Monday, August 08, 2016

Sea Roses


12 comments:

  1. Alan, I'm doing a copy & paste of a post on Facebook: The most important thing you can do today to move the political revolution forward: Sign up to host an event on August 24 at 9pm ET / 6pm PT.

    That's why, on the evening of August 24, we will kick off a new organization called Our Revolution with a major live stream address where Bernie will talk about the specifics of what we can do as organizers going forward to fight for every single issue that drove this campaign. In order to get as many people watching as possible, we need to set up grassroots watch parties all over the country. Note: this was from the Bernie Sanders page on Facebook.

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  2. Those roses are a gorgeous shade of pink, my favorite shade of pink, as it happens.

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    1. Very good. And yet there is one point that essentially no one acknowledges: It has been proven time and time again that ordinary people, contributing small to medium amounts via the internet, can provide more total money than the tiny handful of mega-donors. Much of what campaign finance reform seeks to accomplish would be accomplished if people (politicians) would simply wake up to that fact.

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    2. Not only that, Bill, but a mega-donor may give millions but they still only have one vote, whereas a million small-dollar donors have a million votes.

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    3. Ah, but the megadoner has power, influence, connections,name recognition and a myriad other intangible advantages to offer. The little guy, even a couple million little guys, only can offer votes. What percentage is there in that? :P

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    4. Not just votes. In total, they have money. And friends who vote. And megadonors' power and influence derive from the misconception that one million dollar donation is somehow worth more than half a million $50 donations. Somebody can't do math.

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  4. Well, folks, think of me tomorrow. August 9th is Vermont's state primary day, and I'll be working at the polls from 12:30-3:30pm, and again 5:00-7:00pm, then staying to help count the vote. I will also likely help the Town Clerk bring the voting machines back over to the Town Hall. :-)

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    1. I don't want to seem disrespectful, but to an Illinoisan this notion of having *two separate primaries* in the same year just makes no sense. I looks like a total, unmitigated wast of money.

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    2. I remember when the voting machines were square black stamps with an "X" on the end. They still work very well in much of the world, and are totally oblivious to electronic would-be tamperers. I suppose that every few years one had to re-ink the stamp pads. And in most cases the tallies were/are completed within a few hours. I seem to recall a few years back that there was one precinct in Florida that still used the old-fashioned ballots, and it drove the folks at the county and state levels batty--they couldn't figure out how to cope with manually marked ballots. Which would be a good argument for using them, IMO... Oh, yes, I remember one part of the problem--when the higher-ups asked for a manual recount of some small percentage of the ballots to check the reported tally, of course the answer was that 100% of the ballots had been manually counted to start with. DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOES NOT COMPUTE!

      --Alan

      P.S.: I also recall that one of the last iterations of the Votomatic voting machine used a stylus with a cutter on the end and an un-perforated IBM card, so no hanging chads. And that was OK with the Help America Vote regulations, but they never caught on. I liked the Votomatic. The early ones were more heavily built and durable than the later ones, they say.

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    3. I remember the voting machines where you cast your votes by flipping levers. And, it goes without saying, precinct workers or their superiors could open up the back and change the totals.

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    4. That was not long after the days when a precinct captain reportedly told his workers, "Vote early and often." Probably apocryphal. BUT, it is documented fact that there was a precinct where the majority of the registered voters had addresses in the local cemetery.

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