From: cp2w+@andrew.cmu.edu (Conrad Poelman)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: PAC's Lets have a real democracy
Date: 15 Apr 92 13:01:57 GMT
 <1992Apr14.181239.11094@husc3.harvard.edu> <EduuKVe00h5yQx1FM8@andrew.cmu.edu><1992Apr15.001430.28554@hellgate.utah.edu>
Distribution: alt
Organization: Doctoral student, Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts from netnews.alt.politics.elections: 15-Apr-92 Re: PAC's Lets
have a real .. Kenneth Tolman@cs.utah.e (1448)

> >Simply providing "free" T.V. times raises several questions: 1) who pays
> >for it? 2) how do we determine who gets it? 3) what makes you think ads
> >will be any more constructive?

> 1) Who pays?  If this were "regular programming", then ads would pay the
> cost.  Unfortunately, their might not be enough viewers!! 

> Otherwise, the media could offer a public "service" (through tax break)
In other words, the taxpayers will pay for it, by increased taxes or by
adding to the deficit via decreased tax collection.

> or the time could be bought outright.  Buying some non prime time would
> be MUCH cheaper than the current fleet of telephoners/hand out people
> engaged in the election process.
"Bought outright" by whom?  The taxpayers, I assume.

> The Discovery channel ran a "head to head" for Brown, Tsongas and Clinton
> (I believe, I only saw the post-review).  They said this was THE FIRST TIME
> this has happened in a forum purely for presentation of ideas (in a form
> for mass consumption not dedicated to slamming each other) That fact is 
> sad.  
What do you mean "the first time"?  How did this "head to head" differ
from debates?
>  
> 2) Public TV would be adequate.  How do we determine who gets the info
> now?  A person can always go to the womans league of voters for info.
> Currently, we control who gets info by buying them (achieve recognition)
> this is puke-rot. We should not have to flood our population with merely
> the faces of candidates, this is worse than no information.
My question was, how do we determine which candidates get this
taxpayer-provided time on TV?  There are hundreds of candidates in every
presidential election, we simply don't hear about most of them. 
Currently the government campaign support is in the form of "matching
funds", so that only those who can raise money can get money.  So, would
you go by number of signatures on some petition, or simply let any
declared candidate get free TV time?

> 3) Ads would be more constructive because:

> a) They now have their pledges written down
> b) Anyone could read it anytime (without a VCR)
> c) Candidates should be judged by their merit, not on their appearance
I haven't seen any mention of "pledges" in your previous posts.  What
pledges?  Are these mandatory pledges?  Also, I don't see how 3c)
applies at all.  How is free T.V. time going to make people judge
candidates more on merit than appearance, any more than paid T.V. time?

> ELIMINATE PAC's!!!!!!!!!

Remember I was responding to a post that suggested "Get rid of T.V. ads
- make them have to give a certain amount of t.v. ad time to candidates
like they do in Britain and other places."  All I wanted was some
clarification as to who "them" refers to, who "candidates" refers to,
and why you think this would help.  I still haven't seen any answers,
except that "them" probably means "the taxpayer".

--Conrad