[HN Gopher] Elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling po...
___________________________________________________________________
Elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling political
campaigns
Author : atlasunshrugged
Score : 95 points
Date : 2024-10-22 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Terrible, self-indulgent page design. That aside, my parents are
| around 80 and while neither is showing signs of dementia, dad
| readily admits he's not as sharp as he used to be. Mom is in
| denial. For their ages, they're doing pretty well. As far as I
| know, neither has been victims of scams but it troubles me when
| I'm at their house and see things like "Congratulations! You just
| won $10,000" banner ads blinking on their monitors and tablets.
| Maybe I should set up some kind of network wide ad blocking for
| them but in general I try not to be intrusive on how they run
| their lives. I know the day will come when they're not able to
| and it worries me that my siblings and I might not see it before
| it's too late. Medical science has done many wonderful things for
| helping people live longer but it seems more common for our
| physical bodies to outlive our minds. In that period, there's
| lots of room for exploitation.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| I don't want this come across the wrong way, but have you tried
| talking to them about scams, or what they see in the banner
| ads? It might give you an idea of how credulous they are. My
| parents are in a similar age group, and I frequently share
| information about scams with them. I don't expect all the
| information to stick, but it just keeps re-enforcing the ideas
| of 'no free lunches', 'too good to be true', 'pressured to act
| quickly' etc.
| saltcured wrote:
| Having seen both of my parents develop dementia at different
| rates, I'll say that yes it does sneak up. There wasn't a clear
| day where yesterday they were self-sufficient and now they are
| not.
|
| It is natural for the sufferer to develop coping mechanisms
| hide problems from themselves and others. The problems have to
| grow until the coping mechanisms start to collapse, and then
| suddenly they are much more evident. Another aspect is the
| child's denial. It is a significant shift in your worldview to
| see a parent go from being self-sufficient to dependent. To
| recognize the myriad day to day functions you took for granted
| that now require a caregiver's involvement.
|
| Also, the cognitive problems do not develop as a slow and
| continuous trend. There are different cycles overlaid with
| seasons, illnesses, and even time of day. So you see
| fluctuations in their capacity and returning moments of
| lucidity and function help sustain denial.
|
| I've heard it said, and I agree, the process of caring for
| someone with dementia includes a grieving process with all the
| complexities that ever has. You are watching many layers of the
| person die, sometimes over and over. At times you are faced
| with the living husk of the person you remember. Or worse, a
| strange subset of their prior personality traits and memories.
|
| It can take a crisis to force the issue, if families get stuck
| in denial. Sadly, this also makes later caregiver arrangements
| more difficult. As far as I can tell, the happiest dementia
| sufferers seem to be ones who were able to transition into a
| supportive care environment before they progressed too far, so
| they had the capacity to adapt and familiarize themselves to
| new routines. Those routines help them cope in later phases.
| Those who go down kicking and screaming may be stuck with a
| care environment that seems (to them) threatening and
| disorienting.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Everyone really needs to have an up-to-date Power Of Attorney
| Directive and a trusted agent who can act on their behalf
| once they lose their cognitive ability and financial
| judgment.
| jnmandal wrote:
| The state of affairs surrounding this practice as well as the
| amount of money used up in the election system generally is
| absolutely ridiculous.
| hluska wrote:
| One of my good friends is, in his words, older than oxygen. He
| lives across the street in a senior's home and I always saw him
| out for walks.
|
| I have a rule - when I see someone enough for them to become a
| familiar, I introduce myself. So I introduced myself to him and
| now he sends me a text message a few times a month for a coffee.
|
| He was getting close to getting reined in by a scam. It was a
| Canadian party pulling the same shit as MAGA.
|
| He said something really interesting.
|
| You're young and nobody listens to you. You just get dragged
| around, told where to go and what to say. Then, you hit around 40
| and suddenly everyone listens to you. They will stop what they're
| doing to cater to you. But then you turn really old, your wife
| dies and all of a sudden, you have nobody to even drag you
| around. You're totally by yourself and day to day, it doesn't
| matter if you live or die.
