The fed doesn't favor investment over work. What does that even mean?
I think he meant investment over savings. That is, low banking interest rates drive money into more speculative investment markets.
I don't think either is really true. The Fed tries to balance employment with low inflation. Employment keeps the masses buying crap and low inflation keeps the bond market, where the majority of wealth is parked, stable.
You raise some good points but the telcos, as you would imagine, have the very best lawyers on wiretapping issues. I find it very hard to believe they didn't know they were breaking FISA laws. Which makes me wonder why they went along with scheme. Maybe it was a simple as some misguided sense of patriotism. Maybe it was something more. I think we deserve to know and the law suits are a means to that end.
I don't care for the telcos behavior in this but I don't think they are the real villians. But squeezing them is the only way (currently) to get to the truth.
And yes, congress ended up passing a law that allows him to do exactly what was supposed to be against the law when this happened.
Congress would sell their mothers before having their August vacations shortened. One can only hope the people force them to do the right thing when this comes up again in 4 months.
By pointing out "new" "secret" and "undocumented" doesn't make it lawful, especially when not passed by any lawful body and it explicitly breaks 30 years of FISA rulings.
God forbid a company goes bankrupt for breaking the law.
I think I speak for a lot of people in that I would willing forgo the $12 I would get as a settlement from these companies for helping to spy on me so long as the real culprits are brought to justice. I don't particularly want to bankrupt these companies but if these law suits are the only viable vehicles to getting at the real criminals then so be it. Let the rats start fighting with each other as the law starts closing in on them and let the truth come out.
when an officer of the law comes knocking with a an official-looking document, legal or not, how can any individual (and you know that corporations are viewed in the eyes of the law as individuals, right?) decide whether or not to go along?
Geez, I dunno. Consult a lawyer, perhaps? The telcos are rumored to employ a few.
And yes, you can say that AT&T and such should not have complied, but nobody outside of the top brass at AT&T know what they were threatened with.
Isn't this the kind of thing that once upon a time the Free Press leaked, Congress investigated, and the Justice Department prosecuted? Maybe it time people stopped mumbling the mindless incantation that "everything changed after 9/11" and using it as an excuse to abdicate their responsibilities and justify not upholding the law.
WTF? So, basically the gPhone will have some kind of operating system and be connected to some kind of network, all of it to made by some as yet unnamed manufacturer.
>> Uhm yeah, consultants. Their job is to whip up a fear frenzy and then sell the cure.
That is very close to the truth. I have a good friend who worked for Gartner and now works for a major competitor. It's not so much fear/cure they are selling as the latest hyped trend and how (for a fee) you can jump aboard and gain a competitive advantage. The whole business plan of these guys is basically to be a CYA vehicle for IT management.
The puddles of pee in the AT&T executive suite when the first law suits were allowed to move forward.
>> you're a big company with lots of government contracts. A well-known government law enforcement agency comes to you and says "we need you do X, and it needs to be secret." Wouldn't you think that you could presume that the actions the government asks you to do are by definition legal?
Why on earth would anyone presume that? If they have stockholders, that BIG company had damn well not presume anything. That's why they have large in-house legal staffs accustomed to reviewing every detail of a contract and a fleet of top flight law firms on retainer. It is called due diligence and the people who invest in companies take it seriously when it is their dollars you are risking on an assumption.
>> Or if they turn out to be illegal, you have reason to have acted in the manner you did, which dramatically lowers any punishment.
I am guessing the people on trial at Nuremberg and the fools at Abu Graib took that line of reasoning too but one can only hope that a CEO of a Fortune 500 company might have access to a history book and newspaper.
>> I'm not a lawyer (thank God), but I've hung out with a bunch to know the difference between unpleasant acts and illegal ones.
And this was both. Baring any ridiculous "national security" ruling the case will move forward and you will get confirmation of that from "a controlling legal authority".
Maybe but I think it would be harder and have a much lower hit rate. One big difference that jumps out at me is that American English is much more homogenized from 60 years of national television, radio, fairly standardized educational materials, etc. Arabic, spread over dozens of nations, with no (until very recently) unified media encompassing the entire region, highly variable levels of literacy and education quality, etc., makes it seem much easier to pinpoint locality, origin, etc.
The coolest part of the project is a tool called Writeprint, which 'automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating "anonymous" content' with an accuracy of 95%, according to the release."
