Shutting down a democracy

[REASON]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

I totally disagree with all of you.
We obviously see the world, and the government, differently.
I'd rather not argue about it into infinite.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that we see eye-to-eye on many such issues.

Obviously, another benefit to living in a relatively free society as ours is that you can choose to believe and respond as your heart desires. I cannot condemn you for doing so. And I do encourage you to press the reset button as you have described in your other thread. That can be your way of reacting to the much needed change around here.

Good luck!

[Mike C]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

the presidential elections are rigged.
sure I'll vote for prop 420
but not for idiot puppet #3

The elections are NOT rigged.
The 2000 election of Bush would appear that way but Gores defeat was the result of the Nader entry into that presidential election.

Nader drew about 90,000 votes in the Florida election.
Gores loss was by only about 500 votes.
Gore, no doubt would have gotten about 75,000 of the Nader votes if he was not in that race.

Florida was the deciding state in the 'electoral college' point system that decides the winners.

Mike C

[REASON]

Originally Posted by Mike C

The elections are NOT rigged.

Gores loss was by only about 500 votes.

I recommend that you do a bit more research into the '04 Presidential election in Ohio, the primary swing state in that election. There are many documented irregularities associated with the vote counts in critical districts that tipped the election to Bush.

I don't find it a mere coincidence that there were major controversies in two separate states, Florida and Ohio, in two separate elections that proved to be the deciding electoral votes.

As citizens, it is our responsibility to remain vigilant against election fraud and the disenfranchisement of particular segments of the voting public.

In other words: Get our heads out of our arses.

[HydrogenBond]

One change that could help the state of the union is the fair tax. What it does is limit the power of the govenment. The best way to see this is to reverse engineer the affect. Hypothetically, say the fair tax is already in place, first. It is essentially a sales tax. There is no income tax, SS or FICA tax. There is no need to file taxes. There is no tax on savings or investment income, etc.. The tax appears if you buy something.

Someone comes along saying, I have this 3000 page tax code that I think would be better than that puny tax booklet we currently have. It looks very impressive on the book shelf. Instead of one, across the board, sales tax at POS, we will now have a bunch of rates, with tax benefits, shelters and loopholes, for those who can figure out how to take advantage. The complexity will create a lot of middleman jobs. Everyone is going to have to worry about filing their taxes each year or quarter. We get a lot of free slave labor before we take their money, so we can show who's boss. The logistics will also require a whole new beaurocracy called the IRS.

Currently credit card debt is a little tentative, since default on the card would mean that tax revenue would have to be paid by the credit card company without any tax relief. But with the new system consumers will be able to spend over their heads. We get our money up front, so who cares if people get themselves enslaved to debt.

The politians love it, because they will have an easier time hiding their kickbacks for campaign contributions. The current booklet is too thin, such that changes are too easy to spot. The big book will then create lobbyist jobs since the guys in Washington will now have more room to manuver. If they currently want to raise taxes, there is only one rate. To tinker with that rate leads to a lot of public awareness and outrage. With the "big book", they can tweak here and there, shifting wealth or taxes. The only people who will see it are the experts. But since they will be leasing their skills, they will try to keep it quiet since this knowledge will give them free market leverage for their skills.

Using the little tax booklet, there no tax on savings and investment so there is no need to hide money in overseas tax shelters. This money is all in the economy being saved and reinvested. But with the big book, we will be able to keep the economy luke warm, by causing alot of money to leave for overseas shelters. This allows the govenment to require a bigger percentage of the national pie for the same cost of operations. This won't create any new jobs, but does give it more power to Washington.

[TheBigDog]

Originally Posted by REASON

I recommend that you do a bit more research into the '04 Presidential election in Ohio, the primary swing state in that election. There are many documented irregularities associated with the vote counts in critical districts that tipped the election to Bush.

I don't find it a mere coincidence that there were major controversies in two separate states, Florida and Ohio, in two separate elections that proved to be the deciding electoral votes.

As citizens, it is our responsibility to remain vigilant against election fraud and the disenfranchisement of particular segments of the voting public.

In other words: Get our heads out of our arses.

I registered to vote in Ohio about a month before the 2004 election. I have first hand experience with the environment in question. Speaking with my friends, co-workers, and neighbors, the irregularities ascribed to Ohio are of far greater concern to fringe political organizations around the country and the world than they are to anyone here. There have been issues with the board of elections in the area, but through all of the firings and investigations not a single instance of election fraud has been found.

I note with interest that the article you liked to cites Edison Media Research, the company that did the exit polling for the 2004 elections. My sister was an employee of EMR at the time, in fact she was among the first dozen employees of the company. A bit of history, they did their first exit polling in preparation for the 2004 national elections during the NYC elections on Sept 11, 2001. My sister spent much of her day tracking down her count crews to make sure that everyone was OK. But that is just peripheral information to fuel the stray conspiracy theorist... My point is that EMR dropped the ball during the 2004 election. Much of the basis of looking for irregularities is based upon their flawed methods of releasing and calculating exit polls. In a nutshell, historic election results were used to normalize the raw exit polling to try and make the extrapolation more accurate. When the trend was different in 2004 than in previous elections that fact was completely hidden in the exit polling because of the methods, and very clear when the actual votes were counted. If women had traditionally voted 60/40 Democratic, the forecast was taking the exit numbers and adjusting them to a 60/40 ratio to predict the result. So when the exit polling surveyed women voting 50/50 they released this as a 60/40 margin. These are not actual numbers, but represent the general method used.

So, thanks to flawed reporting from exit polling, the world has the impression that all sorts of shenanigans are happening, and the only thing that is happening is really poor statistical methods.

EMR's core business is doing music surveys. They have groups of people listen to new albums and through the interview process they recommend what songs to release as singles. They do the same thing for determining radio airplay. They made the leap from that with a staff of 20 or so, to being the primary exit poller for the national election in just about 3 years. Wonder why there were issues?

Bill

[Mike C]

Originally Posted by REASON

I recommend that you do a bit more research into the '04 Presidential election in Ohio, the primary swing state in that election. There are many documented irregularities associated with the vote counts in critical districts that tipped the election to Bush.

I don't find it a mere coincidence that there were major controversies in two separate states, Florida and Ohio, in two separate elections that proved to be the deciding electoral votes.

As citizens, it is our responsibility to remain vigilant against election fraud and the disenfranchisement of particular segments of the voting public.

In other words: Get our heads out of our arses.

The 2004 election was won by Bush, no doubt.
The 2000 election was close and tipped to Bush by the votes Nader got. Otherwise, Gore would have won that election. He did win the popular vote count but the electoral votes are the deciding counts.

Mike C

[REASON]

Originally Posted by REASON

As citizens, it is our responsibility to remain vigilant against election fraud and the disenfranchisement of particular segments of the voting public.

In other words: Get our heads out of our arses.

I stand by my previous statements above. They are valid no matter who's running or who wins. It is naive of us, as American citizens, to believe that we are so morally exceptional that there could never be fraudulent activities perpetrated by people in positions of power in an attempt to manipulate election results.

And when irregularities start showing up, it's foolish of us to assume that they are nothing more than crybaby conspiracy theories. Even if they are.