www.JoeCobb.com

Many political professionals are worried about a situation in the Electoral College. In 1824, the 12th Amendment to Article II of the Constitution did not work, and the House of Representatives (not individual voters) chose the 6th President, John Quincy Adams.

What if this happened in 2008? Ralph Nader is running for President, and the Libertarian Party is running Bob Barr, who has a good chance to cost the election for John McCain (see “spoiler effect”). What if either of them won a single State? It would prevent McCain, or Obama from getting a 12th Amendment majority. The House of Representatives would have to vote and elect the next President.

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently under a Democratic majority, but that is not how it would vote. Each State gets one vote. Unit rule. California gets the same vote as Wyoming. Ha ha. No “democracy” here.

If this all happened, you know the next political movement would be an attempt to repeal the 12th Amendment and abolish the Electoral College system. Direct democracy, like in France or Louisiana, with run off elections, would be demanded by most Americans.

And just like in Louisiana, and Florida in 2000, every vote in every precint might make the difference in the final total. Vote stealing could occur in any of America’s 300,000 precincts. Florida only had about 15,000 precincts. The Electoral College is how our founding fathers insured against that kind of vote fraud problem.

Electoral College is Flawed, but
Constitutional Amendment is not Necessary

Yet, it is not even necessary to repeal the 12th Amendment. We could already solve this problem by adopting Ranked Choice Voting, by Electors, in the Electoral College. Congress would count the ballots, and by its own rule-making, it could adopt the Ranked Choice voting method, if the State Electors sent their votes in that 1st Choice, 2nd Choice, 3rd Choice manner of communication.

Ranked Choice Voting (known also as “instant run off voting”) is a method for voters to indicate their order of preference on a ballot. If a voter’s first choice is eliminated due to a small first-choice vote total in the election, the voter’s second choice candidate would receive the vote. This technique of counting votes eliminates the “spoiler” effect of third party candidates, and minimizes the political strategy of attack advertising to encourage “voting against” instead of voting for candidates.

States could amend their election laws to specify the use of Ranked Choice Voting by individuals serving as Electors in December 2008. Maybe it would not even take a State law. The Electors, setting their own rules as they meet to vote, could just do it themselves.

Of couse, the U.S. Congress, sitting to count the ballots, would have to have its own rules change, to allow Ranked Choice Vote counting of ballots from States that submitted them with 1st Choice, 2nd Choice, and 3rd Choice information.

It is All About Information in the Voting Process

It is all about the information, after all. Democracy should be the way in which “the people,” or at least the voters tell Congress what it should do.

Negative voting poisons the information stream: if you feel you must vote for Obama or Hillary to keep the war monger, McCain, out of the White House, you are not sending any kind of mandate of support to the Democrats. If you feel you must vote for McCain in order to keep the Democrats out of power in foreign policy or welfare/health policy, you are only trying to veto them. You are not really supporting McCain’s agenda. The information is not communicated what you really want.

Ranked Choice Voting would change that dynamic information system. Even the candidate who loses has received some 1st Choice votes. Those voters have sent a message to the person who earned their 2nd Choice vote, and so on. Everyone can see how the voters really chose who gets inaugurated. Everyone can see what the voters really wanted, in proportion to how much they wanted it.

Vote for Ranked Choice Voting in city elections: Our Initiative is I-08-01 in Glendale, Arizona, on September 2, 2008.

My friend wrote me, “… It’s so obvious….politics isn’t about knowledge, politics is about power….”

Yes, politics is about power.

Of course politics is about power.
That is why Libertarians want “to sit in the chair, at the desk.”
If we don’t sit there, somebody else will sit there.

We, however, will perform “Justice.”
That means we will NOT DO ANYTHING.
Justice requires letting people do what they want to do,
not to police them.

That, in a short poem format is why I am motivated to work inside the Libertarian Party to get elected to public office.

My opponents believe people will hurt each other. Some of them believe government laws and regulaitons will make people behave better, or spend their money better. I disagree.

by Joe Cobb

Know thy enemy, know thyself. Words of wisdom.

Terrorists are not just criminals, they are conspiracy criminals. The label “organized crime��? is out of style. Now the conspiracy criminals are called “El Quaida.��?

RICO is insufficient. Now the government wants war powers and Homeland Security police to control things, like immigration.

Typically, there is some conservative “bait��? in the government’s strategy, so Latinos are spotlighted (although most illegal immigrants are not Latinos and arrive by airplane; they come with legal tourist or student visas and just don’t go home).

Who are the crime victims here? Surely illegal immigration is a victimless crime?

Today as I write, it is September 11, the anniversary of an infamous tragedy. We know the victims and we mourn with their families. We rage at the violation of the victims’ right to life and shudder at how some of them died, by jumping or burning to death.

