Russian collusion and Donald Trump

If you have a few hours free, read the Washington Post’s long article on Donald Trump and the Russians.

If you still have time read all the comments.  This is a bit more time consuming because the Washington Post allows instant commenting.  It’s great to have instant posting rather than waiting hours for arbiters to approve comments, but some people criticize others over and over again, often with insult rather than insight.

Third Party candidates, another false equivalency

A Los Angeles Times article on the death of John Anderson blames his candidacy for Jimmy Carter’s loss in the 1980 Presidential Election.

These articles rarely, if ever, blame the losing major party candidates for the loss.  A more thorough analysis would include the turnout.  How many Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Hilary Clinton lukewarm supporters stayed away?  I think poor turnout has far more to do with a major party candidate’s loss than anything else.

Ralph Nader stealing votes

Blaming Ralph Nader for Al Gore’s defeat by George W. Bush is an issue that will probably never go away.  It came up again a few weeks ago in the Letters section.

The figures below for the 2000 election are from www.electproject.org/2000g and Wikipedia “Spoiler Effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect

In 2000, Florida had a voting-eligible population of 10,666,193.  5,963.110 ballots were cast for a Presidential candidate.  Ralph Nader received 97,421 of those votes.  That was only 2.07% of the no-shows, not much above those who didn’t even vote for a Presidential candidate, 1.6%!!!

We can only guess how the no-shows would have voted.

I would say that we had something similar with the 2016 election.  Turnout for the Presidential vote was 59.3%.  How would the 40.7% who didn’t show up have voted?  We really didn’t know.

It is too true for election after election:

The only way
To throw your vote away
Is to stay away.

Remember to vote for local offices on November 7.  The local results often affect us more directly than the national elections.

Published in Reader Weekly, 2017-10-23 (as far as I can tell, letters are not published online).

For a deeper analysis, see https://www.truthdig.com/articles/dont-fall-for-it-the-nader-myth-and-your-2016-vote/.

Rain or shine: VOTE! If you don't, you could give the election away!!

Rain or cool weather means lower Democratic turnout.  Does this mean those without cars don’t show if the weather is not good.

"These findings significantly illuminate the theory in regards to voter turnout. In
particular, these results show that the primary exogenous mechanism through which
turnout affects elections is the composition effect. In other words, when turnout is
increased, newly mobilized voters are disproportionately Democratic.  Furthermore, these results illuminate a question that has been claimed to be unanswerable: If one could increase voter turnout, would it help Democrats? We find that the answer to this question is, resoundingly, yes.”

"The Joke Isn’t on the Democrats?  The Partisan Effects of Voter Turnout"
Alexander Kendall, Political Science, Stanford University
http://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci353/2004spring/reading/kendall_final.pdf

Elections are not won!

They are given away!

Today’s Star Tribune had a good example of this in an article about the 3rd Congressional District of Minnesota  It was a chart in the printed edition showing voting results for the last 4 biennial elections.  it is a tally of percentage votes for president, Congress, statehouse, and governor.  The percentage of Democratic votes is up in Presidential election years and down in off-years.

What would the elections been like if all those stay-away Democrats had shown up?  They certainly helped Republicans win.

The only way
To throw your vote away
Is to stay away.

If you don’t show up because you don’t like Hilary Clinton, you might help elect Donald Trump.  Just like the stay-aways in Florida helped elect George Bush in 2000.

Quote of the day: Why Democrats don’t win more often.

"Democrats have traditionally led in voter registration efforts, but have a harder time getting their voters to actually come out to the polls. There's a big factor in this election that could help there: Trump.”

- Daily Kos, 2016-05-13

It was the stay-at-home Democrats in Florida that gave Bush the election, not Ralph Nader.

Remember my mantra: The only way you throw your vote away is when you stay away.

General Ization battles truth

Originally published in
Reader Weekly
April 26, 2007

I meant to write about the General’s sister Globa L,. but several articles, including in the Reader Weekly, made writing about the General seem more timely.

Generalization is taking something specific and applying it to many other situations that might not have any relation to the original event or idea.  One of the worst examples is calling Jews “Christ killers” because a mob called upon Pilate to crucify Jesus.  But does a mob in one part of one city represent all the people of a country?  Is every child in that country responsible for the actions of a mob?  Should these children’s descendants be responsible for something they had no say in?

We certainly don’t like certain Muslims deciding all Americans should die because of the actions of governments that we can’t always control.

One of the most frequent generalizations is “the media is liberal”, seen most often in the letters to the editors of daily papers.  These letters are often written by someone who has a “conservative” agenda and doesn’t want to see anything published that contradicts his or her viewpoint.  Ironically, the publication of these letters proves the writers are correct; publishing many different viewpoints is a liberal action.

