HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: The Capricious Us
Date: 9 Apr 92 17:54:37 GMT
	<1992Apr9.155755.16805@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov>
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
In-reply-to: cah@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov's message of 9 Apr 92 15:57:55 GMT

cah@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Allen Halsell) writes:
|isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell) writes:
|>I've been following the campaign closely and I hear a lot of stuff off
|>Headline News and read a lot of stuff in the New York Times, New
|>Republic and various pseudo newszines like Time and Newsweek and I'm
|>curious:  why is the media going after Clinton, Brown etc like mad
|>dogs but ignoring Bush?
|>
|> ...
|>Is this the presidential equivalent of the incumbent effect or what?
|>Or will this happen after June?

|It might.  I'm pretty interested to see what happens when Roe v. Wade
|gets overturned.  Look for it in late June.  The ecological summit in
|Rio de Janeiro is likely to be a wash for the US, and BUsh will look
|even worse.


I wonder if they'll actually overturn RvW.

In any case, some eco-think-tank will be releasing a report either
today or tommorrow indicating that, basically, that real wages for
middle income familes have dropped each year over the last four
years--the first time ever since WWII.  In short, we really _aren't_
better off than we were four years ago.

Headline News claims that the Dems are gleefully waiting for the
report.
--
Peace.
     "The US has a vital interest in that area of the country."
                -- Vice President Dan Quayle Referring to Latin America.
                           ------
Don't just adopt opinions |  \/  | I am Charles Isbell, Homeboy from hell,
      develop them.       |  /\  | living axiom and anonymous absolute ruler
                           ------  of the cosmos.  

Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
From: solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky)
Subject: Re: A suggestion for presidential election reform
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 23:01:22 GMT

In article <6483@shodha.enet.dec.com>, berenson@cookie.enet.dec.com (Hal Berenson) writes:
|> 
|> In article <1992Apr8.051451.25520@athena.mit.edu>, solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky) writes...
|> > 
|> >WRONG! The point of voting is to have some say in how the country is run. If I
|> >vote libertarian, I will have absolutely no effect on who becomes the next
|> >president of the United States.
|> 
|> So, does that mean that you'll wait until the day before the election and
|> check the polls, then vote for whoever is in the lead so it's "your
|> {wo}man" that's elected?  Does it mean that you'll blindly vote for

The day before I vote, there will be some candidates that have a chance of
winning and some that don't. I will vote for the candidate I like best amongst
those that have a reasonable chance to win ATLEAST 1 STATE.

|> You are completely right, a Libertarian Presidential vote in 1992 likely won't

Thank you.

|> have an impact on who the next President is.  What it will determine is
|> the type of president we could have in the next decade.  Will you still
|> have little difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates,
|> or will you have a real choice?  If you want a real choice, then you've
|> got to start down the road NOW.  Libertarian success will either lead to
|> election of a Libertarian President, or movement in the Republican and/or
|> Democratic parties to a more pro-liberty stance.  Either alternative is
|> better than the current two-party drift to bigger, more intrusive,
|> government.

The election is to determine who will be president during 1993-6. If I want to
change the way elections are run, I can push for legislative reform and
constitutional amendments.

Jason W. Solinsky
From: gst@stiatl.salestech.com (Greg Tucker)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Sold Down the River...
Summary: Budget with 400 billion deficit passed..
Keywords: deficit
Date: 13 Apr 92 20:57:44 GMT
Article-I.D.: stiatl.1992Apr13.205744.8157
Organization: Sales Technologies, Inc.

On April 11th the US Senate passed the budget. It includes a
deficit of 400 billion bringing the United States federal
public debt to 4 trillion or $24,000 for every man, woman, and
child. 

The only candidates who have made an issue of the deficit are
Tsongas and Perot. 

Others have dodged the issue. Why? Because of the political
clout of the over 65 retired folks who always vote and 
want a free ride on the backs of the younger generation.

It is the first time in US history that one generation has
sold out another. In a few years the deficit will reach
10 trillion and America will be bankrupt. Why? What
have we to show for this massive debt? Medicare and 
medicaid that wasn't paid for. Pork barrel projects that
didn't deserve funding. Over crowded prisons we can't afford.
Foreign corporations who don't pay taxes.