It is my understanding that there are so many Arab dialects that an Algerian and Syrian have a better chance of understanding each other in a common second language than trying to under each other's local dialect. If the language is really that fragmented, that alone cuts down the search space enormously. I venture to say this is true of many older languages that developed with small quirks on different sides of the local mountain range. Throw in link analysis, cross-referenced content, etc., and this doesn't seem so extraordinary.
>>Do you really think that Giuliani would be worse than Bush/Cheney?
When fielding a fascist baseball team, it like being forced to pick between Ruth, DiMaggio, and Mantle. Ruddy has every instinct and skill to carry on the Bush/Cheney traditions.
To quote Ruddy:
Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
In the context of the speech in which this was given (NY Times),it almost sounds reasonable. In the hands of President Giuliani it most definitely won't.
I took it to mean that spies, being perfect arbiters of innocence and guilt because they can intercept everything, would never bother innocent people and therefore never give innocent persons a need to defend themselves.
Of course, it could just mean that without a paper trail, and having already been sent to Gitmo, no defense is required for the innocent or guilty.
That nothing like this this happened, was a very commendable achievement of the city government.
Absolutely. That is the only possible outcome of political demonstrations. Too bad there wasn't more of this, eh? Sadly, just things like this,this,
and this.
I just can't shake the nagging suspicion they've gotten a little slack on the warrant thing lately.
Man, you are going to require surgery if you stick your tongue so far into your cheek. Didn't your mother warn you about the consequences of making funny faces as a kid?
Really? Is that why Michael Moore was attending the Republican National Convention in 2004?
But if he wasn't famous he would have been put in one of the "free speech zones" (i.e. fenced in pens blocks away from where anyone could hear or see) like everyone else.
Only if they convince the military to go along with it.
They only need to keep the military at bay - or overseas. Blackwater and the other private armies are more than sufficient to do the job of disarming average citizens. Google Blackwater and Katrina to get a glimpse of what went down in NOLA.
The mercenaries only require a nice big paycheck and don't carry baggage like honor and loyalty and dedication to the country that might make them hesitate.
I find this frustrating because in reading some of your other post we agree on a lot of things. Unfortunately not all things in the world are the way you want them to be just because you think they should be.
You are defending the indefensible...
Says you - for no reason, apparently, other than you say so. The rest of the paragraph is silly enough to speak for itself.
Cars and planes have been around for over 100 years. And they get used pretty frequently. There's also these little things called radio and local television stations.
Yes, and let's compare the flight time to NH from DC (less than 90 minutes) to one of your mentioned states, WA (5 hours?). Now double that for a round trip to a one or two day swing through the state. Notice something relevant here for a time constrained, exhausted candidate who has more to do than collect frequent flyer miles?
If you don't grasp the concept of retail politics and the value it adds to the political process then this discussion is truly hopeless. Suffice it say that media spots are not the relevant issue. Sure, any state can run ads. So your solution leads to a candidate who, because he can't physically get to the first primary state as often as he might like, nor meet as large a percentage of the voters as he might like, runs a boat load of ads. Now isn't THAT an exciting and insightful process for the country! I can hear the pundits now. "Candidate X could not attend any functions in WA this weekend but he release a new radio commercial with several words that differ from last week's radio spot."
Ah, yes, because Texas's constitution forbids voters from asking candidates questions at open forums.
Ok, this might be hard for you because it involves big numbers but do your best. Candidates want to win elections. They do this by getting the largest number of votes. In TX, with 25 times the population of NH, they will do this by rarely, if ever, leaving the major cities. They will do it by staged media events and there will be nothing open about the forums. To be effective gatherings will need thousands, not hundreds, of attendees and they will be tightly scripted and controlled. A candidate in NH can easily visit 2 or 3 towns in a weekend and personally meet (not herd into an auditorium) 700 people - 1 of every 1000 of the voters. That will not happen in TX. And yes, in an early primary personal contact is key.
Airplanes, airplanes, airplanes
Already explained. Let it sink in.
Pfft. Air fairs are going to be vastly cheaper from DC to California or Texas than to Iowa. Secondly, the top candidates all have warchests in the millions, and can easily afford plane tickets for themselves and their staff. Hell, even Ron Paul can raise $75,000 in one day.
Meditate for a bit on the fact that "expensive" applies to many different resources, not just money. It will help you grow from being a know-it-all kid to someone who might be useful in a national campaign some day.
small state elitism...more elitism
Throwing the word elitism around may have gotten you a bit of notice in political science class and possibly laid once or twice but it is misused and laughable in this context. You will need to get some new material if you want to make the next step up.
