Reforming Democracy

lizbethrose wrote:The people of the US have lost the ability to speak as a democracy; our II Amendment rights have been abrogated by the corporate voice of the market; our voice has been lost in the cacophony created by the money counters. I think this is true of all ‘democratic’ forms of government in the world today. The people we elect to legislate no longer represent us; our capitalist economy dictates to us.

Is this the whole Big Business paying off politicians issue again?

No, gib, it isn’t the ‘whole big business paying off politicians issue, again.’ Political bribery of one sort or another has always been around and will continue to be around. Nor is it that corporations have the money that is listened to in politics. It’s deeper and more complex than that.

lizbethrose wrote:While I understand the situation, I wonder if it's a problem that can be solved. On the other hand, I believe we all should work for the future. Right now, we're products of our near history. Obviously, we can't change that. But can we change future history? In other words, can we learn from our history and do what we can to get rid of ideas that no longer work as they once may have or as they were intended?

Now here’s an interesting dilemma. The left want government to have a hand in how the market and people’s lives are run. The right want the government’s hands out. But what kind of position is it that says the people and the market should have their hands in the government (other than by means of running for office, that is)? That almost makes the right seem like the neutral middle ground. Big Businesses influencing politics by paying off politicians, especially to establish regulations in the market that benefit those businesses, certainly doesn’t sound like the government and the people/market minding their own respective businesses. You could almost say this is where the right and the left come full circle–it’s where the freedom that the right wants for the market and for businesses is it’s own undoing: with that freedom, along with the attitude that the government belongs to the people, businesses attempt to manipulate and use politics to their own advantage, thereby injecting regulations and ultimately coming around back to leftist policies.

Right and left are labels that originated in France during the French Revolution to signify where people sat in the assembly. Those who were loyal to the monarchy sat on the right and those loyal to the revolution sat on the left. It’s only been recently that political ideologies have been described as either right or left. I prefer not using labels, and I’ve tried not to in this thread.

Now this is especially interesting because it really does bring your question to the fore: “I wonder if it’s a problem that can be solved?” I suspect the right would say that as this is not the proper function of the government–implementing more regulations in the market at the behest of businesses–we ought not to allow this to happen, and I think they would be right. But an “ought” is not the same as a “how”. The question is how to prevent it. It’s not impossible that government should, of its own initiative, pull out of the market–look at Reagan–but when money is involved, human beings (and politicians are still human) are weak. It would take some principled politician to smell the money being waved under his nose by some wealthy corporation and say “Nope! It’s not my business to be changing my policies in return for a bribe.” ← Here’s the dilemma. You can strike down laws, introduce stimulus packages, declare war–a whole slew of ways to make things happen–but how do you make a politician scrupulous? How do you keep a market free of regulations without imposing regulations on Big Businesses prohibiting them from influencing politics?

Looking at regulations, right now it seems that everyone writes regulations. There was an article quoted in another thread, for example, that mentioned the Police Chiefs from around the country getting together to write the rules concerning the use of body cams by police forces to present to the Justice Department. Sugar producers got together to block the stevia plant from being used as a sweetener, even though it’s about 200 times sweeter than cane and/or beet sugar and has zero calories. Now, the chemical in stevia that produces sweetness is synthesized in labs and has been introduced as ‘pure’ stevia to be used as a sugar substitute. Of course, sugar substitutes have a bad name, so fewer and fewer people will use them. President Clinton lifted regulations from banks and lending institutions, and look what happened. (Sorry, that’s 3 examples of 3 slightly different things, but they tie together.)

