League of Young Voters PAC:

Your vote is powerful. But these ballots can be confusing! That's where a voter guide can help out. Find a voter guide for your area, or create your own guide that other people can use. It's easy.

From the PAC history page:

The League of Young Voters PAC was started by Billy Wimsatt, hip hop activist and author, in 2003. Billy was an occasional voter who never really thought his vote mattered. But one November evening when Billy went to cast his ballot at the polls he stared up and down the ballot and realized that he was only prepared to check the box for Governor but had no idea who to vote for to be judge, controller or any of the local positions. Billy left the polls with a new idea and mission: voter guides for the hip-hop generation, made by young people for young people -- in every community across the country. No more giving away votes. It was time for young people to educate ourselves and make a youth voting blocs across the country.

By November 2004 the League of Young Voters PAC had 163 voter guides across the country in 44 states. The guides were distributed at clubs, concerts, coffeehouses -- everywhere people could be reached. In addition, the League developed theballot.org, an online site where anyone can create their own voter guide for their own community, reaching hundreds of thousands of people and helping them make informed votes. The League of Young Voters PAC has been credited for swinging key elections on the state and local level and building significant influence on national elections as well. In countless communities across the country the League's voter guides are trusted sources of information about the important choices in every election.

Voter Guides - theballot.org

Michael Kinsley:

There are a dozen ways to look at the national debt and the annual government deficit, and they all lead to varying degrees of panic. What's especially scary about our fiscal situation is that everybody knows the facts and concedes the implication, but nobody is doing anything about it.

Decius:

I said I'd do something about this, and I am.

Wendy Kaminer:

I wish the issues were vetted ... but I think they're not, because voters don't have the time, or the energy, or the information.

Tribal Leader:

We Taliban have time.

Christopher Hitchens:

I could introduce you to dozens of enthusiastic and intelligent people, highly aware of "the issues" and very well-informed on all questions from human rights to world trade to counterinsurgency, to none of whom it would occur to subject themselves to what passes for the political "arena." They are willing to give up potentially more lucrative careers in order to work on important questions and expand the limits of what is currently thinkable politically, but the great honor and distinction of serving their country in the legislature is only offered to them at a price that is now way too steep.

The Economist:

In all his speeches, John McCain urges Americans to make sacrifices for a country that is both "an idea and a cause".

He is not asking them to suffer anything he would not suffer himself.

But many voters would rather not suffer at all.

Josh Kraushaar:

Democrats have portrayed the influx of GOP outside money into the political process as sinister, raising the unsubstantiated specter of foreign influence into the political process. But money chases momentum -- not the other way around.

Lawrence Lessig:

Under our current system of campaign finance, there is no overlap between the interests of voters and of contributors. There is instead a fundamental gap. The sort of thing you need to do to make contributors happy is not the sort of thing you need to do to make voters happy.

Jay Rosen:

Who's going to win? What's the strategy? Is it working? Focusing on those things helps advertise the political innocence of the press because "who's winning?" is not an ideological question. By repeatedly asking it journalists underline that theirs is not an ideological profession. But how does this pattern help voters make a decision? Should they vote for the candidate with the best strategy?

My own view is that journalists should describe the world in a way that helps us participate in political life. That is what they are "for".

Michael Tomasky:

One old rule of politics is that when the other side is shooting itself in the foot, do nothing - just stand back and watch.

But we are in a new media and political environment.

So I propose a new rule: when the other side is shooting itself in the foot, stand close by and keep handing out bullets.

Robert Darnton:

Thomas Jefferson formulated it succinctly: "Knowledge is the common property of mankind."

We have the technical means to make Jefferson's dream come true, but do we have the will?

Martin Wolf:

Of the need there can be no doubt. Of the will, the doubts are many.

Christopher Calabrese:

If you can identify any individual at a distance and without their knowledge, you literally allow the physical tracking of a person anywhere there's a camera and access to the Internet.

Anil Dash:

We're all celebrities now, in a sense. Everything that we say or do is on the record.

