<nettime> (Voting for)? Nader (is|was) important, get rid of (fear|him\!) digest

["nettime's_man_behind_the_curtain" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

Voting for Nader? Can't afford not to!
     Mike Weisman <popeye@speakeasy.org>

Re: <nettime> Nader (was) important
     Law <law@cs.orst.edu>

Re: <nettime> Nader is important, get rid of fear
     ronda@ais.org (Ronda Hauben)

Re: <nettime> Nader is important: get rid of him!
     "Mr.Bad" <mr.bad@pigdog.org>
     underbelly@newsgrist.com
     underbelly@newsgrist.com

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Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 17:14:26 -0800
From: Mike Weisman <popeye@speakeasy.org>
Subject: Voting for Nader? Can't afford not to!

There is little heat or light in the panicked attacks on Ralph Nader, the
Green Party, and 'flaming liberals.'  I haven't read so much nonsense
since, well, the last election.   So much complete misinformation, and
completely ridiculous nonsense that I had to post to this list out of a
sense of civic duty.  Many of the readers of this list are from outside the
US, and many who are Americans have succumbed to a case of mass stupidity
over the last couple of weeks. So let's start off with a few facts.

The President doesn't choose the Supreme Court in the US, the Senate does.
The President only sends nominations.  The President checks with the Senate
leadership, in most cases, before Supreme Court nominees are offered the
position.  Nonetheless, the Senate has denied approval to several nominees
in recent years, including Robert Bork and that pot smoker Ginsberg.
Senate right of approval is absolute and not subject to override or veto,
so if you were really concerned about future Supreme Court members, you
would be focused on the Senate, not the President.  Again, for you slow
ones who were out sick that day in 1967, the President does not appoint the
Supreme Court, the Senate does.  Tie-breaker question: who nominated the
most liberal judges sitting there now?  Republicans have nominated just as
many liberal judges(Souter, Stevens) as the Democrats(Breyer, Ginsberg),
maybe more.

The Senate also appoints all the other judges.  In this case, the President
doesn't even make the nominations.  Senators decide who will sit on the
courts in their states, and they give the nominations to the President as
part of their senatorial prerogative. In this instance, the President
doesn't even have a say.  The President then turns around the formally
nominates the person.  All federal judges must be confirmed by the Senate.
In the Clinton administration, a motley crew of conservative judges was
appointed because that was all the Senate would approve.

Statistically speaking, as of Sunday Oct 29, Gore has the election locked
up.  The campaign to discredit Nader was started long after Gore went ahead
in the polls, in fact it was started one week ago.  If they were really
worried about Nader, they would have been after him in August.  Why did
this campaign to nicks Nader start so late?  Although Gore's numbers are up
(and remember, he only needs a plurality, not a majority of the votes.  For
our slower students who missed math class too, that means Gore needs the
most votes, not all the votes), Ralph Nader's polling numbers are creeping
up from low single digits to middle single digits.

If Nader can poll 5% of the TOTAL vote cast, in what promises to be one of
the LOWEST votes totals ever, his party, the Greens, will be eligible for
federal funds in the next election cycle.  And this, I tell you, has the
Dems scared absolutely completely shitless!  What if Ralph, or Jim
Hightower, or Bill Bradley, or someone else runs as a federally financed
candidate in the next cycle, when Al is running for re-election?  Will this
be an unpleasant experience for the Dems?  You bet!  Could that very
possibly, almost certainly throw the election to the Republicans, who will
run someone like McCain?  You bet?  Does the Democratic party not want to
have to reach out to the left to try and bring these people back into the
party? You've got it now!

According to a detailed analysis of the Nader vote here in the Pacific NW,
only about half of the Nader voters are accessible to Gore.  The rest came
from BUSH, or would have sat out the election.  That means even lower total
votes if these people don't vote Nader, and Gore could very well lose if
the Republicans turn out their voters, who are generally more reliable
voters.  So a vote for Nader is a vote for Gore, mathematically speaking.
And that's not fuzzy!

Fuzzy math is even more important in the races down the ticket.  Most of
the Green Party voters will continue to vote down the ticket, and a number
of them will cast votes for Democratic candidates down the line, except for
Ralph.  Note to our European audience: the Green Party doesn't have
candidates in most of these races, so voters must split their vote after
they cast their presidential vote.  By all reasoning, and by the numbers in
the polls, these Nader voters are likely to be a big part of the voting
block that is going to swing the majority to the Dems in both the lower and
upper houses.  Polling does indicate the Dems will probably retake both
houses.  Worried about whether abortion, the only issue left for discussion
by some nettime subscribers? You better hope for a Democratic Congress
because Gore is a strictly antiabortion and has been his whole political
career.  The only hope to protect women's rights generally is a Demo
Congress, not Al Gore.  The same goes for all that other stuff you want to
protect, like affirmative action for the salmon, global warming, the hole
in the atmosphere (not your head), nude swimming, and lyrics in hip hop
music.

