Dokken and the Electoral College

I got an email earlier today from my friend Nate, who, after years of ridiculing blogging (for good reasons), told me he just caved in and started his own blog. I realized when he said this that I "haven't posted anything in forever," as my life partner, Michael, friends, creditors, and pen pal Vladimir have been telling me for a few months. Sorry everyone, I guess work, grad school, and moving got in the way. Bitter? No...

So this gives me a good opportunity to both introduce Nate's blog, "Rockin' with Dokken," and to step back into blogging. [I hate any word that uses "blog" as its root, by the way.] You see, now that I have immediate competition from my friends, I'm once again motivated to write on my blog. It's the same behavior that results when you have two guitarists and one guitar in a room. As soon as one guy picks up the guitar and starts playing, the other guy eyes it feverishly and, masking his craving to show that he can also play, calmly asks, "Hey, uh, can I play/give it a whirl/grab the axe/shred for a bit?" So it's not truly altruistic on my part to plug Rockin with Dokken---to the extent someone who gets like 25 hits a day can plug anything.

Nate's first post on those stupid "I Voted" stickers is pretty dead on. I always feel an annoying pressure to vote whenever I see them, which I guess is the point. If I don't vote, I'm not in the sticker club, and I haven't done what I was supposed to do, so I should feel bad. I never saw the point of voting for someone who I didn't think would be a good leader (not to be confused with a good politician), and I still feel that way. I'm not going to exercise my civic right to support a politician in an election just because P. Diddy tells me to (or threatens me to). This pressure led me to vote for Bush in 2004 for god knows what reason, so I'm pretty skeptical that just voting for the sake of voting empowers people to elect leaders that serve their interests any more than not voting does.

"Seriously, I will kill you."

Since it's Election Day, I have a unique opportunity to sway massive public opinion (ha!). I'm not going to get into who to vote for---if you haven't figured it out by now, just don't vote (seriously). Here's my gripe: why do we still have an electoral college? A few days ago I heard Pat Buchanan on MSNBC talking about the possibility of McCain threading his way to victory by way of a popular vote loss but an electoral college win. The New York Times has a story discussing this possibility, as well.

Does this make sense? I realize the the U.S. presidential election system is an indirect democracy, but the present manifestation of something doesn't lend evidence for its existence. That is, just because we're doing something a certain way doesn't mean we can't do it differently, and better. Why not have a direct democracy, (i.e. a true democracy) in which each vote is equal to every other vote. Why should my vote in heavily-Democratic DC have far less impact than someone's vote in Arlington, Virginia, which is 2 miles away?

Good question. Let's look at where this wacky idea of an electoral college came from: the U.S. Constitution. According to the source of infinite knowledge, Wikipedia:

The design of the Electoral College was based upon several assumptions and anticipations of the Framers of the Constitution:
1. Each state would employ the district system of allocating electors.
2. Each presidential elector would exercise independent judgment when voting.
3. Candidates for either office would not pair together on the same ticket.
4. The system as designed would rarely produce a winner, thus sending the election to
Congress.

Hmm. Number 4 looks like a troublemaker. Seems strange to me that the framers would construct a system that intended to rely on Congress to pick a President and Vice President. Turns out this bit them in the ass in 1796 and again in 1800 after the emergence of political parties, which became effective in gathering large blocks of electoral votes, and thus in manipulating the electoral system to their advantage. In fact, the famously bitter schism between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton arose from Hamilton's support for Thomas Jefferson when Jefferson and Burr were tied for electoral votes for President in the 1800 election, resulting in the Jefferson Presidency. Burr (the sitting Vice President) later shot and killed Hamilton (the sitting Treasury Secretary) for this transgression. Who ever said the Framers were perfect?

The 12th Amendment changed the original system from one in which electors would cast two votes for President to one in which they would cast one for President and one for VP. This is still in place today. No further shootings occurred.

"Hey Hamilton, go fuck yourself."

Enough of the boring stuff.

So it is apparent to me that the Framers were more concerned with establishing an electoral system that satisfied the political whims of the time rather than one that was grounded in democratic principles, those being equality of representation and justice.

If the electoral college system worked such that it exactly represented the popular vote, there would be less of a case against it. Of course, then we'd have to wonder why we even have such an elaborate (and thus, expensive) system. But, unfortunately, as we saw in 2000, the electoral vote put Bush into the Presidency, even though the popular vote should have carried Gore, by half a million votes, to the White House. Whoops. That should have been enough to motivate us to replace the electoral system with a direct democracy. Obviously it didn't. Whether or not the current election actually results in another split between the votes of the electorate and the votes of the people is entirely unimportant. The prospect that it is still a possibility in this and all future elections is grounds for dismantlement or systemic repair. It flouts the contemporary concept of democracy.

