User:Kevin Baas

Template:Research team member

My Wikistress level

I give you this medal for your tireless contributions and fight against right-wing radicals. --Julie1984 23:50, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC); Hear, hear. Keep up the good fight. --kizzle 23:57, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC); "We Few, We Happy Few, We Goalies of the Memory Hole" ... Rally on! -- RyanFreisling @ 06:23, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Featured on my user page

George Galloway testifies at Oil-for-Food hearing, Video (http://www.edwardsdavid.com/BushVideos/msnbc_uk_galloway_blisters_us_on_iraq_050517-01.ram)

Full transcript is available here (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616578,00.html), but, oddly enough, not here (http://hsgac.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=232).

I am a...

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.

So, apparently I'd sooner be called a fundamentalist than an idealist. Please don't call me a "fundamentalist" - I consider that very offensive.

NPOV

I don't consider myself a NPOV arbitrator by any means. But that's another subject: my philosophy regarding "NPOV, interacting with others to achieve". That's stated in the following section. This section is my philosophy regarding "NPOV, methods to assess and work in the direction of".

Tenets of NPOV:

• proportional representation

  this is "balance". balance does not mean assuming the conclusion that the sum total will be pov ambigious; "grey". this is known as the grey fallacy. (this leads to mutually assured delusion) balance means that each piece of info is weighed according to the same criteria, so that if the article where a scale of pieces of info, it would be balanced. for instance, each piece of info is given sace in the article (representation) proportional to its significance, relevancy, etc. piece of info w/the same such measure should be given equal validity, regardless of their "pov". this is how one gives each pov equal validity: one makes a conscious effort to not assess validity on the basis of pov (to not say "this is leftist pov, so its less valid", or "this is rightest pov, so its less valid"). balance not in relation to the assumption of an equal total of pov (the epistemic), regardless of the empirical, but in proportion to the empirical, regardless of pov (the epistemic). That way, the article refers to the real world, not images or feelings (and possibly delusions, as they have no neccessary connection to the empirical world) in people's heads. represent the facts in proportion to their significance and relevance. (see below)

• significance
  • "interesting"; informative. this means statistically unexpected. "joe wears shoes" shouldn't be in the article, but "joe does not wear shoes" should. by the same token, "joe does not have 6 fingers" shouldn't be, "joe does have 6 fingers" should, assuming, ofcourse, the given statement is factually accurate.
  • important
  • not redundant. redundancy is a form of stating things out of proportion. this is a special case of interesting.
  • "Articles need to be interesting to attract and keep the attention of readers. For an entry in an encyclopedia, ideas also need to be important. The amount of space they deserve depends on their importance and how many interesting things can be said about them." - from Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial#Space_and_balance
• relevance
• factual accuracy
• straightforward presentation
  • logical simplicity (convolution is a form of evasion and/or distortion)
• avoidance of logical fallacies

i don't consider info favoring one pov or another to be a legitimate objection. legitimate objections would be things like significance and relevancy. if it's not significant or relevant, it's usually because someone was trying to push a pov, and the fact that its insignificant or irrelevant is a form of bias, i.e., putting things out of proportion.

I'm against disputing an article in general, as it amounts to disputing the conclusion of one's interpretation of the article, a.k.a., shooting the messenger. (and putting the cart before the horse)

-begin rant- Frankly, if one does not dispute the facts or how they add up, but nonetheless disputes what they add up to, that's nothing but stubborn ignorance and denial. the part of their brain that adds what they don't dispute and comes to the conclusion, is the thinking (rational) part . that's what thinking is. The part that denies the conclusion without disputing the premises, that's the non-thinking (irrational) part. Such people need to learn to distinguish between the two and use the thinking part of their brain more often. That's what I mean by shooting the messenger: Such a person is getting angry because they don't like what's being said. They don't realize that regardless of whether or not it is said, it still is. The problem lies not with the messenger, but with the empirical world, and the disputer's refusal to acknowledge the reality, even though they can find no valid argument with which to answer. It's called the "Concrete operational stage" of thinking, and is supposed to happen between the age of 7 and 12. However, since it's been discovered, disturbingly, that only about 40% of people ever use "formal operational" thinking habitually, it is questionable how many people have substantially developed these skills, which would explain a few things. -end rant-