Anyone under 50 has been 'sold down the river'.
Vote for Perot or Tsongas. They are our only hope.



-- 
    |\/\/\/|
    |      |     G. Tucker   uupsi!stiatl!gst 
    | (o)(o)   
    c      _)
From: fsspr@acad3.alaska.edu (Sean P. Ryan, Hardcore Alaskan)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: anyone hear of Bo Gritz?
Date: 17 Apr 92 18:07:53 GMT
Reply-To: fsspr@acad3.alaska.edu
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Fairbanks, Alaska...no wait, that's not right...
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-a3

In article <92108.102406C05705DA@wuvmd.wustl.edu>, C05705DA@WUVMD writes...
>The other day I tuned into a talk show on the radio; and some deligate
>named Bo Gritz was on it.  He's a low budgeted independent canidate run-
>ning for the presidency.  He is for cleaning out politics, via many of the
>people behind the scenes who practicly run the office.  Publish notes the
>same way Lincoln did in order to recover from the Civil War.  He has no
>political ties.  For what I heard, he made a lot of since; but I heard
>only about the final 10 minutes.  I don't remember what else he said.
>As for his background, he is a retired military officer.

Col. James "Bo" Gritz is basically affiliated with the Liberty Lobby and
most other populist-type organizations.  His is the typical right-wing
conspiratorialist spiel which sounds good the first few times you hear
it, but gets old very fast.  As for Gritz himself, his recent notoriety
concerns his efforts to free Vietnam POWs and his attempts to portray
the Bush administration as responsible for importing drugs from
Southeast Asia.

I like Gritz a lot, and he does have a lot more support for him than the
traditional far-right crowd that usually supports folks of this type,
but I realize that it would be a waste to put my support behind him,
given the realities of our current political situation today.

************************************************************************
Sean Patrick Ryan, Hardcore Alaskan*****Internet: fsspr@acad3.alaska.edu
WWIVnet: 220@9704*CFN: au414*IRC: RadioKAOS, Aoxomoxoa*Ph: (907)488-8365
BITnet: FSSPR@ALASKA****Snail: P.O. Box 83381, Fairbanks, AK  99708-3381
*Call me Pastor - Pastor - Pastor of Muppets I'm pulling your string...*
I'll do a disclaimer when they pry my cold dead hands from the keyboard.
From: tom@ssd.csd.harris.com (Tom Horsley)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: PAC's  Lets have a real democracy
Date: 15 Apr 92 12:08:56 GMT
Distribution: alt
Organization: Harris Computer Systems Division
In-reply-to: tolman%asylum.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu's message of 14 Apr 92 16:53:08 GMT

Actually, I have though about PACs a lot. One thought I had was to use PACs
to get the same effect as public financing.

   * Start a national oversight organization.

   * Form local PACs around the country informally affiliated with the
     national organization (due to limits on PACs, we can't have just 1 PAC,
     we have to have lots and lots of them, just like the S&Ls or the real
     estate industry).

   * The PACs contribute money equally to all candidates who get on the
     ballot (ballot access reform is a separate issue...) and who will sign
     a pledge to not take money from any PACs not affiliated with the
     oversight organization. The candidates must also sign a pledge to
     remove any campaign advertisements the oversight organization finds to
     be misleading or downright false.

There is, of course, one major obstacle: Getting the PACs successful enough
at raising money to outbid the other special interest groups so the
candidates are willing to sign the pledge...
--
======================================================================
domain: tahorsley@csd.harris.com       USMail: Tom Horsley
  uucp: ...!uunet!hcx1!tahorsley               511 Kingbird Circle
                                               Delray Beach, FL  33444
+==== Censorship is the only form of Obscenity ======================+
|     (Wait, I forgot government tobacco subsidies...)               |
+====================================================================+
From: gdh@calmasd.Prime.COM (Gerald Hall)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,alt.sex
Subject: Re: Vote NeXT!
Date: 7 Apr 92 06:28:48 GMT
Followup-To: alt.politics.elections
Distribution: usa
Organization: Computervision, San Diego, CA

In article <1992Apr3.023748.5564@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> birdman@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Christopher Kush) writes:
>
>                             Elect H. Ross Perot!