|
| He knew it was a scam and knew when it got too expensive so
| decided to walk. But it was human contact. And as he says,
| loneliness is worse than being broke.
|
| The best part of being friends with him is how the staff treats
| me at our spot. It's a pub he used to go to with his wife when
| she was alive and the entire staff knows him very well.
|
| Whenever we have coffee, one of the servers inevitably looks at
| him, points at me and says "Ray, I see you're doing your good
| deed for the day."
|
| Without fail, his eyes twinkle and he replies, "If I don't teach
| this young peckerhead a thing or two, we're all doomed."
|
| I'm not sure there is a moral, but if you happen to see an older
| adult regularly, stop and talk. You may protect them from scams.
| You may end up with a close friend. If you're really lucky, you
| may even get called "peckerhead."
|
| Edit - Me spell not good.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Good on you for being a nice human, peckerhead.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| What were these damnable canadian MAGAers pulling exactly? Were
| they promising to enforce immigration laws? Lower taxes?
| Economic protectionism?
| renjimen wrote:
| More like demagoguery: emotionally fueled fear-mongering.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| He implies he got involved with this Canadian MAGA type party
| because no one listens to him. How does that make you, someone
| who sits down with him regularly and listens, feel?
|
| I bring this up because in my experience, people are rarely
| honest about why they support such politics/politicians.
| swayvil wrote:
| I interact with wealthy retired elderly people every day. Yes,
| they are the #1 prey in our society. They are so harassed. Like
| wildebeests getting nibbled on by a pack of jackals.
|
| Nibbled for their money, time, vote.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| There used to be a time when retired US politicians with
| decades of service were still respected in retirement. Granted,
| this was before Gingrich's hyperpoliticizing of every bit of
| minutiae in America.
|
| Then Fred Thompson, not satisfied with his $250K an hour
| lobbying gig or his acting career, decided he also needed to
| start hawking reverse mortgages to the elderly, and that was a
| wrap. Before people were willing to look past the lobbying...
| stopped being a thing after ole Fred was caught on TV and radio
| right next to the gold bouillon sellers.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| The Clarence Thomas nomination hearings are I think a better
| marker for the beginning of our modern era of
| "hyperpoliticization" of everything.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Thomas_Supreme_Court_.
| ..
| Clubber wrote:
| I would opine it was Robert Bork a few years earlier.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork_Supreme_Court_nom
| i...
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I disagree. For one, Bork had already been refused a seat
| on the Supreme Court. Secondly, it's the first time that a
| mainstream political party ever succeeded in "othering"
| another group of straight white capitalists purely with
| propaganda.
| frmersdog wrote:
| Everyone forgets that the DNC forced out FDR's two-time
| VP for being too buddy-buddy with socialism, giving us
| Truman and a half century of the ultimate in
| hyperpartisanship (the kind with Nukes of Damocles
| hanging over everyone's heads).
| smegger001 wrote:
| they don't even need to be wealth just lonely. My father in law
| lives on the other side of the country far away from any
| family. He has been giving every spare dollar to a con artist
| that has got him convinced they are going to get millions of
| dollars from the government but inevitably something gets in
| the way and the con artist need a little more money for them to
| finally get it... He has bounced between menial jobs as long as
| i and my wife have been together, before we had kid we tried to
| get him to come live here but he refused because he was so
| convinced he was going to soon be a millionaire. he is
| otherwise able to take care of himself is emotionally/mentally
| stable but wont listen to any one that says he is being scammed
| because the only person that is near him who talks to him is
| the one conning him.
| nickff wrote:
| Governments seem very focused on protecting people from easy-
| to-address, low-harm activities like website tracking and
| spam, but wholly unconcerned with scams and theft (which I
| consider much more harmful).
