Friday, August 24, 2012

This is a fantastic essay. It provides a useful framework for interpreting the bullshit rhetoric that gets thrown around in political circles and in the media.

With that essay in mind, I will focus on one piece of this article, Broke cities: What's next?:

"The best option is to empower the local control boards we already have: the local government that was elected," said Peter Baynes, executive director of the New York Conference of Mayors. "But they don't have sufficient power to manage their workforce costs, and what we've seen in municipalities is that this lack of power leads to such a problem that the state has to come in with a control board."

I happen to agree with that first sentence, being a fan of democracy. But that's beside the point. On to the rhetoric: "[...] they don't have sufficient power to manage their workforce costs [...]"

I think it would be fair to read that sentence as: administrations don't have the legal right to break negotiated contracts. But, that doesn't have the muddled and middle of the road and reasonable-like tone that this person is going for. So it gets changed to sufficient power and workforce costs.

And there is the rhetoric that can move the discussion to ways in which to put the screws to working folks, while sounding nice and reasonable. See?

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Voters can end company's political clout

OK, Mr. Advocate. You have identified a problem. That's all well and good. You also spend a lot of time lecturing Teh Voters of Albany County. As an Albany County voter, I kinda resent the lecture.

You failed to mention that if it wasn't for your colleagues, Gavin, Carleo-Evangelist, Hinman (and others I'm sure), Teh Voters would have no idea that all these contributions were from the same company.

Before you started your lecture, did you confirm that the TU has always and consistently informed Teh Voters about these contribution shenanagins? Are you certain that Teh Voters always have this information before we vote?

You also failed to discuss the mechanics of these contribution shenanagins. The muddying of the waters that occurs when donors set up LLC's for the purpose of making contributions and getting around contribution limits.

Does every voter need to become a campaign finance expert before he votes? Does every voter need to put in the time and effort that your colleagues did, when they pieced this puzzle together?

Why did you not feel the need to lecture the legiscritters who set up a system that is designed to disguise these campaign contributions?

Blame Teh Voters all you'd like. But we are not the ones who set up the system. We are not the ones who talk about reform and then use institutional inertia to keep the system just as it is. Put the blame where it belongs.