I don’t find this too terribly surprising, other than that the conservatives outnumbered progressives at those gatherings. Many years ago, I had a Common Cause calendar on my office wall. One of my co-workers, a conservative, asked me what it was. I told him, and he said “sounds like a good conservative organization.”

It’s also good to remember that Arizona was one of the first states to try publicly financed elections. Not exactly a liberal bastion.

Eli!!

Unfortunately too many sheeple watch Faux Noise.

Well, I think many Republicans will happy to try and scrap that. It hurts the capitalistic approach to elections.

It *is* interesting that it at least looks like there is grassroots support for it on both sides, but almost all of the congressional and org support is on the Democratic/progressive side.

Although that’s not exactly surprising either, since Republicans and conservatives don’t require as much cognitive dissonance to support corporate goals.

Matt!!

Even if FENA doesn’t pass (and right now it’s hard for me to see any way it could possibly get cloture in the Senate even if it does pass the House), I would love to see the Republicans forced to defend and vote for the current corrupt system that most people hate.

How anti-collegial of you! I’m not sure you understand how Congress works, Eli. It appears that, lately at least, the entire raison d-etre is to avoid having friends on the other side of the aisle be pressed into taking difficult votes.

That’s right, I don’t know how I keep forgetting that the Democrats aren’t actually interested in winning elections.

Democrats aren’t actually interested in winning elections.

Glad to see you’re picking up on my hypothesis. To elaborate: if Ds lose they get high paid jobs working for lobbyists and get elected again on the next ‘throw the bums out’ election. How can they lose doing that?

Aloha, Eli… Tomorrow, I’m all set to vote for my County Council critter under our newly enacted Publicly Financed elections here…! ;-)

if Ds lose they get high paid jobs working for lobbyists and get elected again on the next ‘throw the bums out’ election.

Yep, I’ve said that first part a few times before, and it’s part of what I meant about the ideal solution possibly not being constitutional. It would also forbid spousal/familial conflicts of interest, which might also be tricky…

Aloha, CTut! And congratulations.

I’m not sure, but if anyone has a good idea about how they could lose …

The progressives could cave in to Koch in exchange for his support & financing. /s

*heh* Ya gotta start somewhere, eh…? Btw, this should’ve been the second election cycle, but, the State hemmed and hawed and delayed and delayed…! ;-)

Money talks BS walks…hope your election shows that public finance equal funding is happening CT short of that what is the difference? We won’t have a democracy until public financing is the only way for campaigns to be funded. Meg Whitman buying a state gov office will no longer happen.

Here’s a question:

How come Chase and Bank of America are able to offer their customers ATM machines that give a detailed receipt of a transaction, right down to a facsimile of checks deposited and a breakdown of the bills deposited, and we can’t get a voting system nationwide that replicates that technology where we can walk away from casting a vote with a receipt showing who we voted for?

Because money talks and democracy doesn’t count for shit.

There’s always the fundamental antipathy between capitalism, where ever dollar gets a vote, and democracy, where every person gets a vote. In U.S. capitalism wins almost every time.

I am they aren’t planning to go back to the old days when you had to own property to vote. Millions have recently or would soon lose their vote in that case.

Well, for crying out loud. If you don’t own property, you obviously have no stake in the country. Q.E.D.

exactly

On a serious note, my late friend from VT would occasionally espouse that view. I never had to join the issue with him because he ended up voting for Clinton & Ds for prez after that, as he found the Rs too wingnut going back in the 90s. Must say, as one of the big small biz owners in VT, he never liked Bernie Sanders, who was the only VT member of U.S. congress who would never return his calls.

*sigh* If ya’ll think our collective plight is woeful…! 8-(

“We Need To Feed Our Families”

Yeah I’ve learned that lesson.

But think of it: simple technology and we’ve been made to believe that this is so hard.

Oh, Jesus, some cracker just actually called msnbc a socialist, nazi, bolshevik channel. Well, on that note…

Nitey nite.

It’s very tempting to sell out in Washington DC. Over the last three decades, I’ve watched it happen over and over. I worked at a consulting firm which used to steal key employees from competitors.

Hope you stayed around long enough to see Rachel with her vampire teeth.

Have a good night.