The fact that the man has made a lot of money and done some spectacular
but essentially stupid political stunts in his lifetime should not be
considered as qualifying him to be president.  Both probably helped him
get laid, though.

The fact is that he is really the worlds first welfare billionaire.
His fortune was made contracting for forms handling for the various
state Medicare programs (MediCal etc.) where he could apply computers
to the claims processing.  He was able to reduce the state's per claim
processing cost from just under a dollar to about thirty cents while
his actual costs were less than ten cents per claim.  The state agencies
were not allowed to enrich anyone directly off of these programs but their
subcontractors were allowed to profit.  And it was from these welfare
programs intended to benefit the poor that H. Ross Perot made his first
billions.

Because of the imense amounts of money involved and because of the huge
profit margins there were often allegations of "improper influence"
being brought to bear on members of the state agencies awarding these
contracts.  The gangs of "suits" that were brought in to implement the
conversion to the automated system made IBM reps look like hippies in
comparison.  Insiders in the companies being converted refered to them
as the "Texas Mafia".

I assume the stupid political stunts will get sufficient coverage
elsewhere, but for now me he doesn't sound much like the kind of guy
I would like to see elected president.

-- 
   /
  /	Jerry,	CalmaSD UNIX SysAdmin,	+1 619 587 3065
 /
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: The American Way
From: leech@cs.unc.edu (Jon Leech)
Date: 10 Apr 92 18:47:18 GMT
Organization: UNC-Chapel Hill Computer Science

In article <1992Apr8.123804.201424@uctvax.uct.ac.za>, swjnev01@uctvax.uct.ac.za writes:
> From the outside the American election looks like a complete farce.

    It looks that way to some people on the inside, too (perhaps a
significant number of people, given all the media coverage on unhappy
voters).
--
    Jon Leech (leech@cs.unc.edu)    __@/
    ``Have there been any good flame wars lately. (It's so funny to
    see adults act worse that the kids at my middle school...)'' - Jaci Passey
From: tdsmith@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Timothy Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: Why Vote for Bush?
Date: 8 Apr 92 23:26:19 GMT
Reply-To: tdsmith@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Timothy Smith)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Carderock Division, NSWC, Bethesda, MD

In alt.politics.elections, jhoskins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (James M Hoskins) writes:

>Bush's people (who have done quite well electing folks to the executive branch)
>will take a TV crew down to Arkansas in August and find people on the
>street, probably democrats, who will say, "I live here and I don't see that
>Clinton did that much for our environment--and he raised taxes too."

    Of course. However, the person most responsible for the last two
or three republican presidential bids is gone.  Lee Atwater won't be
doing his usual monkewrenching this campaign. Atwater was a brilliant 
dirty politics player.  The republicans will be hard put to find a suitable
replacement.

    Also, Clinton has shown remarkable resiliance.  He knows how to
take a punch and redirect it.  He is from the south, where dirty politics
is the norm.  Dukakas was sucker punched, Clinton is a counter-puncher.

    Finaly, Clinton can do the same to Bush anywhere in the country.
There are plenty of Republicans angry about the "no new taxes" pledge.

Tim Smith
From: tdsmith@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Timothy Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: Why Vote for Bush?
Date: 13 Apr 92 14:28:29 GMT
Reply-To: tdsmith@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Timothy Smith)
Organization: Carderock Division, NSWC, Bethesda, MD

In alt.politics.elections, c9e-am@danube.Berkeley.EDU (William F. Tell) writes:

>Perhaps it is Congress that should get down to business.  Bush gave his
>state of the Union address back in January.  He set the March 20 deadline..
>well, where has the Congress been?

    They passed an economic program before the bogus "deadline."

    Bush vetoed it because it would have increased the tax rate on the 
top few percent of the population (his power base).  Mexican standoff.
    Oh, and congress has been fighting off the attacks regarding 
"rubbergate."  Looks like a typical divided government election year
so far.  A republican president working with republicans in congress
to make congress look bad, so that the president looks good in comparison.