An article should be disputed in its particulars (the style, tone, accuracy, etc. of phrases, sentences, or paragraphs) on the basis of those particulars, on the basis of the relative significance of info included or not included, or the organization of the article. if nothing of this is disputable, and the article is still found to be "failing" in its general impression, it is by no fault of the article. Indeed, if it were by fault of the article, there would be no way to correct this fault, as all the ways in which the article can be modified without violating policy are listed above.

re: Giving equal validity: this is done by adding, not subtracting. if "the other side" doesn't have a "rebuttle", that is no fault of the original side, and no fault of the messenger. if one is to remove things for purposes of conciseness, one removes for purposes of conciseness; that is, one removes the least significant and/or most redundant info (regardless of whether it is critical or supportive of any given POV) an example of this is the recent edit by Kronius, where he removed a rather insignificant paragraph. Not because it was arguably POV, but because it was insignificant. if it was arguably POV and it was significant enough to merit that space in the article on the basis of its significance (irrespective of its POV), then so, likely, does related info supportive of a different pov likely merit space in the article on the basis of its significance (irrespective of its POV). In summary, I agree both with increasing conciseness by subtracting, and with including significant info via the principle of "giving equal validity" which involves adding. I consider them logically independant.

POV fights, be them in their purest form, can't very well manifest themselves as POV fights if progress is to be gained. I'm reminded of childish bickering: "you're stupid. no, you're stupid. no, you're stupid. no, you're stupid..." Ideally, discussions produce somewhat more sophisticated arguments than that, involving critical thinking and regarding proportion, citation, relevancy, etc, everything but "POV" - the productive ones, at least. I'll admit some discussions involve people calling other people POV-mongers and the like, but those discussions don't lead to any changes in the article.

..."Here's my take: It should do none of the above listed. Instead, we should hold it to a higher standard: We should represent the facts in representative proportion. That each, each fact will be weighted by it's informativeness (that is, unexpectedness), relevancy (that is, hamming distance), and importance (that is, its impact on the empirical world). Each fact will be given space in the article commensurate with that weighted value, so as to maximize the total value of the article.

This may result in an article very critical of a person, or very flattering to that person, but this is no objection. Balance does not mean creating a completely ambiguous article. A balanced and neutral article may support a certain pov much more than it does another. For instance, an article might support the POV that science if founded on empiricism much more than the POV that science is founded on catholicism, and thereby "creation science", which is totally invalid from an empirical philosophy, as not science. Also would a fundamental principal of science, "falsifiability", overwhelmingly support the "POV" that "creation science" is not science. Yet one could argue, from the logical fallacy that a balanced presentation of the facts results in a POV ambiguous article, that the science article should be rewritten such that the "POV" that "creation science" is science is supported in the science article as much as the "POV" that it is not science.

I hope my point is made clear by this example. One should not assume the conclusion (such as two given povs being equally supported by the facts), and select facts so as to support that conclusion. One should weigh each fact on the same scale, regardless of what pov's it supports or sheds doubt on, and let the facts, submitted to a candid world, speak for themselves. Kevin Baastalk 00:08, 2005 Apr 8 (UTC) "

cooperating to achieve NPOV

"...Nor am I so arrogant, self-righteous, and logicaly inept as to consider myself neutral, or to consider neutrality a goal that can ever be achieved by an individual. So rest assured, I do not bear the pretention of being neutral, and rest assured, also, that I will work collaboratively towards neutrality, via wikipedia policy, equitable protocols, and critical thinking." - Kevin Baas^talk 16:04, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC)