Someone pointed out the obvious on TPM: every lobbyist who visits a pols office in D.C. makes more than $250,000. Enuf said?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/17/tea-party-rift-values-fiscal_n_720869.html

The temptations are life altering. You’re a highly educated young man or woman who came to DC to do good, working for $50,000 to $60,000 for a government agency.

You get an offer of $150,000 and a car — and an interest-free executive loan of $200,000, 20% forgiven for each year you stay with the firm. You begin thinking of your spouse, your kids’ education …

And once you discover the utter powerlessness of your job, you bolt for the green.

Folks don’t understand that someone like Elizabeth Warren could make $1 million per year for the next ten years — just to keep her mouth shut.

finally canned all the beets

Congrats!

is it wrong to say,im bushed?

my housekeeper helped me,or i just could not have made it…4 hand so much better than 2…bless her!

yes, you should say you’re tired :-)

hahahahhaahahaa

My answer to that would be that we haven’t been willing to pay for that kind of reliability in voting machines. The price of those things is much lower than for any high-reliability systems of similar complexity that I’ve ever worked with.

If you want reliability, you have to pay for it. There are ways of making things less expensive, like funding an open source code base, but the basic problem remains that the systems must be designed, evaluated, and tested to much more stringent standards than home PCs are. Yet these systems are priced more like home PCs than they are like ATMs, encryption systems, or airliner avionics.

Would be a GREAT bumpersticker:

JUST CAN THE BEETS!

Perhaps better than saying you’ve been gored.

I had a young man, son of a friend of a friend of mine (I’d ‘met’ him once when he was a child), come talk to me about biz school recently. His basic Q was how long the Wall St. MOTUs were going to prevail. In good ‘conscience,’ I couldn’t say I saw they were going to be unseated any time soon. (He was asking me in my forecasting mode, not in my political mode.) He didn’t get accepted at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, so was going to continue at his position at a consulting firm. At the last moment he applied & was accepted at INSEAD. I emailed him that I thought it was a brilliant move, as I thought over his lifetime, Europe was on a much healthier track than the U.S. We’ll see. What will be interesting for this single test case is that I’ll get occasional updates on his career so there will be evidence.

My only regret, so far in life, was my decision not to go to Law School…! *gah*

pay for it, why….San Bruno Calif,just incinerated,cause they chose to give the money in salaries………….

She still has plenty of time to do just that. Life is long.

hahahahahahhaa….comedy central as usual tonite

Nope. She should say she’s beat.

It is a good choice. I know because my daughter is Director of Admissions at a top ten MBA program.

i hope she does,if she wants it…then if her kid gets married she can throw a 20 million dollar wedding/snark

shes BEET

YES!!! How did I miss that?

my pappy offered me a sports car of the Italian persuasion,if i went to law school,i said no daddyo……..i dont think like a lawyer…my sis went,but no sports car,and she doesnt practice,but thats a whole other story

Your reward is in heaven.

my pappy offered me a sports car of the Italian persuasion

If it was a Fiat — Fix It Again, Tony — you made the right decision!

I’ve had young folks ask me about that. I self-describe as the lowest paid professional (not that I was lowly paid) with the best job on Wall St. As a U.S. econ forecaster, I always had some new interesting problem to work on and my publications were not ever censored because my conclusions never impacted my firm’s business. And, as for how I spent my days, I seldom had to do the boring work that lawyers have to do. But that’s just me.

On a personal note, I was in Manhattan yesterday when the storm hit. Heavy rain, thunder & lightning, but no biggy for the 15 minutes it lasted. I hear on tonight’s news that the official word is that Queens & Brooklyn were hit by 2 tornadoes & one microburst. Talk about dodging a bullet.

hahahahhaha

How RED are you?

hahhaahhhahha…..needless to say i never get offers like that anymore,and i coulda had a Dino……

purple…your gonna get some,with or without sweet onions?

Shame on me for not thinking of it when he came to see me. It’s such an obvious alternative. He can still sell out to Wall St if that’s what he decides, and will be a catch for any of those firms, but INSEAD offers a lot of excellent other choices.

scary shit,ive survived some real scary weather….mother nature,can really be in a pissy mood,from time to time

Had Rib-eye tonight with carmelized onions. Almost orgasmic.

i loves me some onions….but they dont travel welll,or id send ya some,do you like pickled beets?

mother nature,can really be in a pissy mood,from time to time

Try Ames, Iowa. Grew up in Chicago, never heard thunder until I went to grad school there. Kee-fuckin’-boom!!!

