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Actual Final Third Party Debate Tonight
Separate from the debate moderated by Ralph Nader last night, Free and Equal is hosting a final third party debate tonight at 9:00 p.m. EST (pre-debate coverage began at 8:00 p.m. EST). As a follow up to the October 23rd debate, only Jill Stein (Green) and Gary Johnson (Libertarian) will be facing each other for ninety minutes of questions primarily focusing on foreign policy. It appears that this one isn't being picked up by C-SPAN, but it is being broadcast on RT America on a few cable networks as well as on YouTube (which should work if you have an HTML5 browser, or via the XBMC YouTube plugin). Discuss.
Third parties have literally zero relevance on a national stage.
The debate between fictional write in candidates is tomorrow morning.
This is why we need them.
RT is usually considered a Kremlin propaganda news source. What is with their interest in broadcasting a third party debate?
“The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination; between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals; between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition; between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard. — Sir Winston Churchill, WOLVERHAMPTON, 23 JULY 1949” (Kudos )
Will the debate be this good?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
At 11pm will be the real, true, absolutely final third party debate... prior to tomorrow.
The U.S. party system is divided into two groups: major and minor parties.
Major parties get more than 5% of the vote at the last general election. Minor parties get less than that.
The difference is major parties are eligible for federal matching campaign funds and have easier ballot access. In order to get on the ballot in a State you have to get a certain number of registered voters to sign a petition.
Major parties have a threshold that is frequently fairly low. Minor parties often have much higher requirements, often 3 - 4 times the number of signatures that a major party candidate will need.
That is why Gary Johnson has "Give me 5%" on his homepage. He knows he isn't going to win, but is aiming to get equal ballot access and financing for the Libertarian Party for future elections. The idea is to maybe break the lock the Republicans and Democrats have on the electoral process.
If you want to see the grip of the Big R and Big D loosened, consider voting for Gary Johnson and contribute towards the 5%. If you're in one of the "undisputed" States that are firmly in the grip of Romney or Obama, consider casting your ballot for Johnson (or Jill Stein of the Green Party) even if you'd normally vote Obama or Romney. This way your vote isn't wasted.
http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This should be interesting not because of their relevance to the elections tomorrow because as much as I'd rather have Johnson, Stein, Goode or Anderson as our next president rather than 4 more years of Obamney, I think there is a general discord among people of both the Republican and Democratic parties about their candidates the last couple of years. McCain and Romney haven't really pushed for smaller government or for auditing the Fed, Obama hasn't closed Gitmo nor has he been a very peaceful, anti-war president after murdering a couple of American citizens as judge, jury and executioner via drones, involved the US in yet another war (Libya) and won't even release real statistics of how many innocent Pakistanis our Peace Prize winning president has killed (instead, if they are military-aged males they must be "enemy combatants").
Because of this, I think Stein and Johnson will help to shape the Democratic and Republican party platforms if they manage to get enough votes. If Johnson ends up getting 5% of the national vote (unlikely but he's at 5.2% in national polling...) it could radically change the American political landscape.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The mainstream media polls all over-sample democrats to make it look close, but Romney will win almost all of the so-called toss up states. People know things have been bad the last 4 years and Obama cannot escape his record by attacking Romney. People can see right through that tactic.
the Ohio Secretary of State has illegally placed "experimental" software on voting machines in some counties; illegal because he should have gotten approval from a board. This was done just a few days before the election and an emergency suit has been filed to stop it.
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Loons and fruitcakes? Your brain has been washed. Wake up, look around, and think about the true meaning of the word "democracy".
The primary goal of every right-minded American should be to eliminate the Democratic and Republican parties with EXTREME prejudice. They are two massive weights sitting on a balance beam and we, REAL FUCKING PEOPLE, are the fulcrum. FUCK THEM.
Sorry about all the caps but some people need to be shouted at.
Jill Stein has my vote. It's hard to be a liberal living in the DC suburbs, constantly being harassed by two-party evangelicals.
But, she has a good head on her shoulders, and she knows exactly what it will take to break out of this awful economy.
