February 8, 2010

A new sign for Main Street.


4 comments:

rbj said...

It appeals to emotion (fear) without in any way supporting its premise. It's really returning to the old law that is the Kool-Aid against fairly giving government rule to the majority.

The Rush Limbaugh tactic. Accuse one's opponents of precisely the infraction one is guilty of.

Joyce McCloy said...

I doubt any readers are losing any sleep over that sign. It may hopefully get people to think.

What truly IS Rush Limbaugh-like is to use talking points with no facts behind them. Many of the IRV talking points have been disproven with studies of IRV elections in the US and in other countries.
But people who are critical of the IRV talking points often have to deal with personal attacks.

A good example of how pro IRV advocate resorted to their own version of "negative campaigning" for IRV happened early on in San Francisco to Professor David Lee who is head of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee.

See: Smearing for IRV
July 18, 2003
...IRV supporters are conducting a nasty campaign to smear the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, a group concerned about IRV’s potential to confuse and disenfranchise more than 15,000 voters who use Chinese-language ballots.
http://www.asianweek.com/2003/07/18/smearing-for-irv/

Now thats fear when someone threatens you with character assassination and also puts a decent voter education organization in jeopardy.

There's an article now over at New America Foundation with an innuendo laden title "Is Big Money behind SF Lawsuit?" which is intended to attack the character of the San Francisco citizens and former candidate who are trying to stop SF's rank only 3 type IRV. The group argues that voters should be allowed to rank all candidates in a contest. In fact, if voters did rank all choices, then IRV might actually provide a majority winner.

But speaking of pouring huge money into an agenda - tons of money is being spent on promoting IRV to communities. See this article for more info
http://instantrunoff.blogspot.com/2009/09/dollars-spent-on-direct-lobbying-for.html

rbj said...

well, i don't wanna get distracted with the SF thing. not yet.

What, about the Burlington IRV "talking points with no facts behind them. Many of the IRV talking points have been disproven with studies of IRV elections in the US and in other countries."

Joyce, i would like you to be specific about what talking point is used and who has disproven it. Tony Gierzynski is okay, i'm happy to debate stuff you might cite from him. in fact, i agree with some specific conclusions he makes.

but returning to the old system helps no one, except Republican mayoral candidates and their supporters (at the expense of the majority).

Anonymous said...

"What truly IS Rush Limbaugh-like is to use talking points with no facts behind them."

You mean like the proponents of the repeal of IRV in Burlington are doing?? Please...give us all a break carpet-bagger...

"But people who are critical of the IRV talking points often have to deal with personal attacks"

...because, unfortunately, their "arguments" are just plain silly & have been debunked well over a year ago now.

"See: Smearing for IRV
July 18, 2003"

This is old news, and no one is going to give a damn about it in VT. San Francisco is *not* Burlington. BTW, why should voters be using "Chinese-language ballots" in this first place?

"But speaking of pouring huge money into an agenda"

...yea, and by "huge" you apparently mean a little over $100K *nationwide*. Yea, that sounds really "huge" to me...not...
------------------------

"Joyce, i would like you to be specific about what talking point is used and who has disproven it."

She doesn't *have* any specifics...just vague & incorrect assertions, period. She's just a an anti-IRV clone.

"Tony Gierzynski is okay"

...if one doesn't spend more than a few minutes thinking about the nonsense that he writes that is.