Democracy is a lot of work
I finally finished (my absentee) voting for the 2004 elections. Deciding the Presidential race took no extra effort, though I did watch 3 of the 4 debates. However, I am a resident of Berkeley, California, and there were 32 state, district, school, and city measures to vote on, in addition to a few other appointments that needed to be decided. Especially because I'm quite young, deciding my view on each of these measures took me hours of work -- reading the unbiased legal commentary, the arguments for, against, and rebuttals of these. I spent over 8 hours on the task, and still I wish I could have spent more time. Annoyingly, only 1/2 of the information I needed to vote on the measures was available in my voter pamphlet (which was already over 1/3 inch thick). I needed to go online to read about the state measures and candidates. Is democracy supposed to be so time consuming? Aren't I supposed to elect representatives to decide on most of these measures for me? Does everyone spend the equivalent of one work day trying to figure out where to place their vote? Will I always spend so much time voting, or will laziness (or wisdom) prevail?
- posted by David Sontag @ 3:30 PM 0 comments

 
The New York Times > International > Middle East > How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence

In this article, they quote a front page New York Times article, from two years ago, that gave "the first detailed account of the alumnimum tubes," yet "gave no hint of a debate over the tubes." Why doesn't this article say anything about why the New York Times article refrained from discussing the debate? I'd like to know, for example, whether the New York Times had spoken to their contacts in the Energy Department, and knew about the debate, or whether they were completely relying on the White House and CIA's skewed intelligence reports.
- posted by David Sontag @ 4:37 AM 0 comments