It turns out that you can't just exploit labor forever and expect them to have any money left to spend. For too long people have been alienated from their right to an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. She will work hard to fix that, and get us back to honest, living wages like we had in the middle of the 20th century.
It used to be that a family of four could survive on one income, but now it's hard to make ends meet even with two.
Adding to her fiscal vision, her positions on the environment, education, and drug legalization are all enlightened and future-forward.
I am a progressive. I am a liberal. She is the only liberal on the ticket, running against a bunch of right-wing warmongering fascists. I gave up on Obama when he illegally invaded Pakistan to kill OBL without any due process whatsoever.
If you're planning to vote for Obama, PLEASE take one last look at Jill Stein.
I've only been listening for a couple minutes and I agree with the GP. You must be looking in the mirror when asking if someone was brainwashed. But reading the rest of your comment, I can see why you are offended.
I can see why "sumdumass" is one of the brainwashed people, his own username gives it away.
I wish I could have more faith in the motivation of each of these fringe party candidates.
It's interesting how they always seem to help the candidate that they would least agree with. Especially in a close election where so much was at stake, I think it's perfectly appropriate to hold these candidates and their voters accountable for whatever happens, just as I believe Ralph Nader helped George W. Bush.
Do I believe Ralph Nader meant to help GWB get elected? No, but he had to know that there was a distinct possibility that he would do so. But I guess it takes such a monumental ego to run for president, that his better nature didn't have much of a chance to dissuade him.
As I've said before, if you are interested in seeing an alternative to the two-party system, the place to get it done is in local elections, starting with school boards and county boards. I'm a bit suspicious when a party with practically no local presence nationwide all of a sudden puts up a candidate for president.
I don't want to be so cynical as to believe these fringe candidates have motives unrelated to their victory, but given the history, the burden of proof is on them.
It's also interesting to me that just like the candidates of the two main parties, there is not one of these fringe candidates that is the least bit impressive. What is it about our political system that it seems no matter what the party, how big or small, they can never seem to field a candidate that is significantly better than a random selection from the phone book.
Maybe I'm wrong and have missed something. Do any of you believe that any of these "third-party" candidates are particularly impressive all-around?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Whoever wins, we ... ... couldn't care less.
We have a 16 trillion dollar debt, and we are adding to it at an unsustainable rate of more than a trillion a year. We are heading for a cliff. The fruitcakes want to turn right, the loons want to run left, but the "moderates" think we should go straight ahead.
The problems facing our country were not caused by the fruitcakes or loonies. They were caused by mainstream politicians and the voters that support them.
Yech, in response to the "Iran crisis" and Syria, Dr. Stein went off on a terrible anti-nuclear rant. Goal: eliminate all nuclear all the world round because it can never be safe, and all reactors produce bomb material... someone's never heard of Generation IV reactors. Hopefully the Green party can be convinced over the next few years that working against nuclear is working against "green" energy...
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
We are heading for a cliff. The fruitcakes want to look right, the loons want to face left, but the "moderates" think we should wipe the bird shit off the windshield.
They are two massive weights sitting on a balance beam
Actually, having two parties STOPS extremism: http://kellogg.nd.edu/publications/workingpapers/WPS/144.pdf (Thanks, Cracked!)
So you want more relevance for third parties. That's fine, and no one is arguing for eliminating third parties. How about a four party system? Five? Let's pick a nice round number. Say, 10 parties. You've got your ultra-lefts, your super conservative religious rights, your socially conservative but fiscally liberal, et cetera. Enough choice that everyone can find one that really lines up with their beliefs.
Now it's time to vote. We'll assume we've reformed the electoral college, and who wins is purely determined by the popular vote. Because these parties are so diverse, we can roughly assume that they're about equal in size. So, election time! 8 of the 10 candidates win 10% of the population. 1 of the remaining two only gets 9%, and the other candidate snags 11%. So great! Now, we have a party in power that 89% of the country disagrees with! Hooray!
Here comes the fun part. The two parties most opposed to our winner above, and therefore most alike, look at each other and say, "Fuck this," and their members merge. So, of course, next election their candidate wins with a whopping 20% of the vote. Their political enemies say, "Fuck this," and now we're down to 8 parties. You can see where this is going.