It isn’t so much that politicians are unscrupulous, it’s that, for politicians, ethics and morality often get in the way of expediency. The same is true of business people. This is Capitalism. The goal of Capitalism is to make money. In order to make money, you have to have both a manufacturing base and a consumer base, right? They can both be the same–the manufacturer is the consumer and vice versa. Only now, the US is no longer an industrial country, it’s a service country. Consumers are no longer the manufacturers. The market has to expand in order to continue making money; that’s where trade becomes important. This is also one area where the Federal Government is involved with the market; the government makes the trade regulations.

lizbethrose wrote:Farm subsidies are an example. Billions are spent every year in farm subsidies, yet this is a Depression Era program. Not only that, but farming has been taken over, in great part, by agricorps. Corporations get 'corporate welfare' in the form of actual local, state, and federal subsidies as well as tax breaks, which, I believe, also began in the 1930's. Finance and defense are industries 'too big to fail.'

Right, so incentive programs to keep the agricultural industry afloat (so we can all eat) are easy to implement, but they rarely ever get withdrawn when they are no longer needed, do they?

First off, I used farm subsidies as an example and not as a suggestion for cutting down the size of the Federal Government–although I’ve thought of it ever since I read Catch 22. Maj. Major M. Major’s father made his money during the Great Depression by not growing wheat on his wheat farm. The novel takes place during WWII, but farm subsidies still go on. Why? I think it’s because now, instead of small, rural farms there are large corporate farms and there’s no one to lobby for the small farmer. But that isn’t the only ‘problem.’ The agricorps are allied with the chemical corporations which are allied with the food processors which are allied with the grocery stores–and so on and so on. (Throw the advertisers in there somewhere, too.) So it’s more complicated than what a simple answer would solve.

The US is also a nation of faddists. This is purposely done to us through the market. One of the current fads now is the gluten-free fad, although very few people know why or even what gluten is. Yet gluten is a commonly used additive in processed foods; it’s used as a thickening agent, among other things. So called Greek yogurt is becoming a fast growing fad. Greek yogurt is different from regular yogurt because it’s strained 3 times instead of just twice, so there’s less whey in Greek yogurt. Would the normal yogurt eater know this let alone demand it from the yogurt producers? I don’t think so. Staying with food, we eat more processed food than ever before. The chemicals used in the processing aren’t necessarily approved by the FDA; few of them are. One additive everyone is aware of is sugar, but not everyone is aware of how many different kinds of sugars are used in processed food. You can’t rely on labeling, either, unless you’re an organic chemist.

I went up to a relative at a family party a couple of weeks ago. He’s an engineer, middle-aged, with 3 grown kids. I told him he was wearing his jeans a bit low and he smiled and said that was all that was being made, now. And he’s correct. Our clothing is what the manufacturers produce. You’d be out of luck if you were in love with, for example, wing-tipped shoes. There aren’t any on the market. Women’s clothing and foot wear is even worse.

Why has this all come about? Basically, because our nation is a capitalist nation. Our capitalist economy is all we know; producers have to maintain the consumer base in order to survive. What else is there? Remember, we can’t go back.

Enjoy!

Liz

Labels can be useful for certain purposes. I use them mainly as shorthand for ideologies or theoretical positions, but you do have to be more careful when applying those labels to people–even when they’re self-ascribed, they don’t necessarily mean the same thing to the person as they mean to you.

Is this what caused the current recession? I don’t quite understand enough about this to respond. I looked up the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act on Wikipedia (is that the same act?) and found this:

I don’t know what this means. The only thing I’m getting out of it is that some economists (mainly from the “Austrian School”) think it wasn’t real deregulation. As for what happened and how and why, I’m clueless.

Right, but these regulations still affect the domestic market. Being told what you can trade, at what rate, with whom, etc. affects how you perform within your own market.

Is that you’re point? That it’s more complicated than we’ve been letting on?

The fad thing touches on manufactured demand, and the food additives the need for consumer awareness agencies (which would entail the need for regulations forcing producers and service providers to allow inspectors to test their products/services). Both these, I think, are important issues for conservatives like Eric and Ucci to address. They tell us that in a free market, businesses would emerge to meet the demands for these things (but who’s gonna pay for it?) or the local community would decide upon what laws they want in place to handle these kinds of problems (remember, as long as it’s not government, they’re fine with it). I’d like to hear their feedback, as I’m sure you would too.

