From: "Matthew J. Miszewski" <mjmiski@execpc.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 11:40:51 -0700 (PDT)
To: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Subject: Re: Stopping the buying of candidates
Message-ID: <199610241840.NAA05148@earth.execpc.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


This is my last reply.  I guess I forgot your overarching theory. 
Reality, nah.

(snip)
> No, I didn't say I was "cutting off all prediction of money appearing."   
> But it would be a long shot from having particular donor's names associated 
> with particular dollar figures.  And, the system would simply have to 
(snip)

It's not a long shot.  When Bob the Big Bad Lobbyist comes into the 
Senator's office and leads him to believe a donation will be made and 
magically a sizeable one does, it can be reasonable infered from 
whence it came.  In the real world, politicians have access to the 
names and addresses of people who regularly donate to political 
campaigns.  Trust me, the probability of others, i.e. regular working 
people, donating to campaigns is zero to none.  There is a finite 
pool of political campaign money out there.

> >> Try again.  Rather than trying to prove that a system won't work, why not 
> >> help develop one that will?
> >
> >Why don't you run for office.  I did.  Reality, after all, is far 
> >better than theory.
> 
> I'd prefer doing something far more...uh...permanent than to merely REPLACE 
> officeholders.

My fault.  I forget whom I was replying to.  Of course my reply above 
was in response to your question about developing a "working" system. 
Have fun in your politicianless world (with no physical 
infrastructure, information infrastructure, national defense, etc.)  
I would much rather leave it to the market.  There is, of course, no 
corruption there. (WINK) 

> >Every candidate ever endorsed by the Firefighters Union in my town 
> >have been absolutely elected.  Looking at the firefighters voting 
> >records and matching with their addresses shows a distinct pattern of 
> >voting in almost every election. 
> 
> "Firefighter's voting records"?  I _thought_ we had a secret ballot in this 
> country.  Maybe you're from some  town that I don't know about!

I, unlike some people, live in the real world.  It is trivial for 
political groups to put together listings of public employee 
addresses, their VOTING records (meaning whether they voted or not, 
check with your city hall...hmmm...go figure, they keep track of 
that) and public expressions of support (i.e. lawn signs, letters to 
the editor, rally attendance).  Compile this info and you have a 
pretty good handle on who voted for whom (Yes I know it cant show 
absolutely that someone voted a certain way, but most of campaigning 
is simple probability.  I dont have the time to explain this in 
detail, look it up if you are really interested).

> Besides, what you're saying can be considered a bit of self-fulfilling 
> prophecy.  Some cities ALWAYS vote one way, or another.  Over time, public 
> employees simply adjust their politics to match their wallets, etc.  
> Remember, these are PUBLIC employees after all, which really just means the 
> employeees of the thugs who get into office.  It does not serve their 
> interests to go against the winning candidate.  If, one year, the party 
> normally out of office appears to be winning, the Firefighters will simply 
> adjust their politics accordingly.  Simple.

What you are not getting is that, in this case, the public employees 
are the edge that causes the win.  We have had some close races, the 
winning margin is clearly less than the number of voting public 
employees.  You don't need to control all the votes.  Only the sure 
number that you can "deliver", the need for which can be discerned 
fairly easily (using those nasty historical voting records).

> 
> > They have sufficient numbers to win every time.
> 
> Whichever candidate wins, "has sufficient numbers to win."  Tell me 
> something else I don't know.
> 

This came from a discussion of vote delivery.  X has a block Y that 
will vote for Z (the endorsed candidate) every time.  If victory 
margin is less than Y, X's delivery controls the race.

> >Power currupts.  Not size of governement. 
> 
> Size of government is evidence of the size of the corruption.
> 

Unproven.  Apparently you don't believe that some monarchies, which 
can be extremely small governments, have been some of the most 
corrupt in history.  As I stated above, power corrupts.  It is an 
easy way out of arguments for libertarians and most republicans to 
say that big government is the root of all evil.  

Quite simply put, it is people that are the arbiters of their free 
will.  People are the root. 

> Jim Bell
> jimbell@pacifier.com

Matt 
++++==============----------------------------
Matthew J. Miszewski |The information revolution has changed wealth: 
		     |intellectual capital is now far more important 
mjmiski@execpc.com   |than money.		-Walter Wriston
                         ----------------------------==============++++