I see where you are trying to take it, but the proportional representation systems don't do as badly as you insist.
Learn to love Alaska
Third party candidates serve a useful negative purpose for campaign managers. If they can't get a person to switch to their guy, they try to get them to switch to a third party to neutralize their vote. It is one less vote you need to find for your guy.
Phrases like 'protest vote', 'both main parties are the same so vote for the third guy', 'your vote is never waste [yes it is]'
It needs to be said again and again, IT IS A WASTED VOTE unless the third party candidate has any chance of winning, and if he does, why isn't he inside the Republican party changing it from within like Ron Paul, or the Dems. Ron Paul may not have won, but he did, nevertheless make such a dent in them they did this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAFjY96Y1F4&feature=related
So vote the change candidate in the Primaries and change one of the electable parties, once we're past that, you have to vote the lesser of two evils. I'm not sure it will be any longer possible, given they even rigged that vote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=77W5OKStO5s#!
(That's the teleprompt that had the 'ayes have it' result of the voice vote before the voice vote was over, and the rest of the speech on the teleprompter was written as though the 'ayes' won. So the Republican elite won't let one of our guys get elected now).
The of course there's this:
http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Republican-Primary-Election-Results-Amazing-Statistical-Anomalies_V2.0.pdf
They flipped a proportion of the votes on the ES&S Diebold Tabulators to Romney. I wonder how Ron Paul would have scored if the vote hadn't been rigged.
I see where you are trying to take it, but the proportional representation systems don't do as badly as you insist.
But then the point is, the 2 party system isn't the real problem. It's our system of voting that is wrong. So by focusing on breaking out of the 2 party system, we're focusing on the wrong problem (treating the symptoms rather than the disease).
Actually, it's not that uncommon to have a runoff between the two top candidates, or even runoffs just to GET 2 top candidates. That way at least gives the majority a voice, even if their ideal candidate doesn't make the cut.
Whether 2 parties or 2000, no candidate is ever going to do things exactly the way I want them. Heck, that's one of the problems we have now. "My Way or No Way". At least with multiple parties you aren't as likely to fall into the trap of political thinking in pure binary terms. Nor, for that matter, are the politicians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sovereign_default
Third parties in the US don't work. With the way that we vote, 2 parties are the only stable configuration. That's not some grand conspiracy on the part of said parties, it's just the dynamics of the system. The result of that is that the each of the 2 parties have historically themselves been fairly broad coalitions who align around general principals. So, we might not have a Green party as such, but people with those views would be welcome in the Democratic coalition, for instance.
The way to foment change in this system is to push the major party most aligned with you in the direction that you'd like it to go. You do that by getting more candidates who agree with you to run and win. If your cause(es) are really that popular, then it shouldn't be so hard with a lot of work and focus. Third parties are an excellent way to make sure that this doesn't happen. In short, you win by taking over the party that's most closely aligned with your values.
The republican party is an excellent recent example for this actually. The teabaggers rebellion didn't run third party candidates, they ran in party primaries and started knocking out incumbents. The remainder of the party saw this in action and moved fairly quickly to align with the insurgent faction out of simple self-interest. The result was that the party shifted rather significantly to the right to accommodate them which meant that they ended up getting much of what they wanted.
8 of the 10 candidates win 10% of the population.
Here we have far more than 10 parties, most of which irrelevant when considered alone. I don't remember a single election where the votes were uniformly distributed. Usually you end up with 2 or 3 candidates that have a chance to win, I guess because elections are won with money and companies won't invest in candidates who they agree with but can't win.
In practice, if there are 10 parties you won't have 10 candidates. They'll join forces, one naming the president (for instance) and the other the vice-president, other parties get to name ministers if the alliance wins, etc.
the other candidate snags 11%. So great! Now, we have a party in power that 89% of the country disagrees with! Hooray!
That can be solved by using Australian voting or voting again, but only with the top n (normally, n=2) candidates until someone gets more than half the votes. Besides, in the current American system, can you really say you never met anyone who voted in a party even though they preferred another that had zero chance of ever winning?