As for the baggy pants thing, I would think a free market is exactly what you need to solve that problem–for an industry to produce one thing and one thing only, despite the existence of an (albeit marginal) demand for alternatives, seems like something that could come about only in virtue of regulations limiting what that industry produces.

My parents just came back from their 6 month escape to their condo down in Ft. Lauderdale. They do that once or twice a year–go down to the States for a good stretch of time, to their condo by the beach, then back up to Canada.

Just today I asked my dad: you’ve experience the American medical system for a while now–how is it compared to Canada?

He said: it’s excellent if you’re rich–and I mean really rich–but for regular folk, the Canadian system is much better.

I think Eric's answer to this about Communism being a verbal thing thatdoesnt work in a practical environment was close, but I'd also like to point out another factor- the Cold War. About the time the universities went so far left was when the Gov't was blacklisting/investigating people with Communist sympathies to try to get rid of spies and seditionists.   On the one hand, the USSR really did infiltrate academia with spies and seditionists, and on the other hand, many of those professors who were just decent American liberals were turned off from the anti-Communist actions (some would say extremes) of that time.  Add to all of that, Vietnam.

I guess the first thing I'd say is that Liz didn't say why us being a nation of faddists is actually a bad thing that needs to be addressed. OK, people eat a different kind of yogurt and wear a different cut of jeans because consumer culture told them to.  Annnnnd?  If the argument is that there should be all kinds of different yogurt and all kinds of different jeans, well...you're only going to get that in a capitalist society, and one of the most often spouted criticisms of capitalism is that consumer culture creates an overabundance of useless choices.  So I find it odd to hear "Because capitalism, we are limited in our options" when I so often hear the precise opposite criticism. 

I will also say that I'm more of a conservative than a libertarian, so I have no gut instinct to defend the actions of big corporations any more than big government.  But as long as big corporations are funded by people choosing to give them money that they can choose not to give, and they don't have the right to enforce their will with violence, they will always be the lesser of two evils.  Corporations absolutely can do evil things, and the primary way to combat that is through a society with a shared, single cultural norm of right and wrong such that outing corporations for that wrongdoing has meaning, people can be shamed, and consumer support flows to companies in part from our shared understanding of their dignity.  In other words, all that 'objective morality' that a lefty wants to do away with.    A leftist will tell you that corporations are behaving immorally on Monday, then tell you there is no such thing as objective morality on Tuesday.  They will wonder why people act only out of self interest when it's the only absolute you've left them to believe in.

That’s because it isn’t necessarily a bad thing that needs to be addressed. For example, I’m a little person with no hips to speak of; I’m kind of built like a boy. For years, I bought boy’s jeans because they fit me better than girl’s jeans. But it took years before manufacturer’s started to make all types of pants for women. My relative is tall and thin and has a heck of a time finding trousers that fit him properly and he often has to pay more for them. But that wasn’t my point.

My point is that, our voices aren’t heard although we live in a democracy. Once elected, our representatives–the people who’s job it is to speak for us–don’t do their jobs. It isn’t because they don’t want to, I suppose, so much as it’s because they’re either over-whelmed or inured to the whole business of politics as politics.

That’s the average tenure; obviously some Congressmen serve longer terms. And it doesn’t include the representatives who then switch and become senators. Nine to eleven years can be a pretty long time, particularly in a boring job. I don’t know if you’ve ever read the Congressional Record, but it’s a pretty tedious read.

The people who are re-elected time after time are said to be there because ‘they get the job done!’ But have they? Or is more a matter of name recognition. What, exactly, have your electeds done for you and/or your community? And I’m talking about the Federal rather than the State government. And what does this have to do with US capitalism?

