Did I miss a memo from the political science department declaring issues irrelevant to U.S. Senate campaigns?
I check the websites for our four contenders—Marion Michael Rounds, Rick Weiland, Larry Pressler, and Gordon Howie—and find that not one of them offers what I thought was the standard laundry list of policy priorities on one nice neat webpage for voter convenience.
- Weiland comes closest, posting a "Priorities" page that crystallizes his crie de cœur contra crony capitalists' control of Congress. But that page doesn't say, "Elect me, and we'll do X, Y, Z...."
- The Rounds menu offers no Issues page. Rounds gives us a biography, a longer biography, and a "Record of Experience," his spin on his eight years of non-achieving governorship.
- Pressler offers no policy summary. His website mostly reprints other press about him.
- Howie offers a string of bloggy posts that make clear his love of guns, his fear of immigrants, and his hope for Christian theocracy. But again, interested voters have to hunt around; Howie offers no summary of his positions.
On the House side, I gave Democrat Corinna Robinson a hard time for not getting an Issues page up. But now she has such a page, making clear to voters her legislative priorities. Even Rep. Kristi Noem, not known for her expository skill, offers a concise Issues page with links to more detailed explanations. (Noem's Affordable Care Act and budget pages come up snake eyes this morning, but at least her blurbs are on the summary page.)
An informed legislative agenda should be more than a bullet list of Tweet-sized slogans. Thorough analysis (and blog coverage!) of the candidates requires ongoing reading of multiple interviews and speeches. But when voter attention is a scarce commodity, we need to make candidate research as easy as possible for those citizens who do take precious moments from their work and family time to study the folks on their ballots. Candidates, help us out: get those Issues pages up!
They don't want to be pinned down to anything anymore. This reminds me of when I asked Ernie Otten why he choose to vote against the resolution of the teacher shortage. His response was basically that he did not want to make that vote and have someone hold him to it when there was a request for education funding.
One of the problems for candidates who are serious about issues, is that cheap, sleazy, creeps like the Rove, Koch, banksters PACs, and so on, will spend millions lying about the candidate's positions and making up crap about its effects.
Ms. Geelsdottir, some people spend almost zero and lie about candidate's positions and make up crap about the perceived effects. Are they any worse? I, young lady, think they are an even bigger problem.
Grudz my dear, I think both are reprehensible.
Timing is everything in a campaign and the candidates know it, we can look for stronger positions around the Labor Day when the traditional campaign start.
If and when there are any serious debates, there will be immediate press releases critical of other candidates and writing more solid platforms.
rove-for one did a lot of damage as we all know.
kochs-for two seem to be behind phenomenal influence peddling. can't trust pbs, nova or Johns Hopkins CUMC anymore, to mention three biggies.
LL, why did you say this: "can't trust pbs, nova or Johns Hopkins"?
I mean, LE.
(Oops. I'm required to say more, or the gremlin in here will not accept it. Says shorter answers are "not useful." I am chagrined.)
well, the more i look, kochs fund everything
like our kids' high schools:
"We don't try to push or drive ideology," Birmingham, the YE official, told HuffPost. 7.17.14 "From an entrepreneurial standpoint, we're big on free markets, of course. We're big on voluntary trade. We're big on property rights. All of those things align with their [the Kochs'] thoughts. Those are things that most entrepreneurs believe in."
Today, to teach its most controversial lessons, YE often relies on videos provided by the Charles Koch-chaired Institute for Humane Studies, which operates out of George Mason University in Virginia. The videos are produced and marketed under an institute arm called Learn Liberty....
kochs fund and chair geo. mason univ, Columbia univ. (johns Hopkins), ect
they fund Antarctic drilling research at Univ. Montana, they fund complete climate data skewing just like the tobacco industry and others.
they own politicians-w. va congressman, a p.e. runs committees spouting climate b.s.-like the arctic ice is returning, rather than declining significantly over time.
they fund evolutionary biology touting that humans are adaptive so abrupt man-caused climate change is good for us.
there is so much disinformation in so many fields that the middle class isn't going to have any real understanding of factual, unbiased science. we used to be able to rely on pbs, npr, nova ect. not any more. as the other les likes to call me - chicken little- awwwwk- the sky is falling. i'll take that debate any day.
would be happy to provide citations in the appropriate thread.
It looks like an extensive and frightening list. I saw Johns Hopkins on it, but not PBS, NPR, or Nova. I don't know who/what YE is.
huff post 7.16.14 claims Youth Entrepreneurs, 501 (c) 3 KOCH non-profit formed 1991 has educated 10,000 poor kids giving high school and college credit in 29 schools in KS, MO. bless their libertarian hearts.
Oh! Thanks.
Got this message when I tried to post my comment:
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I hope I have said something useful now.