>William F. Tell

Tim Smith
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,bit.listserv.politics,talk.politics.theory
From: wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr)
Subject: Re: Why Vote for Bush?
Organization: Northeastern Law, Class of '93
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 18:02:26 GMT


In article <1992Apr9.130641.25637@chinet.chi.il.us>, 
pat@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Louis Sugent) said:

> Six reasons why You should vote for Bush:

> 3) Bush is as good on foreign policy as we are likely to see.
> (Except for China :-) ).  This is still very important in our
> World and for a President.  It is the one area that a President is
> actually in control over.  Everything else can and will be
> manipulated by congress (which has a known talent for screwing
> things up.)

This has always puzzled me -- Bush's reputation as being strong and
competent on foreign policy.  This is, after all, the same guy who
(as you mentioned) favors the current thugocracy in China, who went
to Kiev last year to tell all the Soviet Republics that they should
remain loyal to Moscow (and, one presumes, Gorbachev), who ordered
an invasion of Panama for no better reason than that its current
leader was a potential embarrassment to Bush, who helped build up
Saddam Hussein's Iraq into a power to be reckoned with, at least
briefly, who went on a field trip to Japan to beg them to please,
pretty please, pretty please with sugar on top give America some
economic breaks (dragging Lee Iacocca along with him, for
gawdsake!), who now demands that a sovereign nation, Libya, turn two
Libyan citizens over to a nation of his (Bush's) choosing or else,
and who babbles on about something called a "New World Order" but
never quite gets around to explaining just what he means by it...

Hell, Bush's only major "success" in foreign policy was in beating
up a nation whose military, for the most part, didn't even want to
fight.  Looks to me like the only area Bush has shown real strength
in over the years is spin control.

-- William December Starr <wdstarr@athena.mit.edu>
From: emmett@kpc.com (Emmett Kilgariff)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: A few questions for President Bush
Date: 15 Apr 92 17:57:32 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Kubota Pacific Computer Corporation, Santa Clara, CA

In article <1992Apr14.130559.25627@chinet.chi.il.us> pat@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Louis Sugent) writes:
>>
>>4. Your team has been at the helm for 12 years now. The S&L
>>   problem was born, bred and is now being bust within these
>>   12 years. How is it that the eagle-eyed Republican 
>>   Administration which prides itself on saving expenses
>>   let this assume such monstrous proportions? If you were
>>   not aware of it, what have you been doing, playing golf
>>   with Ronnie and Danny?
>
>   I would not begin to claim that Reagan was innocent on this one,
>but he did try to put a stop to it when it was "only" a $15 billion
>dollar problem as was blocked by congressmen who were receiving
>large sums of money from the S&L lobby.
>

It should also be noted the Current Secretary of State Jim Baker was
in charge of the Banks & S&Ls under Reagan, when the problem balooned
into a $100-200 Billion problem. He left his job under Reagan to become
Bush's Campaign manager, and we didn't hear of the problem until after
the election.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: Voter registration (was President Moonbeam!)
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 21:40:45 GMT

In article <1419@orpheus.slc.unisys.com> markb@slc.unisys.com (Mark Baranowski) writes:

>As an incentive to get people to vote, however, consider the following:
>why not give a tax credit of $5 to each person who voted in the last
>national election?

Um, to be perfectly honest, why should we bother?  The way I look at
it, the vote is a precious right for which people have literally
fought and died.  While I think it's up to the government to make it
reasonably easy to register (e.g. not set things up so the only way is
to take a day off work, or drive fifty miles), I don't think its
responsibility goes beyond that.  Anyone who needs to be cajoled into
voting deserves not to vote.  Anyone for whom the difference would be
made by a five dollar payment is not worth the five dollars it takes
to get him or her to the polls.  (I understand that there are people
who choose not to vote on the basis of principle, and while I might or
might not agree with the specific cases, I won't argue it.  But if the
"principle" can be bought for five bucks...)

Mike
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Never let your sense of morality prevent
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 you from doing what's right!"
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 --Mayor Salvor Hardin of Terminus
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Isaac Asimov, _Foundation_
Xref: sparky alt.politics.elections:729 talk.politics.misc:17742
From: lee@wang.com (Lee Story)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Ross Perot
Date: 10 Apr 92 19:04:55 GMT
	<1992Apr3.061306.13224@Cadence.COM>
	<1992Apr6.055137.6789@ringer.cs.utsa.edu>
	<1992Apr7.192135.415@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Wang Laboratories, Inc.

