Block the vote!

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Comments

[telemann.livejournal.com]

/***
But Teachers' Unions!
Governmental worker unions!
ACORN!
Philadelphia Black Panthers harassing voters in 2008!
CODE PINK in SF!
Hipsters in Brooklyn!

***/

That Koch piece is a great editorial cartoon.

[blackdwarv.livejournal.com]

You don't understand.

Bengazi.

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

Aside from literally paying/bribing people to vote for you, how does one buy an election?

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Look up the Overton Window.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

I'm struggling for a name for this work of art.

So far my best is "Accuse-a-recursion"

#2 on the list is "Mandle-blame"

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Fractal back atcha?

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Very carefully.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Along with peristaltor's pertinent reminder of the Overton Window, consider this question:

Is Advertising Effective?

If No, then you cannot use advertising to buy elections. Also, all the people who pay good money on advertising are insane, and all the statements about the efficiency of the Free Market are similarly insane, and unfounded, because look at how they inefficiently waste money on ineffectual processes like advertising!

If Yes, then you can buy elections, because advertising costs money.

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

Saying that purchasing advertising amounts to buying elections is quite a stretch.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Is advertising effective?

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

The studies I've seen point to advertising spending being critical at the margin, but not the be all and end all of winning a campaign.

What is more troublesome to me than the spending itself is the obligation the politician has to the superpacs and such that donated to his campaign.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

It has an effect. Sure, other things have an effect too, but...

1) Advertising can be the difference between winning and loosing and election.

and

2) Advertising Costs Money.

Therefor,

3) Spending money can be the difference between winning and loosing an election.

If you consider the above formulation as substantively different than "Money can buy elections", that's you own lookout.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

The studies I've seen point to advertising spending. . . .

. . . are, sadly, often paid for by advertisers. And don't look for the news media to investigate this at all, either. For a clue as to why that would be silly, watch the entire newscast, and note what happens after the show takes a short break. *Gasp!* Is that advertising?!?

What is more troublesome to me than the spending itself is the obligation the politician has to the superpacs and such that donated to his campaign.

And me as well! The result?

Two professors working separately at Princeton University, Larry Bartels and Martin Gilens, have been studying the correspondence between what politicians do and what their constituents of differing economic backgrounds say they want them to do in opinion polls. Are the opinions of wealthier Americans more likely to be heard and heeded than those of less affluent Americans?

The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is yes. But the scale of the disparity may shock those used to thinking that everyone's opinion counts. Bartels looked at how closely aligned with voters U.S. senators were on key votes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It turns out there is a pretty high degree of congruence between senators' positions and the opinions of their constituents—at least when those constituents are in the top third of the income distribution. For constituents in the middle third of the income distribution, the correspondence is much weaker, and for those in the bottom third, it is actually negative. (Yes, when the poorest people in a state support a policy, their senators are less likely to vote for it.) Bartels also found that while senators in both parties were more likely to vote for a policy when it was supported by better-off voters, Republicans were much more responsive to high-income voters than were Democrats. Senators may pledge to represent everyone in a state, but they do not, Bartels's analysis suggests, represent them equally—or sometimes at all.

(Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, Simon & Schuster, 2010, pp. 110-111, I emboldened.)

Welcome to plutocracy! I am hopeful, though, since the issue has been getting some exposure (http://thedailyshow.cc.com/guests/gilens-page).

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

One more thing to consider. Those who manipulate elections using the Overton Window do not necessarily do so using advertising labeled as such. Examples?



Here's the game. Before an election, poll an electorate. Ideas range within that electorate from sensible enough for policy to waaaay out there. Here's where your non-advertising advertising comes into play. You find some waaay out there voices and you bring them on to local media as if they weren't so "out there." People are used to judging ideas based on their social acceptance, that is the likelihood that they would be—or would not be—featured on something like a local radio or television show.

This simple act (repeated enough times) causes people to re-think their own priorities and political affiliations. The best part? The waaay out there ideas need not even be the same one as you the political operative are trying to get passed or endorsed! They only need to be grouped in the direction you want the electorate to mentally travel before election time. Right-wing talk about eliminating social security, completely removing all gun restrictions, questioning the existence of the Federal Reserve, for a few examples—all of which most regard as batshit insane—can easily draw an electorate to the right when it comes to considering a charter school. They aren't the same issues . . . but they kinda are!

Wanna do this for the left? No problem. Get the leftie wing nuts on the media talking calmly about socializing industry, doing away with guns altogether, getting rid of the Federal Reserve (who said nuts didn't share some goals?)—and, importantly, doing so without being challenged by the interviewers!—and the same goal of shifting goalposts would be achieved.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

Whatever you call it, it certainly raises some troubling questions. If elections can be won just because one side had more money for advertising, then what does that say about the reliability of the democratic process?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[icelore.livejournal.com]

I could get behind a literacy test to vote. For, you know...everyone.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

That's why they're trying to get rid of basic education.

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

LOL DOH!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[interdictor.livejournal.com]

Hope he's ok.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

Numb-nutted moron.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

This is what happens when lafinjack passes the bong.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

OK.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]