30. October, 2000 - Electile Dysfunction

• The Yellow Dog Greens for Nader Petition asks Al Gore to withdraw from the presidential race, since he's ruining Ralph Nader's chances.
• The Rip Rense Election guide will help you decide between the two major candidates. Or maybe just convince you to stay home on November 7th.
• Mother Jones says that US Elections Need International Observers. I'm pretty sure that's the wrong answer, but it's hard to deny that the ruling parties in the US have denied opposition candidates access to the media. Or did I just dream that the Commission on Presidential Debates wouldn't allow Ralph Nader into the debates, even though he held a valid ticket?
• For Democrats, gun issue losing fire -- apparently they've finally figured out that the NRA is a powerful lobby because its members take freedom seriously. I particularly like the NRA Political Victory Fund's Vote Freedom First campaign.
• An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought. Using this metric, here's my take on the honesty level of the various candidates (in order of campaign contributions reported this time around):
  • George W. Bush: He's been bought by big oil and shows no signs of wavering. He looks pretty honest. The only cause he's sold out is the party-animal caucus, but they don't contribute a lot of money.
  • Al Gore: Not very honest at all. He was previously bought by the NRA, and received an A+ rating. Recently that's slipped to an F. He had also been bought by big tobacco, but seems to have sold them out, as well. It's not Ralph Nader who hurt Gore, it's Al Gore who hurt himself.
  • Pat Buchanan: Pat hasn't much changed his message, but it's hard to figure out who's buying him. Other than the milions of dollars he got from the Reform Party, most of his money still hasn't been coded by profession or industry, and what has been classified comes from other. He's not much of a Washington outsider though, which doesn't make him seem like much of a Reformer.
  • Ralph Nader: He's being relatively true to the Green Party and pushing for election reform. Most of his money is classified as coming from other. There are some who say there's a dark side to Ralph Nader. And interestingly enough, Ralph owns a lot of stock in Occidental Petroleum. More at Inside Nader's stock portfolio.
  • Harry Browne: Communications and Finance are the big two. Both would like to see smaller government and less regulation, which is what Harry's about. I think Harry's pretty honest, but there have been allegations of financial funny business within the Libertarian Party. Sigh.
• Some of the above information comes from the People for Real Change Skeleton Closet. You might want to check it out.
• There's also a discussion of Protest Votes over at Flutterby. It covers most of the issues I've heard about elsewhere.

Copyright 2009, Dave Polaschek. Last updated on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:49:44.