The People Have Spoken
Posted November 4th, 2008 by Howard TaylerA friend blogged saying he feels like the 21st century officially began today.
I feel much differently. The 21st century began when I started webcartooning. That’s perspective for you.
Thank you for your votes, and for your contributions. I’m not sure what prompts people to spend $5, $10, or $25 on a desktop wallpaper, but I suspect it isn’t the quality of the wallpaper. Why, the wallpaper called me at 11:00pm and conceded the contest to the “Plot and Blam” ticket.
Aaaand that’s about it for political humor here. I’ve got lots of deep sociopolitical and economic thoughts, but this isn’t the post for them. This is a time to be happy that twenty-one months of campaigning is over.
Let’s get on with being nice to one another, shall we?
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November 4th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
All I can think to say is, “Oh, hey, we’re all going to die.”
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20050608.html
Don’t ask me why…
November 5th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Thank God!
I’m also filled with glee that the 21 months are over.
We now have 27 months free of campaigning, squabbling, political phone calls, and incessant TV commercials attacking the other party.
November 5th, 2008 at 2:12 am
All I can think to say is, “Eventually, yes. Are you telling me you know when?”
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20040306.html
Don’t ask me why…
November 5th, 2008 at 4:32 am
I hate to disapoint you guys, but I was reading something that said the 2012 election campaigning begins today.
November 5th, 2008 at 5:54 am
adciv: http://xkcd.com/500/
November 5th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Ugh. Howard, I really appreciate your earlier comment about getting folks who “don’t like either bum” engaged locally. That’s what our nation, less-and-less, seems to “get”. After watching the last 16 years since I started voting, it’s clear that (whatever your “side”) we’re paying too much attention to the national obsessions (2012?) and not enough time to our local (roads, schools, taxes, environment, etc. etc. etc.). I’m about as far from a states-rightist as you can get, but why do we expect magic “change” to come from far away when it can’t come from ourselves, and could so (relatively) easily?
All politics is local, but some is more local than others.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:09 am
squidfood: You’ve touched on a subject that is dear to me, and that deserves an entire essay. In short, my take on it goes like this:
Government should not be compassionate. People should be compassionate. Voting in favor of kind, compassionate government is often an abdication of personal responsibility to be kind and compassionate ourselves.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Amen. But it’s just so easy to be compassionate with somebody else’s money.
Alexis de Tocqueville had it right: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” It’s been downhill (in some respects) ever since.
@me262: I’m afraid it’s a lot less than 27 months until campaigning for the next Congressional elections starts.
November 5th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
And for those Unamericans among us who happen to be New Zealanders, don’t forget that we get to have all this fun again this coming weekend – and this time, it’s actually for the people who set our taxes.
Question for the Americans; Do you get sick of all the NZ election coverage you get splattered all over your local news?
November 5th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I’ll just make one comment about “compassionate government.”
The reason why governments got into the welfare business is that private charities couldn’t handle the load. During the 1840s Potato Famine in Ireland, the British government encouraged private and church charities to “do what they can” to alleviate the suffering. From 1845 to 1850, about a million Irish died of starvation and disease.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Howard: It’s probably the case that you and I wouldn’t vote the same way for various reasons. That said, I tip my hat to you for the reasoned and calm manner with which you conduct yourself here and on your website. It’s soothing after so much invective from so many directions over the last couple of years.
I look forward to four more years of your comic.
michaelbirks: i thought you guys were ruled by a good-natured but despotic king who wears a ram’s skull on his head and is fond of carousing. You can never claim Americans aren’t well-informed about world affairs.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Michaelbirks:
Yes; both commercials interrupted the late-late-late night reruns of Stargate SG-1 I was watching.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
@ JoJo: The preamble to the U.S. Constitution indicates that the government was formed in order to “promote the general welfare,” among other things. In the event of widespread famine or other catastrophic collapses of the well-being of the populace, our government does have a constitutional mandate to step in and help. I’m all for that.
That’s not the same thing as tax-funded handouts, takeovers of private industry, eminent domain, and any number of other over-steppings of that initial mandate.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
What? New Zealand is having an election? Why hasn’t some one told us?!?
Hey, good luck to ya, hope yours turns out better than ours. After it’s all over maybe you can tell our guys where to find a few trillion dollars to cover all the free stuff they promised everyone.
Oh and bukuwawa; you got it all wrong, it’s a yak scull. Get your facts straight man.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Disclaimer: The following joke will not be understood by anyone unfamiliar with stereotypical New Zealand speech-patterns. Also, I don’t remember who I ripped it off from.
It’s great that New Zealand is having an election. It means they get a choice, eh bro?
November 5th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
I’m all for individual compassion, but unless you’ve got a good plan for large scale individual compassion the government is necessary. We have to have them do it because there’s no other way.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Personally, I don’t think I would trust my well being to individual notions of compassion. There are three types of people relevant to this concern. The good, the bad, and the indifferent. Unfortunatly, the latter two groups outweigh the good done by the first. The bad rip off the good (just like they do in the welfare society we live in), but at least government has a mechanism for getting the indifferent to contribute something (taxes)
November 5th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Yes, I’m wealthy.