A capitalist market must maintain a consumer base in order to make money. Very simple no matter who’s ‘theory’ is used. In order to make money, new products have to be introduced at a certain rate. Then, the consumer has to be convinced that he actually needs that new product for whatever reason. I used yogurt as an example. Basically, yogurt is sour milk. If the yogurt manufacturer wants to increase his market, he adds fruit to it. Once that starts to get passe, he comes out with a new variety of yogurt with a different name and a slightly different process. And he usually charges more for it. If the customer is lucky, both regular and Greek (or whatever) yogurt will be sold, but it’ll take time. In the meantime, because more is being charged for sour milk called by one name than the less expensive sour milk, the more expensive product will be the one sold. That’s where the fad factor is played. All that needs to be said is, “The more expensive yogurt is better for you.” But sour milk is sour milk, for goodness sake!

The same is true with politics, to me. Tell someone often enough that Rob the Wrangler got ‘more done’ in Congress and he’ll be re-elected, whether he has or not. Tell people that Pete the Plumber is an ass-hole who’s never at his seat in Congress, and he won’t be re-elected, no matter what he’s done. A lot of politics is sales.

I started all my replies to this thread by saying I’m not a Party person, I’m an independent. Ucci, you heard what you wanted to hear; you didn’t hear what I said. And I’ve certainly never said, “Because [of] capitalism, we are limited in our options” as you implied with your use of quotation marks.

Enjoy,

Liz

The Sub-prime Mortgage crisis had more to do with the Clintons using political pressure to lower the standards for people buying homes. GLB might have contributed, as people with more are willing to take bigger risks, and it lead, in part, to people having more. But the primary reason is, as usual, wishful promises and stage one thinking. The housing Boom and Bust, by Thomas Sowell (Buy the book) The book does not disagree that it was a bunch of greedy business men that exasperated the whole damned thing…

Liz, the nice thing about companies selling me something, is that if I buy it, and I don’t like it, I don’t have to go back. I still don’t buy Nike to this day, I purchased two pairs of shoes made by them and they fell apart WAY to fast for my taste. Does my refusal to buy Nike stop them from making stuff, no, but it means I do not support them, because they did not fulfill my needs and desires. Politicians though, come whole-sell, if I don’t like one politician in a race, I still must vote to have any influence at all and I effectively support them, until their candidacy is up. And unlike Nike, who has no influence in my life because other people vote for them, the politician can have HUGE influence, but only because other people vote for them.

You talk about not having a “voice” in the democracy of companies (WE ARE A REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLIC, by the way), but I can think of no way to limit that voice more than to be forced to use the pants everyone else likes. You my not get your needs served fully, because of the limited amount of people “like” you (body type wise) by the evil corporations, but at least you don’t have to wear what everyone else is wearing, because everyone else is wearing it. You can make your own clothes, you can find a business that is willing to cater to you… Politics and government doesn’t work that way.

To sum up, the bitching you have for corporations applies worse for government.

I empathize on the pants thing… I’m short, and the result is a limited amount of pant options… (Being short is worse for men, especially when it comes to clothes.)

When it comes to consumer awareness and safety, I think you might be comparing apples to oranges. The FDA would be an example of the government “evil” and the agricorps that Liz spoke of would be the capitalist “evil”. But these two aren’t substitutes, they’re pitted against each other. What I would like to know is whether a conservative like you or Eric believe that in a truly free market, some equivalent to the FDA would emerge, something to protect the average consumer from incurring inadvertent harm from the products or services he consumes due to carelessness or oversight on the part of the producer or service provider. I can understand why you or Eric might say that such an establishment would probably be a lesser “evil” than a government agency like the FDA, but I’m wondering how it would emerge in the first place, and at what cost to the consumer. Specifically, why would businesses subject their products or services to inspection at all? And what would prevent such agencies from being “bought off” by the corporations they inspect to supply whatever data those corporations want their consumers to see (almost as if you’d need inspectors to investigate the business practices of the inspectors).

