Politicians For Sale... On Amazon 425
aldheorte writes "In either a brilliant move or a sick commentary on politics (or both), Amazon is now selling U.S. Presidential candidates, or at least contributions to such."
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Politicians For Sale... On Amazon
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No man is an island if he's on at least one mailing list.
Cut out the middleman (Score:5, Insightful)
Might want to check their privacy policy. (Score:3, Insightful)
"We release account and other personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our Conditions of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of Amazon.com, our users, or others.
Uhhh (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyway, this is kind of cool, because it gives people a way to contribute who may not have known how, and we don't have to join anything except amazon.com. And who isn't a member of that already?
Umm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems a shame to create a potentially "democratic" contribution system like this wherein all the candidates appear side by side, yet return in the end to the flawed two-party (or at most three-party) set of limited choices...
Sick commentary on politics ? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see how Amazon facilitating a higher-efficiency method of contributing somehow changes a standard adjunct of democracy into something that is "sick".
Re:Might want to check their privacy policy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, I wonder what they'd do if someone donated $5 to each candidate.
I like this (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe this will help educate some people on the lesser known candidates and help even the playing field a tiny bit for those candidates who don't have a lot of cash.
Re:Cut out the middleman (Score:2, Insightful)
And their selling point to the charities will be: We take a smaller cut than other fundraisers.
Duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
You have got to be kidding! Greens, Socialist Workers and Communist are ANTI-CAPITALISTS! Signing up with the biggest online capitalist tool would be make them look silly and go completely against their political beliefs.
Re:Sick commentary on politics ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Just to clear something up. (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, our econimic system - for those of you who don't know - is commonly known as Capitolism. Such is the nature of a capitolist economy that the government, in order to function effectively, must operate as a business. They offer services - courts, police, etc. - and we pay for those services with our taxes.
Now, running for president is not a government service, therefore the money must come from somewhere. Thus, camapign contributions. After all, it would be kind of hard to organize a Bake Sale large enough to support this kind of operation, wouldn't it?
Of course, there are those who would love to see this system collapse and a new take its place. They are known by a variety of names and methods - Communists, Socialists, some Democrats (Not all, just the worst, like this Dean guy), and in general, idiots. In some places, they have already managed to gain some power. Like Oregon. Or New York. If this trend continues, we will all end up where Russia is now, and where China, France, and Australia will be before long. Poverty stricken fools, deluded by the promise of so-called "true equality" and condemned to a life of servitude to the very entity created to serve us - the government.
Now, I believe in equality, but in ctual equality, which is that everyone has the same chance to succeed, not this crap they are trying to feed you, which is that no one should be rich and successful, and any who become so are the tools of an evil empire bent on keeping the average man down. I know I'll probably be called a troll or something for all this, and if that is the case, so be it. But the rest of you have a choice. You can either beome a pawn of those who would truly seek to rule over you completely, or you can be thankful that the founding fathers of this great nation had the incredible foresight to put into effect a system that is admittedly not perfect, but something much more important than that. It's free.
Re:Can't Wait..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can't Wait..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't knock self-directed book learning. Remember that quite a few geeks, especially younger ones in, say, high school who don't have access to computer classes do just what you're mocking him for doing.
Not to mention that the US of 72 years ago probably didn't have near the educational resources available to them that we do -- what with them recovering from the great depression* and all that, his learning from books might be very impressive indeed, given the era.
* Is my math/memory off? Wasn't Black Friday in 1929, which would put him growing up on the tail end of it all?
Re:Can't Wait..... (Score:3, Insightful)
If it makes you feel any better, I'm sure there are a lot of intelligent people who've learned JUST through reading books. I'm sure of them did it through reading about the Java SDK and only program in Notepad.
Re:Contibutions (Score:5, Insightful)
people should save their cynicism for corporate/special interest soft money and lobbying (you know, the things that ACTUALLY buy off candidates). really, if candidates got all enough money through small, distributed, contributions then they wouldn't have to sell themselves to bigger contributers who could want favors in return.
you know, since campaign funds translate into votes (funds buying ads and all), this is pretty close to an internet voting system --plus it's got more security to it than any of the real electronic voting systems i've read about.