Drake Bennett:

When asked what they most regret in their recent past, subjects tend to describe actions, but over the long run, people regret the things they didn't do, whether it's not going to night school or never learning to play the piano.

Susan Orlean:

For some reason, even people who did fairly well in high school biology ask me whether you need a rooster to have eggs, which is like asking whether a woman needs a boyfriend in order to ovulate.

Joel Stein:

There is so much you can't know about your spouse when you get married, like that one day she will want to eat her placenta.

Joe Klein:

There is something profoundly diseased about a society that idolizes its ignoramuses and disdains its experts. It is a society that no longer takes itself seriously.

Lawrence Lessig:

Somehow, as a culture, we, or maybe just we who are old, have forgotten how to deal with stuff we can't believe.

Drake Bennett:

America is disappointed. But it turns out that human beings are easy to disappoint. Research suggests that even when people know that someone has nothing but bad options to choose from, they still blame the decider for a bad outcome.

Johann Hari:

The Cranfield School of Management studied 170 companies who had used management consultants, and it discovered just 36 per cent of them were happy with the outcome -- while two thirds judged them to be useless or harmful.

Marlo Stanfield:

You want it to be one way. But it's the other way.

Jay Rosen:

Ninety percent of everything is crap, but that's nothing novel. There's just more everything now.

Bruce Feiler:

Go. You'd be surprised at what you get just by showing up.

Steven Johnson:

Chance favors the connected mind.

James X. Dempsey:

They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.

@AlanDeSmet:

Sure, @lessig is charismatic and smart, but then he calls for widespread cannibalism and baby punching.

Steve Bellovin:

It's a disaster waiting to happen.

Joel Jewitt:

We didn't do it on purpose.

Amit Singhal:

It's what you want.

Eric Schmidt:

Think of it as augmented humanity.

John Gruber:

Here's my theory: the problem with Google is that Eric Schmidt is creepy.

Casey Affleck:

There was no wink.

Evercookie:

Simply think of it as cookies that just won't go away.

Roger Dingledine:

Counterintuitively, even if a tool has many users, as long as nobody talks about it much it tends not to get blocked.

John Barry and Evan Thomas:

The secretary of defense does his own laundry, shopping, and cooking, and waters the flowers outside his house.

Homer:

Can't someone else do it?

Barack Obama:

I'm done doing this!

Jack Schafer:

The numbskullery continues.

Karen Nussbaum:

They're angry, and they're ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

The Economist:

American exceptionalism comes in many forms, but one of the odder ones is the way it sets its electoral boundaries.

Politically controlled redistricting helps drive the hyper-partisanship of politics. In turbulent political times, when large swings in the vote are possible, party bosses feel driven to construct safer seats than they once used to need. With fewer seats changing hands on election day, this tends to shift the focus of politics away from the general election itself, and on to the primaries in which the parties select their candidates. The turnout in primaries is tiny, typically only between 10% and 20% of voters, and tends to be disproportionately composed of activists. So those selected tend to be politically slanted to the left or the right extremes.

On November 2nd, a big blow could be struck against the ancient practice of gerrymandering, when California's voters will decide whether or not to turn the task over to an independent Citizen Redistricting Commission, laboriously constructed so as to be balanced and independent by a process of screening and random selection.

Most other states don't have the power to change voting rules by popular ballot, meaning that legislatures will, in effect, have to vote to disempower themselves.

Until every district matters, perhaps we could use a tool that vectors prospective authors of Wikipedia articles toward the "battleground" districts where their efforts at educational outreach might have an impact.

Aaron Swartz:

As described in Jeffrey Toobin's excellent New Yorker article, The Great Election Grab, new computer software allows whatever party controls the state legislature to redraw districts so finely and accurately that of the 435 House seats, only about 30 are actually contested.

Jeffrey Toobin:

Before 1990, most state legislators did their redistricting by taking off their shoes and tiptoeing with Magic Markers around large maps on the floor, marking the boundaries on overlaid acetate sheets. Use of computers in redistricting began in the nineties, and it has now become a science.