As for manufactured demand, I think that’s less of a problem. People can die if they take a drug that wasn’t produced with care. No one will die by buying a product they don’t really need. I think some onus falls on the shoulders of the consumer sometimes, an onus to grab a backbone and not be such a drone to advertising or the warnings of professionals, to think critically for a bit and make independent free choices. We want to know if what we’re being told is true, of course, and I suppose some want to enforce regulations on advertisers limiting them to what the original point of advertising was supposed to be–informing the consumer of what products/services are available and let him decide whether he wants it or not–rather than telling the consumer what he should want or what he needs, but I think regulations like this would only serve towards consumer convenience rather than consumer safety. Not that I like manufactured demand, but I think it’s tolerable (at least at the levels we currently see it at).

With all due respect, Liz, it’s sometimes difficult, reading through your posts, to understand the overall point you’re making. You post a lot of facts. You ask a lot of (rhetorical?) questions. And we’re grateful for that (if I can speak for the others here). But sometimes you leave it to the reader to tie it all together into a succinct overall point. That’s why I had to ask “Is that you’re point? That it’s more complicated than we’ve been letting on?” in an earlier post. In the quote above, you made it a bit more clear that you were using the phenomenon of manufactured demand as an analogy for “manufactured votes” in politics (if we may call it that). But did I get that right? I think Eric at least understood this.

I apologize, gib. I’m very understandable to myself.

No, I take that back; I don’t apologize. If you have to think about what I say, that’s good. If what I say gives you new ideas or helps you to rethink your ideas in a slightly different way, we’ve both grown a bit. I think ‘manufactured votes’ is a good way of putting it. It’s probably more accurate than any label I could come up with–as long as I can explain a bit more.

I’ve been trying so hard not to have to say this because I really don’t like Rush Limbaugh, even as an entertainer. But he’s correct when he says we’re a nation of “sheeple.” Marketing and advertising has made us so. That’s why, according to letsfreecongress.org, 95% of the candidates that outspent their opponents won their elections; 68% of campaign funding came from only 1% of the population. (Use caution, I haven’t been able to corroborate these figures.) I’ve been trying to compare[ the market and politics.

I started thinking about this back when we talked about corruption. Money leads to power; power leads to corruption; money leads to corruption. Actually, I’ve been thinking about it for much longer, but I started trying to bring all my thoughts together back then. Writing helps me; it’s a process thing, for me. Getting feedback such as yours and Eric’s helps me immeasurably.

The question, then, is can we get our voices back? Peacefully. So far, I can’t see how.

Enjoy,

Liz

Eric, I vote, but I don’t vote for ideologies. By voting, I’m supporting a candidate, just as you do. And I don’t think corporations are “evil” because, to me, only a person can be evil. Even then, there are very few truly evil people in the world. Despite the SCOTUS rulings, a corporation isn’t a person, to me. I make my own clothes or have what I buy altered to fit me. Now, I wear Levi’s and shirts most of the time. I’m not a fashionista!

Although we live in a representative democracy, I feel we’ve lost our balance of power to money. That’s all. And I’m mostly concerned about the future. (Go ahead and laugh, I’ll wait.)

Liz

Of course our voices are heard. Give me some example of something that isn’t the way you want it, that you think is an example of ‘we the people’ not being listened to, and I’ll point out that there are millions of people that DON’T want it the way you do. Leaving aside for the moment that we don’t even live in a democracy and democracy was considered a bad thing by the founders, and the purpose of a lot of their writing was how to avoid it…even leaving all that aside, a representative Government doesn’t just represent you.

WHAT job? What is the thing that they havent got done, that there is actually consensus in this country that should be done?

So don’t buy it, then. You still haven’t shown me where this is a problem.

Yes, that's right. Since everybody can vote and everybody is told that they SHOULD vote, while at the same time maybe 5% of voters will bother to learn anything about the issue or people they are voting on, they will just do whatever some trusted voice tells them, be that CNN, Fox, a family member, or the incumbent.  That's not an exception to representative government, it's a consequence of it. 

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Yeah, tons of liberals do that. So what?

Are you sure about that? How many FDA regulations do you think are passed at the encouragement of one agricorp because they know it will give them an edge over the rest?