On the other hand, many so-called liberals complain that the media is conservative.  The Reader Weekly publishes the views of two columnists who often level this charge.  I long ago gave up on reading Norman Solomon because he derides “the media” for not covering news as he thinks it should.  Jim Hightower recently complained about media bashing Democrats for investigating the Justice Department using two publications as an example.  Then he uses a poll by USA Today to show popular support for continuing the investigation. (1)  The papers that I read, all called “liberal”, report that even Republicans are dissatisfied with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ testimony.

“Mallard Fillmore”, the conservative duck drawn by Bruce Tinsley, bashes liberals and government mercilessly.  One of his favorite targets is the U.S. Postal Service.  One of his recent strips was a reply to an “irate postal worker” asking when Mallard would stop bashing the Postal Service.  Mallard’s reply was “When they stop bashing my packages.”  My question is when is Mallard going to bash UPS or other package carriers for bashing his packages. (2)

I’ve probably received more damaged packages from UPS than I have from the Postal Service.  Does that mean UPS bashes packages more?  No, I have to take into account that I probably receive more packages from UPS than any other source.

Ad hominem arguments are a form of generalization, that is, an idea is not very good because a certain person said it.

I would suppose that the income tax is a bad idea because Marx and Engels called for it in “The Communist Manifesto”.  Oh, but conservatives in Britain imposed an income tax in 1799.  The British Government needed all the revenue it could get in its struggle against Napoleon’s France.  Despite income and property taxes going from 1.67 million pounds in 1799 to 14.6 million pounds in 1815, the British economy prospered. (3)  Napoleon had to rely on indirect taxes because the French were resistant to more direct taxes.  Guess who won the war.

Many conservatives seem to use ad hominem thinking to formulate their positions.  They see global warming as a liberal cause, and therefore they must oppose it.  Some of these global warming skeptics use generalizations to support their arguments.  Many letter writers say the cold weather in March proves there is no global warming, mixing up meteorology and climate (weather today and weather trends spanning decades and centuries).

Global warming skeptics also use “positive” ad hominem thinking.  If someone who seems to have some scientific stature supports his or her viewpoint, then that person must be correct.  (Like all those liberals who are praising Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which I haven’t seen and don’t intend to.)  One of these global-warming skeptic documents was supposedly signed by 17,000 (or was it 20,000) scientists stating “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide … is causing, or will, … cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” (4)

But who are these 17,000 scientists?  Are they all climatologists or chemists employed by oil companies?  Are there even 17,000 climatologists in the world?  It turns out that these scientists are anybody with a degree who signed a certain petition. (5)(6)  I think I would rather go with the opinion of people who regularly study weather and climate. (7)

If climate change is not happening, why is the corporation liberals love to hate, Wal-Mart, going green, saving itself and its customers money? (8)

Generalizations about conservative and liberals certainly don’t always work out as expected. Truth takes a bit more work.

P.S. Do your own search on "17,000 scientists" and "Marshall".  I did and found the "Global Warming Petition Project".  I looked for a unique name in the A section and found "David Acerni" and did a search for him.  There is only one "D Acerni" at whitepages.com.  He lives in Kittaning PA.  According to a Department of Energy spreadsheet from 1999, he was the contact for the Rosebud Mining Co. of Kittaning PA.  I can find no current professional reference to him.

(1) “NYPD’s ‘intelligence’”, section titled “Why media companies get no respect”, Jim Hightower, Reader Weekly, April 12, 2007

(2) “Mallard Fillmore”, Bruce Tinsley, Star Tribune, April 13, 2007

(3) The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy, p. 130

(4) “Gore causes lobal warming in area middle school brains”, Budgeteer News, April 15, 2007

(5) “What the skeptics don’t tell you”, Woods Hole Research Center

(6) “The denial industry”, George Monbiot, The Guardian, September 18, 2006

(7) Climate Change: An information statement of the American Meteorological Society, Feb. 1, 2007,

(8) “The Power of Green”, Thomas Friedman, New York Times Magazine, April 15, 2007

See also "General Ization's power grows".

©2007 Melvyn D. Magree

Be Counted! We the People Are Counting on You!

Election day is next Tuesday.  Are you registered?  Have you made your picks?  Please remember to show up.  Without your vote, the candidates you favor least have a better chance of winning.

I’m serious.  Time and time again, candidates have won in a “landslide” because far too many people didn’t show up.  In 1980 many media outlets reported that Ronald Reagan won over Jimmy Carter in a “landslide”.  The “real’ winner was “none of the above”!  Ronald Reagan came in a distant second with 27% of the eligible voters; 47% didn’t bother to show up.