| Apocryphon wrote:
| You have to wonder how much of the economy similarly relies on
| uncanceled opt-out services that this demographics never knew it
| subscribed to.
| giarc wrote:
| Not just that demographic, every demographic. There was a
| Planet Money podcast episode just the other day called The
| Subscription Trap. The podcast host and the founders of this
| tool, all seemingly young, tech enabled people all had hundreds
| (if not thousands) in unknown subscriptions. It's a problem top
| to bottom.
| matwood wrote:
| > tech enabled people all had hundreds (if not thousands) in
| unknown subscriptions
|
| I don't really understand how people can't easily see this on
| their CC bill(s). You don't even need to check monthly, just
| every so often and make sure you recognize all the charges.
| frmersdog wrote:
| They don't (have to) care. At least in America, the vast
| majority of people have never felt the pinch of being
| "broke"-broke. When you have money coming in, you have
| enough to waste on dumb stuff. Going off my own list:
| $100/m phone bills when $15/m ones are available (even
| less, because employee discount!)? Well, it's more
| convenient (it wasn't, it was just money getting shoveled
| into the trash). Eating out at lunch? Making food is a
| chore (actually, stew pots are your friend, Panda Express
| is not). $200/m for a storage unit isn't reasonable.
| Neither is a new car note. Overspending on insurance.
| Monthly media subscriptions. On and on. You don't realize
| it until the money simply isn't there anymore, and you're
| forced to make cuts. And it's at that point that you
| realize, "Dang, I could have had a lot less stress _now_ if
| I 'd been more vigilant about spending money I didn't need
| to - if I'd just _known_ better - _then_. " But the entire
| economy essentially encourages and then preys on your
| apathy and lack of knowledge.^1
|
| By the time you see what's going on, it's too late. You're
| a bum and no one cares about what you have to say.
|
| 1: Actually, this is not in and of itself a bad thing.
| "Stupid" purchasing decisions keeps artists and artisans in
| food and home, is the "slack" that keeps labor inefficient
| enough to be tolerable. The problem is twofold: 1) that
| corporations systematically prey on this tendency, and 2)
| its distribution as an ability is lopsided: most people can
| be extremely frivolous with money, and some can't be
| frivolous _at all_ , and there's very little middle ground.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I am always shocked at the number of people who don't
| balance and reconcile their accounts each month. I go
| through each of our accounts at least monthly and compare
| each financial org's ideas of our transactions with our own
| record. I cannot fathom _not_ doing this. And yet, people
| look at my like I 'm nuts when the subject comes up.
|
| Sometimes they err in our favor and I still try to have it
| fixed, expecting that eventually they'll figure it out and
| try to claw the money back. Goldman Sachs gave us about
| $200 earlier this year. It went something like this:
|
| - Starting balance: $1000
|
| - We paid: $700
|
| - New charges: $300
|
| - End balance: $400
|
| I spent a couple hours on the phone trying to get them to
| realize their arithmetic was wrong. I finally insisted that
| guy I was talking to pull up a calculator, punch in the
| numbers, and see for himself. "Let's see, $1000 minus $700
| is $300, plus $300 is $600, so... wait, why did we tell you
| $400?" "I don't know!" I even escalated to their audit
| department who said their math all checks out that I only
| owed them $400 instead of $600. I am certain to my core
| that someday they're going to ask for that $200 plus
| interest.
| SSJPython wrote:
| There needs to be public funding of elections. That would go a
| long way.
|
| If we really want reform, the system should be changed from a
| first-past-the-post presidential system to a parliamentary system
| with party-list proportional representation. Neither system is
| perfect, but the latter captures a wider range of views within
| society.
|
| Germany is a stable constitutional federal republic with
| proportional representation and power vested in the Bundestag. No
| reason why the US can't have the same.
