Greetings again, Steven! Here's a little background for those list members who may not be from the Northwest US and may not know about this issue. (If you already know all about it, you can skip down to where the ">" quotes start. Also, note that I might not have all the details entirely correct. But this should give you the gist of it.)
A few years ago, the Kingdome (in King County, next to Seattle), was condemned. It was about 25 years old and had been rather poorly maintained (hmmm, I wonder if that was intentional) and one day some of the underpaid and understaffed maintenance crew discovered that a ceiling tile or two had fallen on some seats. Obviously, if this had occurred while someone had been sitting there, there would have been injuries, if not fatalities. The estimates for repairs were outlandish and so the decision by the politicos to raze the Kingdome and build a new stadium. Of course, none of the local billionaires were dumb enough to put their money into a stadium that would lose money. Paul Allen (one of the Microsoft founder/billionaires) owned (and still owns) the SeaHags (aka. The SeaHawks). He was willing to put up with having them lose their home games in the local University of Washington football stadium for a short period of time, but he wasn't going to continue to lose potential ticket-sales money from the smaller attendance that the UW stadium could accommodate. It was obvious to all concerned that he would soon move the team if something wasn't done. So, the problem of accommodations for the SeaHags' losing home games became Seattle's problem and by extension, King County's problem. They tried to float a bond issue to pay for a new stadium but the voters decided that they shouldn't be the only ones on the hook since the football games were attended by fans from neighboring counties. Of course, the officials from the neighboring counties weren't going to volunteer any assistance. So, the Seattle and King County "fathers" went to Olympia (the state capitol) with hat in hand. The legislature could have simply turned down the request or they could have simply funded some sort of deal. Instead, they came up with a deal that required higher taxes state-wide and a small surcharge on top of that for King County. Then, they put the deal before the state's voters. Background is now over, here's my response to Steven: > "Lowell C. Savage" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > > > Fact: a majority of the people voted in favor of spending the money at > > issue > > in that "special election." It would appear as if 'the people' made > their > > "voice" known. (Note: I happen to disagree with the decision, but I > don't > > try to claim that "the people" were somehow disenfranchised by the > > proceedings.) > > Yes, Mr. Allen had his way at the expense of every citizen in the entire > state. Your missing my point... > > Questions: Why should a group of citizens (voters) be forced to organize > and > raise millions of dollars to purchase campaign ads to provide some > alternative message for the purpose of educating the people prior to > voting? I'm sorry Steve. I'm just not going to take any responsibility for missing a point that you didn't make. The paragraph to which I was responding follows: >>> Fact: A few years ago the State of Washington sold an entire "special >>> election" to billionaire Paul Allen... It would appear as if 'the >>> people' >>> have no voice when the "corporate controlled media" only broadcast(s) >>> sound bites from one side of any given issue. I think that some of the Eastern WA legislators had statewide ambitions and so copped out by allowing the vote to go forward. I thought at the time that they should have simply taken responsibility and killed the thing. But putting it to a vote was at least better than voting the funds directly through the legislature. While there were certainly some false numbers thrown around about the "economic benefits," I think you aren't giving the people of the state sufficient credit for understanding the issue involved. The issue was: "Is the State of Washington going to continue to have an NFL team or not?" If you couldn't make the case against it in the Voter's Pamphlet you certainly weren't going to do it with 30-second TV ads. (WA state sends out a Voter's Pamphlet before each general election which contains candidate statements and descriptions of the Initiatives and Referendums as well as the full text of same as well as statements for and against.) > Why should 'principled' candidates be forced side with special interest(s) > in order to raise the necessary money to become a 'viable' candidate? Why > would 'the people' relenquish the power and authority to the "corporate > owned media" to decide who's a viable candidate for public office? Have > you > ever heard the term; The only bad press is no press? All to often, at > every > level, principled viable candidates receive little if any press. > Candidates > lose some of their principles when they are forced to side with political > parties and or special interest(s). I'm going to have a very libertarian (small "l") answer for you that you probably will not like. The problem is that there is not enough money in politics and there are too many bottlenecks in getting it to candidates. If you think of the problem in the general terms of "selling a brand," then I think you start to realize just how backwards our thinking is. Last summer, Pepsi ran an ad campaign which advertised a "1 Billion Dollar prize." This likely nationwide and was for only part of one year. Think about it, more than $1,000,000,000 to influence the brand of flavored, colored, carbonated sugar water that people drink. My guess is that the true number for each year is closer to 2 billion. Yet people think we're spending way too much on campaigns when once every four years, the Presidential candidates and supportive groups spend approximately $1 billion...combined!!! That's right! The combined Presidential candidates and parties and 527 groups spent approximately 1/2 the amount in 2004 that Pepsi did and we think the candidates are spending too much and we don't care about what Pepsi spends--or Coke or RC or any of the others. > The courts have ruled that 'money is speach' when addressing campaign > finance laws. My position is to eliminate the need of raising big money to > get your positions heard. This last election *should* have proved the folly of this argument. If you really have a compelling message, you don't need much money to get it out there and once people realize the message is compelling and persuasive, money will roll on in. I'm thinking specifically of the SwiftVets. They came out with a compelling message and got all kinds of traction with something like $100,000. Once a few people saw what they were doing and word got around, the money rolled in. > So, that's my two cents, tell me yours... How would you work to eliminate > the total sell-out of our most precious right, our right to vote in a > democratic, free election? I think that you reach a saturation point beyond which more money doesn't really make much difference. We keep focusing on big contributions (which these days, go in support of "the party of the little guy"--go figure) which makes it so that a candidate has to spend more effort getting enough little contributions to be effective. If larger contributions were possible, then a candidate could reach that "saturation point" more easily which then means that they could be freer to alienate some potential contributors by taking principled positions. Doesn't mean they will, just that they will be more able to. Lowell C. Savage It's the freedom, stupid! Gun control: tyrants' tool, fools' folly. _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