So, why do we still carry on with this antiquated system? Precedent provides momentum, sure. But, remember what happened once the electorate was first formed? Political parties self-organized, gathering electoral votes, and accreted power. In any social institution, people will always expand their authority to the extent allowed by the rules, and once that power exists, it is very difficult to change rules that would affect the distribution of power. And so, though the Republicans may hate the Democrats, and the Democrats may hate the Republicans, they need each other to perpetuate the dominance of the two-party system, in the same way that Fidel Castro needs the United States, Garfield needs Odie, and peanut butter needs jelly (why do you think there's an ampersand between them? They HATE each other).

Garfield and Odie: now a compelling political parable.

I'm sure this is rife with applications of game theory, if I understood it. Basically, without an electoral college, third, fourth, and fifth parties could start to eat away at the incumbent parties' votes, and thus their political power. And why would they want that?

Now let's all get drunk and watch the results.

Postlude: I realize there are argument of states' rights, urban overrepresentation, and others, that can be made in favor of the electoral college, and perhaps they can be made convincingly, but any system that strives to be a democratic one must, as a first principle, ensure equality of representation. Before any argument for keeping the current system is considered, I believe you have to first assess whether the current system is functioning to preserve the fundamental democratic rights of the people. If it is not, any argument in support of it fails. But I'm open to argument.

Drukgz

I was planning on putting together a polemic "hip-hopera" on our great nation's War on Drugs and the impotence and hypocrisy therein, but I came across something much simpler in the Economist that I could plagiarize and still get the general point across, thus saving me about 4 hours during which I can instead work sedulously and exacerbate my slightly sore throat and stuffy nose... RUN-ON!!!!



"NEARLY 1.9m people were arrested in America for drug offences in 2006—over three times the number detained in 1980. Around one in eight arrests is now drug related. But what they achieve in the "war on drugs" is unclear, according to a report by The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group. Fewer people take drugs: 14% of people reported using them monthly in 1979, but only 8% in 2005. But arrests are increasingly for more trivial crimes: in 2006 only 17.5% of arrests were made for the sale or manufacture of drugs, whereas some 39% were for the possession of marijuana. "

- Economist, October 09, 2007

So, over 700,000 people were arrested for having some weed in 2006, while 1.4 million were arrested for drunk driving (2004). Weed killed nobody, but drunk driving killed over 17,000 people. Hmm.

New Study Proves Liberal-minded People are Easily Fooled

A new study linking liberalism and gullibility is bound to find favor with conservatives but rouse the liberal base.

The research, conducted by Dr. Brice Lord, M.D., Esq., Ph.D., LLM, M.S.E.E. of the Cola War Memorial Institute for Social, Political, and Flavor Studies (CWMISPFS), finds a strong correlation between liberal-minded individuals and the degree to which they succumb to deception and guile. He explained that further study will not be needed since the results are perfectly definitive.

Dr. Lord began by polling what Dr. Lord calls "a blind, representative superset" of readers on his personal blog. This began with a seemingly insignificant question requesting his readers' political tilt. After gathering responses from over 8 individuals, he next posted a poll whose goal was to trick readers into admitting their ease of manipulation. Out of more than 13 people who took the second poll, over 71.42% of people honestly registered their submission to Dr. Lord's artful deception. After analyzing and comparing data from the two supersets, Lord was able to produce the results he was looking for.

Dr. Lord explains the results to two victims of his research.

What he discovered Dr. Lord describes as "a shocking presupposition solidly confirmed with uncorrupted scientificy." He adds that "the data is so unbelievably statistically significant I guarantee you've never seen anything like it." Lord found that, by water weight, the majority of liberals fell for his linguistic chicanery whereas the sole conservative poll-taker "mostly pretty likely" didn't fall for it. He added that the write-in populist/anarchist seemed particularly susceptible to "manipulation by the liberal machine."

Lord isn't jumping to any conclusions, however. "I isn't jumping to any conclusions", Lord states, but he does believe the study should be worrisome to the left. "If I was proved beyond a doubt to be ridiculously gullible and unattractive I'd probably be pretty careful from here on out." Lord recommends that concerned liberals may want to consider "watching fair and balanced news programs like Fox News and maybe change shampoos," but stresses that this goes beyond the statistical relevance of his research.

A CWMISPFS scientist researches the transparency of glass objects and liberal bias.

While the Freemen, Montana-based CWMISPFS continues "research-as-usual"---a phrase emboldened on the stock of the 20-foot solid bronze statue of a Winchester rifle outside the research compound---a public backlash has begun to stir back in Washington.

Critics have complained that Lord's methods have not been properly vetted in other studies, and that results need to be refabricated in order to verify his conclusions. MoveOn.org complained that shampoos such as Garnier Fructis are too expensive for the average worker, and that a government program should be created to help the lower classes "Take Care" of their hair. MoveOn and Barbara Boxer, D-CA, are co-sponsoring the Clean The Hair Act in hopes to advance the legislation.

