🚀 go-pugleaf

Are you tired of being bombarded by political one-liners ?

Do you resent having Political Action Committees trying to frighten
you, intimidate you, persuade you into voting like a reactionary,
instead of a thinking, reasoning human being ?

Are you tired of millions of dollars being spent dividing us against
one another, so that we fight instead of organizing ourselves ?

I _am_ tired, and I _do_ resent it. Damned right. I always have.

Here's what I do to counter this evil - and I use that word
deliberately - trend towards turning the population into unthinking
automatons.

I read the Voter Information Pamphlet.

Now, mind you, even the voter information pamphlets have propoganda in
them. Side A submits slanted commentaries. Side B submits their
equally slanted commentaries. Side A foams at the mouth. Side B foams
at the mouth. Once in a very great while, Side C injects a note of
rationality, but this is a rare event. So I skip that, by and large,
although I do go over it to see which side descends the lowest, as a
part of my decision-making algorithm.

Reading the actual law is impossible, in most cases, as it is
gibberish, by lawyers, for lawyers. Sure, I make a valiant effort. But
it's pretty obvious they don't want me to read it, it's _not_ the
King's English ...

But there is a summary, which is fairly straightforward, and which can
be compared to all of the above rhetoric and lawyerese. And there is
always a commentary from the Controller, telling how this will affect
finances.

Between the summary and the controller's comments and whatever else I
can glean from the rest of the pamphlet, it's fairly easy to get
several orders of magnitude more information than you'll ever get from
the boob tube, or any other media controlled by the power brokers of
our decaying, pathetic society.

Somewhere in the pamphlet is a single page with everything listed,
along with a YES and a NO. Take a hiliter, mark the page, and, as you
go through the pamphlet, mark your vote, YES or NO, with the hiliter.

Now, do a sanity check. Go to sleep ... and when you get up, go over
your pamphlet(s) again. Make sure everything makes sense, on a second
reading.  It usually does, but sometimes something changes, and you
mark the change.

Now, take this page with you, go into your precinct voting booth, and
vote.  It'll take about two minutes, if you do it right ... and you'll
never look back, because your every decision will be a solid one, free
of political rivalries, scare tactics, and the rest of the nonsense
that has made its way into the political arena.

It's not only important to vote ... it's important to vote
intelligently.  With the number of issues facing us as an electorate,
no other method can possibly offer us any hope.

Please vote ... but, please, do so thoughtfully. Not emotionally. Send
a message to your 'representatives' ... show them you won't be
frightened, or talked down to, or treated like a five-year-old.

And do me a favor ... vote down every new jail you see suggested. To
do anything else is to tell the legislators that it's OK to make more
and more stupid laws. Something like 80% of the jail population is
incarcerated for drug-related crimes, better addressed as a medical
problem.

Thanks.


-- richard

-- 
=====
-- richard childers		rchilder@us.oracle.com		1 415 506 2411
         oracle data center  --  unix systems & network administration
                    Klein flask for rent. Inquire within.

[ I would think twice about saying that "drug related crimes" (often
including murder and robbery) are a medical problem -- except for the
victim.  -CWM]