Dude. Every state in the union is practiced at having elections...
Dude, you just refuse to get it. Early primaries are freaking different in many, many subtle ways. Ask any political operative who has been through a national campaign. There is more to it than taking the voting booths out of storage and cranking up the standard political machines. Seriously, read something other than your own thoughts.
Do you have any (arguments) that aren't ludicrous?
Sure but they require reason and an open mind so no need to waste them on you.
Nope, still ludicrous. Millions are spent on advertising, traveling,
First, immediate points off to anyone who puts the words elitism and New Hampshire in the same paragraph. Scrappy, independent, frugal, industrious, maybe. Elitist? Not uttered by anyone who ever set foot in the state.
But to your point, no, not every state can do it.
(1) Size matters. In this case small, geographically and demographically, is better. The ability for the people to actually meet and press the candidates on the issues could never happen in a state the size of TX. Candidates could spend a year there and not meet 1% of the population and you would never get the level of citizen involvement that one gets in NH. The physical size alone makes it financially impossible for shoe string candidates to get a foot hold
(2) Location, location, location. Most presidential candidates are tethered to DC in one way or another. The many trips back and forth to any state too far west becomes impractical and too expensive very quickly.
(3) Practice, practice, practice. IA and NH have been at this for a long time. Campaigns need experienced operatives and volunteers on the ground to get a campaign, particularly for candidates who are initial long shots, off the ground. Any state can learn to do this over time but it will be a mess for the first few cycles and rotating primaries would just guarantee an ongoing cluster fuck.
There are many other reasons but these are enough for now.
Turning to the racist nonsense about NH and IA being "too white", so what? There isn't a state in the country that perfectly reflects every demographic, be it race, income, age, religion, etc. And it doesn't matter. IA and NH have 90% of the same concerns of all Americans - the economy, security, environment, globalism, health care, etc. It's not as if somehow IA and NH are denying FL the opportunity to pander to retirees or Arizona to talk about border issues. Every state has some local concerns - that's why they have primaries too.
Lastly, the stuff about the financial rewards of the primary is just drivel. Most NH residents don't own hotels or tv stations so they never see a dime but even if they did it would come out to about $100/person/year. Whoop di do, party on!
Thanks for that excellent post. Sadly it will probably not get its due in one of these topics where most people are more interested in venting than anything else.
The attacks on the traditional primary line up and the whining of other (larger) states is largely misguided and the current trend of trying to jump the line is going to be a disaster if allowed to continue.
The early primary states are not a problem, they are a national treasure.
Any sense of disenfranchisement from states voting later in the season has less to do with the so-called lack of diversity in NH and Iowa than it does in party rules, the media, and political funding. The political conventions have become nothing more than a 3 day media spectacle because the parties have changed the rules so that the outcome is known 6 months in advance. When was the last time there was a real floor fight or 2nd or 3rd nomination ballet? Campaigns now approach elections using the Powell doctrine of warfare: use overwhelming force (money) and persuasion (crappy media ads) up until Super Tuesday and the winners then watch the other campaigns slowly bleed to death because they cannot finance media buys in the big states. This is the way the parties want it - not IA, NH, or SC. Undermining these states is the wrong solution aimed at a complete misreading of the problem.
The voters in New Hampshire, for instance, take the primary process very seriously and I would confidently put their collective political knowledge up against that of any other state. Yes, it has only a million people - exactly why politicians are forced to get out of the limos and participate in retail politics. Which works as intended. Mitt Romney, for example, cannot hide behind his money and slick ads when waitresses in Manchester diners can pummel him with questions and objections to his health care plans.
A national primary or front loading big states would be a disaster. CA or NY can never have real retail politics so all that will happen is that the pols will climb further up the asses of big corporate money so they can finance pigeon campaigns where they fly over and dump ads on the populace.
If your idea of democracy in action is 30 second ads by pols preselected by the corps, or political conversation on the order of our misnamed television "debates", keep dumping on IA and NH and front loading the primaries. We will get the political outcome we desearve.
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The fed doesn't favor investment over work. What does that even mean?
I think he meant investment over savings. That is, low banking interest rates drive money into more speculative investment markets.
I don't think either is really true. The Fed tries to balance employment with low inflation. Employment keeps the masses buying crap and low inflation keeps the bond market, where the majority of wealth is parked, stable.
Only those with something to hide pay them any attention.