...The point was that noone can be an objective judge of the neutrality of the article, but if we work together and in good faith, using equitable protocols, the article will continue to approach the "mean" of empirical perception - "neutrality" - that neutrality which no individual has direct access to, as it resides in the aggregate, not the individual. This point persists regardless of individual views, indeed, it is a point regarding the interaction of such views. Neutrality cannot be arrived at, but it can be approached via the central limit theorem, in this case more commonly refered to as "synergy" or "emergence". The more agents interacting via equitable protocols, the faster the article converges to "neutrality". This process must be respected in good faith if the goal is neutrality. Kevin Baastalk 04:05, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

In regard to whether I think this article is neutral, I have no answer to that question. I don't claim to be Wikipedia's arbiter of neutrality or to have any special insight into this article's NPOV status. It's not up to me, or any single editor, to declare this article neutral or non-neutral; it's up to the community. My goal in editing this article is to do my part, whatever it might be, in making this the best article about George W. Bush we can possibly come up with. I didn't come here to push my personal POV. I came here to do my part, whatever it might be, in making this article the best it can be. Part of that is making sure we always strive toward a neutral point of view. The way we do that is by building consensus by reconciling all our differing points of view until they meet somewhere near neutrality. I love to see Wikipedians with diverging political views working together collaboratively in a spirit of good faith to get as close to NPOV as possible. That's the way we make an article NPOV, not by strongarming it to satisfy one user's personal view of how this article should be. / sɪzlæk ˺/ 05:08, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My wiki philosophy type

My Wiki philosophy type:

• Moderate eventualism
• Moderate status-quoism
• Communityism
• Anti-authorism
• Neutrality:Elusive_virtue

The case for impeachment of President George W. Bush

The purpose of the impeachment remedy

Among the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation apparent to the delegates to the Constitutional Convention was that they provided for a purely legislative form of government whose ministers were subservient to Congress. One of the first decisions of the delegates was that their new plan should included a separate executive, judiciary, and legislature. 23 However, the framers sought to avoid the creation of a too-powerful executive. The Revolution had been fought against the tyranny of a king and his council, and the framers sought to build in safeguards against executive abuse and usurpation of power. They explicitly rejected a plural executive, despite arguments that they were creating "the foetus of monarchy,"24 because a single person would give the most responsibility to the office.25 For the same reason, they rejected proposals for a council of advice or privy council to the executive.25a

The provision for single executive was vigorously defended at the time of the state ratifying conventions as a protection against executive tyranny and wrongdoing. Alexander Hamilton made the most carefully reasoned argument in Federalist No. 70, one of the series of Federalist Papers prepared to advocate the ratification of the Constitution by the State of New York. Hamilton criticized both a plural executive and a council because they tend "to conceal faults and destroy responsibility." A plural executive, he wrote, deprives the people of "the two greatest securities they can have for the faithful exercise of any delegated power"-- "[r]esponsibility... to censure and to punishment." When censure is divided and responsibility uncertain, "the restraints of public opinion... lose their efficacy" and "the opportunity of discovering with facility and clearness the misconduct of the persons [the public] trust, in order either to their removal from office, or to their actual punishment in cases which admit of it" is lost.26 A council, too, "would serve to destroy, or would greatly diminsh, the intended and necessary responsibility of the Chief Magistrate himself."27 It is, Hamilton concluded, "far more safe [that] there should be a single object for the jealousy and watchfulness of the people;... all multiplication of the Executive is rather dangerous than friendly to liberty."28

James Iredell, who played a leading role in the North Carolina ratifying convention and later became a justice of the Supreme Court, said that under the proposed Constitution the President "is of a very different nature from a monarch. He is to be... personally responsible for any abuse of the great trust reposed in him."29 In the same convention, William R. Davie, who had been a delegate in Philadelphia, explained that the "predominant principle" on which the Convention had provided for a single executive was "the more obvious responsibility of one person." When there was but one man, said Davie, "the public were never at a loss" to fix the blame.30

