Day: November 4, 2024

Open Letter To ‘Independents’

College Of Political Knowledge

2024 Election Series

2024  vote is closer than most Americans think….

The news seems to be focused on what is humorously termed the ‘independents’ as the deciding voters for the next few elections…..

Independents reign as the voting bloc for political candidates to deal with this election year, new data show. Gallup has found that 43% of US adults identified as independent in its survey, while 27% of respondents said they’re Democrats or Republicans. That’s a low for Democrats, Axios reports. There have been blips, but independents generally started to outnumber the ranks of the two parties in 1991. “The increase in the percentage of independents has come more at the expense of Democrats than Republicans, which might be expected since Democrats were previously the largest political group,” Gallup’s post says.

To begin with I am not comfortable with the term ‘independent’…..simply because these self-described voters will vote either GOP or Dems….that is not an ‘independent’ in my book.

They are still part of the problem for it is the D or the R that they are voting for….is not in any way an independent voter.

I am an old fart so as an old person I apparently have a different definition for the term.

My thought is if you are an independent then you probably avoid politics like the plague….but that is just me…..

Independents often are portrayed as political free agents with the potential to alleviate the nation’s rigid partisan divisions. Yet the reality is that most independents are not all that “independent” politically. And the small share of Americans who are truly independent – less than 10% of the public has no partisan leaning – stand out for their low level of interest in politics.

Among the public overall, 38% describe themselves as independents, while 31% are Democrats and 26% call themselves Republicans, according to Pew Research Center surveys conducted in 2018. These shares have changed only modestly in recent years, but the proportion of independents is higher than it was from 2000-2008, when no more than about a third of the public identified as independents.

An overwhelming majority of independents (81%) continue to “lean” toward either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Among the public overall, 17% are Democratic-leaning independents, while 13% lean toward the Republican Party. Just 7% of Americans decline to lean toward a party, a share that has changed little in recent years. This is a long-standing dynamic that has been the subject of past analyses, both by Pew Research Center and others.

Political Independents: Who They Are, What They Think

But are these voters truly independent?

Not really.

On the one hand, more Americans identifying as independent probably doesn’t seem like a bad thing. Independents are often portrayed as more open-minded and less dogmatic in their political views. And in a nation whose founders feared factional politics, the value of political independence is also an attractive one to many Americans.

The problem is that few independents are actually independent. Roughly 3 in 4 independents still lean toward one of the two major political parties, and studies show that these voters aren’t all that different from the voters in the party they lean toward. Independents who lean toward a party also tend to back that party at almost the same rate as openly partisan voters.

“Independents tend not to look all that different from partisans,” said Samara Klar, a political scientist at the University of Arizona and co-author of the book “Independent Politics.” “But they do tend to be more averse to identifying themselves as a partisan when there is a negative stigma associated with partisanship. So, it’s really the arguments, the hostility, the negativity that seems to be driving this behavior.”

Few Americans Who Identify As Independent Are Actually Independent. That’s Really Bad For Politics.

Or these voters could be ‘undecided’ voters…..another term I do not agree with…..

All in all a true independent has principles beyond party then more political parties would be in the mix….as it is they are not….most vote either ‘R’ or ‘D’…..and the nation suffers.

Is there any debate?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Thieves In Business suits

A change of pace….we will be bombarded with stats and reports for the next few days so let’s try and change the tone.

I know I do go on about the War Department and it’s inflated budget that grows yearly….and I rail about the sycophants with buckets on money that buy off Congress and the White House….the corruption is just getting worse with every admin that comes to power.

For instance one of the preeminent defense industry has just bee caught gouging.

Indictments of arms contractors for corruption and malfeasance are not uncommon, but recently revealed cases of illegal conduct by RTX (formerly Raytheon) are extraordinary even by the relatively lax standards of the defense industry.