Said like only an Anonymous Coward could!
(CJIS) Division today awarded Lockheed Martin a $16 million contract to upgrade its Hewlett Packard Superdome Unix servers.
That ensures that FEMA will never find them w/o help from Anderson Cooper.
You raise some good points but the telcos, as you would imagine, have the very best lawyers on wiretapping issues. I find it very hard to believe they didn't know they were breaking FISA laws. Which makes me wonder why they went along with scheme. Maybe it was a simple as some misguided sense of patriotism. Maybe it was something more. I think we deserve to know and the law suits are a means to that end.
I don't care for the telcos behavior in this but I don't think they are the real villians. But squeezing them is the only way (currently) to get to the truth.
And yes, congress ended up passing a law that allows him to do exactly what was supposed to be against the law when this happened.
Congress would sell their mothers before having their August vacations shortened. One can only hope the people force them to do the right thing when this comes up again in 4 months.
Great. Now we have to worry about deadly moon microbes in the pet food and toys.
By pointing out "new" "secret" and "undocumented" doesn't make it lawful, especially when not passed by any lawful body and it explicitly breaks 30 years of FISA rulings.
God forbid a company goes bankrupt for breaking the law.
I think I speak for a lot of people in that I would willing forgo the $12 I would get as a settlement from these companies for helping to spy on me so long as the real culprits are brought to justice. I don't particularly want to bankrupt these companies but if these law suits are the only viable vehicles to getting at the real criminals then so be it. Let the rats start fighting with each other as the law starts closing in on them and let the truth come out.
when an officer of the law comes knocking with a an official-looking document, legal or not, how can any individual (and you know that corporations are viewed in the eyes of the law as individuals, right?) decide whether or not to go along?
Geez, I dunno. Consult a lawyer, perhaps? The telcos are rumored to employ a few.
And yes, you can say that AT&T and such should not have complied, but nobody outside of the top brass at AT&T know what they were threatened with.
Isn't this the kind of thing that once upon a time the Free Press leaked, Congress investigated, and the Justice Department prosecuted? Maybe it time people stopped mumbling the mindless incantation that "everything changed after 9/11" and using it as an excuse to abdicate their responsibilities and justify not upholding the law.
WTF? So, basically the gPhone will have some kind of operating system and be connected to some kind of network, all of it to made by some as yet unnamed manufacturer.
>> Uhm yeah, consultants. Their job is to whip up a fear frenzy and then sell the cure.
That is very close to the truth. I have a good friend who worked for Gartner and now works for a major competitor. It's not so much fear/cure they are selling as the latest hyped trend and how (for a fee) you can jump aboard and gain a competitive advantage. The whole business plan of these guys is basically to be a CYA vehicle for IT management.
>> I assume you can grasp the difference between telling a government official who called whom when and summarily executing thousands of people.
You do indeed assume correctly.
I make no assumptions, however, whether you understood the principle involved in both is the same, regardless of the magnitude of the crime.
>> Source please?
The puddles of pee in the AT&T executive suite when the first law suits were allowed to move forward.
>> you're a big company with lots of government contracts. A well-known government law enforcement agency comes to you and says "we need you do X, and it needs to be secret." Wouldn't you think that you could presume that the actions the government asks you to do are by definition legal?
Why on earth would anyone presume that? If they have stockholders, that BIG company had damn well not presume anything. That's why they have large in-house legal staffs accustomed to reviewing every detail of a contract and a fleet of top flight law firms on retainer. It is called due diligence and the people who invest in companies take it seriously when it is their dollars you are risking on an assumption.
>> Or if they turn out to be illegal, you have reason to have acted in the manner you did, which dramatically lowers any punishment.
I am guessing the people on trial at Nuremberg and the fools at Abu Graib took that line of reasoning too but one can only hope that a CEO of a Fortune 500 company might have access to a history book and newspaper.
>> I'm not a lawyer (thank God), but I've hung out with a bunch to know the difference between unpleasant acts and illegal ones.
And this was both. Baring any ridiculous "national security" ruling the case will move forward and you will get confirmation of that from "a controlling legal authority".
Maybe but I think it would be harder and have a much lower hit rate. One big difference that jumps out at me is that American English is much more homogenized from 60 years of national television, radio, fairly standardized educational materials, etc. Arabic, spread over dozens of nations, with no (until very recently) unified media encompassing the entire region, highly variable levels of literacy and education quality, etc., makes it seem much easier to pinpoint locality, origin, etc.
