Don’t throw your vote away. Vote on 11/6

Odd year elections are decided by turnout more than the even year elections.  If you stay away, you are even more likely to get your least liked candidate.

If you live in Virginia, this applies very much to you.  It is a election that will be decided more by who stays away than by who shows up.  If you don’t live in Virginia but have friends or relatives in Virginia, please remind them to vote.

My wife, an election judge, thinks I am too negative with this sentiment.  But if I don’t shout it from the rooftops…

Is business experience a qualification for government office?

Some Republican candidates are running for statewide office in Minnesota.  See
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/270538031.html and http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/270412441.html.  They claim that their business experience makes them better qualified for government service.

Adam Smith seems to have thought differently.  He said that those who live by profit are not to be trusted because they have often “deceived and oppressed” the public.

See “The Invisible Adam Smith” for more about this.

Let's give Gov. Chris Christie some slack

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, is getting a lot of heat and blame for staff members who did really dumb stuff.  They caused traffic snarls around Fort Lee as retaliation against a Democratic mayor who didn't support Christie for governor.  When Christie asked them directly if they had anything to do with the snarls, they denied it.

Now many people are giving Christie a lot of heat for something he had little control over.  Let's give him slack.  He is not a king who can command exact obedience.  Just as Obama makes statements like keeping your current insurance plan, he must rely on others to give him correct and timely information.

If we expect our leaders to know everything they need to know by their direct experience, they will never be able to lead because they are spending so much time gathering information.  Why do you think there are briefing books and executive summaries?

Do we blame the small business owner for the shenanigans of a trusted bookkeeper who siphoned off funds for years?  Without trust, any organization large or small would become inefficient with a burden of checks and cross-checks.

An alternative to Hillary mania

I see two strong opposing notions about Hillary Clinton running for president.  On one side we have all the Clinton haters who think the Clintons are second only to Obama in being the worst thing that could happen to U.S. politics.  On the other side we have those who think we must have a woman for president and that Hillary Clinton is the best choice.

I don't agree with either side.  We have had worse presidents than Clinton or Obama.  Although I'm not opposed to a woman being president, it doesn't matter to me whether it is sooner or later.  And is Hillary Clinton the best possible woman to have as president?

What really bothers me is that we seem to be trending to "elected" hereditary office.  Because George H. W. Bush was president, then George W. Bush and Jeb Bush should also be president.  Because Bill Clinton was president, then Hillary Clinton should be president.

If you want women for president, I have two better choices and I would vote for them over many, many men: Elizabeth Warren and Kathleen Sebelius.  Maybe even a pair - president and vice-president.  Pick your order.  I lean to Sebelius as president because she has been a governor who could work with the opposition.  Warren might be a good campaigner as vice-president because she is being a good "attack dog" in the Senate.

Have Republican defections gotten a big boost?

Former Florida Republican Governor Charlie Christ has come out in support of Barack Obama.  See
"Here's why I'm backing Obama", Tampa Bay Times, 2012-08-26.

Once upon a time I was active in the Republican Party, and then it nominated Ronald Reagan over John Anderson.  I did keep voting for Bill Frenzel, Rep., 3rd District, MN, until he retired.  And I voted for Arne Carlson for governor when he replaced the Republican candidate who behaved inappropriately in a swimming pool with teen-age girls.

And the Republicans have gotten even worse.  If they really looked at Ronald Reagan's ability to compromise, they would consider him a "Marxist".

I keep hoping the current Republicans will self-destruct and be replaced by a common-sense party based on facts rather than ideology.  Meanwhile, I feel compelled to vote for Democrats even though they try to cater to too many narrow interests.

How to stop political ads

Well, not quite stop them, but here are two ways to avoid them.

1) Don't watch TV.  Read lots of newspapers and magazines instead.

2) OK, you don't want to give up sports, reality shows, and Comedy Central.  Then try these simple steps each time a political ad comes on the screen.
a) Close your eyes
b) Put your hands over your ears
c) Count to 60
With these three simple steps you won't have missed anything meaningful.

Remember also that political ads are designed not to get you to vote for a candidate, but to get you discouraged about the other candidate and not even vote.  It seemed to work very well in New York's Ninth Congressional District in 2011.  The Republican candidate won despite a 3 to 1 Democratic registration.

So, get even yourself and be sure to vote.  Remember that the biggest spender is not always the winner.  Think Meg Whitman who outspent Jerry Brown by a wide margin for governor of California and lost by a wide margin.

All's fair in love and war and elections, too?

I looked at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to get some feel for the turnout in today's recall election in Wisconsin.  It looks like the turnout is mixed as are the reactions.  Some polling places have short lines, some long.  Some people are happy to vote Scott Walker out, some are unhappy that there is even an election.

One item in particular caught my eye.  It was about a mailing designed to increase turnout.  Using public records, the mailing gave the voting record of individuals and their immediate neighbors.  It was sent out by a liberal group.  Will it get more people to vote in general, or will it get more people to vote for Walker?  Judge for yourself.  See "Mailings that list voting records set off some neighbors", Meg Jones, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2012-06-05.

If you live in Wisconsin and the polls haven't closed, make sure you vote.