Your mistake was oversimplifying a complex problem. As Einstein supposedly said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Mathematically, yes, you are correct. First past the post guarantees that only two parties will ever be relevant.
But as long as your state is already sewn up, why not vote for a third party? If you're in Texas, Alaska, California, or New York, you know where the electoral votes are headed.
Or you can try to ensure that a third party gets enough of the vote to get [a] on all of the ballots, and [b] federal matching funds next election cycle.
Really, if you're not in Ohio, you should vote third party.
I'm beginning to lose faith in the "great experiment". I've lived in other countries before, and come back. Yesterday I saw Obama speak in Cincinnati, to a crowd of people who might have equally been cheering a particularly articulate and well-dressed baboon as anyone who actually represented their interests. Worse, the people I attended the event with didn't understand what scared me about the blind tribalism -- they were voting blue team this season. I didn't need to see the same thing at the Romney events; I feel dumb enough for having stood in line yesterday.
What hope is there for my country?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The fruitcakes want to turn right, the loons want to run left, but the "moderates" think we should go straight ahead.
I'm confused --- how did you know which party was represented by the loon and which by the fruitcake?
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Actually, having two parties STOPS extremism
It all depends on how you define "extremism." Personally, I think we need a bit more of it; I'd rather not have the TSA or the Patriot Act, for instance.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Now, we have a party in power that 89% of the country disagrees with! Hooray!
So it's quite possibly no different from how it is now, then? The only difference from now is that people are actually voting for people that they disagree with so the other side doesn't win. Is it really any better to vote for the 'lesser evil' (someone who you disagree with)?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Oh God. America, please just vote for Obama this time. I know he's a let-down in so many ways, but he is hugely the lesser of two evils.
You can compare the 3rd party candidates Johnson, Goode and Stein against Romney and Obama at voterscorecard.com Since there is a Ron Paul write-in campaign and he is a certified write in some states like CA, he also can be selected.
"But as long as your state is already sewn up, why not vote for a third party?"
Because there's no such thing, I think XKCD puts it best:
http://www.xkcd.com/1122/
A State that is sewn up, is just one that hasn't flipped yet!
"Really, if you're not in Ohio, you should vote third party."
And if Candidate Romney's lot (I refuse to call him the Republican Candidate just because he rigged an election), can convince enough Democrat voters to do likewise he can add another panel to that XKCD comic.
If you can cure the symptoms, do you have to cure the disease? And if you treat the symptoms, it's easier to treat the disease. When we have a 2-party system, they'll ensure the voting system favors them. If we broke the 2-party system, then it would be much easier to change the voting system. And vice versa.
Learn to love Alaska
Libertarians include both - full on anarchists to outright George III swapped for Koch Royalists, with just about anything you can think of good or bad in the middle. So in other words you can't tell, all you can tell is that they are people that think the word "liberty" is nice.
Considering that the first AP1000 hasn't even been started up yet it's going to be a long time before the generation after that gets going.
or instead of casting one single vote we could rank the candidates from best to worst and the canidate with highest over all score wins the election which would more than likely lead to moderate semi sane people getting elected as all of the parties realize that the start putting smarter people in and get rid of demagogues who will get both rated highly by one set of whackjobs and lowly by the nut-cases at the other end of the spectrum. so we would have a system rewarding sound reason instead of which charismatic loon happens to have the largest fallowing of zealots by 1% or can discourage 60% of the nation to not bother
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Just to recap, the OHIO REPORTING SYSTEMS DOESN'T NEED THIS SOFTWARE! It already tabulates the results as they are. What Ohio have ordered is an interface to something else. What happened in August is they were caught rigging the election, they need to improve their rigging and that needs early voting data:
http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Republican-Primary-Election-Results-Amazing-Statistical-Anomalies_V2.0.pdf
The Ohio vote in the Republican primaries was noticeable because the voter fraud had a linear slant. The more votes in a district the bigger the slant to Romney. So districts of size X, voted 35% for Romney, districts of size Y voted 30% for Romney and so on, regardless of anything else.