| ianeigorndua wrote:
| Lol, Germany was bought and paid for decades ago and the party
| with the most political power is the Hells Angels. They even
| got their rivals federally banned, even though they are not!
| pc86 wrote:
| This comment reads like LLM-generated text, but like... a
| pretty old version where it's basically MCMC text generation.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > No reason why the US can't have the same.
|
| There's one big reason the US can't have the same: the ruling
| class don't want it.
|
| This isn't some gordian knot. We could have it tomorrow if the
| ruling class had their feet held to the fire. The fact that we
| don't is a result of the system working exactly as intended.
|
| The richest person in the world is out in broad daylight
| shoveling bribes to voters as fast as he can transfer the
| money, and not only is he not getting arrested, he never will
| be. It's a dark subsection of a very dark chapter.
| ryandrake wrote:
| A person who can't even legally own a gun due to his status
| as a felon is about to become commander and chief of the
| military. "Dark subsection" is pretty mild.
| gottorf wrote:
| The commander-in-chief isn't leading a charge at the front
| lines, so whether or not he can legally own a gun has no
| bearing; otherwise, we'd have to demand that every elected
| official has direct, hands-on experience in everything that
| they legislate, regulate, or judge. Well, perhaps that
| wouldn't be so horrible, after all...
|
| I personally find the way he came to be a felon to be a
| darker subsection, but your mileage may vary, of course.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| What you are missing about the analogy is that the US
| military is effectively the largest gun on the planet.
| gottorf wrote:
| I assume your point is that a felony conviction is
| evidence of an unsound mind that justifies prohibiting
| someone from owning a firearm, and that this translates
| to leading our military.
|
| The analogy falls apart if said felony conviction is
| unjust or otherwise has no bearing on one's ability to
| lead the military. By and large, American voters think
| so, with two-thirds of those polled thinking that what he
| was convicted of is a nothingburger[0].
|
| [0]: https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-indictment-
| hush-money...
| nomel wrote:
| This could be seen as protection for candidates against
| lawfare, which is widely used in tyrannical governments.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > the ruling class don't want it
|
| Too cynical and defeatist. The difference between the "ruling
| class" and you is that politicians know what it takes to get
| support from large donors. They spend all day figuring that
| out in fact.
|
| But at the end of the day politicians still need votes, not
| dollars. One way to swing the balance back would be to make
| support contingent on support for and accomplishment of
| popular goals.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has been systematically
| attacking all attempts to limit private campaign finance,
| including public funding.
|
| In 2011, in Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett, they ruled that
| a program that Arizona established which would give campaigns
| that opted out of private financing public financing matching
| their competitors financing infringed on the First Amendment
| speech rights of the privately financed campaign.
|
| That's right, _matching_ private campaign spending with public
| funding violates the free speech of the privately funded
| campaign, because it removes their advantage.
|
| The solution to campaign finance needs to start and end with
| court reform, or it's DOA.
| samatman wrote:
| That was a good decision, because the rule creates a negative
| responsiveness paradox. Spending money to support your
| preferred candidate should not make opposing candidates
| stronger.
|
| That was the effect of Arizona's rule: money spent to promote
| a candidate was matched by free public money, which the
| opposing candidate did not have exert any effort to obtain.
|
| Good voting systems minimize this effect. The US first-past-
| the-post system is not a good voting system, but that's no
| excuse for making it worse.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_responsiveness_parado.
| ..
| cbsks wrote:
| Why should money be involved in supporting a candidate?
| Doesn't the democratic action of voting do that?
| pc86 wrote:
| Yard signs, phone calls, websites, GOTV operations,
| consultants, debates, mailers, all of these things cost
| money. The current system requires you to appeal to
| donors with a winning message to get contributions to pay
| for these.
|
| Who decides which candidates get limited public funds?
| Are you just going to split it equally between whoever
| runs? Why should the public pay for fringe campaigns that
| won't get any votes?
