dm93 * home CivicDuty

I generally find politics distasteful, but apathy is even worse; it conflicts with personal integrity. If I enjoy the benefits of living in America and don't vote against the leadership or otherwise seek redress of grievances, then I share responsibility for their actions.

I saw a Saturday morning public television show where a panelist told familiar stories of golden-triangle politics at the federal level and then explained that the lobbyists have found that so successful that they're starting to apply their tactics at the state level, playing one state off the other for, say, tax breaks on building a new factory. The panelist argued convincingly that this trend will continue until it reaches the local level, where you know the people involved well enough to bump into them at the grocery store or look them in the eye.

My brother in law ran for office in the state of Oklahoma. You'll never meet a finer, more hard working family man. He thought he had some ideas to offer, but he was disillusioned to find out how much the process is all about money. I heard the same thing from a Texas state legislator in a government class at U.T. Austin.

Our political system selects for the worst sort of leaders. Only a megalomaniac can put up with the drek that one has to go thru to get elected these days. It reminds me of Zaphod Beeblebrox, the president of the galaxy in the Hitchhiker novels. He was selected for his ability to distract the people from the way government decisions were actually made.

See also: delicious bookmarks. ToDo: integrate them realtime... client-side using javascript/xslt? or server-side? hmm... bake/fry...

1Nov2004: Via a slashdot article, I learn of the Intelligent Design article in Wikipedia, where we see "Opponents of ID, who include the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, ..." Hmm... is that NPOV? OK, it's backed by "To date, intelligent design has been able to publish one single peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal ...". A The Crusade Against Evolution in wired makes ID proponents sound like scoundrels, but I don't see anything other than circumstantial evidence. I'll have to study it further. I keep losing my notes on this stuff. Let's see:

Nearby, in same-sex marriage, "The moral legitimacy of marriage between two people of the same sex hinges on how the authoritative definition of marriage is derived." Huh? The moral legitimacy has at least as much to do with the consequences on the affected people as how the definition of words is derived. I think I've seen research data on this; I hope to contribute it to the discussion.

28Oct2004: In the presidential election, campaign finance reform is the biggest issue, to me, but the only candidate with an interesting position on that (Dean) got eliminated in the primaries. Hmm... Nader... well, a vote for Nader might as well be a vote for Bush.

Johnson County Election Office has the ballot. Aside from the presidential election, we have the Bistate Tax, Kansas supreme court judges (e.g. Beier). ProLife Candidates.org has a useful tool.

Hmm... OP chamber won't endorse Bistate 2 (finally found the actual article, after swatting away a zillion cookies and pay-for-archive newspaper sites). but the KC chamber of commerce did. I'd like to know more about how they work. They need some WebMasterClues: the cost of aliases (cf webarch; session-id redirect from their homepage), why "click here" sucks (cf QA tips, WAI guidelines). But their legislative survey is excellent info; I'm not sure how to link to the survey itself, but one candidate's answers are handy.

ah... there it is: Electoral Vote Predictor, from Bray on politics.

19Aug2004: mnot's note about apple's summary reminds me of Bray's exhortation to read the 9/11 commission report... hmm... can't find Bray's exhortation... maybe it was philg?

1Aug2004: had lunch with a guy who was agitating for justice for the minority in Cameroon; he was so oppressed that he narrowly escaped the country with his life. He had to leave is family there. Now that is taking your civic duty seriously!

18Jul2004: Fahrenheit 9/11 ... wow... if half of that is true... fork discussion...

I saw the Moore Approves Fahrenheit 9/11 Downloads story on slashdot; it took a day or so to grab by bittorrent... hmm... not sure exactly which torrent I used. torrentractor's entry agrees with my copy about filename (Fahrenheit.911.SVCD-TS.Centropy.DIVX_Xtech.avi ) and bytesize (730007020) but I can't reproduce their hash (dd0d124607b99bf3da745b7eaa46cee5a17d9611) with md5sum (a15923e19edf830812aa362476f0236e) nor sha1sum (0434a06feed3488983eee49a123b9d68b02c598d)

This seems to work, though:

btdownloadgui http://www.torrentreactor.net/torrents/download_16066

30Jul2004:
the Democratic party wants to have an extended tightly-controlled five-day infomercial; the last thing they want is actual news.
Bray

3Jul2004 a Protect your family petition from a friend sent me spelunking. I read Wikipedia's hate crime article and an ACA update

Hmm... I'd like to learn how to follow the trail from political rhetoric and news media back to the authoritative sources. I think every high school kid should be taught how to do it. Maybe I'll learn by teaching a course at the local junior college.