The company has agreed to pay nearly $1 billion in fines, which is one of the highest figures ever for corruption in the arms sector. To incur these fines, RTX participated in price gouging on Pentagon contracts, bribing officials in Qatar, and sharing sensitive information with China.

Engaging in illegal conduct on this scale suggests that, far from being an aberration, this behavior may be business as usual for the company. Given the scale of RTX’s malfeasance, the Justice Department should take a close look at the practices of other arms contractors to determine whether these infractions are industry standard.

The company’s approach is reminiscent of the way arms companies did business in the 1960s, when, for example, massive cost overruns on Lockheed Martin’s C-5 transport plane drew fire from internal critics like Ernest Fitzgerald and congressional gadflies, like the-Democratic Sen. William Proxmire of Wisconsin.

Resorting to bribery has been less prevalent since Sen. Proxmire pushed through the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, which was a response to a massive scandal involving the bribery of officials in Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. The exposure brought about by the scandal – which covered events going back to the 1950s that were not known to the general public until a set of 1975 Senate hearings on the activities of multinational corporations showed the world how bribery was used to sway the decisions of foreign policy makers. This resulted in major consequences, including the conviction of former Japanese Premier Kakuei Tanaka, along with 10 other business people and government officials.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/raytheon-corruption/

This is disgraceful….if these thieves are caught red handed then they should be fined and sent to the bottom of any future contracts.

I wish I could say this was a one off incident….but it is all too common.

Then there is Boeing, you know the plane maker that has been doing shoddy work, it was also caught gouging….

A new report from a Department of Defense watchdog claims Boeing managed to slip a few pricey items through, reports Reuters, inflating the cost of a dozen spare parts for C-17 transport planes used by the Air Force to the tune of almost $1 million. According to the DOD’s Office of Inspector General report released Tuesday, included in those spare parts were bathroom soap dispensers that ran the military arm nearly $150,000 in unnecessary costs. The markup on the soap dispensers was 7,943%, the report noted—or more than 80 times what similar commercially available dispensers cost, per CBS News.

“The Air Force needs to establish and implement more effective internal controls to help prevent overpaying for spare parts for the remainder of this contract, which continues through 2031,” says Defense Department Inspector General Robert Storch in a statement. He makes the point that “significant overpayments for spare parts may reduce the number of spare parts that Boeing can purchase on the contract, potentially reducing C-17 readiness worldwide.”

Under that contract, Boeing is the entity that buys the spare parts for the C-17 planes, then is reimbursed by the Air Force. The inspector general’s review was spurred by an anonymous tip about the soap dispensers. Boeing, meanwhile, says the spare parts had to be significantly modified to meet military specs, and that it plans to dive into the details in its own written response “in the coming days,” per Reuters. The Air Force says it concurs with the “intent” of the watchdog’s recommendation to “determine whether spare parts prices are allowable and reasonable before payment,” adding that it would seek to recoup more than $902,000, reports USA Today.

These are not solo incidents this practice is all too common and there is little oversight anyone thanks to the GOP and stupidity.

This is taxpayer money and should be reported whenever abuse has been rooted out….but rooting it out seems to be a huge obstacle.

But that is just my wish for this government.

Taxpayer cash side note: 

A new report by the Israeli outlet Calcalist reviewed Israeli military spending on wars since October 7, finding that Washington is funding 70% of Tel Aviv’s military costs. In a little over a year, the US has provided Israel with more than $20 billion in military aid. 

“The scope of American aid since the beginning of the war is about 85 billion shekels… According to official estimates by the Bank of Israel, the total cost of the war is…approximately NIS 118 billion.” It continues, “Therefore, according to a simple calculation, The Americans financed about 70% of the war effort.”

According to the Cost of War Project, the US has given Israel $22.57 billion in military aid since the Hamas attack. Calcalist concludes without US support, Tel Aviv’s war would simply be unaffordable.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/washington-is-funding-70-of-israels-wars/

And no one seems to care how much money is being pissed away on these endless wars.

Why is that?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”