The coolest part of the project is a tool called Writeprint, which 'automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating "anonymous" content' with an accuracy of 95%, according to the release."
It is my understanding that there are so many Arab dialects that an Algerian and Syrian have a better chance of understanding each other in a common second language than trying to under each other's local dialect. If the language is really that fragmented, that alone cuts down the search space enormously. I venture to say this is true of many older languages that developed with small quirks on different sides of the local mountain range. Throw in link analysis, cross-referenced content, etc., and this doesn't seem so extraordinary.
>>Do you really think that Giuliani would be worse than Bush/Cheney?
When fielding a fascist baseball team, it like being forced to pick between Ruth, DiMaggio, and Mantle. Ruddy has every instinct and skill to carry on the Bush/Cheney traditions.
To quote Ruddy:
Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
In the context of the speech in which this was given (NY Times),it almost sounds reasonable. In the hands of President Giuliani it most definitely won't.
Thank you for the clarification. I feel a bit better. I think.
Your last sentence makes my brain hurt.
You too? Maybe it is a zen koan.
I took it to mean that spies, being perfect arbiters of innocence and guilt because they can intercept everything, would never bother innocent people and therefore never give innocent persons a need to defend themselves.
Of course, it could just mean that without a paper trail, and having already been sent to Gitmo, no defense is required for the innocent or guilty.
That nothing like this this happened, was a very commendable achievement of the city government.
Absolutely. That is the only possible outcome of political demonstrations. Too bad there wasn't more of this, eh? Sadly, just things like this, this, and this.
I just can't shake the nagging suspicion they've gotten a little slack on the warrant thing lately.
Man, you are going to require surgery if you stick your tongue so far into your cheek. Didn't your mother warn you about the consequences of making funny faces as a kid?
Really? Is that why Michael Moore was attending the Republican National Convention in 2004?
But if he wasn't famous he would have been put in one of the "free speech zones" (i.e. fenced in pens blocks away from where anyone could hear or see) like everyone else.
Only if they convince the military to go along with it.
They only need to keep the military at bay - or overseas. Blackwater and the other private armies are more than sufficient to do the job of disarming average citizens. Google Blackwater and Katrina to get a glimpse of what went down in NOLA.
The mercenaries only require a nice big paycheck and don't carry baggage like honor and loyalty and dedication to the country that might make them hesitate.
I find this frustrating because in reading some of your other post we agree on a lot of things. Unfortunately not all things in the world are the way you want them to be just because you think they should be.
You are defending the indefensible...
Says you - for no reason, apparently, other than you say so. The rest of the paragraph is silly enough to speak for itself.
Cars and planes have been around for over 100 years. And they get used pretty frequently. There's also these little things called radio and local television stations.
Yes, and let's compare the flight time to NH from DC (less than 90 minutes) to one of your mentioned states, WA (5 hours?). Now double that for a round trip to a one or two day swing through the state. Notice something relevant here for a time constrained, exhausted candidate who has more to do than collect frequent flyer miles?
If you don't grasp the concept of retail politics and the value it adds to the political process then this discussion is truly hopeless. Suffice it say that media spots are not the relevant issue. Sure, any state can run ads. So your solution leads to a candidate who, because he can't physically get to the first primary state as often as he might like, nor meet as large a percentage of the voters as he might like, runs a boat load of ads. Now isn't THAT an exciting and insightful process for the country! I can hear the pundits now. "Candidate X could not attend any functions in WA this weekend but he release a new radio commercial with several words that differ from last week's radio spot."
Ah, yes, because Texas's constitution forbids voters from asking candidates questions at open forums.
Ok, this might be hard for you because it involves big numbers but do your best. Candidates want to win elections. They do this by getting the largest number of votes. In TX, with 25 times the population of NH, they will do this by rarely, if ever, leaving the major cities. They will do it by staged media events and there will be nothing open about the forums. To be effective gatherings will need thousands, not hundreds, of attendees and they will be tightly scripted and controlled. A candidate in NH can easily visit 2 or 3 towns in a weekend and personally meet (not herd into an auditorium) 700 people - 1 of every 1000 of the voters. That will not happen in TX. And yes, in an early primary personal contact is key.
Airplanes, airplanes, airplanes
Already explained. Let it sink in.
Pfft. Air fairs are going to be vastly cheaper from DC to California or Texas than to Iowa. Secondly, the top candidates all have warchests in the millions, and can easily afford plane tickets for themselves and their staff. Hell, even Ron Paul can raise $75,000 in one day.