22Mar2004 John Gilmore, Entrepreneur and Civil Libertarian. Amen; preach, brother!

30Dec2003 voter registration card issued 24Dec2003... Johnson County Election Office... crud; I'm unaffiliated. I thought I was registered republican --- not to endorse their agenda, but because I realized that in Kansas, republicans pretty much always get elected; it's a matter of which republican. And to get involved in that decision, i.e. the primaries, you have to be a registered republican.

Hmm... the purpose of the public education system is to have educated voters, yes? then why do we learn so little about how to vote in school? Maybe I just wasn't paying attention. My school these days is often Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia so... U.S. presidential election, 2004.

Dean seems interesting... "While presidential campaigns have been traditionally financed by tapping wealthy, established political donors, Dean's funds have come largely in small donations over the Internet; the average overall donation size is just under $80." but... "... he ranks first in total raised ($25.4 million...). However, even this performance pales to next to George W. Bush, who has so far raised $84.6 million for a primary campaign in which he has no challenger." Yikes!

"As a physician, I do not like the idea that Congress or the President think they should practice medicine. Abortion is a deeply personal decision which ought to be made between the patient, the family and physician. It's none of the government's business." Yes, if only it were so... "I will unflinchingly defend a woman's right to choose against those who would take away this right." Does that mean he's going to get the government to stop funding abortions? See gartl ad: What if your Taxes paid for Abortions?. (see also: Advice and Aid, here in the OPKS area).

16Dec2003 following on UN Geneva stuff... Electronic Individual Voting, by McCarthy? appeals to me as a nice, fractal form of democracy. Advogato trust metric likewise. Debian is remakably scalable...

Is This An Occasion to Celebrate

2003 California recall - Wikipedia

(from esw wikimarklet)

Jun 2003: philg on israel.

13Apr2003 Is `shareholder democracy' an oxymoron? By Floyd Norris. see also: FractalAccounting

3Apr2003: I'm interested in ways that the net/web can really have impact on civic issues. e.g. 3908 signatories endorse the Bill Gates, Buy the Rainforests Petition

29Mar2003: John Thompson, candidate for city council , just knocked on my door asking for support. What does the OPKS city council do, anyway? 1Jun2003: oh good; he got elected to the city council

17Mar2003: I never thought I'd be explaining to my kids that we're going to war.

27Jan2003: got a census from the replublican national committee... ""Do you support President Bush's initiatives to promote the safety and security of all Americans?" Er... which initiatives, exactly? It seems to be full of "when did you stop beating your wife?" questions.

I registered as a republican not to endorse their agenda, but because I realized that in Kansas, republicans pretty much always get elected; it's a matter of which republican. And to get involved in that decision, i.e. the primaries, you have to be a registered republican.

@@more on SB39... gartl...

tax grumbles in FractalAccounting...

on Sep 11... The New War Against Terror Chomsky... I think that's the one I found 8Aug2002 from Muiguel on advogato.

"Jefferson could never completely separate education from government."
Jefferson, Education and the Franchise by Professor Thomas Jewett

found while thinking about a name for this page...

public agenda (from my research notebook; version 1.30 included netscape bookmark metadata ala ADD_DATE="920352291" which means I bookmarked it on 1999-03-02)


comments:

required reading for BV students --connolly, Wed, 03 Nov 2004 18:15:42 +0000 reply
Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools shows BV has some iffy stuff on its required reading list. Better let the board know what I think.

donated to VerifiedVoting?.org --connolly, Sun, 07 Nov 2004 13:26:52 +0000 reply
I just donated to VerifiedVotng.org on AaronSw's prompting.

"It's a small piece, but it's a piece on which I can act" --connolly, Wed, 08 Dec 2004 16:23:05 +0000 reply
Ben A, 3 Nov 2004. Amen.

donated to IFRCS to help with Indian Ocean Earthquake --connolly, Tue, 28 Dec 2004 23:44:17 +0000 reply
After reading about the Indian Ocean earthquake, I was flabbergasted at the number of lives lost. I managed to collect my wits enough to donate via the IFRCS.

See also: tsunami bookmarks on del.icio.us

Harvard conference on Internet and Election 2004 --connolly, Thu, 30 Dec 2004 10:12:05 +0000 reply
Internet + Society 2004 -- Did the Internet change the Election? Dec 9-11 2004 at Harvard.

toward collaborative public policy --connolly, Wed, 25 May 2005 14:48:09 +0000 reply
Saw a bunch of nifty talks on facilitating dialog between government and the people, especially in the UK, in the open data track of XTech. talkeuro. I learned about the Hansard, the official record of the UK parliment.