When stoned, they are mind altering. Oh wait …

Without onions, SVP. Luv me some picked eggs, and will use some in beet & vicchysoise soup, which is absolutely scrumptious. I finished canning & otherwise preserving 1/2 bushel peaches, nectarines, 1 bushel tomatoes. Apples are in season, so I’ll make a buncha decadently sweet apple sauce & freeze some apples for pies during the winter. I made the corn relish & have been enjoying my first jar for the past week. Gave away 5/8 jars. I missed the berry season completely because it was unconscionably hot then.

i survived Katrina and Wilma in the same year….but just barely,lost practically everything

you did this all by yourself………….i bow to superior humanity

I feel foolish.

I was also in the city during the Central Park microburst last year. Never heard of a microburst before, but it was the biggest devastation of mature trees in CP in its history. My apt is only about a mile or two away, but I heard nothing. (Happened during the night.) Bizarre weather, to be sure.

*heh* That’s what I’m ‘banking’ on…! ;-)

Sorry to hear about your loss. You are absolutely right about how nature can be devastating.

nooooooooooooooooo……it was just piss poor luck,ive moved to a safe place,it could have been worse,none of us died

God will say, yeah verily, untempted by law, you toiled in the garden … or something like that. Pass the Vodka.

yah,and insurance cos are the worst,lost 2 cases in court

You DO live in a tropical paradise!

*G*

Yeah, this ain’t no democracy.

I don’t think conservatives want a level playing field at all. They intuitively know they will lose any fair fight, and they clearly want the whole system rigged for themselves. It’s no accident that the right are terrified of the Fairness Doctrine and the left are not. If you join forces with conservatives, you will almost certainly come to regret it.

OY. My gigantic weeping willow tree of which half came down about 1-1/2 month ago, not in a storm, was not covered by insurance because it caused no damage to house. Another bullet dodged, but I still had to pay the $1500 to get it cut up & carted away.

i dont think it ever was,but we are really circling the drain fast

“Conservative” is an antonym for “level playing field”

my judge,was a lawyer for a big insurance co. i got so hosed

hahhaahaahha
conservative = i got mine…go fish!

could you salvage any of the wood?

Read and rcc’d.

Always, hoss.

*bows*

Most ‘conservatives’ aren’t rich, so they are more victims of the PTB than the progressives, who at least are not intellectually nor emotionally coopted by their enemies. Haven’t figured out why ordinary folks go for their antagonists yet, except for fear of the unknown.

TAX THEIR ASSES AND THEIR HEARTS, Bless Them All.

the whole system is so corrupted,those folks who filed suit,against the egg co,wont see a dime i predict…..prove our eggs made you sick

Eh, you are wealthy enough to HAVE a house keeper?

Or WANT one?

Huh, go figger.

i believe they like to be on a percieved WINNING team.

I think it depends on the conservative, which is why I used that “honest” qualifier. I think there are plenty of them at the citizen, grass-roots level – it’s not just anecdotal from the interviews in that commercial, there’s polling that supports it too.

But the conservative establishment, the pundits and pols, absolutely they have no interest at all in a fair fight.

once a week,and it is no luxury with my menagerie 4 dogs,5 cats,one turtle

Wow, that’s pretty incredible.

Nice work, ma’am. Good on ya.

I’ve had my share of ‘legal’ proceedings. Didn’t get hosed, but didn’t win either. I am older, much, & wiser, but still wouldn’t know how to deal with such problems better than I did when I was younger & naive. Made me real cynical, though, and I can’t count on one hand the number of lawyers I’ve stiffed. They never came after me because their embarrassment in court would have made it not worth their effort. My proudest moment was stiffing the head of NYC Estates and Trusts of Dewey Ballantine. Small consolation, but its the best I could do.

good on ya, that is another way,the little guy cant win vs a big corp

Thanks. I seldom get asked for advice, more’s the better. The intermediary in this case is a long-time friend, who has an exalted opinion of my opinion and I never seem to behave badly enough to disabuse her. But on the rare occasion when I do get asked, or give it without being asked, I think back on it from time-to-time for a long time into the future. It’s one of the few ways you can judge yourself without a lot of emotional involvement.

I likely over reacted, having read about your ‘cane survivals . . .

My bad.