Shame on Wisconsinites!

Scott Walker won the governorship of Wisconsin in 2010 with about a quarter of the eligible voters in a light turnout.  Then in February 2011 there were big demonstrations against some of Walker's anti-union legislation.  See "The "people" are speaking, but a bit late".

Then this year many started a petition to recall Gov. Walker.  They collected 900,939 signatures.  That is about 40 percent of the 3,285,704 registered voters (July 2010).  These figures are from the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board.

So what happened on primary day on May 8, 2012?  Did 900,939 voters vote for any of the Democrats?  Right, and we will have 100% turnout in the Presidential elections this fall!  The five Democratic candidates received 665,928 votes together.  Where were the other 25 percent of the petition signers?  And it is probably worse than that because many who showed up to vote didn't sign a recall petition. (Election results from the Green Bay Press Gazette.)

Demonstrations take a lot more effort than voting.  But it seems many people would rather demonstrate than vote.  See "Which is better, civil disobedience or voting?"

Remember, "The 1% may have the money, but the 99% have the votes", but your vote doesn't count if you don't show up!

An ad for candidates with deep-pocket opponents

I thought up the following after reading about Meg Whitman spending $119 million of her own money for the California gubernatorial campaign:

Do you want the be$t candidate money can buy,
or do you want the best candidate.

BTW, I think it was Meg Whitman who said we needed candidates with experience in the real world.  Gosh, I wish I lived in her "real world".

Vote for Dayton, Emmer, Horner, or nobody; but VOTE!

I left the following comment on a Star Tribune editorial, "This November, the choice is not either/or".

Whatever you do in November, vote one of four ways according to what you believe, not what the polls say.  Remember 1998 when the poll rankings were Humphrey, Coleman, and Ventura.  The election rankings were Ventura, Coleman, and Humphrey.

Four ways, what fourth way?  The fourth way is to not be a stay-away.  If you don't like any of the three candidates, vote anyway with a blank ballot.  If you leave a blank ballot for governor your vote is counted.  If you stay away, your vote is not counted.

If everybody who stayed away in 1980 and many other elections had cast a blank ballot, the winner would have come in second to none-of-the-above.  There would not be any trumpeting about a landslide with less than 30 percent of the eligible voters casting a vote for the "winner".  When this happens, we are all losers.

Carly Fiorina, get real!

Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is running for governor of California.  I saw a snippet of one of her ads, on The Huffington Post, I think.  In it, she says something like politicians should join the real world.

Come on, Carly, when were you last part of the real world?  Your first year at HP you had compensation of over 69 million dollars.  Is that a real-world salary?  That's over a thousand times what many people wish they could make in a year.

A few years later, you were fired from HP with a severance pay of 22 million dollars.  A lot of people in the real world aren't making one thousandth of that every year and when they get laid off they get zilch.

Now you're trying to buy your way into being the CEO of California.  Are you going to arrange to buy Nevada like you bought Compaq?

Sadly, the so-called capitalist system as run by CEOs and their crony boards is getting worse than what I wrote about ten years ago in "Talk about Boards with Conflicts of Interest", Reader Weekly, 2000-04-26.  One thousand teachers in Duluth were trying to get a two-year raise that was one-tenth for all of them of what you got in a single-year.

Will moderates be returning to Minnesota state government?

I don't have any great hopes for seeing this happen in a big way soon, but a wedge has been put in to create an opening.  Margaret Anderson Kelliher, the DFL-nominated candidate for governor, has chosen John Gunyou as her running mate.

John Gunyou was Finance Commissioner under Arne Carlson, the last state-wide moderate Republican.  He has written many op-ed pieces for the Star Tribune criticizing the many ideologues in politics, especially Republicans.  I've saved five of them.

One of my favorites is "Taxpayer's League's model for governing", Star Tribune, 2006-06-15.  Sorry, it's no longer available online.  His opening is priceless:

"Here's a civics question to start the day. Who provides your public services like police and fire protection, education, parks and roads? Is it: (a) cities, counties and schools, (b) Uncle Sam & Cousin Tim, or (c) the Minnesota Taxpayers League?
Listening to the Taxpayers League and their political sycophants crow about our state's drop in tax rankings is a little hard to take for those of us actually responsible for delivering the services those taxes pay for. It's a whole lot easier to pontificate about downsizing government when you don't have to figure out how to stretch shrinking resources to patch crumbling streets."

Among other things he points out is the Taxpayer's League doesn't consider that the price of asphalt has gone up but the cities's share of the unchanged gas tax has not gone up.  As citizens' two biggest concerns are speeding and road repair.  Gunyou proposed that his city solve these with less taxes by having inverted speed bumps.  He had a couple of other tongue-in-cheek ideas for getting something for nothing.

If you are a Minnesota voter, I highly recommend looking up his commentaries in your nearest public library.  That is, if it is still open and at a time convenient to you.

I was planning to cast a blank ballot in the August primaries, but now I will be sure to put an X next to Kelliher/Gunyou.  Also, after I post this I'll make a small contribution to the Kelliher/Gunyou campaign.  Note that I am still a Party of One and do not contribute to parties.  Oh, the Coffee Party might be an exception.