But revenge is not the solution. Prevention is the solution. It must never happen again. How can this be done?

First, more police and control over the American people are not the way to go. We cannot give up our freedom in the name of protecting our freedom. That is madness.

Second, we must understand why anyone, anywhere would want to do mass murder in the United States. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in Oklahoma City and we are not sure why he did it. He was mad; he was against something. He was a mass murderer.

The Clinton Justice Department killed 80 people, 21 of them children, in Waco in 1993 because a nutty religious guy had a cult with some weapons, and children. He believed he was a messiah, so Janet Reno killed him and 79 others. Who was mad then? Why wasn’t she forced to resign, like Alberto Gonzales? She was a mass murderer.

But before they can take away our freedom, they should have to prove to us an “Enemy” exists, not just a mafia or criminal conspiracy.

There is (and never has been) any “War” on terror or drugs or poverty. There has only been a gigantic growth in the police state and welfare bureacracy - including the loss of common rights.

by Joe Cobb

Last month, the California legislature faced a stalemate over its FY 2007-08 budget, and a number of service providers had to cope with late payments. It was a form of political theater and it repeats every year. The newspapers and commentators on television decried the “irresponsibility��? of lawmakers, who were deadlocked again over whether to raise your taxes or slow down their increases in spending.

News reports are now coming out of Washington, D.C. about a stalemate in Congress over the same issue. The federal lawmakers are even more behind schedule this year than in the past. They haven’t passed necessary appropriations bills. Some commentators are worrying about another government shutdown in October, when the federal fiscal year for 2008 begins.

Why do we need a government budget? Before 1900, governments didn’t do business with an annual budget. Back then, they had low taxes and still had a surplus in the treasury. Since adopting the modern “budget forecasting��? system, financial planning by governments has gotten worse every year.

Governments pass laws to spend money. Households and businesses don’t. Those laws make it much more difficult to change if they get things wrong.

Whereas households and businesses can predict wages and sales, governments have a difficult time predicting tax revenues when inflation and tax brackets have a large effect on actual revenues collected the following year. In California a large part of the state income tax depends on capital gains income. Former governor Gray Davis well remembers how the stock market slump of 2000-02, which reduced capital gains for most investors, affected his budgets, and his career.

Government revenue forecasts are unreliable (just look at recent history), but there is a more realistic way that governments can manage money. It is the same way governments did it before 1900.

Congress established a system of appropriations committees and separate “authorization��? committees over 200 years ago. Unfortunately, the appropriations committees, which decide how much money each program should receive each year, are no longer looking at how much money to spend based on actual tax collections; they spend money based on unreliable forecasts.

A year or two later, the programs are audited and someone says, “This program has cost more than we forecast.��? Another sad excuse is, “Revenues are less than we forecast.��?

Why not look directly at how much something actually costs and how much revenue is actually being collected, and match these debits and credits directly on a monthly basis? This practical idea, which is how every household and private business does the job, is dismissed because “experts��? say government would not be able to plan.

Government Planning

Government planning? Anyone who actually works in government is now laughing at you. Government planning is an idea that was popular a hundred years ago, when socialism was seen as the wave of the future. After the failure of the Soviet experiment, we should know better.

Government agencies never downsize; government agencies never discover more efficient or productive ways to deliver services. Government agencies never want to save money, because that might mean a smaller budget next year. Incentives are not oriented toward cutting costs, which is why governments cannot be organized “like a business.��?

In a few weeks, Congress will pass “continuing resolutions��? to keep spending after the fiscal year ends. A practical idea would be to make those “continuing resolutions��? not for one or two months, but for 12 months. The protest against this simple idea is that some government agencies and programs will run out of money next April or May if they cannot get an increase in their appropriations.

But this is not a valid protest, because some government agencies and programs will run out of money next April or May even if they do get an increase from some “forecast��? budget. Lawmakers always vote for supplemental appropriations bills when this happens. It happens every year.

This is a “look back��? method of controlling spending, and it is actually how households and private businesses control spending. Government really needs a new method to control spending. It is as simple as giving up the bad habit of trying to forecast the future.

“Reality Based” Budgeting

Between now and next April or May, let the appropriations committees perform oversight and audit the costs of programs. Let the treasury monitor the actual tax revenues. If there is enough money for an increase in spending, it can be considered. If there is not enough money, let the programs be cut. This is “reality based��? budgeting. Those founding fathers in Congress 200 years ago knew how to do it right in the first place.

Background detail: In about 1992, in one of a series of a regularly published newsletters about politics, a ghost writer made several [racist] remarks under Ron Paul’s name. Ron Paul took responsibility for the error stating that he failed to proof read the piece before it was published.

