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Help Select Questions for Bush and Kerry
This is a strange post in that it has 50 comments attached to it already. These are 50 questions for Bush and Kerry selected by non-Slashdot moderators, as explained in our original call for help with the New Voters Project Presidential Youth Debate. At this point, where you come in is not only with extra-insightful moderation of these 50 questions, but with your "many eyes" trying to spot questions these two candidates have answered elsewhere so that the final questions presented to them are not repeats. The first 40 questions are from potential voters aged 18 - 35. The last 10 are from future voters 13 - 17. And that's enough explanation. From here we might as well jump right into the questions...
The United States, by invading Iraq, used international support and resources to lead the fight against nuclear weapons. However, no weapons were found in Iraq. How do you think this has hurt or helped our efforts against nuclear proliferation in countries such as Iran and North Korea?
What is the plan for dealing with Iraq if the citizens of Iraq vote in favor of a fundamentalist Islamic form of government that resembles the one currently existing in Iran? How will your administration work to preserve the roots of democracy that have been cultivated in this middle eastern country if the citizens of Iraq vote in a theocratic form of governance?
Nearly 100 American media resources today are owned by only 5 corporations. While the Senate's overruling of the FCC's controversial 3-to-2 decision to further deregulate media ownership rules in June of 2003 is a source of encouragement, most Americans want more variety in their sources of news and entertainment. What will you do to ensure that Americans have accurate sources of information to base their democratic decisions on?
What are the three written works or political thinkers that have contributed the most to your philosophy of governance, and why?
In regards to social security, as a professional 25-year-old worker I'm concerned that I'm paying into a system, which is severely over-taxed and will be non-existent when I reach retirement. I would like to know what steps will be taken to either ensure I will get the benefits I've paid for, or to allow me to no longer contribute to Social Security and use that extra income to invest myself for my retirement, most likely a Roth IRA.
Why do you say bad things about each other? When I grow up and become President I will be truthful and honest and I won't talk bad about the other guy. You both have a war against each other and you are forgetting we don't care about your war but we care about the War in Iraq. I would like for you to say one good thing about each other.
The Bush administration has made a big deal of President Bush's Christian faith. Democratic candidate John Kerry is also a Christian. My question for both candidates is how does your faith affect your decision-making for the future of our country? Also, America is based on the separation of church and state. For the candidates, is it conflicting to take a position on issues based on Christianity (such as abortion and gay marriage) when not everyone in America believes in God or Christianity?
Drop the first part of the question. All it will draw are generic homilies about the importance of IP, how wonderfully innovative Americans are, and how Americans will be more innovative with me than the other guy.
Specificity doesn't guarentee answers, but it makes evasion more obvious and sometimes that's all you can hope for.
Additionally, could you explain why outlawing alcohol required an amendment to the constitution, yet no amendment is necessary to prohibit the use of marijuana and other illegal drugs.
I think this is the best of the three questions on drug policy. Frankly, they are redundant and should be lumped into one question somehow.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
A better electorate question might ask the candidates how they feel about the usage of paper-less electronic voting machines which have proven vulnerabilities.
There are many ways to tally the votes (electoral college, proportional electorate by state, etc), but if the votes themselves are vulnerable to fraud then democracy of any type is in peril.
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The national debt sits at 7.4 Trillion dollars, we have a 500 billion dollar budget deficit, a 500 billion dollar trade deficit, and the one question about the global economy is about the frickin' metric system? I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
So originally, it was (at least partially) intended to select a candidate who was popular across the entire Union and supported by the body of Electors who were entrusted with the duty of selecting somebody who they believed would be most qualified.
In today's world, people aren't voting for an Elector whom they trust to select a quality candidate -- they're just voting for a party, since most Electors are pledged to their nominating party (this wasn't anticipated at the time). The result of this strict two-party system and our increasingly national awareness is something much closer to mob rule.
The first is drugs where dependence is chiefly psychological (alcohol, most psychedelics, marijuana, X). The second is drugs which have a strong physical component to dependence (nicotine, cocaine and derivatives, opiates). The last is drugs which induce violent and unpredictable behavior in the average user (meth, PCP, Ketamine) and are usually dependence forming.
