Today, hundreds of newspapers, at the initiative of the Boston Globe, are purporting to stand up for a free press against Trump’s rhetoric. Today also marks exactly one month since I was dragged out of the July 16 Trump-Putin news conference in Helsinki and locked up until the middle of the night. As laid in my cell, I […]
The Immigration Con: How the Duopoly Makes the Public Forget about Roots Causes of War and Economics
Many are focusing on the travel ban, largely targeting Muslim countries, and the separation and detention of asylum seekers separated from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border. The the U.S. media and political establishment has put the issue of immigration front and center, causing all manner of political venting and pro and anti Trump venom […]
Letter in Washington Post: “VotePact Offers Voters a Sensible Alternative”
The Washington Post just published this letter about VotePact: In his Aug. 24 op-ed about Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, “2016’s Ralph Nader,” Dana Milbank described VotePact.org as a group that backs third-party candidates. This simplification was a way of mentioning VotePact without noting the problem VotePact solves — a problem that pundits use […]
Nader Outlines VotePact as Strategy for So-Called “Swing States”
Today on the program “Democracy Now,” host Amy Goodman asked former presidential candidate Ralph Nader about “swing state strategy” for the election. It’s an ambiguous question and we were delighted to hear Nader respond by outlining the VotePact strategy, though he didn’t actually mention VotePact: Let’s say you’re in a swing state, and you think […]
Election helps bring into view serious issues in polling
I just posted this on the American Association for Public Opinion Research listserve. While I certainly agree that framing etc huge problem, doesn’t seem to me that this gets at critical issues made evident from what happened. There of course is a spiral of silence with regard to “third party” candidates. Stein and Johnson supporters […]
Should “Third Parties” Embrace VotePact?
From “Should Third Parties Support ‘Vote Pacts’ To Avoid ‘Spoiling’ Elections?” by Kit O’Connell at MintPress: “A lot of people have basically grown to depend on the confines of the two-party system and have a hard time getting their brain around a constructive, strategic path out of it,” Sam Husseini, a political activist, told MintPress […]
“This Political Activist Created A Meaningful Way For You To Vote Third Party”
From Bustle.com: “This Political Activist Created a Meaningful Way For You To Vote Third Party” by Amée LaTour: One of the main appeals of Vote Pact is that it allows people to vote for candidates they actually support without begrudgingly helping their least-preferred major-party candidate in doing so, since one vote is denied each candidate. Husseini suggests […]
The Huge Problem with Polls: My Letter to Frank Newport
This letter was sent on Sept. 24 — via an intermediary who knows him well — to Frank Newport of Gallup, the pollster adviser to the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. I’ve received no response. Ironically, Newport is author of Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People. I think a close […]
Lester Holt Told the First Big Lie
Before the faceoff between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, many were pleading that Lester Holt, the NBC anchor and moderator Monday night, to be a “fact checker.” Any delusions in that regard should have been dashed right away as he perpetrated a root falsehood at the very start of the event. Holt claimed that the […]
Debates: Another Level of Bipartisan Control
From accuracy.org: — “Televised Joint Appearances”: In 1985, the national chairs of the Democratic and Republican parties, Paul Kirk and Frank Fahrenkopf, signed a remarkable agreement that referred to future debates as “nationally televised joint appearances conducted between the presidential and vice-presidential nominees of the two major political parties … It is our conclusion that […]