| kelipso wrote:
| Usually you do a poll and set a threshold for funding,
| like 5% or something, to avoid funding fringe candidates.
| pc86 wrote:
| SCOTUS doesn't "attack" anything. They issue a ruling based
| on law. It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we
| like, it's fair and impartial, and any time there's a
| judicial ruling we don't like, it's judicial activism.
|
| The other reply already makes it pretty clear why this
| Arizona's law violated 1A. If you want to make a legal
| argument that donating money to a political campaign isn't
| political speech, go for it. But right now it's considered
| protected political speech so this ruling makes perfect
| sense.
|
| "Court reform" is a funny way of phrasing "ignoring the
| Constitution."
|
| This isn't even a partisan issue. Harris has been on the
| ballot 4 months and her campaign has raised approximately 3x
| the amount of money Trump's has. Moneyed interests are
| absolutely on the side of Harris this time around.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Truth.
|
| The courts have become more / too important as Congress has
| become more ineffectual.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Congress wouldn't matter as much if the feds hadn't spend
| 200yr usurping so much power from the states.
| dingnuts wrote:
| well the states really kind of blew it when they chose
| slavery as the hill to literally die on, didn't they?
|
| it's not like this is all on Congress..
| gottorf wrote:
| That states' rights were used to fight for the right to
| maintain slavery does not mean that the concept of
| states' rights is wrong. It is slavery that is wrong.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I was thinking more recent stuff, like fed income tax and
| then "giving" that money back with strings resulting in
| the current "we'll fund your state level EPA and DOT
| agencies but only if they goose step in line with us"
| status quo. Said status quo means that every stupid
| nitpick of federal law winds up getting fought tooth and
| nail over.
| gottorf wrote:
| > It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we
| like, it's fair and impartial, and any time there's a
| judicial ruling we don't like, it's judicial activism.
|
| It is funny, but at the same time I absolutely believe that
| in many cases it's possible to distinguish between
| judgments of the activist kind and those that aren't.
|
| Critics of SCOTUS should keep in mind that they agree
| unanimously more often than one might think. In fact, it's
| the modal outcome over all terms, with roughly third of all
| cases decided unanimously. IIRC 7-2 or more one-sided
| rulings (meaning more concurrence between all justices)
| occur roughly four-fifths of the time.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| The Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade 2 years ago and
| the Chevron doctrine recently.
|
| Do you think these judgements were both supported by the
| constitution when they were made and also not supported by
| the same constitution when overturned? Which one was the
| "ruling based on law"?
|
| If there was a straight deterministic line from the laws to
| the rulings the court make, we wouldn't need courts or
| highly trained judges. The fact is there are a million laws
| and precedents with 100 applying to any given situation in
| slightly different ways with many interpretations. The
| courts do have a lot of power here.
| Animats wrote:
| We _have_ public funding of presidential elections in the
| US.[1] The last year in which a major candidate accepted it was
| 2008, because it comes with limits on fund-raising.
|
| [1] https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-
| finance/understand...
| keybored wrote:
| Sortition.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Proportional representation is prone to a grid lock and
| fragmentation. A ranked choice looks like a good option in the
| situation when you don't like both major candidates (or
| parties) and would like to vote for 3rd one but with first-
| past-the-post you vote will be wasted unless you will vote for
| one of two the most popular candidates.
| cco wrote:
| > Germany is a stable constitutional federal republic with
| proportional representation and power vested in the Bundestag.
| No reason why the US can't have the same.
|
| The government of the United States is both far older than
| Germany's Bundestag and has been far more stable over that
| time.
|
| I'm not explicitly arguing one way or the other here, just
| calling out that I think it is a little early to say that
| Germany's Bundestag is a stable republic when it is so young.
| SllX wrote:
| > There needs to be public funding of elections. That would go
| a long way.
|
| I'm going to push back on this.
|
| Not a single dollar of public money should be spent helping
| anyone at all acquire a seat in an office of power. This
| includes running primaries through State election apparatuses
| and laws governing primary selection processes.