In many ways 2000 was a ridiculous election.  Because of the electoral college system, George Bush won with 47.9% of the votes compared to Al Gore’s 48%.  Some people claim that Ralph Nader gave the election to Bush.  Would those who voted for Nader have voted at all?  Bush had 537 votes over Gore; 2,912,790 to 2,912,253.  Nader had over 90,000 votes, a tiny count compared to the no-shows.

Drat!  For years I’ve depended on the Election Project at George Mason University for turnout figures.  It is no longer available, and even many of the cached pages are no longer available.

According to the Florida Secretary of State’s office, turnout in 1980 was 70.1%.  That is, over 2.6 million registered voters didn’t bother to show up.  The de facto “none of the above” certainly swamped Nader votes.  We really don’t know if the Nader voters would have voted for Bush or Gore or stayed home.

Ah! I just dug deeper and Prof. Michael McDonald has taken his Election Project to the University of Florida.  See www.electproject.org.  McDonald claims that over four million eligible Florida voters didn’t show up (he’s counting eligible rather than registered).  Both Bush and Gore came in a distant second to “I don’t give a damn.”  That’s a helluva way to run a country.

Are you following the polls?  I say don’t bother because polls don’t determine elections.  You showing up can turn polls on their head.  Think about the 1948 post-election headline: “Dewey wins!”  The papers rushed to publish based on a telephone poll showing Dewey ahead.  However, the pollsters didn’t compensate for many Democratic voters not having telephones.

Even polls that claim to call people on landlines and cellphones may be missing an important clue.  Many people have caller ID; if they don’t know the caller, they don’t answer.  Have you seen any polls that mention the no response rate?

Another classic example of polls really missing the mark was the 1998 Minnesota gubernatorial election.  The polls had Skip Humphrey in the lead, Norm Coleman second, and Jesse Ventura last.  The results were Jesse Ventura winning, Norm Coleman second, and Skip Humphrey last.  I think that Jesse Ventura’s complaint about the auto-emission testing stations and the high taxes on his fancy cars resonated with a lot of drivers.  You can rest assured that somebody didn’t design their poll well.

Many rightfully complain about all the money in politics.  But the high spenders don’t always win.  Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, former CEOs of major tech companies, spent oodles of their own money to run for office in California,  Neither was elected.

Big spenders who lose are not confined to either party.  I had the pages up the other day which gave the spending by each party in the Presidential elections.  Surprise, the bigger spender wasn’t always the Republican candidate.  And when the bigger spender was a Democrat, he didn’t always win the general election, hanging chads or not.

A practice that has really gotten worse in recent years is the attack ads.  Candidate Joe will raise your taxes even mo’.  Candidate Tom doesn’t beat the drum for the military enough.  Candidate Bill didn’t spend enough on infra-structure (never mind that he did vote for a ten percent increase).  The silliest I’ve seen is that Al Franken voted with the President 85% of the time.  Duh!  When Bush was President, how often did Republican members of Congress vote with the President?  I would hope it was not 100% but definitely between 75% and 90%.

We can avoid many attack ads by not watching TV but they appear on billboards, in the newspapers and even on web pages.  I was surprised to see a silly attack ad on a web page against Stewart Mills who is running for Rick Nolan’s Congressional seat.  It was on a web site of a Wisconsin company!  The web knows whether you have been naughty or nice.

The purpose of attack ads is not to get you to vote for the attacker but to not show up at all.  Gosh!  I thought Sen. Foghorn was a great guy, but I guess I won’t bother showing up to vote for him this year.

So, what’s a poor confused citizen to do with all this obfuscation.

First, find all the neutral sources you can for information.  I know, there aren’t many of those.  About the best we can do is to read the candidates’ own statements in newspapers or on the web.

Second, show up and vote.  The only votes that don’t count are the votes not cast.

If you believe in democracy, you must be part of the demos, that is the people.

Mel hopes that he has to wait in line to vote.

This also appears in the Reader Weekly of Duluth at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/10/30/4267_be_counted_we_the_people_are_counting_on_you

Bye, bye, Democracy!

Today is the primary election for Duluth School Board and City Council.

At 10:30 I was the 36th voter in my precinct.  My wife is an election worker in another precinct.  At about 11:00 she said they had about 45 voters.

In the 2012 election, Duluth had an average of over 1600 voters per precinct, and that was with a turnout of over 70 percent.

If we can't even show up for local elections, do we deserve a democracy?

And this happens all over the world.  George W. Bush was elected because many Democrats didn't show up in Florida in 2000.  Morsi was elected in Egypt because many boycotted the elections.  North Carolina has a Republican legislature because only 44% showed up in 2012, probably mostly Republican activists.

If you don't vote, please don't complain about potholes, taxes, schools, or anything else that government does.

See also "If you don't vote, you have only yourself to blame", Reader Weekly, 2004-10-28.