Re:Decisions, decisions... (Score:1, Insightful)
We have the gvt on one side telling us we need to pay more money to support wars we don't want to be in, corporations on the other side telling us we need to buy stuff from them while they lobby the overworked gvt to steal our rights out from under us, and the same companies outsourcing all their jobs to other countries (laying off hundreds of thousands of Americans) and then have the balls to wonder, "WHY IS NOONE BUYING OUR CRAPPY PRODUCTS?!?! THEY MUST BE STEALING ON THE INTARWEB THINGYMAGIGER. LETS STEAL SOME MORE RIGHTS... OR BETTER YET, SUE@@!@!#!@"
I'm sick of it.
Maybe capitalism isn't the way...
Circumventing Capmaign Finance Laws? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dean (Score:3, Insightful)
KFG
Re:Decisions, decisions... (Score:5, Insightful)
You exagerate, or you are confusing LaRouche with Charles Manson. LaRouche was jailed for 15 years for fraud and tax evasion in 1988. He has been out on parole since 1993. I guess that the sentence probably expired completely last year (parole can extend longer than the original sentence).
Amazon don't state the basis that they used to compile the list of candidates. Each election there are a couple of thousand people who file for president, so there has to be a cut-off at some point. Probably sending reports to the SEC.
Its interesting the way that folk imediately translate dollars into votes. The fact that someone gives money to a campaign does not even mean they want them to be elected. Plenty of candidates in primaries get dollars from the other party, say there is a guy standing for re-election, folk will send dollars to a challenger in the primaries to help make it a rougher ride. I met a Democrat who freely admitted that 80% of his campaign dollars came from Republicans.
The big issue in this campaign has been whether the Democrats would run the type of pusilanimous campaign that Gephart ran with in the mid-sessionals. Under that strategy the party would nominate 'Bush-Lite' - Lieberman or Gephart, someone who would not criticize the invasion of Iraq, someone who would basically roll over when the GOP press did their smear campaign.
At this point Dean has made sure that whoever gets the nomination it will not be Gephart or Lieberman. Bush is going to be criticized on his record. Unfortunally for the poor Deaniacs they are now dispensible. We know full well that they will organize and vote for any Democrat candidate against Bush, except Lieberman that is.
At this point I don't think anyone can say with confidence who the winner of the nomination will be. I think Kerry, Clark and Edwards all have a chance, Dean might recover. One thing I am sure of is that Edwards is the most likely choice for Veep. I don't think Clark or Kerry would even want it - Clark would almost certainly prefer Secretary of State. But Edwards is one heck of a smooth speaker, unfortunately the poor chump does not really have enough of a Resume to run. Last time that a guy with as little experience as he did became President was 2000 - and the results show it.
Re:Contibutions (Score:2, Insightful)
The USA is a nation of states, not of big cities.
Re:Contibutions (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Contibutions (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe this is stupid... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Decisions, decisions... (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I've read about LaRouche, the idea of him as president is almost as scary as Manson as president. The guy is completely apeshit. I've seen a lot of his cultists around the Bay area; until I moved here, I thought he was pretty much defunct.
Under that strategy the party would nominate 'Bush-Lite'
Careful there. Ignoring the war issue for a moment (although there were many liberals who supported it, at least in principle, Clinton being the best example), this sounds a lot like an echo of Ralph Nader's preposterous claim in 2000 that there was no substantive difference between the Dems and the GOP. We've all seen how well that prediction turned out, havent' we? Ralph was just bitter because moderate neoliberal Democrats like Clinton didn't share his antipathy towards capitalism.
At any rate, either of those candidates would have been capable of criticizing Bush on his record - and might have been better insulated against the inevitable RNC smear that they don't care about national security. (Note: I don't think this is a good reason for them to be president, however, nor do I support either candidate, although Lieberman's politics are closest to mine.) Personally, I would like to see a Democrat attack Bush from the right, and point out that we haven't yet captured bin Laden (but started another war anyway), he's ramped up the deficits, and the size of government (and spending) has actually expanded under Republican rule.
Re:Contibutions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Contibutions (Score:3, Insightful)
It's unlikely that the electoral college will ever be changed. It would require a constitutional amendment to pass. It takes 3/4 of all the states to vote to change the constitution. The small states have no reason to vote for a change as it would decrease their representation.
Re:Contibutions (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Contibutions (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Contibutions (Score:3, Insightful)
Not true. A candidate that is willing to screw over everyone living in the less populous 40 states could easily win the vast majority of the popular vote in a few key areas. That's the main reason why we need the electoral college.
My personal preference for improving the election system would be to require all states to split their electoral votes in the same proportion as the popular vote in that state. It's not perfect, but at least it gets rid of the "safe states" where your vote doesn't mean anything.