|
| I'd be okay with zeroing out contributions to individual
| candidates and limiting political contributions exclusively to
| political parties to dole out to their members as they see fit,
| even if that required a constitutional amendment, but not with
| public money. You're effectively subsidizing the acquisition of
| power by interested parties with taxpayer money, while
| simultaneously cementing an additional incumbent advantage for
| those already seated and able to write the rules for the public
| funding of elections.
| gottorf wrote:
| > You're effectively subsidizing the acquisition of power by
| interested parties with taxpayer money, while simultaneously
| cementing an additional incumbent advantage for those already
| seated and able to write the rules for the public funding of
| elections.
|
| This is a very good point. And if we can generalize: it's
| very difficult to regulate something in a way that does not
| eventually advantage those already inside over those on the
| outside looking to come in; industry regulations, rent
| control, minimum wage, etc.
| gottorf wrote:
| > Neither system is perfect, but the latter captures a wider
| range of views within society.
|
| In the FPTP system in the US, you end up with two "big tent"
| parties with broadly opposing views. What makes you suggest
| that this model does not sufficiently capture the width of
| views within society?
|
| > Germany is a stable constitutional federal republic with
| proportional representation and power vested in the Bundestag.
| No reason why the US can't have the same.
|
| There is a lot to admire about Germany, but that vaunted stable
| constitutional federal republic just about committed economic
| suicide via an over-reliance on cheap Russian gas and zealous
| persecution of domestic nuclear. It now has the weakest
| prospects among its peer nations. Their governing model isn't a
| guarantee of good decisions.
| jltsiren wrote:
| It doesn't capture the width of views precisely because of
| the "big tent" parties. When a political party is united and
| effective, it functions as a weighted average of its
| representatives. When it's not, it loses power and makes
| other parties stronger.
|
| If your opinions are outside the mainstream of any party, you
| will not have genuine representation in any democratic
| system, where political parties are allowed to form. Some
| outlier representative may speak in favor of policies you
| support, but they would be equally effective as an extra-
| parliamentary activist.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > Germany is a stable constitutional federal republic with
| proportional representation and power vested in the Bundestag.
| No reason why the US can't have the same.
|
| Germany's second most popular party is labeled a "suspected
| extremist group", there are discussions of banning it
| altogether, and the entire rest of the political establishment
| unites to ensure they are kept out of actual power.
|
| When you even have a second-most-popular party that _can_ be
| labeled an extremist group, I 'm not going to call you a
| "stable" country. In general, the feature of parliamentary
| democracies where the "wrong" election runner-up is totally
| shut out also makes it seem not any different in _practice_
| than the US system. It 's nice that the "right" runner-ups will
| be a part of a governing coalition, but this is also already
| effectively the way the US works, as party discipline is not
| nearly as strong.
|
| Democratic institutions are a problem throughout the west right
| now, and I would definitely not be looking at Germany as a
| model. Not sure who would be. People say good things about
| Swiss governance, but I don't know enough of the situation
| there.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "No reason why the US can't have the same."
|
| The reason that won't work here currently is because the two
| party system has people currently picking the lessor of two
| evils. The spectrum of stances within a single party is
| extremely wide since all cobinations of views must fit within
| two parties. For example, compare a NYC Democrat candidate vs a
| WV Democrat candidate. Or a republican candidate from TX vs one
| from NJ.
|
| "There needs to be public funding of elections. That would go a
| long way."
|
| I sort of agree. Instead of all these commercials and flyers,
| it would be much better if every candidate gets a page on a
| government website where they can advertise their views and
| platform. It would be similar to how specimen ballots are
| available online today. Restrictions like that would remove
| much of the influence of money.