I doubt the remarks in Ron Paul’s 1992 newsletter are actually “racist,” as if to infer there is some biological or psychological differences among [race] groups. We all know, in the first place, that “race” is a bogus category invented by the eugenics movement as it emerged from the 19th century. (What actually exist are cultural differences: different more/less successful adaptations to modern society - e.g. education - and small variances as documented by Murray & Herrnstein in The Bell Curve (1994).

Murray & Herrnstein pretty well proved there are no significant differences, although their even presuming to look at the data created a firestorm of accusations about “racism.”

The best discussion of this issue I know is Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005), but Sowell makes very clear the issue is redneck culture. Redneck culture is very maladaptive to modern society. Many former African slaves in the USA (importantly: not Brazilian nor Caribbean) grew up absorbing and learning redneck culture from the white community. It is not any thing biological about people with African heritage.

If Ron Paul was only reporting higher crime rates and broken family rates among the African American community, then Lyndon Johnson is more to blame.

It is a fact that many African Americans are infected with the inferior Redneck culture. Not only candidates like Ron Paul should speak frankly about this contributing factor to (1) poverty, (2) poor school achievement, and (3) adverse social discrimination.

Criticism of the “facts on the ground” is some kind of blind spot among Ron Paul’s critics.

Congress is beginning work again on immigration law. Amid all the fanfare, the underlying problem with U.S. immigration policy will not be changed. Our current system promotes the migration of family members, particularly elderly relatives, and those new people rapidly qualify for financial aid from taxpayers. Meanwhile, young workers who would pay taxes are denied visas.

Much of the heated debate on this subject is rhetorical spin. Frank Luntz, the Republican strategist credited with the 1994 congressional victory of Newt Gingrich, writes this advice for conservatives in his book, Words That Work (2007): “Never say ‘undocumented workers.’ Instead say ‘illegal immigrants.’ This linguistic distinction may prove to be the political battle of the decade. The label used to describe those that enter America illegally determines the attitudes people have toward them.”

Describing the issue with that word, “illegal,” brings support to opponents of immigration they would not otherwise earn. To escape the mind-clouding effect of this rhetoric, look at the original law these immigrants have violated. Surely this is a victimless crime.

In 1924, inspired by the eugenics movement “to save the superior Nordic race” and under growing racial hatred fostered by the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist groups, the U.S. Congress adopted for the first time a national quota system for immigration. That quota system favored northern Europeans, and eastern/southern Europeans, Latinos (Catholics and Jews) as well as Asians and Africans were virtually locked out for 45 years. This quota system still exists today. This is what makes it “illegal” for many young workers to accept jobs from eager employers who want to hire them.

The quota system transforms the question about “who is valuable” and “who should come to America” into a collective, national issue. It is actually an issue that ought to be decided at the local, individual level by families and by employers.

In 1965, the quota system was modified to reduce its racist taint. The top priority became bringing parents, siblings, and children from the old country to live in the United States. This was expanded in 1980, 1986, and 1990. But the overall national quota system was not changed.

The result has been to tilt the age demographic of those receiving legal visas, and those on the waiting list for years to come, toward more and more elderly immigrants. More than two-thirds of all visas today are given to family members.

The bottom line is, why should the rest of us care? Why not eliminate the national quota system? Families want to bring their close relatives to America for a better life. Employers want young, willing workers. Perhaps the only reason we should care is that the rest of us are the ones who pay for generous, compassionate welfare programs: poverty medical care and aid to the elderly.

The quota system favors older people. America’s welfare system mostly gives money to older people. Immigration law contains a provision against new immigrants immediately going on welfare, but it is still a systemic problem. After a waiting period of only a few years, large numbers of these elderly family members qualify for public aid, Supplemental Security Income, free medical care, and other forms of assistance.

It is clear America’s immigration quota system is badly broken. The national quota system favors nonworkers. America needs and wants more young workers for its growing economy, but instead we are encouraging immigration by elderly people who will soon be living on the generosity of a compassionate government – and the taxpayers. Those who are “illegally” working are actually contributing taxes to support everyone else’s elderly relatives.

With the quota system filled up with old people, young workers from Mexico have no choice except to run across the Sonoran Desert. Who can blame them?

Moreover, most illegal immigrants do not even come across the Mexican border. It is easy to get a tourist or student visa to come into the United States. Most illegal immigrants simply do not return home when their visas expire. There is no system for tracking people with expired visas.

The national quota system not only shifts the proper focus on “who is valuable, who should come,” from individual Americans – employers and families – it also threatens the civil liberties of every other American.

There now is a federal requirement for employers to check whether job applicants are legal residents, but it is hard to enforce.

In Arizona, it is already mandated employers must verify with computerized data banks, maintained in Washington, to prevent anyone from getting a job if his or her papers are not in order.

Watch out for computer errors in the future that will frustrate many legal Americans from starting a new job.

Big brother will be watching.