You do have examples of that in other industries- for example movie ratings, video game ratings, and the infamous “Comics code” are media rating systems that are/were privately organized and maintained to increase consumer awareness of what a product is like. So I think it’s entirely possible that something like that with regards to food safety could emerge. Another possible vector would be the free press- if people have an interest in knowing if their food is safe, then presumably somebody could make money doing journalism on the subject and the people could stay informed that way. That being said, those rating systems came into existence partially motivated by the fear that if the companies didn’t do it themselves, the State would step in and it would be out of their hands. So it was the fear of Government regulation that led to an absence of it. I’m more of a traditionalist conservative than a libertarian; my problem with organizations like the FDA and the EPA is the degree to which leftists infiltrate them and turn them to an ulterior motive; not their mere existence. The Government probably should be doing things like regulating food quality and environmental impact from industrial manufacture.

Well, if a business wants the "Food Safety Research Society’"s stamp of approval, they would have to let this FSRS do whatever kind of inspections they wanted to do in order to earn that stamp. In turn, if the FSRS wants to sell advertising on their news bulletins or their blog or whatever, people have to trust them enough to watch them. If the FSRS is bought off and isn’t giving fair inspections, and that becomes public or suspected, then the Concerned Citizens for Safer Food organization will appear to fill in the gap, and the FSRS and CCSF will be competing to show which of them has more integrity. I imagine that’s how a libertarian would see it going. So compare that to a model that takes the free market out of the question- there is one such organization, and it is run by the State. If a business doesn’t earn the State’s stamp of approval, they can’t sell food period.

Well, I’ll do what I can, as will Eric I’m sure.

Money leads to power because it represents the ultimate “property”. We want possessions because we want tools, and we want tools in order to control things. You can do some things with a hammer–drive in nails, smash things–but there’s not much more you can do than that. You can do a hell of a lot more with a computer–it gives you more power. Money is the ultimate “power tool” because it represents the pinnacle of power–with it, you can do pretty much anything–if not directly, then by paying others who have the wherewithal to do it. You can even buy votes or manufacture demand, change the world to your liking.

The corruption that comes about with that much power is a consequence of how little there is stopping you from getting whatever you want. Taking the needs and concern of others into account need not enter the picture in your brain.

In both the market and in politics, those with power get their power from the people–from the money they pay into the system. In the market, powerful corporations have the power they do because of their enormous consumer base–people continue to buy their products, pay for their services. In politics, it comes from donations and tax dollars. I would say it comes from votes, but if you’re right that “95% of the candidates that outspent their opponents won their elections” then the money they get from the 1% of the population is being used to manufacture those votes.

So your concern here is how to free up our votes from the control of media influence. Is that right? I mean, the media is where the money goes to manufacture votes, correct? You’re asking how to make our votes count for us once again rather than for that 1% that paid to have the rest of us vote for them, right?

True, but the FDA and agricorp companies aren’t performing the same function. That’s why I brought up a free market version of the FDA. Then you’d be comparing apples to apples–the free market version compared to a government puppet like the FDA. I wanted to bring your statement–that agricorps compared to agencies like the FDA are the lesser of two evils–into perspective.

Ah, yes, the competition factor. And you’re right, if one inspection company fouls up and their consumer base catches wind of it, they will invest their money into another company. Overall, the idea of allowing itself to be bought off would probably be seen as a bad idea by inspection companies. The only exception to this that I can think of is if the companies under inspection pay the inspection company so much money that they can literally retire, but these companies would probably go bankrupt from the sheer cost of paying every inspection company that came along enough to retire.

Now, you mentioned movie rates, video game ratings, and comics codes. How do these organizations make their money? You also mentioned journalism. I presume journalists make their money from television companies or subscribers. I think in order for such companies to avoid becoming corrupt, they would have to be paid by the consumer (directly or indirectly), the ones who want their services the most. Is this how you see it working out in a free market?

Yeah, of course. It’s very simple, really. The idea is simple; the solution isn’t. It starts with our every day language.