No, I don’t plan to redistribute it. If I did, I wouldn’t be wealthy.:)
Ah, the joy of being married to a tax expert. Here’s to four more years of 100% refunds:-D
November 5th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Does anybody reading and replying to this form know how to program the V chip in the TV to block out the Political Ads? The wife and I just about wore out the mute button punching it every time one of the Attack Ads came on. In the last couple months there were more Attack Ads than commercials for business purposes airing in primetime. I really admire the way the British system works. They declare an election and then have it in 30 days. In all other aspects I support our American system, I’ve voted in every election since I turned 18, (Hi Jimmy, I didn’t vote for you!) even while I was stationed overseas in Japan. It is a citizen’s right and responsibility to participate in our electoral system. We have to bring in the best candidates and turnout the proven bad incumbents. But I have to wonder how much effect the 2 years of campaigning has had on our national economy. I mean every minute of Campaign Attack Ads is a minute some business owner couldn’t buy to get his/her message about their service or product out to the American public. And the way there was 4 or 5 Attack Ads for every business ad really had to have an effect of cooling down the economy.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
another symptom that democracy is a failed experiment, perhaps?
November 5th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
“teach the children well, for someday sons and daughters will fight where we stood still”.
(”silent running”)
“gunner”
November 5th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
I’m all for the Canadian system for elections as well. Between X and Y periods of time, there will be an election. Once the election is announced, they get almost no time to spam people with advertising.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Curt:
It can’t be done. Political speech is so protected that it has to be encoded as “suitable for everyone.” It was a long time ago (late 70’s or early 80’s), but one Independent presidential candidate taped radio commercials bashing the two party candidates with all of George Carlin’s seven words. The courts ruled the radio stations had to run them and the FCC couldn’t levy fines. I think he was a local SC whacko. His name wasn’t on the ballot, so he ran as a write-in.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:28 am
Today swear words, tomorrow porn!
Janet Jackson should have written a political message on her pastie.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:44 am
Let’s get on with being nice to one another, shall we?
Couldn’t agree more…
November 6th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Ollie -
Democracy is a failed political experiment. It is the tyranny of the majority.
Republicanism, on the other hand has worked very well for us for the past 230 years.
(And, no, this post has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans.)
November 6th, 2008 at 9:07 am
@kcolloran, if “large scale” is the problem for you with individual compassion, I humbly suggest that we have another “civil war” where we can “politely” reduce the scale of the problem to a more manageable level. I’ll gladly return to Texas or happily move to Alaska, if you’ll let us “peacefully” bow out of the so-called Union.
Until I see Bono et al donating EVERYTHING to the sacred poor, I’m not convinced yet that “large scale compassion” has given a fair trial. Even Gates and Buffet, as magnanimous as they’re being with their own money, would prefer, apparently, to give MINE away (based on the political candidates they supported). My teeny autists need my money more than anybody else… except maybe Howard and my local mosque.
Incoming $$, Howard. My work PC needs a new desktop. I was too depressed yesterday to even lack in productivity. Only buying new guns and ammo made it bearable. Heh.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:14 am
well, perspective IS everything.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Welcome back from barfsville, Lawrence! Sorry for the non-attributed quote, but when I saw you were ill and unable to defend yourself I figured you wouldn’t mind.
It’s a shame your 21st Century had to begin with so much porcelain. ;-)
November 6th, 2008 at 9:57 am
November has not begun well for my household. On the other hand, I just ordered the Teraport Wars, so maybe that will change my luck.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am
DarthReed:
It’s an interesting Constitutional football that’s been kicked around. The Constitution says nothing about a State wishing to leave the US, and that means it’s up to the states and the people. The question is “Which states and which people?” Does this mean that only the state and its population need to secede, or does it mean that all of the states have a right to say? Let’s say Utah (to pick a state at random) wanted to secede. It’s smack in the middle of several other states whose interests would be greatly affected if the State of Utah became the Kingdom Of Howard I (long may he reign).
As far as I know, the Supreme Court has never ruled on such a matter. And I’d like to remind you that the Confederacy fired first.
I, for one, would be happy to let Alaska secede under Queen Palin the Only (I hope). [This is a joke. This is only a joke. Had it been an actual opinion, it would actually make sense. We now return to our normal deprogramming.]
November 6th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Part of what’s killing us as a country, vote-wise, is summed up by the opinion of a friend in Oregon. She refused to ‘throw away’ her vote on a third party, no matter how much she might want to, because she decided to vote for the one that had “a chance” of defeating the person she really disliked.
This is why we need “Vote Against” and “None of the above is acceptible”.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Howard: my take on it is a little different from yours, but maybe not too different. I think the scale of compassion matters a lot, and it should be local rather than national with a direct link from the compassionate and those in need ["compassionees?"]. But I wouldn’t automatically tar a “compassionate” program because it came from “government”.