The first category should not be illegal for any reason. However, I like the idea of denying welfare checks to folks who continually test positive for those drugs. I also like the idea of taxation at the state level to avoid such drugs becoming consumer staples. (Think of it as a luxury tax.)
The second category should be legal simply to reduce the criminal profit motive;criminal action from the second category almost invariably is a result of an addict not being able to find a 'fix'. Taxation proceeds from the first category should go towards providing rehab clinics with funding in order to get people off the junk once they go and get hooked (if they are the 10% that is susceptible to dependence).
The third category should only be available via the medical community and prescribed as necessary, but with general distribution regulated by the states. These drugs are so dangerous and unpredictable across the set of users that just allowing their use might present a clear danger to others.
I believe the above notes form a basis for a socially responsible and freedom enhancing drug policy.
Note that this is all contingent on getting the federal government out of regulating intrastate matters, and the idea that government should not regulate your own body, but is responsible for preventing you from doing harm to others through your poor choices. People are going to use drugs and fuck up their lives, just like they always have even within prohibition. Why waste money and make criminals of folks who only wish to harm themselves?
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Thousands of people poured over the wording, grammar, and nature of these questions, making them as simple and clear as possible, yet both of you won't ANSWER THEM.
We don't want to hear you talk about unrelated crap that has nothing to do with the questions in front of you, we don't want a rambling missive about the failings of your opponent(s), we don't want a speech riddled with prewritten soundbites. We want answers.
When will we get simple, clear answers?
Maybe this is "-1, Offtopic", but how do I find out who my Electors are?
And why is it, on the ballot, I only see the names of the candidates (Bush, Kerry, etc) and not the names of the ELECTORS that I'm REALLY voting for?
Thanks.
Here's a question: Why do you think a President ought to be chosen by popular vote?
I'm sure your instinct will be to tell me that I'm asking that question the wrong way around. That's a sign that you've been thoroughly indoctrinated. Make an effort to cast aside your assumptions and try to build a case for chosing a President by a simple majority. If you're honest about it, you'll find it surprisingly difficult.
And the brethren went away edified.
It's only "whacky" if you assume that a majority of the popular vote ought to decide the election.
Wrong. Get a dictionary and look up "majority". Then flip to "plurality".
Plainly, the Founding Fathers thought otherwise.
It's not clear-cut at all. We can never accurately know the beliefs of another person- we can only try to infer those beliefs from their actions. And if there existed important motives to act contrary to belief, then one must admit the question is not easy to solve.
Would you also claim "Plainly, the Founding Fathers thought that slaves had 3/5ths the value of a man"? Of course you wouldn't.
That was just a compromise offered to convince the slavery states to join up. Likewise, the creation of a Senate whose representation is independent from population was an enticement to attract smaller states into the federation.
Appeal to tradition is rhetorically invalid.
you'll find it surprisingly difficult
No, it isn't. The burden is on advocates of unequal political privilege to defend their position. It is the inherently less tenable side, for that is the cause of elitists, royalists, and dictators.
It is perhaps possible to come up with convincing arguments for maintaining the electoral college as it is, or for changing it without eliminating it entirely, but merely implying the alternative would be fascism is inadequate.
The founding fathers were not particularly ingenious, they were a bunch of essentially aristocratic(though without formal title) land owners who wanted more say in local government and higher profits on their shipping. They weren't particularly bad men, but they weren't infallible saints either(see slave=3/5's of a person or the fact that they counted for population even when they couldnt' vote). The primary reason they created the electoral college rather than the popular vote(or so I've always been taught) is that, like aristocrats throughout time they feared that true democracy would result in mob rule(read poor people who might want to know why the founding fathers had so much money).
In the end, they came up with a reasonable(this does not mean perfect) governmental system, which was, for the most part about as liberal as was possible at the time, but most of its provisions are simply English common law and experience codified into a single document.
The US constitution is not the be all and end all of government and the constitution itself isn't why we have or do not have freedoms, the constitution is just a piece of paper, the Soviet Union had one too, one which in theory granted more rights to its citizenry than does ours, but that was only theory. Our constitution works because we have a general belief in the rights of the people, as do many other systems where those rights aren't written down.