James WIlson, in the Pennsylvania convention, described the security furnished by a single executive as one of its "very important advantages":

The executive power is better to be trusted when it has no screen. Sir, we have a responsibility in the person of our President; he cannot act improperly, and hide either his negligence or inattention; he cannot roll upon any other person the weight of his criminality; no appointment can take place without his nomination; and he is responsible for every nomination he makes... Add to all this, that officer is placed high, and is possessed of power far from being contemptible, yet not a single privilege, is annexed to his character; far from being above the laws, he is amenable to them in his private character as a citizen, and in his public character by impeachment. 31 33

As Wilson's statement suggests, the impeachability of the President was considered to be an important element of his responsibility.

Impeachment had been included in the proposals before the Constitutional Convention from its beginning.32A specific provision, making the executive removable from office on impeachment and conviction for "mal-practice or neglect of duty," was unanimously adopted even before it was decided that the executive would be a single person."33 [1] (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/watergatedoc_3.htm#purpose)

Duties of the president

It is useful to note three major presidential duties of broad scope that are explicity recited in the Constitution: "to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed," to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States" and to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" to the best of his ability. The first is directly imposed by the Constitution; the second and third are included in the constitutionally prescribed oath that the President is required to take before he enters upon the execution of his office and are, therefore, also expressly imposed by the Constitution.

The duty to take care is affirmative. So is the duty faithfully to execute the office. A President must carry out the obligations of his office diligently and in good faith. The elective character and political role of a President make it difficult to define faithful exercise of his powers in the abstract. A President must make policy and exercise discretion. This discretion necessarily is broad, especially in emergency situations, but the constitutional duties of a President impose limitations on its exercise.

The "take care" duty emphasizes the responsibility of a President for the overall conduct of the executive branch, which the Constitution vests in him alone. He must take care that the executive is so organized and operated that this duty is performed. [2] (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/watergatedoc_9.htm)

Grounds for Impeachment

In the past, Congress has issued Articles of Impeachment for acts in three general categories:

  1. Exceeding the constitutional bounds of the powers of the office
  2. Behavior grossly incompatible with the proper function and purpose of the office
  3. Employing the power of the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain

In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton described the subject of impeachment as

"..those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself."

The Framers of the United States Constitution drafted Article II, Section 4 to ensure that the people of the United States, through their representatives in the United States Congress, could hold a President accountable for an abuse of power and an abuse of the public trust. James Madison, speaking at Virginia’s ratification convention stated: "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution." James Iredell, who later became a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, stated at North Carolina’s ratification convention:

"The President must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate. He is to regulate all intercourse with foreign powers, and it is his duty to impart to the Senate every material intelligence he receives. If it should appear that he has not given them full information, but has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated, and by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country, and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them, - in this case, I ask whether, upon an impeachment for a misdemeanor upon such an account, the Senate would probably favor him." [3] (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/watergatedoc_3.htm#grounds)

• Constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/watergatedoc.htm)
  • /duties of the president
• What are impeachable offenses? (http://www.impeachbush.tv/impeach/offenses.html)

• Articles of Impeachment, Watergate (http://watergate.info/impeachment/impeachment-articles.shtml)
  • /matching articles

The case

Giving false information to the senate

What he said: [4] (http://www.republicanspeak.com/wmdquotes.html)

• In a formal letter and report which the President submitted to the United States Congress within forty-eight hours after having launched the invasion of Iraq, dated March 18, 2003, President George W. Bush made a formal determination, as required by the Joint Resolution on Iraq passed by the U.S. Congress in October 2002, that military action against Iraq was necessary to "protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq..."

• Carnegie Endowment report (http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/IraqReport3.asp?from=pubdate)
• Buzzflash - chart of lies (http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/07/22_lies.html)

  Kind of like "Jar of flies", except it's not.

