I heard somewhere (I think David Letterman) that Hillary Clinton's campaign at this point is like the world's most expensive
fantasy camp. To the left is a summary of a Hillary surrogate's explanation of how Hillary can become President with the amount of races and delegates remaining. Actually, the picture is from a page explaining how the electors work.As of April 21 2008 the presidential campaign's total receipts, including donations and loans from the three remaining major candidates were:
Obama: 240M
Clinton: 195M
McCain: 80M
It is extremely expensive to run for President. I don't think this is what the
framers had in mind when they designed the Republic. Think of how all that money could help Americans in need, pay down our debt, or just plain put into non-borrowed reserves. George Ure, an economist at UrbanSurvival.com wrote this today: "the amount of money the banks have in reserve that is non-borrowed is at a fifty year low? In fact in 4 months since it entered negative territory (for the only time in the 50 years on record) it has exceeded 50 years of positive values by 50% on the negative side? Does this not mean that the banks are not only insolvent but underwater more than they were ever positive?"The question mark punctuation does not indicate that his
questions are rhetorical, they are there to infer incredulity on the part of the writer. The word aghast comes to mind. Also the comparison of the economy to the Hindenburg...thanks George, for being Debbie Downer today. Though facts is facts and it's good to know them and I appreciate the work on that website.I am off to a luncheon with the team members with whom I worked in the Good News Club at Comer Elementary School. We're to eat at Dos Palmas in Athens on a gloriously humid-free, breeezy day! Good folks, good eats, good scenery, life is good!
7 comments:
Campaign financing (and reform; or, rather, the lack of) and the electoral system...two things I'll never quite understand.
I believe the founding fathers are either turning in their graves or are laughing so hard that a project could have gotten so far off track! I can't decide which.
Personally, somtimes, I find it hard to reconcile the existence of NASA (and its MASSIVE funding) with the fact that America has starving, homeless children.
Ben Franklin was the first true altruistic of our founding fathers. He did a great deal of work building a philanthropic community spirit in Philidelphia. The other founders were much more sedate in their community spirits.
Chuck
I heard encouraging things on the pundit shouting shows last night, one congresswoman said that there does need to be reform in the delegate-electoral system of choosing a president. They said like what kind, and she said a pure vote, one vote per person, period.
But we are in a republic, not a democracy, and the two forms of government are antithetical. The chief characteristic and distinguishing feature of a Democracy is: Rule by Omnipotent Majority. In a Democracy, The Individual, and any group of Individuals composing any Minority, have no protection against the unlimited power of The Majority. It is a case of Majority-over-Man. This is true whether it be a Direct Democracy, or a Representative Democracy. The New England town-meeting is a direct democracy.
A Republic, on the other hand, has a very different purpose and an entirely different form, or system, of government. Its purpose is to control The Majority strictly, as well as all others among the people, primarily to protect The Individual’s God-given, unalienable rights and therefore for the protection of the rights of The Minority, of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general. The definition of a Republic is: a constitutionally limited government of the representative type, created by a written Constitution--adopted by the people and changeable (from its original meaning) by them only by its amendment--with its powers divided between three separate Branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. Here the term "the people" means, of course, the electorate.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/
aspects/demrep.html
The delegate count never mattered so much till now, and now, boy does it ever!!! I have not been able to find where the superdelegates came into this process or why we need them.
I think Jefferson is crying but Ben Franklin is laughing his naked butt off!
I love than Ben Franklin started free lending libraries
Remember that the PARTY politics are not governed whatsoever by what the Founding Fathers created. The parties are free to dream up and enact their own sets of rules. Ditto each state within the party can change their rules. And when they are too anachronistic for their own good they can either dissolve or morph.
ah! great point. Thank you
Pure Democracies are fine as long as the population is small- town meetings in Maine for example. When your population becomes too large, it can take hours to move past one item on the agenda. Athens discovered this problem early on and it remains true today. Our founders recognized the unworkability of direct democracy and were in fact fearful of mob rule for government. Senators were originally elected by the state legislature- not by the people. The electoral college system provides the only check that smaller states have some say in who is elected to serve as President not only of the larger, more populous states- but also of the smaller and more rural states. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for NH, VT, RI to agree to join the union in the first place if all of the important decisions were made by the large states of the time: Virginia, Massachusetts, NY and Pennsylvania.
Chuck
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