Remember when we talked about feminism? A lot of what I said then can be used now, in this thread. You know I don’t like labels and that I do like critical thinking, right?

We can’t stop the media from advertising. That’s how they make their money. But we may be able to listen to the advertising critically and to teach that to our children. The language we use reflects our attitudes; the language our listeners hear reflects their attitudes. More than that, language helps shape those attitudes. I came across this just tonight. It says what I think much better than I’ve been able to:

http://voiceseducation.org/content/overview-language-prejudice.

I’ve been told I can be difficult to understand. I think everyone is, really. I don’t compartmentalize my thoughts and that may be a problem for some people, unless they know me. Anyway, read the above, please. It’s very short and uncomplicated.

Thanks,

Liz

Ok, in what way do you think the prejudices of language are the culprit (or one of the culprits) in how the top 1% influence the media in order to get the rest of the population voting how they want the population voting?

Personally, I think we need a way of sifting through all the crap being spewed at us to get at the actual useful information. For me, it’s the problem of how to decontaminate the information pool. We need information, we need the media, just to get the facts that we require in order to make informed decisions on who to vote for. We need some way of knowing when the information we’re being fed is being used solely to inform us and when it is being used to persuade us towards voting the way someone else wants us to vote.

[size=150]NEVER!!![/size]

If you replace your repeated comments about “control” with survive I might agree with you on parts of this. Using “control” in this case says more about your view on the world than stating any truth. People want to survive, it is the ultimate drive that overrides all other drives. It has what has driven us to this point, the control you are talking about is a part of that, and often much of giving up that control would result in death of individuals. Money is not only the ultimate power tool, it is the tool for choice. When people complain about not having enough money, they are complaining about not having all the options they wish for… Choice is what we are attempting to give “the poor.” The focus on money in elections is funny, because most studies have show that it has far less effect on elections than people want to believe. I find this is because the people complaining about it don’t understand why everyone doesn’t agree with them, and the answer must be money… A comparison: Money spent in the last election total: 2065.1m (1072.6m by Democrats, 992.5m by Republicans) Link (Note: though Democrats raised more, Republicans spent more, yet still lost… Possibly indicating a stronger correlation between the money raised over the money spent…) 80 Billion spent on food stamps… Link, $2 billion spent on Chewing Gum (Yes, fucking chewing gum gets more money than the presidential election, total, out distancing the presidential election by 1000%) Link, amount of money spent on bottled water (only by Americans) is 11.8 Billion link.

I could go on, the point is, the elections are not a gigantic industry, they don’t receive nearly as much money as people want to believe. The effects are even more doubtable… I call on Freakonomics, Link.

Sadly, as I sit here, I realize I don’t have the time to respond to the rest, so this’ll have to do for now…

You’re kind of agreeing with me and disagreeing at the same time. We wouldn’t get far in the game of survival if we didn’t attempt to control our environment to a certain degree. Insofar as money is a tool, it is used for control.

Then we’ll have to corroborate this with Liz’s statement that “95% of the candidates that outspent their opponents won their elections”.

That just shows that people can do whatever they want with their money. And it isn’t a fair comparison to juxtapose chewing gum with campaign financing; the former is an entire industry whereas the latter is a donation often from a single individual or corporation with a unified agenda (I don’t think any individual cares for $2 billion dollars worth of chewing gum, although to imagine what they might do with it to influence to outcomes of elections might make you laugh ).

Now, that’s more to the point. Again, need to compare sources.

Remember my caveat–I haven’t been able to corroborate the figures. Eric, it sounds as if I should try to sell my idea of color-coded food stamps to the Agriculture department. But even that wouldn’t stop fraud. There will always be people who’ll ‘beat the system’ no matter what. Most of the time, they don’t think they’ve done anything at all wrong.