The software is called Caliper's Maptitude for Redistricting and costs about four thousand dollars per copy. The software permits mapmakers to analyze an enormous amount of data -- party registration, voting patterns, ethnic makeup from census data, property-tax records, roads, railways, old district lines.

Nathaniel Persily:

There used to be a theory that gerrymandering was self-regulating. But it's not self-regulating anymore. We have become very good at predicting how people are going to vote. The software is too good, and the partisanship is too strong.

Electoral boundaries in America: Time to bury Governor Gerry

Billy Hoffman:

Your Time is the most valuable thing that you have. There is nothing more important than how you spend your time.

Clay Shirky:

Time is a precious commodity. Increasingly, I'm trying to maximize it.

Scott Berkun:

When I was younger I thought busy people were more important than everyone else. Otherwise why would they be so busy?

Stefan Klein:

We are not stressed because we have no time, but rather, we have no time because we are stressed.

Leo Babuta:

Stop being busy and your job is half done.

Michael Lopp:

When you become a manager of people, an odd thing happens. You're automatically perceived as being busier.

Having a meaningful conversation with anyone takes time.

A 1:1 is a place to listen for what they aren't saying.

Your reward for a culture of healthy 1:1s is a distinct lack of drama.

Paul Graham:

There are two types of schedule: the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule.

Penelope Trunk:

Stop talking about time like you need to save it. You just need to use it better.

Listen For What They Aren't Saying

Neil Shea:

In Afghanistan every soldier or Marine, every civilian, possesses some small piece of the truth. Journalists pull these pieces together into stories, but it is impossible to collect them all. We generally believe, or hope, that others at higher levels and with grander titles have gathered more and see a larger collage of reality.

Arab Proverb:

It is good to know the truth, but it is better to speak of palm trees.

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef:

The biggest mistake of American policy makers so far might be their profound lack of understanding of their enemy.

P.J. O'Rourke:

We're outsiders in Afghanistan, and this is Occam's razor for explaining the Taliban.

Traditionalism being one of the things that makes Afghanistan so hard for Americans to understand. We Americans have so many traditions. For instance our political traditions date back to the 12th-century English Parliament if not to the Roman Senate. Afghans, on the other hand, have had the representative democracy kind of politics for only six years. Afghanistan's political traditions are just beginning to develop. A Pashtun tribal leader told me that a "problem among Afghan politicians is that they do not tell the truth." It's a political system so new that that needed to be said out loud.

If Americans claim not to understand Afghan corruption, we're lying. Bribery has been a dominant part of our foreign policy in Afghanistan, the way it's been a dominant part of everyone's foreign policy in Afghanistan including al Qaeda's. What we Americans don't understand about Afghan corruption is why it's so transparent, just a matter of openly taking money.

Anatol Lieven:

Afghanistan is often called a "medieval" country as if this were an insult. It would in fact be a compliment -- if only it were true. In many respects, Afghanistan is in fact closer to the European Dark Ages than to the European -- or Muslim -- Middle Ages.

Robin Nagle:

You can understand the entire cosmos of a culture by looking at its definitions of dirty and clean, and acceptable versus unacceptable, the profane and the sacred.

Lawrence Lessig:

Washington is the kind of city where one never writes if one can call, never calls if one can speak, never speaks if one can nod, and never nods if one can wink.

There may be a quid. There may be a quo. But because the two are independent, there is no pro.

Marcia Angell:

They consistently refer to "potential" conflicts of interest, as though that were different from the real thing, and about disclosing and "managing" them, not about prohibiting them.

In short, there seems to be a desire to eliminate the smell of corruption, while keeping the money.

Decius:

I've come to the conclusion that you actually want shifty, dishonest politicians elected by an apathetic populace. This means that things are working.