This INSANE result, showed an algorithm was at work, and comparing the districts with ES&S central tabulators against paper voting districts, showed how rigged the election was, and that this rigging was right across all the states.
http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/stolen-election-2004-plus-the-voter-fraud-scam-series/wisconsin-no-tabulator-versus-tabulator-counties/
To rig an election convincingly, you need the stats early, so that you can make just enough vote flipping near the beginning. If you set too much vote-flipping at the beginning you risk your candidate getting 80% win. If you flip it too late, your guy can lose.
They know they can't simply set constants for vote rigging because they were spotted in the statistical analysis of the Ohio Primaries vote.
But then the point is, the 2 party system isn't the real problem. It's our system of voting that is wrong. So by focusing on breaking out of the 2 party system, we're focusing on the wrong problem (treating the symptoms rather than the disease).
It's the system of financing the voting system is what's wrong. Influence and Lobbying
AccountKiller
Aren't you so cleaver.. Did you think that up all by yourself or didn't your mom help you? I bet you like it when your mom helps you.
The meeting you referred to was in May 2012, the contract for the software was in September 2012, so there's no way they could have approved software that hadn't been ordered. The contract specifically states it's for test only, which is why ES&S are able to avoid submitting it for approval.
Meeting: Monday, May 14, 2012 at 9:30 a.m.
Contract: September 19th 2012
http://bradblog.com/Docs/Ohio_ESS_Contract_091812.pdf
The reason they ordered this software is clear, they were caught in August after the Republican Primaries showed clear, statistically provable fraud. To fix that you need to know the voting in real time. That requires the vote tally.
http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Republican-Primary-Election-Results-Amazing-Statistical-Anomalies_V2.0.pdf
THE COUNT DOESN'T NEED THIS SOFTWARE. THE FRAUD NEEDS THIS SOFTWARE.
Or more specifically, the cover-up of the fraud needs this software. They're trying to avoid the results being statistically shown to be rigged like they were in the primaries.
Anyone else remember html5...?
Sad really, how high hopes don't always do the trick.
Maybe next year....
You're so sharp you sleep in the knife drawer, right?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What, like in Belgium and Italy? Yeah, shining beacons they are.
Not sure how you'd apply PR to a presidential election. Obama on Monday to Wednesday, Romney takes Thurs - Sat and the others draw lots for the Sundays?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I agree. The greens are well intentioned, even if their methods are a little impractical.
Read the contract, it is clear what this is for - exporting data in CSV format.
The idea that you would base general election vote rigging on primary voting patterns is ridiculous as they are completely different.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It would work out with Approval Voting.
They were already CAUGHT in the fraud, the MASSIVE OBVIOUS FRAUD:
http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Republican-Primary-Election-Results-Amazing-Statistical-Anomalies_V2.0.pdf
Well obvious at least because of the way it was done.
So to order software in September and install it 4 days before an election, and that software exports the results, and that is exactly the data you need to improve the fraud that was spotted in August. You claim it was agreed in May, but the Spec says September. Done at the last minute to eliminate the time needed to examine it.
The guy your defending (I've read you comment history), just introduced a new last minute law, too on Friday.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/11/5/in_tight_race_11th_hour_voter
"Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted issued a last-minute directive which could invalidate a large number of legal provisional ballots by placing the burden on the voter to correctly record the form of identification provided to election officials."
The games never end with this one, he was the one who introduced an early voting law that makes it hard for Democrats to vote early, that a judge injuncted:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/say-hello-to-the-ohio-official-who-might-pick-the-next-president/264201/
So we have a known proved fraud, we have a known bad actor introducing several last minute directives, and unvetted patches to the voting machines.
Occam Razor.
That's to smart of an idea for it to ever happen in this country since we have stupid people running it. :)
"The idea that you would base general election vote rigging on primary voting patterns is ridiculous as they are completely different."
The idea that you commission software in September, one month after fraud was detected in the primaries. Software not needed in other States. Install the patch 4 days before an election, and argue that it's test software and therefore doesn't need to be certified.
Now *THATS* ridiculous.
