perfidy

As I have mentioned before, I advocate a _permanent_ 3% reduction in income tax for service veterans; serve, and you'll pay lower income tax for the rest of your life.

I think that's better than flowers.

Bush would rather give a giant tax cut to his corporate cronies than help out a GI.

Now that the election is over, it appears that there were basically no examples of voter intimidation of the sort that Ross predicted. Additionally, the rationale that Ross laid out for those shenanigans turns out also to have been off base, as Republican get out the vote efforts surpassed the traditionally effective Democratic efforts.

The two observers from each party at my polling place might have intimidated a particularly weakminded and decrepit frenchman, if they were dressed in wehrmacht uniforms. But otherwise, the little old lady and small bent backed grey man would not have caused even a small child to feel that he was in anyway impeded from exercising the franchise. Perhaps if they had hired the Hell's Angels...

Ross,
That makes some kind of sense to me, but you'll see that it's in the execution that problems come up. Like, that neither party with a chance of wielding power in this country has anything like such a plan in the works. Issues that resonate with me, like tax policy and immigration, are zero in both parties. Both will say the things they're supposed to say about war and defense, but a fair amount of it is crap.

Then we're back to grudging acceptance of our lot. When neither party has much for me, why would I be enthusiastic about voting for them? Why vote for someone else, when all the "elses" will lose by terrific margins?

Maps, I don't believe you were really trying to argue a point. It reads more like buckshot reasoning*: fire several small hard pellets and see which one has any effect. In this case I see it as either trying to twist my tail for its own sake, by pushing every button you think I might react to and for which you do seem to have alot of skill, or guilting me into voting. Your guilt-fu is formidable, but I am immune.

I can't contact my representatives. Kennedy doesn't even know the geography past Rt 128, and I'd have to fax him a map of how the land lays between Beacon Hill and New York. Kerry's been a ghost for 20 years. Judging by the rampant destitution I see out here, you'd think the Dem deathgrip in the state could be broken.

We are not voting to evict a dictator. The choice is between one president who will continue to oversee programs and policies that fuck me, or at best have no impact upon me, or another one who will do the same thing with different names. What's peculiar is the way some people get so wrapped up in "their" candidate, but remain oblivious that with him elected there will be no significant change in any measurable way to his quality of life. It's like commiting yourself to a sports team- you feel great when they win or bad when they lose. It's in your head.

As for the duty-honor-country tip, save it. I have a bona fide DD 214 that says "honorable" on it, unlike a certain presidential candidate. Our right to vote was pretty well established long before 2003, and fighting in Iraq has no impact on whether or not we will retain that right (goofy Patriot Act/Rove/Halliburton conspiracies aside).

If you want to support troops, stop for a second and really think about what that means. For real. Seriously. They don't need sophistry or magnetic yellow ribbons on your car. Part with something valuable for them: $$, by sending care packages or donations to vet groups or causes; time, by volunteering at your VA hospital or USO for example; or yourself, and enlist. Watch this space for my plans in this regard.

If you do these or similar things already, ignore me.

*Feel free to quote "buckshot reasoning". I like the the union of instant fiery violence with logical measured introspection. And I think it sounds cool.

GL, hard-line activists in Ohio were willing to screw with the votes of hundreds of thousands of people, delaying and/or preventing them from voting, in order to get at a few fraudulent voters. It's a classic security tradeoff. You rate the cost of the fix versus the cost of leaving it alone. In this case certain elements of the GOP didn't care about the cost 'cause it wasn't being borne by their party.

As I've noted on the front page, GOP officials came to their senses and ordered the challengers to observe, and observe only.

When it comes to getting screwed over, the working class guy is in difficulty, I'll admit. But before we can understand that problem, we need to cut through the drumbeat of bullshit that the GOP throws up, particularly in regards to taxation. The _effects_ of our tax system are quite well known and not particularly complicated. Fair fixes for it are also quite simple, really. The problem is that the GOP in this country has somehow convinced a whole pile of poor and middle class people that a) the tax cuts benefit them, and b) that someday they'll be "rich", and wish they'd supported the tax cuts.

It's horseshit, of course. Rich people in this country don't pay all that much more in taxes than the poorest wage-earners do. Poor people's retirement money is used to subsidize tax cuts for the wealthiest (the social security surplus).

A friend of mine who's as GOP as it gets has precisely the same solution to the problem as I do. Eliminate social security and medicare as separately taxable items. Create a single scale with fine-grained progressivity, ranging from 0 to 50ish percent using a fixed exponentially increasing scale, say with an exponent of 1.5. Re-scale the entire system to be revenue neutral, which drops the 50% number down to some "natural" number.

Bingo. Very fair tax system. Look up your income, read the number, multiply, and you're done. It can easily be adjusted in terms of curvature, and doesn't LIE to taxpayers about where their money goes, or how much they're really paying.

I'm the poll "challenger". Voter steps up to the table. Poll worker inspects photo ID, looks up the person, says "Thanks", checks off the person's name.

Challenger says, "wait a second". That didn't look right to me. He asks for and receives the person's ID, hems and haws over it for 30 seconds, compares the name on the ID to the voter list, then hands the ID back to the voter. "Thanks", he says, "no problem. Have a good day."