As far as claims that Ralph Nader is not for women's rights, minority or
ethnic quality, or the environment.  Well, these claims are so outrageous
and stupid that they don't really deserve response.  What they are doing,
however, and make no mistake, is demonstrating better than anything
possible that the Gore campaign lacks any shred of integrity or
intellectual honesty whatsoever.  Even if you were leaning Gore, after
listening to these characters claim Nader is not pro environment or women's
right, you really must vote Nader.  Its like saying the Pope doesn't really
support Christianity, or that Elle MacPherson isn't really a women, or that
Clinton is secretly gay. But I guess these folks learned something about
that 'big lie' stuff and figure if they say something completely outrageous
in today's conspiratorial society, someone somewhere will thinks its true.

So now there is 45 minutes out of my life that I'll never get back.  Gore
is going to win, and Nader is going to give it to him. Nader may very well
poll 5%, spread over the entire disgusting pathetic nation.  The Congress
is going to flip to the Dems, and you'll be able to find it all on the
nettime archives, where we told you how it would happen first.  Just don't
blame me; I have a mail-in ballot, and I just put the stamp on it.

Mike Weisman, citizen
Seattle, WA



--
Please respond to:
Mike Weisman
popeye@speakeasy.org

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Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 14:58:48 -0800 (PST)
From: Law <law@cs.orst.edu>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Nader (was) important


On Sun, 29 Oct 2000, Ivan Zassoursky wrote:
> 
> 
	<...snip...>
> 
> Vote for Nader. It will make you feel better.
> 

Sure, for some it does feel better to make a meaningless gesture and
so abdicate responsibility. Nader and Gore could get a lot done. Nader
alone is only a spoiler. There is no feeling better about that. He may
speak eloquently for American discontent, even my own, but he has no
course of action open. I may support his ideas, but I no longer
support him. True, that Nader has nothing to lose. The expense would
be born by the average American.

Voting for Bush or Nader requires joining a personality cult.

I'll pass.

Jim

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Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 18:59:12 -0500 (EST)
From: ronda@ais.org (Ronda Hauben)
Subject: Re: <nettime> Nader is important, get rid of fear

Jay Fenello <Jay@Fenello.com> writes:


>Nader is a harbinger of things to come.

>Today on ABC's "This Week," Ralph Nader once again 
>described how our government has been hijacked by big 
>business, and how its decision making is done behind
>closed doors.

>Having been personally involved in just one example 
>of this, I'd say he's right on target! 

It is good that the Nader campaign is bringing the issue of the
corporate control of the US government out into the open.

I saw someone campaigning for Nader outside in my neighborhood
today and talked to him for a few minutes. He said there would
be a parade for Nader in the neighborhood next Saturday and
asked me to join.

I told him that it was good Nader was bringing out the problem
of the corporate control of the US government. But that Nader
had gone along with the privatization of the Infrastructure to
the Internet. That when I had tried to correspond with Jamie
Love on the issue of the support for ICANN, Love told me 
that I should read what Nader had written. I had and it was
a problem.

The person campaigning said that he would expect Nader to be
against the privatization of the Internet's infrastructure since
he was against the privatization of the air waves. He said he
would look into the situation.

The creation of ICANN instead of the US governmwent figuring out
what was the needed government and scientific role in the development
of the Internet, or supporting and encouraging others to try to 
sort this all out, is a serious problem.

Also my original proposal that was submitted to the Dept of 
Commerce before they contracted with ICANN was a proposal to take
on to determine the problem that had to be solved.

It didn't seem that folks close to Nader ever gave this proposal
any serious thought, even though they had to have known about it.
It's still online at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/dns_proposal.txt
and its also online at the Dept of Commerce.

Also I know someone who asked the Nader campaign about the position
about ICANN and he was told he would get an answer, and he never got
an answer.

Why didn't Jamie Love ever make an effort to look at the proposals
submitted to the Dept of Commerce along with the ICANN proposal?

This is an important issue for the Nader campaign to take on and 
yet the opposite seems to be the case. Instead of opposing ICANN,
it has seemed that Nader and Jamie Love have encouraged the labor
movement to get behind the creation of new TLD's.

