Election Stuff
Who'd a thunk that local leftie, David Cobb, and local right winger(?), Jim Garvey, would agree on anything?
They seem to have found at least one common cause: Publicly funded elections.
Cobb doesn't say much about it in his My Word piece, leaving me to think he'll write further on the subject next week. He writes mostly about the confidence he has with the elections system in Humboldt.
Garvey, for the most part, tells us that politicians are a bunch of bums and the way to fix that problem is to elect a different set of bums. Term limits and publicly funded elections will keep things on the straight and narrow says he.
Whatever. I've said here before I'm no fan of so- called campaign finance reform and am ambivalent about term limits.
Publicly funded elections? Seems to me you still have the problem of a certain group of people deciding who gets the money and, thus, who is allowed to run for office.
Wouldn't that lend itself to the same sort of skullduggery we already have?
I think I prefer the way it is now where pretty much anyone can run for office. Not that they have a chance of winning, but they can still run and raise whatever money they can.
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Speaking of elections, I've been trying to ignore much of the news banter about the possible '08 presidential candidates. I haven't even paid all that much attention to my own favorite, Republican Congressman, Ron Paul, despite seeing quite a bit written about him lately.Hard to ignore him as I don't believe I've ever seem so much support from different sides of the aisle for a dark horse candidate. We've even seen a few letters to the editor of the local papers in support of Paul.
Kind of nice to see that sort of groundswell of support. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking he'll win the nomination. He won't.
Still, I'm willing to wave his flag, but I'll wait a few more months before seriously actually doing anything.
For those of you Ron Paul fans who are interested in waving the flag now, I just noticed this web site selling Ron Paul T- Shirts, among other things.
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As far as the Libertarian Party '08 candidates, nothing too exciting to there. If Ron Paul miraculously won the Republican nomination, I'd certainly vote for him. Since he likely won't, I've been trying to decide if I might just not vote for any presidential candidates of any party.Normally I always waste my vote on the Libertarian Party candidate, whoever that might be, but this time Steve Kubby has thrown his hat in the ring. I really don't have anything against Kubby but his time has come and gone. I really don't want to encourage him by voting for him, not that he would actually know how I voted, or care.
I was having some discussion with myself about whether to vote for Kubby, or not, but a couple weeks ago he took the unusual step of essentially endorsing Ron Paul. I believe he said if Paul wins the nomination, libertarians should vote for Paul. Kubby redeemed himself a bit with me by doing that.
As an aside, Kubby is living in Fort Bragg now. Interesting to note the message the Mendocino County LP has on their web page regarding Kubby (disclosure: I was asked to insert that message by the Mendocino LP Chair).
The other main player in the LP presidential race, at least so far, is self- made millionaire, Wayne Allyn Root.
I'll admit my main reason for being leery of this guy is the Southern CA War Party Libertarians seem to be his most enthusiastic supporters. That might well be more than enough to dissuade me.
However, I was reading an interview of Wayne Root yesterday- which I can't find for the life of me now- where he told how he felt about the War on Terror and the Iraq Invasion, among other things. I felt we were actually pretty close together on the issue. While I'm no pacifist, he didn't sound to be all that much War Party, either.
We'll have to see who wins the nomination this time around. While I was thinking earlier of not voting for anyone other than Ron Paul, these two LP candidates aren't looking so bad that I wouldn't mind wasting my vote on them.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 8:13 AM
15 comments
15 Comments:
Update: I forget about the Craigslist ad I saw advertising a Ron Paul Meetup:
http://ronpaul.meetup.com/cities/us/ca/eureka/?from=loc_pick
Cobb and Garvey in agreement? Funny huh?
Publicly funded elections? Seems to me you still have the problem of a certain group of people deciding who gets the money and, thus, who is allowed to run for office.
Not if you have clear criteria. It depends on how concisely the law is written.
I'm with Joe Biden and these guys on the issue of publicly-funded elections. It's the only way the public has a chance to take back government.
If we got rid of term limits and went to public financing, we would attract more talented people to public life. The expense is a drop in the bucket - an investment.
To both Eric and Greg: So...the best way to deal with the bums we've elected is to elect a different set of bums?
Politicians are not bums.
Ron Paul is certainly the most interesting of all the Republican candidates
If you want to make a difference, register as a Democrat. Answering your question: well, yeah!
Thanks, Fred. I'll forward the Ron Paul info to Godfrey Tudor-Matthews. He stopped by and introduced himself yesterday.
I'm not a Libertarian, but Mr. Tudor-Matthews is quite a good proselytizer.
Public taxes going to politicians failed miserably in Humboldt and across California in a ballot measure last year. As usual Cobb is out of step with local voters and California voters, since Cobb is not a local and not a Californian its no surprise. Too bad Cobb and his cronies are still stonewalling real campaign finance reform via contribution limits.
"Ron Paul is certainly the most interesting of all the Republican candidates..."
No, what you MEANT to say, was:
"Ron Paul is the ONLY repub. candidate who is honest and somewhat sane!"
If the Dems continue to bow to
Darth Cheney and his henchmen, Ron is our ONLY hope!
Here is your proof:
Which Repub-candidate is the media IGNORING?
why? Because they were TOLD to!
To both Eric and Greg: So...the best way to deal with the bums we've elected is to elect a different set of bums?
Buminess is a question of degree. I'll take a weenie over a psycho. I'll take a compromised pol with a brain over a weenie.
"...since Cobb is not a local and not a Californian..."
That is some staggeringly low-quality thinking. Would Cobb's opinion have more gravity if he were from California?
The majority of Texas voters are reflexively anti-tax, so according to the logic of the tax-hating Anonymous, Cobb's opinions should be held in high esteem.
So if Joel Mielke thinks Cobb is such a genius, then why is Cobb and his dirty crew against capping contributions?
I wrote what I meant. Please don't put words in my mouth, 9:38 AM.
Thanks.
The truth is that Cobb came into the community giving the impression to all that he was a licensed attorney to gain credibility. Patrick Riggs, liberal community members and others embraced him. Those who disagreed were automatically blackballed.
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