• Bush on Iraq (http://www.bushoniraq.com/bush1.html)
• The McClellan challenge (http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=951)
• 9/11_Commission_Report
• Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda
• Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
• "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bush%27s_16_words)
• top 40 lies about war and terrorism (http://www.citypages.com/databank/24/1182/article11417.asp)
• cooked intelligence (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cooked_intelligence)

Any more? People are welcome to add to this.

Concealing important intelligence which he ought to have communicated

• [5] (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/21/AR2005052100474_pf.html)
• [6] (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1607676)
• [7] (http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/22/dreyfuss-r.html)
• Downing Street memo
• The McClellan challenge (http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=951)
• Carnegie Endowment report (http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/IraqReport3.asp?from=pubdate)
• 9/11_Commission_Report
• Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda
• Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

Any more? People are welcome to add to this.

Injuries to the country; "irrepairable harm" ("by that means induced them to enter into measures injurious to their country")

• over $200 billion dollars spent on the 2003 invasion of Iraq
• over 1,000 lives lost
• increase in terrorism
• loss of international alliances
• increase in international tensions
• loss of credibility of the US government and its handling of evidence in international decisions

Any more? People are welcome to add to this.

"and which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them"

• Walter B. Jones (Republican Congressman) [8] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1491567,00.html)

Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no justification".

...

Asked by a reporter for the North Carolina News and Observer about the name-change campaign - an idea Mr Jones said at the time came to him by a combination of God's hand and a constituent's request - he replied: "I wish it had never happened."

Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of its most vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the hallway outside his office is lined with photographs of the "faces of the fallen".

"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong," he told the newspaper. "Congress must be told the truth."

• Chuck Hagel (Republican Senator) [9] (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050627/27bush.htm)

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

That's strikingly blunt talk from a member of the president's party, even one cast as something of a pariah in the GOP because of his early skepticism about the war. "I got beat up pretty good by my own party and the White House that I was not a loyal Republican," he says. Today, he notes, things are changing: "More and more of my colleagues up here are concerned."

• "There are members saying that if they knew then what they know now they wouldn’t have given him those powers (to wage war)," -Representative John Conyers
• Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son to this Iraq mess, knows in her heart this is possible. "Members of Congress know that Iraq is a mistake," Sheehan wrote me on Tuesday night. "I know, because I have spoken to many members of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike, who all acknowledge that Iraq is a catastrophe. [10] (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0505/S00322.htm)

Conclusion

It is clear from the above that President George W. Bush:

• gave false information to the Senate, and
• has concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated

and by that means, induced [the Senate] to enter into measures:

• injurious to their country, and
• which they would not have consented to had the true state of things been disclosed to them.

And has thereby commited (an) impeachable offense(s).

Furhtermore, exceeding the powers of his office

Specifically by going to war without UN or congressional authorization. (international law is the "supreme law of the land", according to the constitution)

• [11] (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/5/184322/3073)

Other cases for impeachment of George W. Bush

• Impeach Now (http://www.impeachnow.org/)
• Alternet case 1 (http://www.alternet.org/story/16142)
• Alternet case 2 (http://www.alternet.org/story/16434)
• Democrats.com (http://www.democrats.com/impeachment-hearings)
• Ralph Nader (http://www.votenader.org/media_press/index.php?cid=184)
• Sourcewatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=The_case_for_impeachment)
• Impeach Central (http://www.impeachcentral.com/)

Essays on the political divide

What is going on?

There is a sharp divide between people’s political beliefs and opinions in America today, one so sharp that it is shocking, and merits explanation. What are these two perspectives and what holds them apart?

Conservatives would be quick to argue that there is a clear distinction between “right” and “wrong”, while critics would maintain that, however clear this distinction, when the facts are unclear, so, consequently, is the attribution of this dichotomy to the facts. The aim is then not to place “right” and “wrong” as quickly and decidedly as possible, but first and foremost to uncover the truth, which inevitably takes time, consideration, and an open mind.

