Malaclypse the Younger

I pay into EI with my paycheque, I expect to collect if I have to. I'm not paying for insurance that does nothing. I do not think that I have a misplaced sense of entitlement to expect to get what I pay for. Actually, it's both. Without regulation, the economy ends up where it is now. So, public education and subsidisation of post-secondary education holds no value? We don't need roads, hospitals, police, public health care, firefighters or ambulances to keep everything in motion? These are all things we pay taxes for. Without them, many of us would have a much more difficult time living our lives. What is wealth without value?

We've already got enough ignorant voters, we don't need more. Sure, mandatory voting works in Australia, in that it gets everyone to vote because they'll go to jail if they don't. So they get morons like John Howard running their country.

I don't take web polls seriously. We're not talking about two thousand or three thousand votes, we're talking about a percentage of the vote. I think the requirement is one percent. The Conervsatives don't use that money. Everyone else does. That's why they tried to have that funding removed, and that's what caused the idea of an NDP-Liberal coalition to happen. It would give the Conservatives an extremely unfair advantage in the next election. I'm quite aware. Reason #87765 that I will never vote for the Conservatives. So the poor shouldn't be represented in the House of Commons?

Even the Catholic church doesn't think that God and evolution are at odds with each other. The director of the Vatican observatory firmly holds the belief that God must have directed evolution. It seems silly to be a Christian and think otherwise, I think. But I'm not a Christian.

I knew, the day I was laid off, that I shouldn't count on anything like that. I was working in the department where they put their most expendable employees. Anyone that can operate a drill press or an orbital sander could do my job. But that's okay, I don't want to work there again.

I think that what I get is quite fair, actually. I was only maing $10/hr anyway. Six years ago, when I had been making $17/hr shuffling paper for the government, I got what I considered a reasonable amount as well, but I doubt I'd be able to collect as much as that now if I had been making the same wage. Well, maybe some. I consider my dad a failed business owner with no income, but that's just because he's lazy and has extremely poor business sense. I don't consider being able to make $89 a week as a "larger percentage", really. But I guess it's fair when I'm already collecting $222 a week.

It most certainly is. I was laid off in February, and I've been on EI ever since. I'm just scraping by on what I get, but without the savings I've kept, I might be homeless right now.

I'd say that's just as misguided a reason to vote. You shouldn't vote because you're bored or don't want to be bored. You should vote because you've spent the time to become educated about issues that are important, and want to choose the party that will address those issues in a way that you see fit.

It may cost nothing to cast a ballot, but to convince people to cast a ballot for your party does cost money, and that is the core of the issue. If one party has the funds to mount massive smear campaigns when there isn't even an election happening, while the rest have to beg for donations to combat all of the smearing so that they can do some actual campaigning, there is a severe disproportionality in election fairness. Why not? They don't just get money for each and every vote, they have to reach a certain percentage of the vote before they can even get the funds. In other words, you have to prove that a significant number of people take your platform seriously before you can receive matching funds. Independants often already have a seat in a party they broke away from, and maintain that seat once they break away, then lose the next election. Running as an independant is extremely difficult. Currently, what you call "lame parties" includes everyone but the Conservative Party. We won't have much of a democracy left if the Conservative Party is the only one that can get any sort of cross-country support, but I'm sure that's what they're aiming for. This isn't the 1950's anymore, our base of well-established political parties that have any reasonable amount of clout has shrunk to four. The Reform Party had a base of people with money, also known as the elderly. Now, it is harder to get people to vote for grass roots parties because they're all so convinced that democracy is a horse race. And, finally, see my signature line. I think Abbie Hoffman was quite right in that regard. Matching funds for struggling political parties is giving freedom to dissidents. The richest parties have already won their freedom.

Hackers are not big on politics?! Are you joking? Have you never heard of Kevin Mitnick? Hacktivism? Hackers are massively into politics. If it weren't for hackers, DVD encryption and copyright protection in general would never be an issue. Net neutrality would be a whisper in the wind.

Not one bit. Public funding of political parties is there to ensure that one party doesn't have a disproportionate amount of campaign funding over all of the other parties. If one party is extremely rich because its base is mainly elderly people with money (ie, the Conservative Party), while the other parties are representative of more have-nots then, without public funds, the richer party will always be more likely to win. Last time I checked, we live in a democracy, not an oligarchy.

If you don't want to go to a polling station because you think it's boring, I'd say your priorities are just a little misplaced. Also, no one forced you to own three dogs.

None currently, because you have to show up to a polling station with a peice of official mail to prove that you are who you are, and you can only do that once because if you try again, the people running the polling station will notice that the same person showed up twice. That's much more difficult. Provided that you're not an idiot, you wouldn't go writing your bank card pin number anywhere for people to find. Someone who is good at social engineering can easily find out the answers to "private questions". I would rather see people who care about democracy going out to vote. Increasing a percentage just for the sake of doing so is not really a healthy way to promote democracy. If people can't be bothered to know the issues and get to a polling station, they shouldn't vote in the first place.

If you're self-employed, you should be financially savvy enough to be self-sufficient, I think. You're already managing a lot of finances, and if you do it responsibly, you should have invested the money you've made into ensuring your survival in an economic downturn. Self-employment also doesn't mean that your business is static. You have to always come up with new ideas to keep your business diverse. If you can't do that, you won't survive anyway. In bad economic times, it means you'll just have to refocus your interests. Whether money is tight or not, it's always important to be on the move.

Because if he did, they'd just say it was a forgery. This is the same tactic that racists have been using since before the end of segregation to back people they don't like into a corner. Frankly, I think Barack Obama has better things to do with his time than entertain a bunch of racist crackheads.