Others have even questioned Dr. Lord's motives, claiming that he's merely a conservative shill and a gun-toting fanboy. In a recent press conference, Lord rebuffed this criticism directly, stating that he's "gun-wielding" rather than gun-toting, a difference his critics seem not to fully appreciate.

In fact, Lord has been positively linked to the right-wing MoveAlong.org, which casts some doubt on his research. During a recent interview, Lord was asked whether his research may have been funded by politically-motivated private interests, to which he responded tacitly, "Maybe ... I'm a fucking scientist, not an accountant... Yes, I do have gum, in fact, but it's Big Red; is that okay, do you like cinnamon?"

Dr. Brice Lord can bench press 500 pounds.

Dr. Lord showing off at Muscle Beach, California.

Sen. Redenbacher (D-WV) castigates Michael Vick for "barbarism"

REUTERS, July 20, 2007, Washington, D.C.:

The posthumously revived corpse of beloved popcorn-spokesman Senator Orville Redenbacher took to the Senate floor for over 25 minutes Thursday to decry the indictment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick for allegations that he led a dogfighting ring out of one of his homes in Virginia. After much legal scrutiny, Reuters has confirmed that dogfighting is indeed illegal in all 50 U.S. states and its territories, in addition to every developed and most developing countries around the world. The indictment would appear to hold up in a court of law.

Sen. Redenbacher took the moral lead in this fight against the inhumane treatment of other creatures, even as many of his fellow legislators recently celebrated Vick's revival of the ancient pastime of dogfighting. "It's barbaric! Barbaric! Barbaric! It's barbaric! ......................... Barbaric! ...... Barbaric!!! It's barbaric! ................ BARBARIC!!!" Redenbacher strongly repeated 8 times while madly pumping his fist at a handful of bewildered tourists and a sleeping C-SPAN 2 cameraman in the cavernous Senate chamber Thursday [5:20 - 6:40 in the clip].

Clearly finding his wheelhouse, Sen. Redenbacher again vituperated the indictment by vicariously handing down God's own judgment on the matter by stating that "I am confident that the hottest places in hell are reserved for the souls of sick and brutal people who hold God's creatures in such brutal and cruel contempt." Some critics have wondered whether Redenbacher's 12-year hiatus in the tomb has affected his recollection of having been a leading member of the Klu Klux Klan's Exalted Cyclops chapter for 5 years in the 1940's before winning his first seat in Congress, where he has led for over 55 years. In the past, Redenbacher has indeed made several vague allusions to his views on racial integration:

"Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side."

It appeared that Redenbacher worked himself into a froth enough to have even caused a brief, mild stroke, evidenced by the long pause in his oratory [located at 6:10 in the clip]. An aide of the reanimated Sen. Redenbacher was seen shooting a concerned glance at the Senator just as he began to regain consciousness and his soul returned to his body.

Following this long-winded, meaningful diatribe, Sen. Redenbacher retired from the Senate chamber and stiffly plodded toward the nearest cemetery.

Sources say he forgot to validate his parking.


---Brice Lord, reporting

Perspective

"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were here and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant . . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time -- and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights -- or very early mornings -- when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike
sparks anywhere.

There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

--- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971

Chinatown shenanigans

I live in Washington, DC, it's a fun place to be. It has the quirks and conflicts of any city: creepy rush-hour street musicians who use too much chorus effect on their guitars, volatile homeless people, and an atmosphere of vehicular lawlessness.

While DC is the mecca of international political intrigue and 18-year old bootsniffers in silk suits, the city itself has some fun political history all its own. It what many people (particularly sociologists) will remember, DC's former mayor, Marion Barry, was caught in an FBI sting smoking crack cocaine. What did he have to say for himself of the affair? "[The] bitch set me up." Nice. He went to jail for 6 months, and then immediately ran for seat on the city council under the campaign motto "He May Not Be Perfect, But He's Perfect for D.C." Truer words could not have been spoken, because he was elected to the council and then to the mayorship two years later. As Kent Brockman so eloquently put it, "I've said it before and I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work."

Anyway, the point of this is not to go on about Marrion Barry's countless offences (he forgot to pay his taxes again), but just to give everyone a sense of DC's whacky, laissez-faire political texture.

So this story ran in the Washington Post about two months ago, and I'm not sure why I'm coming back to it now. I guess it's because it just keeps pissing me off. For the record, I haven't met another person who had heard anything about this.

District May Fund Arena Upgrades,
$50 Million Urged For Verizon Center
Link to story

The rub-down: DC Council members get a tricked-out luxury suite at the Verizon Center and the ticket-holders get to foot their bill for the next 40 years.

"Three D.C. Council members introduced a bill yesterday that would provide $50 million in public funding for improvements at Verizon Center, a move that supporters said would spur more economic development near the Chinatown arena.