And he's just accomplished the mission, which is to insert delay into the voting process, which, given the long lines that we all know are out there today, means that some people won't get to vote, or will be so dismayed by the lines that they just give up.

The GOP in Ohio know they will find very few (if any) "problems" with voter registration. What they do know is that for each 30 second delay they introduce, they'll cost Kerry some portion of a vote, due to delays. And that will add up.

Judge it for yourself, GL. Why are these "challengers", 3500 of them, fanning out to poor and minority districts, when the only demonstrable effect of their actions will be to prevent people from voting?

Find me another way to look at it.

It's got Karl Rove all over it.

Ross,
The Times article doesn't explain what, preicsely, "challenging" means.

But unless there are burly dudes outside the door barring people from entering the building, no one's impeding anything.

You are a deep and clear thinker Ross, which is why this sort of thing surprises me. It reads as if the GOP cannot possibly be after a fair election; if we keep that up we're going to be into Halliburton conspiracies before long.

Ross,
Why is it that Republican shenanigans disturb you, but Democratic ones don't?

Do you not believe that the supplicants of St Kerry are pulling their own schemes today? Not that you'd ever hear of such things in a NYTimes Co publication of course.

Why the selective outrage?

Because the democrats aren't sending representatives into poor and minority neighborhoods to make it harder for people to vote. High turnout favors democrats; higher participation in democracy (which just about everybody favors) is good for the D.

The accusation we've got from the GOP is that registration fraud has taken place, and that what they're concerned about is multiple votes. Voting multiple times is outright fraud and a felony. We have mechanisms that guard against that already. The "challengers" being sent to polling places aren't going to be doing anything that the poll workers aren't already doing, which is checking IDs.

If instances of multiple voting are found, it's a crime and should be prosecuted. I think that very few people are willing to commit a crime in an election. What the GOP is doing in Ohio is reprehensible and racist, and occuring on a massively larger scale that felony voter fraud.

GL - You're the target demographic which absolutely must NOT give up hope on the democratic process. If you as a reasonable well-educated person who cares enough to participate on this blog, it's your moral duty to ensure that those who cannot participate are spoken for. Got kids? Got friends in low places? Know someone who can't read? Someone who needs Medicare because they are mentally impaired? etc. I could keep going here.

Ross is a flaming liberal. His ministry tagline even says so. Why does this surprise you?

If you think that you will always be fucked by politics, then you need to get off your ass and say something to your representatives in government. No American should have to feel like they have no voice or power to change things here. If you do, you might as well move to Taliban-led Afghanistan. There's plenty of people waiting to be naturalized who are more than happy to exercise the privilege of voting. They come here all the time to starve and die of dehydration in the Sonora desert and drown on rafts in the Caribbean. You may think that they are economic refugees, but most legal immigrants become reliable voters once they

I'm not an "America, love it or leave it" type, and that's not what I am trying to tell you by saying this. It's just that I personally know a political prisoner/exile of a foreign country that the US considers to be democratic which was not during the 1980's. You can make the case that my parents were political exiles from their native country because they weren't too happy with dictators who tromped on civil rights and shot at student protesters.

As an American citizen, especially right now when there are American troops fighting for a democrating ideal, the best way you can support them is to exercise the privilege for which they are fighting. If you sit on your ass at home and wait for the returns without casting your vote, you insult everyone who's died over there and you don't send a good message to everyone else that democracy, representation, enfranchisement are worthy ideal for which wars should be fought.

Fuck it, next time someone is oppressed, might as well watch them suffer. It makes for good entertainment on TV.

[guilt trip over]

JUST VOTE. I don't care who you vote for, I don't care if you leave some spots blank. Just go and do your civic duty or else it's all a sham and we should let the William Gibson world of the "corporation as govenment" begin now.

Ross,
What I don't understand is your commitment to fairness in a social or economic sense, but on election day won't fairly apply your thought and reasoning to expose dirtbags in all political parties. I mean, fair means they'd all get the same treatment, right?

I think in this instance of OH challenges, why does it have to be a Rov-ian plot? Why can't it be an attempt at reining in fraud by illegal aliens or felons trying to vote, for example? What's that line about the difference between stupidity and malice?

But ultimately Ross, I think we differ in a more fundamental way, much deeper than considering whether this or that action in JohnoLand might be fraudulent, and way past "toMAYto, toMAHto".

I believe that I will always be fucked, whoever is President. Whoever's name is on the White House mailbox, it will not measurably improve my quality of life in any way. I will still have to go to work tomorrow, and lose upwards of 30% of my $$ forever. You, however, are hopeful, judging by the tone and content of recent posts, that a certain candidate or a certain party can make your life better.

You can show me all the spreadsheets you want, but working people will always be fucked, Ross. That's why I'm not terribly enthusiastic about politics, and that's part of the reason I have no desire to vote- because there is very little actual change at all, let alone for what I might judge at that moment to be "better".

And it's also why sometimes it's hard for me to understand why people are so excited over their candidate- Bush, Kerry, or whoever else.