Knowing how much to flip the vote by, to make it look like a plausible result is *EXACTLY* what you need the raw data exported for. It is NOT needed for the election, because it is not used in any other State.
But that's EXACTLY what you need for voter fraud that was detected in August, from the Republican Primary vote.
I'm not saying you should write more sentences, but making them shorter and delineating them in the standard way would be a great improvement.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Of what we are up against.
If you start looking into all of the people that have come into power you will recognize that its a very small number of people from powerful families that have a history in MKUltra Mind Control. Accept for Obama and some others I havent looked up.
Now im not saying this is all true, but if you start looking at the history and connecting the dots you start to wonder if we are living in free country.
This video is talk from a previous mk ultra survivor, the best one I a have seen yet she talks about some of the people involved in mind control experiments and how its part of the people who are running or have run for president. Now it might all be bullshit, but im starting to wonder if there is some truth to it the more I research it.
Dont say I didnt warn you that this graphic stuff and will stretch your beliefs to the limit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhTVP9DsOag&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKMk_s78cw8&feature=youtube_gdata
You're assuming a simple plurality voting system, which is what is used 99% of the time in the US. It's the perfect voting system for exactly two choices, but for more than two choices it falls down completely due to effects like the ones you mention. Pretty much every single pass voting system is better, although they all do have some problems (none as bad as simple plurality) perfectly representing the will of the population. Personally I think that democracy is important enough that there's no reason to balk at a multiple pass system. Anyway, the current farce of a system that the US uses now, where a coin is tossed to see if a Democrat or a Republican will get the job, really needs to change.
It's worth noting that, in the US, the Democrats and Republicans obviously recognize that the system of voting used doesn't actually work properly, which is why they implement their own runoff system in the form of their own primary elections.
If it's true, it's still not a problem. As it stands "third parties" are made up mostly of idealists who know that they don't have any chance of winning. All the hard-core pragmatists join the Democrats or Republicans. If a truly democratic voting system were implemented in the US, there would be more parties.
Third party, fourth party, fifth party--what difference does it make how many parties there are? What's important is what they stand for, not how many of them there are. And none of the "third parties" (shouldn't at least one of them be the "fourth party"? Just shows how baked-in the two-party system is) mentioned here have any solutions that are more worth listening to than the Dems and Reps. There are lots of countries that have lots of parties. Greece, for example. Is life in Greece better for ordinary people than here?
If you would like to make a difference in US politics, then you certainly do not want anything to do with a third party. Look at Ron Paul. Love him or hate him, he had absolutely no influence in US politics or policy as a Libertarian. Instead he did the smart thing: he found the party that most closely approximated his ideals and he worked within to influence change in that party. Today the Gold Standard is official Republican party platform. The Federal Reserve will almost certainly be audited. His influence is felt because he did not stand at the edge and throw stones. He got involved and worked with people on common ground to change the system to further his ideals.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
I think it is important to put a few things in context. First, Stein herself, the Green party, and a goodly amount of progressive leftists aren't against nuclear in its entirety, just technical, sociopolitical, and economic issues as it is currently implemented. If there were Thorium and similar (nearly no nuclear waste, safe without runaway reaction etc..) reactors, available for production en masse, unencumbered by patents and proprietary hangups, operated with the public good in mind instead of profit at any cost, and overseen by an impartial government monitoring body that actually abides by safety regulations and whatnot, Greens (and most progressives) would welcome them as part of the clean energy future.
However, that is not the current state of nuclear power, and that is to what Greens rightly object. We could be on the path to bringing the above to fruition but in nearly all factors, there's issues of greed standing in the way and we need to deal with the implications thereof.
your dad's loins were the loon, and your mom bore the fruitcake.
Not sure how you'd apply PR to a presidential election. Obama on Monday to Wednesday, Romney takes Thurs - Sat and the others draw lots for the Sundays?
Your inability to solve a problem doesn't make the problem hard to solve. How do the places with PR solve it? Oh, you picked an absurd choice nobody does out of the many PR choices. That makes you ignorant or willing to lie to prove a point. Or, more likely, both.
Oh, no, and ingorant liar can't figure out a voting system. Stop the presses and call the countries using the system, it's all a failed system.