On the national scale, your comments on limited constitutionality etc. are right with on the money with me. But remember, the constitution was a compact between states as well, and it was assumed that the states would indeed have more direct impact and relationships with its citizens. On the state (or even better city, town, etc.) scale I would equally welcome a (well-run) government program – think local libraries – as I would private giving. And (ok, I admit to having an, er, “community organizer” gene in there somewhere) I’ve seen plenty of win-win ideas in my time facilitated or sponsored by local government – where there’s a pretty direct link between a community voting to use its own local taxes for something of local community value. [Of course, the worst part is, the more successful a local program, the more likely someone will try to "scale it up" and break it to pieces].
Er, looks like you’re right, we need an essay or three.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
richv wrote: “As far as I know, the Supreme Court has never ruled on such a matter. And I’d like to remind you that the Confederacy fired first.”
In Texas v White 74 US 700 (1869) the Supreme Court held that Texas had remained a state of the United States ever since it first joined the Union, despite its joining the Confederacy. It further held that the Constitution did not permit states to secede from the United States, and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were “absolutely null”.
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0074_0700_ZO.html
November 6th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Bookworm: No, it’s why you need preferential voting.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to do with punchcards. Bloody Americans – what’s wrong with pencil and paper? If you want to tech it up, use OCR.
In case you don’t know what preferential voting is, in Australia we don’t just mark our preferred candidate, we number the candidates in order of preference. (In Queensland, in state and local elections you can stop at any number, but in federal elections you have to number every box for your vote to count – except that because there are so many senate candidates you can vote a party ticket for the senate just by marking the party box.) If no-one gets an absolute majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes are reassigned to the candidate with the next lowest number on the ballot – but in the senate we have proportional representation, which adds additional complications I don’t feel like explaining.
Most parties issue how-to-vote cards, for the benefit of those who don’t want to do any more research than they need to to pick one party. It’s very helpful if there’s some independents you’ve never heard of.
We still have a two-party system (kinda – one of them’s actually a coalition), but it’s because only (kinda) two parties have broadly popular platforms. (Well, the Australian Democrats were right between the major parties, but they never had a plan to actually govern, so they got wiped out when a major party moved into the centre.) Voters who prefer one of the minor parties vote for them, but when their preferred candidate gets eliminated their vote goes to whichever candidate-with-a-chance they dislike the least. And occasionally a minor party candidate – or an independent – wins. And thanks to proportional representation, minor party candidates routinely win senate seats.
Mind you, I don’t think our voting system (technically called Single Transferable Vote) is the best possible – there are better methods of preferential voting (at least in the lower house – I don’t know if there’s a better way to do proportional representation). My preferred method is Ranked Pairs, but it requires a bit of graph theory to explain.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
The other point for RichV: See Article IV, Section Four of the Constitution:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
This has not been tested in any way, but would presumably apply in such a way to allow a state to secede, or call another constitutional convention, upon a military coup.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
rbliss: What are you on about? “The tyranny of the majority” is only a problem when the majority actually want to tyrannise. Which isn’t the case in Australia, and hasn’t been the case in the USA since about the ’60s. It’s very much a problem in Iraq, but that could have been defused if democracy had been introduced in local politics first, then nationally once people were accustomed to thinking about how to govern, rather than focussing on identity politics.
What do you mean by republicanism? Not having a monarch? Democratic constitutional monarchy works quite well (although it can be a bit embarrassing if one’s royal family are poorly-behaved).
November 6th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
DarthReed: “Until I see Bono et al donating EVERYTHING to the sacred poor, I’m not convinced yet that “large scale compassion” has given a fair trial.”
Right. And there are communists who don’t think proper communism has actually been tried yet. They refuse to accept that communism always degenerates into Stalinism, because people are too lazy and selfish for non-fascist communism to work.
Interesting that the nice right-wingers have the same overly-optimistic view of human nature as the left.
“Even Gates and Buffet, as magnanimous as they’re being with their own money, would prefer, apparently, to give MINE away (based on the political candidates they supported).”
None of us has as much money to give away as all of us.
“My teeny autists need my money more than anybody else…”
So… don’t you think there should be more government support for special-needs children?
November 6th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
JoJo – you have to realize that the Supreme Court of the _United States_ doesn’t really enter into the picture for secession. Once seceded, they are technically not under the SC’s jurisdiction. It’s unlikely in the extreme that the current government could work up enough fervor to actually be able to militarily force a seceding state to rejoin the US. Mind you, there are very few states that could do it and be able to make it stick. California, Texas, Alaska, and Hawaii come to mind. My guess is, as well, is that if they just reversed the process that was used to join as a state (Hawaii, specifically), they could revert back to either a protectorate or independent.
Sam – I don’t have a problem with special needs assistance. I have a problem with entire divisions of the US Government dedicated solely to operating in ways that the Constitution forbids to them. For example, the IRS, BATF, FBI, and a dozen other acronym agencies. I did some calculations that I’m sure I can dig up again if requested, based on previous years budgets, that came up with something like 500 billion dollars a year in savings by terminating those divisions and leaving those jobs up to the states – _where they are already being done_. It’s an unnecessary, and unconstitutional, duplication of effort.