It is for this reason that statements such as “We have conclusive evidence that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction.” are taken with different degrees of skepticism. Whereas some respond to this statement with the thought “This is a grave and direct threat to us that must be disposed of”, others respond with the thought “This is not necessarily true; it is possible that this is a lie being used to generate public support for a war that has been preconceived. That is, there are two possible threats: either this statement is true, or, worse, this statement is false. I have no evidence right now to support either conclusion.” The former response is a quick attribution of “right” and “wrong”, while the latter reflects an active effort to take more into consideration before forming an opinion.

It does not take much imagination to see how these two approaches to “right” and “wrong” and to “the truth” can quickly lead to divergent viewpoints. I believe this goes a long way in accounting for the gap in understanding that we experience today.

Here's an idea

A TeX to C++ converter. Standard functions like hamiltions, calculating eigenvalues, etc. are actual functions, all operations and functions work. There is a most abstract class for all math variables, and one can specify more specific such as tensor or vector. Function overloading is used to process the variables correctly. More abstract types are disambiguated via context, determined by the class of variable that overloaded functions return, if the class of the variables it takes as parameters and the TeX are insufficient. (tensor multiplication must return a tensor, etc.) derivatives/antiderivatives - the most basic is w/respect to "time" (which is not neccessarily real time, but a parameter specific for the "module" that determines processing order and scale). Dot notation and the variable t identifies time. All time derivatives/antiderivatives, etc, for a given module, are processed in parrallel (producing x', y', z'..., which overwrite x,y,z... when all computations for the iteration complete) each module has it's own "time", which may be a function of real time, and/or any variables within scope.

module scheduling

• priority levels
• like aynchronous distributed simulation

a visual TeX editor (instead of having to write in tex)

• for example, can select from context menu, matrixes, operations on matrix like transpose or inverse, etc.
• function keys switch alphabet of keyboard (english, latin, greek, hebrew)

c++ to tex (perhaps w/hints, or remarked code) a way to deal with structs; mixed(composite) classes (some strings, some tensors, etc.); object hierarcy

• i guess nothing really needs to be done here - just use dot notation, as usual.

/tex_to_cpp subpage for this

Essays on justice

No, we will not "get over it".

In the rare congressional electoral vote challenge on January 6th , Republicans spent their hour in the floor debate flinging insults and personal attacks at Democrats. The outright belligerency of this kind of behavior aside, they failed to meet the most basic requirement of any debate: knowing what the debate is about. The debate was not about who won or lost the election. The debate was about problems in the electoral process. No, we will not “get over” them. On the contrary, we will solve them. Republicans would do well to quit their insults and futile evasions, and learn to accept this unalterable fact. We will never tolerate the obstruction of the most basic and fundamental right of every American citizen, the primary right by which all other rights are protected.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has chosen to investigate voting irregularities in the Nov. 2nd election. People should consider the implications of this. This country is founded on the philosophy that “Just powers are derived from the consent of the governed.” By recognizing that there were problems with this election which merit a massive investigation, our government has officially acknowledged that this philosophy is in jeopardy. We Americans who value and cherish this kind of justice are thereby compelled to take heed. As adults, we know that we must acknowledge our vulnerabilities before we can overcome our weaknesses. No longer can we naively believe that our rights and freedoms will be maintained without effort. History teaches us otherwise. It is time for us to shed our illusions and face reality.

The reality is that those long lines we saw in Ohio were not benign happenstance. For every effect there is a cause. The reality is that those precincts were dispossessed of the voting machines that they needed. The reality is that in Franklin County this prevented more than one out of five “active voters” from voting. The reality is that the affected precincts account for a significant portion of the Ohio electorate. The reality is that these are the results of conscious decisions made by government officials.