Learn to love Alaska
Last night in the debate she certainly seemed opposed to all nuclear: she wanted an end to nuclear bombs (I'm down with that, naturally), an end to nuclear power in the middle east, and en to nuclear power everywhere, and ending of all research because it was too dangerous...
The problem is that ... we can't develop those future reactors magically. There's no money, there's no societal will. How many new nuclear engineers are there each year? What are you chances of being able to find work designing or researching Gen IV and beyond reactors? If we want next-generation nuclear to exist, we need to implement current generation nuclear. BWR/PWR designs aren't even all that bad; the AP1000 can use MOX fuel, and IIRC it could be modified to run on solid metal fuel instead of oxide fuel (easier to reprocess). The waste from them that can't be recycled could be dealt with (mostly) by sub critical reactors... we have the technology already if only someone would build it!
The thing it, utilities currently do not operate for profit at all costs. In most states (all states?) utilities have capped profits. The local energy producer in NC (Progress) certainly hit those profit caps, but they were pretty modest as far as allowed profits go (12.5%). The NRC is already an effective regulator, not subject to regulatory capture (see the U.S. safety record for proof! And how quickly any problems are detected, publicized, and dealt with... bad press because people don't grok the realities of large scale industrial installations, but good regulation). The AP1000 is already of a design where overheating causes the reaction to slow. "Greed" is being used as the latest bogeyman: obstructionists hippies have done everything to make solutions to their problems infeasible! When solutions to their constructed problems appear, they move the goal. They've defined things so that they cannot ever support nuclear.
Meanwhile, they are basically causing accelerated CO_2 emissions. We're at a point where natural gas just isn't good enough (and it seems kind of idiotic to use a fuel source that will be tapped before any of the plants hit the end of their useful lives)... to the point where if we don't shift to nuclear, we won't be able to develop post-whatever energy technology as a society since we'll have fewer and fewer available resources every year. The "Green New Deal" might actually work if they mobilized the work force needed to roll out a dozen reactors in under a decade (it takes something like over 2000 people per reactor working for several years, tons of industrial support, etc. ... the perfect "job creation plan" if you're ok with federal 'stimulus funding' if you ask me)! It's infuriating seeing them work against their own best interests like that.
Time for a neon green party?
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
So why not push for it? We've all got 3 years to push for and implement Instant Runoff Voting for all elections in our respective states and end this clown show in 2016 and for good.
It's worth noting that, in the US, the Democrats and Republicans obviously recognize that the system of voting used doesn't actually work properly, which is why they implement their own runoff system in the form of their own primary elections.
Good point!
Unfortunately, doing it the way we do it means that the candidates have to out-extreme each other before they can get to the Main Event.
Most people are familiar with the Left/Right (AKA Liberal/Conservative) dimension of politics. More perceptive people are aware that people also analyze politics along a values spectrum that spans from 'economic values' to 'social values'. But few people consider that there is a *3rd* dimension to politics, which we might refer to as the centralism/decentralism continuum. Viewed from this perspective, the major parties occupy the 'centralized' end, and the minor parties occupy the 'decentralized' end of the continuum. This continuum refers to the locus of political power. In a certain sense, it is an artifact of the Cold War, when you had two highly centralized powers confronting each other. In America, of course, you had the two monolithic political parties of Democrats and Republicans. Later, you saw this reflected in the Big Threes of the Sixties: the Big Three media (CBS, NBC, ABC); the Big Three automakers (GM, Ford, Chrysler), and the Iron Triangle of governmental policy-making (legislators, lobbyists, agencies). However, in our own age, the rise of the Net has slowly been undermining these centralist organizing memes. As hierarchies flatten, decision-making moves from the center to the edges. This trend bodes badly for the past-oriented (two) major political parties and well for the future-oriented (many) minor political parties. You can expect to see a backward-facing conservative movement to protect centralism from both major parties, but that movement --- like most conservative movements -- is already doomed to failure. The trend away from centralist organizations will only accelerate. Eventually we will see, here in America, a true multi-party system, which, like most multiple-body systems, will only be meta-stable at best. This increased political landscape, however, will be good for democracy in general, as the market in political ideas will sort itself out via competition among the various groups. Centralism is now the walking dead of politics. Remember, you read it here first, on Slashdot, Election day, 2012.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Is it really any better to vote for the 'lesser evil' (someone who you disagree with)?