(Robert Lynn Ridenour) writes:

   Well, the dopey American public is well on its way to making the U.S. a
   first rate third world country.  And there aren't too many third world
   countries with stable governments.  We NEED a strong leader since we
   obviously can't do it ourselves.  Now, Hitler was a bit overzealous
   (serious understatement), but comparing any potential U.S. President
   to Hitler is just rationalizing your own disapproval of the candidate.

I have the absolutely horrible feeling that Mr.Ridenour is well-intended
in these statements.  Worse, that a majority of Americans may agree with
him.  The most serious flaw in the demonification of Hitler is that many
people seem to have come to see him as a total aberration, rather than as
one more in a *very* long line of egotistical populists who would do
*anything* for power.  Does anyone remember Genghis Khan, Timur Lenk,
Caesar, Napoleon, Stalin?  Does anyone fail to recognize that the former
chief of our international murder-and-mayhem organization (maybe a
necessary post, though I would hope not) is now President...that we're
on a slippery slope?  Or that the best guarantee of political stability
in modern history has *not* been a strong leader, but a government of
the people, by the people, for the people?
--

------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Let your mind go, and your body will follow.
                   _L.A._Story_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
     (^^above part of .sig stolen, but heck, it's my name^^)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Lee Story (lee@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
              (Merrimack Valley Paddlers)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: markb@slc.unisys.com (Mark Baranowski)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Voter registration (was President Moonbeam!)
Summary: Give voters a tax credit
Date: 4 Apr 92 03:46:26 GMT
Organization: Unisys, Salt Lake City, Utah

In article <1992Mar31.062049.10973@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>, Thomas.S.Marlowe@dartmouth.edu (Thomas S. Marlowe) writes:
> Here's an excerpt of something that a friend over email sent to me
> about Jerry Brown. [...]

> Rolling Stone:  Is voter registration part of your program?

> Jerry Brown: I bet that eighty to ninety percent of the names of eligible
> American voters are sitting in a government computer somewhere.  Why
> don't we just automatically register those people?  Why doesn't the
> government send them two or three letters like it does when it's
> chasing after them for taxes?  Let's register everybody.

I suppose that if the same computerized lists used for collecting
taxes were used to register voters then perhaps that could be
construed as an indirect poll-tax (e.g. you pay your taxes to the IRS
and we'll see you get registered).

As an incentive to get people to vote, however, consider the following:
why not give a tax credit of $5 to each person who voted in the last
national election?

What strikes me as funny is that a large number of people refuse to
register to vote in fear that they'll get called for jury-duty.
Because too few people were registering to vote, my home state of Utah
changed their policy to select jurors from licensed drivers instead.
So maybe the fear of jury-duty will help keep down the number of
licensed motorists as well :-)

-- 
                                  (___)                      
markb@slc.unisys.com              /o o\---------------~~~~~
 markb@elen.utah.edu              \ _ / No more moo /
  ...!giga!markb                   \  _  ____in '92/
                                    || ||    ||""||
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
From: pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger)
Subject: Re: H. Ross Perot on social issues
Reply-To: pmetzger@shearson.com
Organization: Lehman Brothers
	<1992Apr3.214521.29956@tygra.Michigan.COM> <44044@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 23:15:10 GMT


In article <44044@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> smithw@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Billiam) writes:

   Where does he stand.  WHO IS ROSS PEROT.  Ok he's the libertarian
   candidate.  But beyond those on this net who knows WHO the hell
   Ross Perot is.

No he's NOT. Andre Marrou is the Libertarian candidate. H. Ross Perot
isn't even a libertarian.



--
Perry Metzger		pmetzger@shearson.com
--
"That government is best which governs least."
		-- Thomas Jefferson, former US President and early libertarian.
Restore the American Dream: Andre Marrou for President! Vote Libertarian!
Libertarian Party info: Phone 1-800-682-1776, E-Mail 345-5647@mcimail.com
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections