The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?
“A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives.” -- Charles Wheelan, "Naked Economics"
Comments
You are both a coward and an idiot. But since your nonsense could easily have gain some ground, I guess I will answer it.
National TV? Are you kidding? $1.8 Million could buy about a half dozen national spots. And that would be it for the campaign. Do you even have a clue what national TV spots cost?
The money has gone to Ron Nielsen's outfit because they are doing the campaign--paying for the signs, the flyers, the bumper stickers, and planning/executing the travel.
What campaign, you say (and I will pretend it was an honest question)?
Gary Johnson and Jim Gray have been crisscrossing the nation at college campuses and other speaking venues for months. They have been collecting earned media on Fox, CNN, The Daily Beast, The New York Times, Newsday, the list goes on. . .
You are pretending to compare a campaign that has raised $1.8 million (pretty much a record in Libertarian circles, by the way) with campaigns that have been special interest funded to the tune of $800 million to $1 billion.
What you are is either a Republican troll or a Ron Paul never-say-die follower who would rather write in a name that will not be counted than actually have a candidate make a difference.
@Steve, now be fair, there are at least five states where Ron Paul write-in votes will be counted (somebody on the internet claimed AL IA WI PA CA VT NH DE, plus I also know Maine got him certified... and because of Ashley Ryan, the new NCW from Maine, there is a non-zero possibility that Ron Paul will win an electoral-college vote from Maine, like Obama got one from Nebraska back in 2008. Every vote for Ron Paul in those states *is* going to make a difference.
Not in the sense of making Ron Paul prez, of course (and for that matter Gary Johnson has no chance to win more than a couple ecVotes either), but in the sense of Sending A Message to the candidates and campaign staffers and state delegates of 2014 and 2016. Just look at CA, locked-up-guaranteed-win for Obama in the electoral college. If the 5M repub voters in CA understood math, they could stop following the herd and voting for Mitt, and instead write-in Ron Paul (he is auto-certified there), or vote for Gary Johnson. Either would be a good thing for 2014 and 2016. CA repubs voting 3rd-party does not help Obama, since he's already won the state, and does not hurt Mitt either (except his tender feelings) because he's already lost the state... for CA repus, the lesser-weevil rule simply does not apply, because of electoral college math!
Anyways, I fully agree that folks should not write-in Ron Paul where such votes might be ignored, or tossed into the trash by lazy or corrupt election clerks that mark every write-in-ballot as "not legible" no matter what. Check online -- if the precinct where you live reported *ZERO* write-in votes in 2008 and 2004, then you should vote for somebody on the ballot (Gary Johnson in 48 states or maybe Virgil Goode in 27 states... Rocky Anderson in a handful of places) unless you personally know the 2012 poll-workers, and trust them to play fair.
One final point, about the idea that Gary Johnson has 'earned' his exposure with the NYT and Daily Beast and CNN and so on... this is absolutely a misleading adjective. The only reason Gary is getting facetime from such places is because they are trying to mess with the overall presidential race in favor of Obama (note how many of the newscasters try and portray Gary as a spoiler-threat *only* to the GOP and not to Obama) and/or trying to discredit the ideas of the liberty-movement ('just a bunch of potheads' or in some cases 'weak on the military') among *republican* voters. Gary truly earned some media-exposure on RT, and on youtube. But the sudden blitz of recent media on The Libertarian Candidate, is to me pretty transparently the corrupt twin-party system at work, not any actual journalism.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see Gary Johnson getting some of our message out to folks, when he can get a word in edgewise over the talking heads. But give the mainstream media no credit, please -- because they deserve none. Where was the mainstream media support for the two-term governor when he was trying to get into the repub debates? Pffft. QED.
I'd be glad if the libertarian party got their fed funding for 2016, too, for the same reason: it will help spread the message of liberty. However, I'm actually kind of on the fence about the long-term usefulness of taking FEC funding grants, coercively extorted from the taxpayers, spent on things they rightfully think are not any of the business of the central government. In other words, while more money to spread the message of liberty is a good thing in the short run, is it really a Good Thing in the long run for the party of small govt to risk becoming dependent on the largesse of big govt?