It is time for the citizens of democracy to become aware of the true nature and scale of these events. It is time for us to contemplate the dangers inherent in such injustices. It is time for us to stand up and defend the future of this country from all threats, foreign and domestic.

One should consider that the differences in views regarding the legitimacy of the 2004 election may be due not to a divided electorate, but differences in information. Significant events are not being reported. Many are probably unaware that there are currently election fraud investigations underway in seven states: Nevada, New Mexico, Arkansas, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, and New Hampshire. Ralph Nader has filed for a recount in New Hampshire, and blackboxvoting.org will be filing recounts in Florida counties that have refused to comply with their Freedom of Information request. Meanwhile, Micheal Badnarik and David Cobb are in Ohio with commoncause.org and thealliancefordemocracy.org, filing for a statewide recount.

But a recount in Ohio is unlikely to change the outcome of the presidential election, not because of the majority views of people in Ohio, but because of problems that a recount can't fix: massive vote suppression. We’ve all heard of the long lines in Ohio. They must have been caused by very high voter turnout, right? That hypothesis seems to contradict the fact that voter turnout was much lower than expected, especially in these precincts. So then what caused the long lines?

Ohio has an election standard: one voting machine per one hundred registered voters. The “allowable limit” is one machine per one hundred and twenty-five voters. It's been applied pretty consistently, up until now. For example, under orders given by Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder, in violation of the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Amendment, Franklin County had an average of not one hundred, but two hundred and twenty-five active voters per machine. However, because the machines could only process an average of one hundred and seventy-five votes from the opening of to the closing of the polls, more than one in five of these voters didn’t get a chance to vote. That’s right, more than 20%. Witnesses have confirmed that about one in five voters left the line before reaching the poll. Does that number seem a bit high to you, in a state that decided what many people have called the most important election in their lifetime by less than 3%? There’s a reason why voter turnout was abnormally low in precincts with machine shortages, and it wasn’t because people didn’t get out to vote.

Had enough? Oh, there’s more: There is a clear pattern to the vote suppression: More democratic precincts had more voters per machine. If you don’t believe me, you can see for yourself at freepress.org. Any honest and competent statistician will take one look at those graphs and tell you that this was clearly by design. This was the result of unethical and unconstitutional decisions made by high-ranking election officials.

Analysis has yet to be done on other counties with voter turnout irregularities and high incidence of both long lines and machine shortages. One such county is Cuyahoga County, home of Cleveland and the most populous county in Ohio. Cuyahoga County had over three times as many reports of long lines per voter as Franklin County. Make no mistake, the problematic precincts make up a significant portion of Ohio’s electorate.

No, a recount won’t scratch the surface, because vote suppression was widespread, systematic, and highly effective. What’s needed to ensure a legitimate election in Ohio is a re-vote. Precincts should have the proper number of voting machines (optical scanners, not black boxes), the Equal Protection Amendment should be enacted rigorously, and Kenneth Blackwell, Matt Damschroder, and other guilty election officials should be recused and indicted. After all, they did break the "supreme law of the land". Or does the severity of the punishment grow inversely with that of the crime? Ideally, all this would be initiated before the electoral college meets in January. Perhaps then we’ll be able to prove to the world that we’re not really as dumb as we look.

-Guess not. :-( Kevin Baas^{talk: new (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Kevin_baas&action=edit&section=new)} 06:17, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

subpages

• To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe...
• /open letters to my congressman
• my "morphogenic network" article on wikinfo (http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.php?title=Morphogenic_network)
• /scratch

Articles I regularly contribute to

Articles that I created or made substantial contributions to include:

• 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities
  • 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, exit polls
  • 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, vote suppression
  • 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, voting machines
  • 2004 U.S. election voting controversies, Florida
  • 2004 U.S. election voting controversies, Ohio
• Florida Central Voter File
• George W. Bush
  • Domestic_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration
  • Foreign_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration
• Downing Street memo

Template:DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual Template:MultiLicenseMinorPD