The Glade 4.0

On much of what is wrong with our government these days.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessi ... claim.html

30 seconds before he'd spewed enough bullshit I didn't want to listen anymore. That is, pretty much, the first time he uses the word "democracy" wrong. Beyond that, he's pretty much factually incorrect on everything. Sure his numbers are solid, but his interpretations are wrong, and there are a couple of huge causal fallacies in his argument. First, government has primary control over the candidates and available choices, not the funding parties. Second, federal elections favor D and R candidates at the penalty of all other candidates through force of law, not force of funding.

*edit*

Having had time to listen to the entirety of his presentation, I'll go beyond the fact he factually undercuts himself the entire time and point out that he's delivering a biased piece of information with a deliberate political end: micro-transaction funded politics favors Coffee Shop liberals (people who can make small donations from social media/public wifi spots). Other than being reductive, there's an actual agenda to his speech: data indicates that small amount donors overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama and the Democrats. His solution doesn't solve the problem: the force of law keeps ballot access and presence arbitrarily low; the force of law makes every election a false dilemma between R and D. His solution simply increases the Democrats' funding; that is, if you listen to his whole spiel -- "We can fix this if we fund my party."

I like a lot of the TED Talks, but your last two haven't been worth cheap industrial toilet paper during a case of the drizzling-shits.

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I like them when they're about T, E, or D. Not politics and economics.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Can you back up those claims with some cites Khross? I'm curious to see the numbers.

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/campaign-finance

We'll use the New York Times, since that's fairly neutral for this.

If you look at the breakdown of private contributions, the majority of Obama's private contributions (57%) are less than $200. This is really important, because all contributions exceeding $200 to a single candidate must be recorded and kept as a matter of public record. Contributions less than $200 are not. There were several stories about the possibility of non-domestic funds ending up in Obama's < $200 pool, but we don't care about that (it didn't matter then; doesn't matter now). The distribution of contributions matters, however.

Opensecrets.org says that works out to $233,000,000 or so for Obama; and $80,000,000 or so for Romney in 2012. Obama certainly got more poor, more lower-income, more less-involved people to throw money at his campaign (in 2008 and 2012). And the Democrats have been working the small, non-tracked contributions angle pretty heavily since. That someone who is an avowed liberal, who makes jokes at the conservatives expense, and talks about Global Warming as his primary non-political funding issue picks a funding source that favors his party is not coincidence.

There are problems with ballot and representation access in the United States; money isn't the issue. The Democrats AND the Republicans (in willful collusion) strive to keep third-parties, independents, and recognized parties off ballots. Michael Badnarik, in 2004, would have been the first third-party candidate on EVERY ballot, had the Republicans lost law suits in 2 states and the Democrats in 3. As it was, they got court orders, injunctions, and other legal action to keep the Libertarians (a total non-threat overall) from appearing in markets where it would have changed the outcome. Ballot access is restricted through force of law and Party Dominance; not funding disparities.

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