So thought the Nader campaign is very important and it has done
something important, if it goes along and keeps the silence about
the privatization of the Internet's infrastructure or if it
encourages ICANN to create new TLD's and to be accepted, then
it doesn't stand up very well under the heat.

When the US government was trying to privatize atomic energy,
the labor movement (I read in Donald Price's telling at least 
in his book Government and Science) opposed the privatization
and that led the US government to form an atomic energy commission
within government and that was a better situation that letting
the private sector take over atomic energy development and policy.

It seems that Nader, instead of encouraging the labor movement
to oppose the privatization of the Internet's infrastructure, he
has been promoting their support of it.

There is a need to figure out how to have an international public
structure for the administration of the Internet's Infrastructure,
but not a private administration like ICANN.

I have found some helpful precedents to give an idea what is needed,
and my proposal was a way to start some international collaboration
to find a way to identify what was needed.

I wonder why the Nader campaign has been silent on this issue
or has gone along supporting ICANN.

Ronda
ronda@panix.com
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/

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Subject: Re: <nettime> Nader is important: get rid of him!
From: "Mr.Bad" <mr.bad@pigdog.org>
Date: 29 Oct 2000 16:33:04 -0800

>>>>> "jg" == joy garnett <joy@firstpulseprojects.org> writes:

    jg> Keep the Republicans OUT.  Just do it.  This is a crucial
    jg> election.  Don't throw it away. Don't vote Nader.

So, when is there going to be a NON-crucial election? Do you
anticipate, say, that the Republican Party is going to disappear
sometime in the next century? Or maybe that the GOP is going to
nominate a pro-environment, pro-choice candidate, so there'll be no
threat?

I guess it's possible that there could be an Ebola breakout in the
Supreme Court in the next 4 years that wipes out all the justices. A
Democratic president could then appoint 9 fresh-faced hale and hearty
25-year-old prochoicers. Assuming they could get through a Republican
Senate, we wouldn't have to worry about Roe v. Wade for another 50
years or so.

Or maybe you're just trying to point out that the Democratic
candidates have become more and more conservative. So that, say, if
the trend continues, by 2008 or 2012 even the minor differences
between candidates that we see today will be eliminated. By then, it
won't be particularly life-threatening to have the slightly-more-evil
of the two evils get into office.

I dunno what it is, exactly, that makes you think the 2000 election is
some kind of watershed. But it seems to me that a CRUCIAL election is
one where progressives have a chance to shake some things up. There is
more momentum in the American left right now than there's been in 15
years. Wasting that by going back under the yoke of the DLC-controlled
Democratic Party would be FOOLISH in the extreme.

~Mr. Bad

-- 
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 /\____/\   Mr. Bad <mr.bad@pigdog.org>
 \      /   Pigdog Journal | http://pigdog.org/ | *Stay*Real*Bad*
 |  (X \x)   
 (    ((**) "If it's not bad, don't do it.
  \  <vvv>   If it's not crazy, don't say it." - Ben Franklin
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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From: underbelly@newsgrist.com
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 19:46:59 -0600
Subject: Re: <nettime> Nader is important: get rid of him!


"Mr.Bad" wrote:

>
> I guess it's possible that there could be an Ebola breakout in the
> Supreme Court in the next 4 years that wipes out all the justices. A
> Democratic president could then appoint 9 fresh-faced hale and hearty
> 25-year-old prochoicers. Assuming they could get through a Republican
> Senate, we wouldn't have to worry about Roe v. Wade for another 50
> years or so.

Wouldn't that be lovely?

>
>
> I dunno what it is, exactly, that makes you think the 2000 election is
> some kind of watershed. But it seems to me that a CRUCIAL election is
> one where progressives have a chance to shake some things up. There is
> more momentum in the American left right now than there's been in 15
> years. Wasting that by going back under the yoke of the DLC-controlled
> Democratic Party would be FOOLISH in the extreme.
>
> ~Mr. Bad

you're not *Bad*; you just don't know how good you've got it under these
dems you've so demonized. I guess everyone needs their demons. have fun.

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From: underbelly@newsgrist.com
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 19:53:18 -0600
Subject: Re: <nettime> Nader is important: get rid of him!

basically the pro-nader camp seeems to be caught up in their own desires:

- to *be* radical;

- to *feel* they have someone in charge they can trust.

how quaint. and how useless. you fell for the most basic appeal to your
emotions, to your sense of identity. you want to be good, do the right
thing. you are so enveloped in the smoke screen you wouldn't know the
difference betw al gore and gwb if it fell on you. this is like a very
depressing chapter in a very bad version of a bruce sterling novella...


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