Welfare fraud is rampant and it comes in all shapes and sizes. What’s bothersome about your link is that the food stamp information isn’t made public. That’s a part of what I mean when I say we’re losing our voice. Consider how much the farm bill covered and whether or not the food stamp program comprised a significant portion of the monies approved with the bill. Was there another part of the bill that covered something totally different that everyone wanted but, in order to get, had to vote on the bill in its entirety? That happens a lot.

I think it happened with the Health Care Reform Act. It’s been said that large portions of the original bill were rewritten by House Republicans; it was their ‘compromise.’ That meant putting the President in the position of either vetoing it in its entirety (taking the chance that his veto would be over-ridden) or signing it in order to get the things he wanted that hadn’t been changed. That was his compromise. Unfortunately, what the people got wasn’t what they wanted, which was to make health care affordable for everyone, not making health care insurance affordable for everyone, although that was a part of it.

Have a good day.

Liz

I don’t think so, mostly just what people focus on. I think it’s attached to how “you” see “your” fellow man. Many people that use words like that separate themselves from the rest of humanity, in a nose turned up sort of way, which would mean yes, it’s arrogance… But, I think it can also be said and used while including yourself… I’ve used it in such a way… Though, I can be am a bastard, rarely am I an arrogant one…

Oh, yes. I am doing both. I just think changing the emphasis matters. It changes what is being said. Despite actions mattering more, words still matter a lot (particularly in a “place” like this). And how something is said changes the discussion…

How much did they out spend their opponent? Was it only by a bit? How were the numbers calculated? If they included all elections, did they account for elections where the difference was huge?

Note in the last election, republicans outspent their opponents… This could just mean that it is part of the 5%… But, looking at the numbers, the difference on money spent wasn’t “statistically important.” (6.3 m or a difference of .32% of the total).

But it isn’t just a couple of individuals. The Koch brothers donated

Out of 992.5M that is less than 1%… Further, This, if accurate, says more was given by individual donors than the Koch brothers…

The comparison is to put the amounts into perspective. We often complain about the amount of money in politics… But it’s nothing compared to the rest of the economy… (It’s like someone bitching about the size of the local rat population… So I show them a capybara to show, it could be bigger… Perspective is important to keep our minds from worry.)

LOL. I love me some economics…

So it happened again. I finished a post, went to submit it right after Eric submitted his, was told to review Eric’s before re-submitting mine. I read Eric’s post, went to submit mine and the computer wouldn’t let me. I tried multiply times–then my post disappeared. So, I’ll try again.

Gib, you’re the only one who can sort through the crap to arrive at the bits and pieces of knowledge that are hidden in what you read. Eric knows what I’m talking about. Language is neutral. It’s how it’s used and how it’s perceived that carries intent.

I had an online friend. He was German. His family moved to Canada. When he was in his late teens, he wandered along the US West Coast, getting work as a musician. He ended up in Arizona where he married and settled down to raise a family. He was there for about 22-23 years. One night, he died in his sleep. Following his death, his family discovered he’d never applied for citizenship and had never even renewed his visa. He was an illegal immigrant.

Does the use of that phrase conjure a picture of a rather large, blond, blue-eyed guitarist with slight German accent, strumming a guitar out by his backyard swimming pool, joking with his family? Or do you immediately think of a small, dark, Latino/Latina, who speaks little or no English and wanders from job to job picking fruit and/or mowing lawns–but who has a valid visa?

Such is the power of language. In my opinion, it’s up to everyone who thinks to become aware of how they use language and how their listener/reader perceives and interprets that language. And to choose their words carefully with that in mind. Don’t accept anyone else’s words if they don’t mean what it is you’re saying.

Any use of emotive words or phrases is logically fallacious. I’ve never taken a journalism class, but I imagine that’s one of the first things to be taught. An emotive word or phrase is used to illicit an emotional response in the listener/reader and has nothing to do with factual information. This is what bothers me so much about many conservative magazines–the overuse of emotive words to manipulate the readers’ thoughts and divert their attention away from an issue.

So, read my words–read Eric’s words–then decide for yourself how words affect you.

Enjoy,

Liz