I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Posted by: Ken R at September 25, 2012 12:19 AM

I listened to that one. Pretty g*ddamned funny . . . until Nov. 6.

Posted by: mpetrie98 at September 25, 2012 2:14 AM

If I haven't heard so many of these before I would think the whole thing was fake; but, unfortunately, it is real. And these folks vote! ouch!

(my favorite funny line - "I'm against the whole war thing; but torture is okay")

Posted by: Charles at September 25, 2012 6:19 AM

Product of public schools. Has nothing to do with race - please, please please google Junipero Serra High School in Gardena California. Blacks can be athletes and students. And, they no longer use corporal punishment like they did in the 50s and 60s. They even accept non Catholics. Caring teachers and expectations matter - not race.

Posted by: Dave B at September 25, 2012 7:59 AM

God, I love this man.

Adoration, they call it... I adore him.

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at gmail] at September 25, 2012 8:59 AM

This is why I think voting would completely change if we erased that D/R after candidated names on ballots, and didn't allow them to hand out filled in sample ballots with the way 'our' party wants things.
At least on the state level voting numbers would drop in half.
Sorry, but if you can't name the VP candidate from your party, you are woefully uninformed and should not be voting.

Posted by: Joe J at September 25, 2012 9:24 AM

Or, if you can't name the VP candidate for "your" party, maybe you just don't give a hoot.

You (we) have no business deciding when other people are sufficiently "informed" to vote.

(Meanwhile, you [we] are still fully empowered to tell other people that they're full of shit. Broad suffrage has consolations.)

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at gmail] at September 25, 2012 9:49 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGVaEGgSNV8&feature=player_detailpage#t=53s

Posted by: Eric at September 25, 2012 10:35 AM

"You (we) have no business deciding when other people are sufficiently "informed" to vote."

Ummm...why not? In advance, I will grant you a gray zone - there are various places you could put the cutoff. However, requiring something, indeed anything would be an improvement over the current situation.

One argument calls for a minimal amount of knowledge. Another argument says that, since knowledge is rather subjective, you should at least have some skin in the game.

Skin in the game, very simple: to vote in a federal election, you must have paid some amount of federal income tax last year, however small. If you don't make enough to pay tax, but voting is important to you, you could always *voluntarily* pay $1 of tax.

Posted by: a_random_guy at September 25, 2012 11:02 AM

Heard - radio background this morning. We started with no taxation without representation. Maybe we should go to no representation without taxation.

Posted by: Dave B at September 25, 2012 11:13 AM

Which is why the experiment of just removing the Rs and Ds. It does not prevent people from voting. Just stops spoon feeding them.

Posted by: Joe J at September 25, 2012 11:31 AM

One could make the argument that what we have now is taxation without representation.

If representives are selling off their votes by bribing people to the point that they effectivly arent paying taxes, the argument could be made that those of us paying taxes are not being adequately represented

Posted by: lujlp at September 25, 2012 11:32 AM

I'm just gonna ditto lujlp.

Posted by: Sabrina at September 25, 2012 1:05 PM

Taxation without representation is clearly a bad thing because a government can take and spend one's money without accountability.

Unfortunately, we seldom talk about representation without taxation, where people can vote themselves government largess without responsibility.

People on welfare do work... their paid job is to vote once every 2 or 4 years.

Posted by: Trust at September 25, 2012 1:47 PM

> Ummm...why not?

Because someone you don't like and shouldn't trust will demonstrate, incontrovertibly, that you're a blithering idiot.

And even if it's true, Randy, even if it's true, I think the polity deserves the benefit of your explicit judgment.... Tallied at scheduled intervals.

The fantasy that civilization's insights can articulated and reduced to algorithmic application by a dispassionate clerk has been with us since that dawn of time.

Seriously— My employer is going through this with some software right now. If we could only quantify the information we need, then we could really move forward....

Yeah, right!... Let's just remove the human element!

Nope, sorry. The genius required to make this planet spin is broadly dispersed... Sometimes in the skulls of people who can't put it into words, and sometimes in the skulls of people who just won't.

Whether you recognize this truth, or are happy about it, is irrelevant.

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at gmail] at September 25, 2012 2:27 PM

What Crid said, plus this...Jim Crow is illegal. No poll taxes and tests before voting. These are violations of the Voting Rights Act. Still, I get the impulse. It would be funny if weren't so frigging sad.

Posted by: Sheep mommy at September 25, 2012 5:18 PM

Love Howard !

Posted by: Brooklyn Bead Goddess at September 25, 2012 5:27 PM

Me, too. Listened to him since he was at WWWW in Detroit. He's really smart. I wish he'd do a political show. He could make mincemeat of so many, and would show Americans what idiots they are for believing politicians are acting in anyone's best interest but their own.

Posted by: Amy Alkon at September 25, 2012 5:34 PM

Skin in the game, very simple: to vote in a federal election, you must have paid some amount of federal income tax last year, however small. If you don't make enough to pay tax, but voting is important to you, you could always *voluntarily* pay $1 of tax. -- a_random_guy at September 25, 2012 11:02 AM

Actually with the EITC it would probably have to be more than that, but still in the good idea category.

An independent truck driver called up a talk show the other day saying that he and his truck had earned $130K, his family of four with a SAHM had netted about $60K and his accountant had gotten that amount to down to the EITC.

The tax code needs to be re-written, seriously.

As far as these idiots -- it's scary that they can run around in public without adult supervision.

Posted by: Jim P. at September 25, 2012 7:55 PM

> Still, I get the impulse.

Oh Sheepers, so do I. It howls drunkenly through my CNS; the airway foams, the extremities twitch.

"When this administration gets in place all of its tax preferences, 60% of the American people, a large majority, will pay either no income taxes or less than 5% of their income. Now that is a majority that has zero incentive any longer to restrain the growth of a government they are not paying for. That is a classic case of moral hazard and it is an addiction and a dependency on the government."

But we can't do it. The reason our economy works is that our positions within it are dynamic. You can do something profitable for awhile and make a bunch of money, then start losing money, then do better and make money again. Should your voter status change each time?

I know I know I know... But government candy is far too often passed to society's winners, economic and otherwise.

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at gmail] at September 25, 2012 10:12 PM