As part of the deal, the city would take over ownership of the building from Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin in 2047. In the meantime, the city would get a rent-free, 24-seat luxury suite, which includes a private bathroom, two TVs, a refrigerator, a food service area and an
unobstructed view of the arena floor.

The legislation, under which the District would issue $50 million in bonds and increase the tax on tickets and merchandise at the center, was requested by Pollin, who built the arena with private financing. The Wizards, Washington Mystics and Washington Capitals play in the 20,674-seat arena, which also hosts major concerts.
... more...
Under the proposal, the city would issue the bonds, which would be repaid by a 4.25 percentage-point increase in the tax on tickets and merchandise at Verizon Center. The current tax at the arena is 5.75 percent, so the legislation would push the tax to 10 percent.

Because about 60 percent of patrons at the center are from Maryland and Virginia, Evans said, much of the increase could be considered a "user tax" on nonresidents. "People who use the arena are going to the pay for the arena," he said."

First of all, they may as well strap C4 onto the Verizon Center if it is actually turned over to the DC government in 2047. It's better off as a heap of rubble than in the hands of DC's incapable politicians.

Now, usually when politicians take bribes for handing out pork, they at least try to make it a little less obvious. But the bar is set so low for DC politics, these guys gladly (and overtly) took a 24-seat luxury booth---worth probably $300-$400K/year---in exchange for doling out this "public funding"...which comes straight out of the pockets of eventgoers.

Doesn't that seem strange to you? What this says to me is that the Verizon Center wants to buy the right from the city to double the tax on tickets so it can buy itself some new stuff. The V.C. doesn't have to worry about the DC Gov't getting in the way because they give it a suite, and the DC Gov't doesn't have to worry about spending out of its own pockets because the cost comes right out of our pockets. It's win-win! So who doesn't come out on top of this one? Everyone else.

Further, why does the Verizon Center need $50M worth of upgrades already? It was built less than 10 years ago and from what I understand recently got a brand new JumboTron.

Ironically, this same issue came up in 1997 when Barry was mayor, but public outcry nixed the deal.

Finally, the last paragraph of this is hilarious. 60% of eventgoers are out-of-towners, so we feel comfortable doubling the tax on tickets. And I assume as a DC resident (one of whom comprises the other 40%) that I'll be exempt from this "user tax" on nonresidents, right? What better way to encourage attendance at events than by increasing the price for no perceptible reason!

So I have a better idea for you, DC Government. You can still take that extra five bucks out of my pocket when I go to a Caps or Wizards game, but instead of putting it into new carpeting and plasma TVs for the luxury boxes, why don't you put it into the shitty teams I inexplicably pay to watch lose?



(ABOVE) "Alright, who else wants to come to the game tonight. We have 9 free seats left and plenty of standing room. You're with me tonight, alright?"

Political affiliation isn't 1-dimensional

For more years than I'd care to count, I've been trying to figure out where my political affections lie on the continuum between "Democrat" and "Republican." I've spent an equal amount of time figuring out where the dashes denoting the degree (or severity) of party alignment go along that spectrum. As of maybe a year ago, I had figured out that I had slowly moved from middle-right to smack in the middle.

Well, what fucking good does that do me? Who the fuck do I vote for, Mickey Mouse? No one? Why is a seemingly straight-forward thinking individual finding it so hard to classify himself into one of the two ruling parties?

The problem with the political continuum model is that it assumes two things:
1. Party platforms do not shift, and
2. There are only two parties.

The biggest problem is #2, where there is a giant grey cloud which encompasses a huge amount of people left wondering why they don't feel they are properly represented by either of the two ruling parties' ideologies.

Well, that's because political ideology isn't projected onto a 1-dimensional line between "Democrat" and "Republican."
To the chagrin of many pundits, public figures, op/ed columnists, and radio/television personalities, in reality there is a vast "second dimension," or "second axis" of political thinkery on which one's political ideology may traverse, both in the positive and negative directions. I know it's hard to comprehend, but wayward minds may, actually, naturally tend to roam off the stable Democrat-Republican bilateral axis and into this danger zone of heterogeneity.
My theory is that the less publicly understood, and therefore heretical, political affiliations lie somewhere in the solution space provided by my new dimension. There may even be a mysterious dimension number "3" to add to this mess, but I'd hate to trouble your mind with such complex algorithms.
After all is said and done, why is it we have been stuck with the same two parties for over 80 years that have oscillated between positions of leadership and humiliation and scandal? Why is the country so entrenched in the two-party system? Is it because we are somehow coerced into projecting every possible viewpoint for every possible issue onto a 1-dimensional continuum, thereby losing differentiation and committing ourselves to a cycle of incapability and misrepresentation? Or is it because the structure of government or laws provide the path of least resistance necessary for the extended dominance of a two-party structure? You tell me.