Wendy Kaminer:

These issues, you say they're going to get vetted in the campaign. They're going to get talked about in the campaign, but that's not getting vetted -- because, it's going to be, a conversation, it's going to be an is-too, is-not conversation ... It's not as if the voters are going to go out there, and read the underlying legislation, do the underlying research on the issue. They're just going to decide whose word they take. You know, that's how voters decide these issues. They decide whose word they're going to take, because they're not going to do the underlying research, and that's why I say, it comes down, not to specific issues ... but to what people glean are the attitudes of the candidates, personalities, and what the general environment feels like.

I wish the issues were vetted ... but I think they're not, because voters don't have the time, or the energy, or the information.

Tom Cross:

Most people in the State of Georgia have never heard of a Voter Information Guide and the idea has never occurred to them. If you think this is a good idea, tell someone else about it.

Gunnar Hellekson:

You get transparency first, and that compels reform. That's the whole point.

Dan Gillmor:

Maybe we, the audience, have to take some responsibility on ourselves, being more literate about media techniques, especially the kind used to persuade or manipulate audiences.

An exchange:

Moe: You gotta ... think hard, and come up with a slogan that appeals to all the lazy slobs out there.
Homer: [moans] Can't someone else do it?
Moe: "Can't someone else do it?", that's perfect!

There Is No Pro

On Drew Gilpin Faust:

She wanted to understand how whole classes of people can get caught up in a shared worldview, to the point that they simply can't see.

Robin Nagle:

What is that thing? What is that mental process where we invisibilize something that's present all the time?

You can understand the entire cosmos of a culture by looking at its definitions of dirty and clean, and acceptable versus unacceptable, the profane and the sacred. You can start with something as humble as dirt and read it out to an entire worldview.

Decius:

One must assume that all garbage is monitored by the state. Anything less would be a pre-911 mentality.

Seth Kugel:

That's not grime you're seeing, it's historical charm!

Michiru Hoshino:

Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!

Alex Carp:

Many of Professor Nagle's insights come from exploring the social energy and meaning of an accelerated elimination process that, in the effort to make a city's garbage invisible, has created Fresh Kills, one of the only man-made structures massive enough to be visible from earth's orbit.

Emily Cockayne:

Focusing on offenses to the eyes, ears, noses, taste buds, and skin of inhabitants of England's pre-Industrial Revolution cities, Hubbub transports us to a world in which residents were scarred by smallpox, refuse rotted in the streets, pigs and dogs roamed free, and food hygiene consisted of little more than spit and polish. Through the stories of a large cast of characters from varied walks of life, the book compares what daily life was like in different cities across England from 1600 to 1770.

An exchange:

Moe: You gotta ... think hard, and come up with a slogan that appeals to all the lazy slobs out there.
Homer: [moans] Can't someone else do it?
Moe: "Can't someone else do it?", that's perfect!

Matt Taibbi:

If America is now circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain.

The Entire Cosmos of a Culture

Ginia Bellafante:

There used to be a time if you didn't have money to buy something, you just didn't buy it.

Paul Krugman:

In a housing market that is now depressed throughout the economy, mortgage holders and troubled borrowers would both be better off if they were able to renegotiate their loans and avoid foreclosure. But when mortgages have been sliced and diced into pools and then sold off internationally so that no investor holds more than a fraction of any one mortgage, such negotiations are impossible. And because of the financial industry lobbying that prevented mortgages from being covered by personal bankruptcy proceedings, no judge can impose a solution. The phenomenon of securitization, created in the belief that a large-scale housing crash would never happen, has trapped investors and troubled borrowers in a mutually destructive downward spiral.

Matt Taibbi:

If America is now circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain.

David Leonhardt:

You can make an argument that the end of the housing crash is near.

But that's not what I found.

Paul Krugman:

Lost decade, anyone?

The Economist's Washington correspondent:

By some measures, America already has a lost decade in its rearview mirror. A couple more would mean a lost generation. Worst of all, it would mean my generation.

Decius:

Man, what a great time to be alive!

Penelope Trunk:

Stop talking about time like you need to save it. You just need to use it better.

Further Down The Spiral