Well, yes. That's what that word "lesser" means. Getting five bucks when you'd prefer 100 is still better than zero dollars.
Not what I meant. Is having to vote for the 'lesser evil' because third parties have virtually no chance of winning really any better than a situation where the number of people who don't want a certain candidate having power is more visible? It's the same situation either way.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Oh, I push for it where I can. The problem is, who exactly do you think is in charge of these elections? The two major parties are. They have absolutely no incentive to alter a system that's keeping them on top.
Remember this was a debate/lecture; she didn't have the time to go into the whole minutia of "Lots of what we have now is bad, implemented in bad ways et.c.. but there is the potential for things to be done right if a whole bunch of things happen". She's spoken about that elsewhere, and I don't object to what she said that overall most implementations and discussions of nuclear policy at the present time are not beneficial (ie. Nuclear power and research in the middle east isn't UAE and Qatari sheiks pouring billions into patentless Gen3.5 and Gen4 research locally under strict security guidelines, its Iran and everyone else in the area trying to create old Gen1 reactors and enrichment for weapons as part of a powerplay against a US-provided nuclear Israel that is already assassinating scientists etc...).
We can absolutely invest in nuclear research without building a bunch of Gen2-3 plants and switching our power generation over to them, problems and all. In fact, under Stein/Green it would be even easier to do so because much of the funding would be public. Can you imagine how much money we could put into safe nuclear research with the end to our two occupations in the middle east? Hell, imagine the funding (both overt/reported and black) just spent on PMCs and similar private organizations with boots on the ground in the warzone alone. There are plenty of nuclear engineers and other scientists/engineers/support personnel that could be useful for development of new nuclear tec that are working for everything from the USAF and Navy, to DARPA, to private defense contractors, the DOE and elsewhere. There could be plenty of work for them in this industry - hell, they're already being funded and subsidized by the public; we could easily give them something more beneficial to do.
There is a great deal of variability to this and I can say that, while there all some decently intentioned programs, many of those caps are full of loopholes and toothless. There are only two power companies in my area, both run for profit, subsidized, and with no serious caps; both with huge violations, lies and fuckups. One was actually pretty decent, but they were then bought out entirely by the First Energy/Edison conglomerate that could be described as the worst of Wall Street and energy put together. Edison's umbrella of companies alone of a quagmire of malfeasance and sadly, since the one of the two local power company was bought out by them in my area, I'm saddled with their bullshit. The other local power company had been under investigation for years for basically taking huge subsidies, retaining control of the lines and fucking up (A near a decade back they lied about applying scrubbing technology to their coal plants and building some solar, while taking tax breaks and subsidies for doing both) . After the July Deracho when it was proven that the other company basically decided to save money by not trimming trees, people were angry enough to actually threaten to revoke some of their subsidies, so they actually started doing their job and lo and behold when Sandy came, things weren't as bad. The new Edison company however had enough money to give the finger to everyone and the outages were horrid... (which was compounded by the fact some of us were forgotten because they sent local trucks, despite outages, up to fucking Ohio because of the election on its way). No matter what, the patrons in the area have no meaningful choice (the idea of a free market in energy is absolutely asinine, much like telecoms, unless the lines are completely owned by the public), and are saddled with a "bad but getting better if we constantly watch over them every single second" local company and a "Fuck you" Edison-owned conglomerate company which retain control of the lines, benefit from subsidy and complain they always need more money, while jacking up "distribution costs" for customers. Energy is much like the telecom industry, a several giant holes that the public pours money into for worse service while some
Freedom first, then peace, then justice. You can't have justice without peace because for that is mob tyranny.. You cannot have peace without freedom for that is slavery. And you have to deliver them to yourself in the only order that can sustain itself during the transitions. Freedom first. Then peace. Then justice.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.