Meditate for a bit on the fact that "expensive" applies to many different resources, not just money. It will help you grow from being a know-it-all kid to someone who might be useful in a national campaign some day.
small state elitism...more elitism
Throwing the word elitism around may have gotten you a bit of notice in political science class and possibly laid once or twice but it is misused and laughable in this context. You will need to get some new material if you want to make the next step up.
Dude. Every state in the union is practiced at having elections...
Dude, you just refuse to get it. Early primaries are freaking different in many, many subtle ways. Ask any political operative who has been through a national campaign. There is more to it than taking the voting booths out of storage and cranking up the standard political machines. Seriously, read something other than your own thoughts.
Do you have any (arguments) that aren't ludicrous?
Sure but they require reason and an open mind so no need to waste them on you.
Nope, still ludicrous. Millions are spent on advertising, traveling,
First, immediate points off to anyone who puts the words elitism and New Hampshire in the same paragraph. Scrappy, independent, frugal, industrious, maybe. Elitist? Not uttered by anyone who ever set foot in the state.
But to your point, no, not every state can do it.
(1) Size matters. In this case small, geographically and demographically, is better. The ability for the people to actually meet and press the candidates on the issues could never happen in a state the size of TX. Candidates could spend a year there and not meet 1% of the population and you would never get the level of citizen involvement that one gets in NH. The physical size alone makes it financially impossible for shoe string candidates to get a foot hold
(2) Location, location, location. Most presidential candidates are tethered to DC in one way or another. The many trips back and forth to any state too far west becomes impractical and too expensive very quickly.
(3) Practice, practice, practice. IA and NH have been at this for a long time. Campaigns need experienced operatives and volunteers on the ground to get a campaign, particularly for candidates who are initial long shots, off the ground. Any state can learn to do this over time but it will be a mess for the first few cycles and rotating primaries would just guarantee an ongoing cluster fuck.
There are many other reasons but these are enough for now.
Turning to the racist nonsense about NH and IA being "too white", so what? There isn't a state in the country that perfectly reflects every demographic, be it race, income, age, religion, etc. And it doesn't matter. IA and NH have 90% of the same concerns of all Americans - the economy, security, environment, globalism, health care, etc. It's not as if somehow IA and NH are denying FL the opportunity to pander to retirees or Arizona to talk about border issues. Every state has some local concerns - that's why they have primaries too.
Lastly, the stuff about the financial rewards of the primary is just drivel. Most NH residents don't own hotels or tv stations so they never see a dime but even if they did it would come out to about $100/person/year. Whoop di do, party on!
Thanks for that excellent post. Sadly it will probably not get its due in one of these topics where most people are more interested in venting than anything else.
The attacks on the traditional primary line up and the whining of other (larger) states is largely misguided and the current trend of trying to jump the line is going to be a disaster if allowed to continue.
The early primary states are not a problem, they are a national treasure.
Any sense of disenfranchisement from states voting later in the season has less to do with the so-called lack of diversity in NH and Iowa than it does in party rules, the media, and political funding. The political conventions have become nothing more than a 3 day media spectacle because the parties have changed the rules so that the outcome is known 6 months in advance. When was the last time there was a real floor fight or 2nd or 3rd nomination ballet? Campaigns now approach elections using the Powell doctrine of warfare: use overwhelming force (money) and persuasion (crappy media ads) up until Super Tuesday and the winners then watch the other campaigns slowly bleed to death because they cannot finance media buys in the big states. This is the way the parties want it - not IA, NH, or SC. Undermining these states is the wrong solution aimed at a complete misreading of the problem.
The voters in New Hampshire, for instance, take the primary process very seriously and I would confidently put their collective political knowledge up against that of any other state. Yes, it has only a million people - exactly why politicians are forced to get out of the limos and participate in retail politics. Which works as intended. Mitt Romney, for example, cannot hide behind his money and slick ads when waitresses in Manchester diners can pummel him with questions and objections to his health care plans.
A national primary or front loading big states would be a disaster. CA or NY can never have real retail politics so all that will happen is that the pols will climb further up the asses of big corporate money so they can finance pigeon campaigns where they fly over and dump ads on the populace.
If your idea of democracy in action is 30 second ads by pols preselected by the corps, or political conversation on the order of our misnamed television "debates", keep dumping on IA and NH and front loading the primaries. We will get the political outcome we desearve.