| wiredfool wrote:
| One of those crap jobs I had when I was young was a temp worker
| in a lock box that processed political contributions (early
| 90's). There would be trays of mail coming in from various
| campaigns, for various orgs (3 or 4, both Democratic and
| Repubican). Surveys were big -- and people would write all over
| them. But the first thing that happened was the money was pulled
| out and deposited. The bundles of surveys might have been looked
| at.
|
| It was depressing as hell. You could tell people were looking for
| someone to listen. And as far as I know, they only reached
| someone doing a buck over minimum wage, who had to process x
| hundred envelopes per hour.
|
| Now, of course, it's been streamlined -- there aren't checks
| anymore so it's all that much faster for the more efficient
| clearing of the marks money.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| One possible idea is to simply publicly fund the political
| parties and do away with political donations entirely.
|
| They're an essential part of your democratic system of government
| and could therefore be considered an essential service, so they
| would be funded in the same way as any other essential service.
|
| That would not only solve this problem but also prevent the
| corporate lobbyists from having too much influence and corrupting
| the system.
|
| Hopefully it'll be capped and that will mean less ads everywhere.
| maxerickson wrote:
| In the US, with the first amendment, it's hard to ban private
| spending.
| jgeada wrote:
| Only since the current SC redefined money as speech, wasn't a
| problem for the first couple of hundred of years when saner
| justices prevailed.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Well, I did say spending and not campaign contributions.
|
| How do you ban a candidate from paying for air time like
| Ross Perot did?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > One possible idea is to simply publicly fund the political
| parties and do away with political donations entirely.
|
| No, political parties should be abolished. People can get
| together, call themselves whatever they want, and recommend
| people as candidates for office, but these private
| organizations should not be institutionalized in law or
| supported in any way. We shouldn't even be helping with their
| primaries.
|
| Law shouldn't recognize anything called a "political party" or
| have any rules governing them. They are not essential, they are
| corrupting.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| That would be even better. I would go a step further and have
| local citizens assemblies manage as much as possible (direct
| democracy).
|
| But with the current system, public funding is probably a
| better idea than private funding.
| Animats wrote:
| _THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. YOUR GOP INNER CIRCLE LEADER
| MEMBERSHIP IS ABOUT TO BE DEACTIVATED._
| iwontberude wrote:
| No, I refuse to give anyone sympathy for funding hate. Dementia
| is no excuse. There is no justification which is acceptable.
| pc86 wrote:
| You have no idea what dementia is.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I am very sympathetic to this. However, much of that hate is
| born of fear. When some sociopath deliberately and
| systematically tells old people that various "they" are coming
| for them, can we really blame the ones that react in terror
| with the hope that someone will protect them?
|
| Dementia is an excuse. It may be the _only_ excuse. If someone
| isn 't thinking clearly, we can't get mad at them for not
| thinking clearly.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| The simple fact that you can spend $1 in Meta ads to raise $1.02
| in political contributions, at the scale of hundreds of millions
| of dollars, is fueling political campaigns.
| neilv wrote:
| Question for historians... Was there a time in the US that
| preying upon the elderly for political campaign funding like this
| would've been met with universal (both sides of the aisle)
| outrage, and probably cost the parties doing it many elections?
| crooked-v wrote:
| Endless political spam texts are infuriating enough even for the
| mentally fit. I actively advise people against making political
| donations now unless they're extremely careful about it, because
| they will be hounded by political groups for literally the rest
| of their lives (literally literally, not figuratively literally)
| if they ever share any kind of contact information.
| Animats wrote:
| STOP seems to work.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I believe it's legally required to?
| water-data-dude wrote:
| This year when I checked my voter registration I noticed that
| the "phone number" field in my profile was not marked as
| required, and there was a little info icon that said "this is
| public information" when I clicked on it.
|
| I removed my phone number and the number of text messages
| diminished (not all the way, but noticeably better). Not a
| magic bullet, but worth checking.
| from-nibly wrote:
| The secret band of robbers and murderers robbing someone?! No
| way!
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