14. In the 1980s, because the atomic bomb explosion in a city in the US, I come back the US and emergency appointment of a president of the United States.
15. Many people take my things to the US and got money and even us my ID card to get the money.
16. In the year of 2001, I was the first high school student recommended to Beijing University, but not enrolled.
17. When I was in another school I was forced back home and no teacher like me.
18.Before there is a magazine who taken the name of Readers Digest(US) in China, someone found my father, my father then went on talking with the Readers Digest, then the magazine now can use the name of DuZhe, but when my father went to back with them, someone push my father down the rapid car.
19. When the government need us, they gave us antidote, when they needn’t us they injected forgotten pharmacy and force us out of work and wanna us die of hungry.
20. I need your help.
21. So I need you can help us back the USA.
Thanks!
Your sincerely,
Qiao Pei(乔培)
From Jiu Jiang City, China
P.S.1.And also take my uncle, the former president of Jiang Ze Min in China, back the USA, he has finished his job in China, I mean, he has help the China economy turn to higher and steady. I am here instead of US law take the former president , my uncle, Jiang Ze Min back the USA. And his family, Help us back USA.
P.S.2.And my aunt’s family, I mean my father’s sister and Jiang Ze Min’s sister, her husband is Mao Ze Dong, still alive. He is thin and little. Help us back USA.
We all have finished the job in China, we wanna be back USA, our home! Help us talk to the USA government and the China government and get us back the USA!
I have been in China for more than 27 years, I wanna be back USA. I have 27 years didn’t see my mother, she is the granddaughter of late president of Ronald Reagan.
I did not know the fifty states funded federal elections. OK I know what you mean but others don’t, and this is why it’s generally called “public funding of federal (presidential) elections. And you can’t prove the counterfactual that it would have been worse without public funding (except for Obama), although it ‘s true it has been far from perfect.
It sounds as bad as Lessig saying, “Obama did not go to a citizen funded high school, and Obama does not send his children to citizen funded high schools.” Likewise Obama did not go to a citizen funded college. The term state school is for fifty state funded colleges.
Also , no system of voting is perfect as proven by Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, which he got the Nobel prize for.
But you miss that funding of elections is to provide voters with information that is needed regardless of whatever voting system is used. The vast majority of voting models assume this problem away, assuming the voters have full information.
It’s an empirical question if one gets better results with taxpayers paying for information on candidates (with free speech problems if one restricts private donations) or if one gets better results letting donors pay for the information.
Take a good political science rational choice course or economics public choice course if you are in a “citizen funded” or other school.
]]>The Change Congress people, thus far, have not made the case that anything is wrong with Congress, in toto, that is a consequence of election funding. Second, how would their proposed solution, state funding of candidates, change anything about Congress? Thirty-five years of state funding of federal elections has changed nothing. Why would more of the same present a different outcome. To be fair, one should also present the possible bad effects of a change in policy; so that one can weigh the two against one another. Something which I have yet to hear.
If one can make the case that Congress is corrupt, you have to ask, is it Congress or is it the nature of politics? The founders believed that was the nature of politics. Their solution was to limit the powers of Congress and the other branches of government. They also left it to the various states to determine how to select their senators and representatives. I like that idea and that’s what I am for.
I think that if you don’t like the Senators and Representatives your state is sending to D.C. then you should lobby to repeal the 17th amendment and lobby your legislature to change the rules for electing representatives in your state. Don’t change the rules to elect the representative in my state.
There are other voting schemes. I prefer cumulative voting. I had hoped that when Prof. Lessig started this campaign he might latch on to something like cumulative voting. I don’t know how such a smart man could be mesmerized by such a crappy idea as state funding of elections.
For more on cumulative voting and its effects try Lani Guinier’s Tyranny of th Majority. Here’s a review:
http://bostonreview.net/BR19.3/tushnet.html
And an explanation of cumulative voting:
]]>If you guys have anything to offer other than “NOT”, I’m all ears.
]]>I think the most accurate description is “public funding, but
Lessig has obviously been picking up on the Republican tactic of renaming things to confuse voters like estate tax to death tax and so on.
And it’s too bad Ralph Nader went nuts and was not around to complain about these business practices instead of forming some utopian third party that only got Bush elected by splitting the vote – similar to what Lessig is doing now. I think it’s a disease of Ivy League law grads.
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