Political labels = political misdirection?

I would distrust any political labels, whether applied to fellow travelers or political opposition.

“Liberal” is flung about as if “liberals” were irresponsible.  However, those flinging this epithet without thought are rather liberal with giving power to corporations.

And those who call themselves “conservative” are more conserving power for corporations than being thoughtful about change.  I haven’t studied Edmund Burke, but I wonder if he would approve of the actions of those who call themselves conservative today.

Maybe we should call them CONservatives because so many of them are con-men.  “Con” being short for “confidence”, that is the con-man gains the confidence of his mark as he takes the mark's money (or in too many cases both money and votes)

See “The Betrayal of Fiscal Conservatism”, David Leonhard, New York Times, 2017-01-09.

The 1% may have the money but the 99% have the votes!

I thought of the above phrase last night after a "debate" between a Tea Party supporter and an Occupy Movement participant.  See "Respectful discussion covers Occupy, Tea Party movements", Mike Creger, Duluth News Tribune, 2012-05-04.

After the main discussion, audience members were allowed two minutes each to speak.  I reminded people that all recent presidents and many other elected official received the votes of only a minority of eligible voters.

After I spoke, I pondered the common complaint that elections are bought.  Come on!  Are we a bunch of zombies who follow some evil master?  If we consider ourselves free agents, then we should go to the polls and vote for the candidates we prefer, write in somebody, or leave it blank.  If more of us voted, the expensive campaigns may become meaningless.  In fact, there have been cases where the candidate who spent the least won the election.

One way government should be run like a business

When a public corporation has its annual shareholder meeting, and the shareholders vote for a certain number of board members, to approve the auditing accounting firm, and such other business that may come before meeting,  the results are almost always announced as the number of shares voting for a proposal out of the number of shares outstanding.  It's been a while since I attended a shareholder meeting, but I don't remember if they give the number of votes withheld or abstaining for a proposal.  I don't think they were.

Wouldn't it be great if the results for elections for public office where announced similarly?  It would be a bit of guesswork as to how many eligible voters there were, but the number of registered voters is known.

Then we might get newspapers reporting that a presidential candidate received 44 million of the votes of the 140 million registered voters.  Reporting like this would give pause to any declaration of mandates or the will of the people.

Of course, we don't want some of the other goings on of corporate elections.

The board chooses a single slate of candidates for each election and recommends that shareholders vote for these candidates.  We wouldn't be happy if we had a single list of candidates for the legislatures that were picked by the legislatures.

The board hires and fires the chief executive officer, who often also sits on the board.  We would not be happy if the legislatures hired and fired the governors or the president.

The board also sets its own compensation.  Few complain about this, but hoo boy!, let the legislatures raise their salaries and the newspapers are flooded with letters.

Corporations don't have one person, one vote, but one share, one vote.  The person with one million shares has a lot more clout than the person with one hundred shares.  If we were to run government like a business, maybe we should have one vote for each dollar of taxes paid.  Gosh, that sounds like a great way to raise taxes.

Can you believe the polls anymore?

In the 1948 presidential election, many polls predicted that Thomas Dewey would beat Harry Truman. They were so wrong. The polls were made by telephone, but many Democratic voters had no telephone. So, they were not counted.

Now more people have telephones; and polls, except exit polls, are conducted by telephone. But two things make them inaccurate. Many polls are conducted by robo-dialer and a large number of people hang up when there is silence on the other end. Polls are conducted to numbers that are in some database, but many of those database are based on listed numbers. People with unlisted numbers might not be called. Cell phone numbers generally do not appear in listings. Many young people have cell phones only. So many young people will never be called by polls.

Barack Obama is attracting and energizing many young people. Will a representative number of his supporters be called? Some polls show him getting fewer votes than John McCain. Will John McCain be the 2008 version of 1948's Thomas Dewey?