I just associate house keepers with elitist wealth.

she works WITH me,i dont sit there and watch,an extra pair of hands is well…HANDY ..g

think ill make this with the left over beet juice

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/ukrainian-red-borscht-soup/Detail.aspx

You know, speaking of that… The humongous growth of the Intel Apparatchik, Think Tank growth, ad nauseum… all denote a decidedly Conservative ‘Welfare State’, all feeding at the same public trough, eh…? Btw, I’m sure the lesser offs’ would’ve appreciated, even half their annual salaries…! ;-)

Well said, I concur.

I just met on the phone a guy I want to work with, cuz he’s a mentor potential, as is his co worker.

I’d dropped in to a local company’s office . . . spoke to his coworker, who liked my style dropping in, and my resume, emp hist and references. She fed them to him. We spoke for an hour that afternoon.

I have a face to face interview Monday.

I mention this, because my thrill is having access to TWO people I already like, as mentors, who have already said, they’d train. And there’s an admin spot, and an inside sales spot or two, to be had.

I’d kill to work for those who mentor and coach. Which is why, I was so smiley at reading your story.

Thanks for all you do for people.

*G*

good luck!

Concur with sadlyyes: good luck.

Life is sooo funny. Things I get into with no effort on my part, and they work out so badly or goodly, also with little effort on my part.

I never had a mentor, and only late in life came to appreciate how much diff they can make. So I wish you all the best.

Thank you.

It’s pretty special to see it this far. I dropped in, walking the floor, hitting the street, like a salesman.

And I scored an interview.

Amazing. I sold myself.

*G*

Good feeling. I’m still floating a bit.

;-)

Moving upstairs.

intrepid……people usualy like that quality…go for it!

Thanks ma’am.

I think, in your own way, you’ve mentored a lot of folks in this forum over the years.

You have lots to be proud of, and I hope, you know many of us feel that way. Or at least I do.

*G*

Will do. And thanks again.

Moving along now, thread and diary wise.

Again, sorry for the housekeeper comment . . . my bad.

I need to check in more often – interesting topic – including the “off-topic posts”

On this topic – this bill – I thought Maine had something like this – and peer pressure makes it work fairly well. (from the web) “The Maine Clean Election Act (MCEA) established a voluntary program of full public financing of political campaigns for candidates running for Governor, State Senator, and State Representative. Maine voters passed the MCEA as a citizen initiative in 1996. Candidates who choose to participate may accept very limited private contributions at the beginning of their campaigns (seed money contributions). To become eligible, candidates must demonstrate community support through collecting a minimum number of checks or money orders of $5 or more made payable to the Maine Clean Election Fund (qualifying contributions). After a candidate begins to receive MCEA funds from the State, he or she cannot accept private contributions, and almost all goods and services received must be paid for with MCEA funds.

In the 2008 general election, 81% of the legislative candidates participated in the MCEA.”

Still missing is audits of elections – killed by Bev Harris at the behest of the GOP (she stills sells herself as a election reformer – :-) ). I would call this new bill perfect if it added HR811 clone language for audits from the original Holt bill or the later Sen. Bill Nelson or Whitehouse language – maybe even ban DREs as of 2012.

But I suspect Bev killed that possibility forever, so I’ll just cheer on this clone of the Maine financing of elections law.

INSEAD near Paris would be a dream – but what are the costs? I have a grandchild asking for advice – and my knowledge base in this area is mostly stuck in the 50′s. Indeed I need advice to give re undergrad options – I sent one child to school outside the US 20 years ago but I can no longer even pretend to have any wealth left these days – and without assistance from some place other than myself, the child may not even go to college.

I totally disagree. I have been talking to conservatives for years on blogs. They surely do not want what is best for the country. They want what is best for their back-pocket. They hate anything that would help those who are part of the fall-out of a permanent underclass created by “Supply and Demand” where it actually exists.

Moreover, they hate poor people and those they see as a “drag” on their earning. They dehumanize them daily.

I want what is best for the people, as that is what is best for the country. I don’t want half-assed bills that are cut on deals with people who have no intention of voting for a terrible bill anyway!

How the rich sell the red states who are about as poor as you can get is beyond me. I have never got it.

I think we need yo buy everyone in America that earns less than $200,000 a book by the now deceased BU professor, William Ryan entitled “Blaming the Victim”! I realize they will say “well that is about blacks”. Really?