Voting

^ In the AMA I linked to above, Johnson talks a little about his options for getting into the debates without necessarily having the polling.

The Commission on Presidential Debates sponsors and produces the debates, and they are the ones who make the rules. Within this article, it mentions that "to be included in the national debates he or she must garner at least 15% support across five national polls", but it doesn't list the polls, so I don't know if there are five specific ones, or if they just have to be fairly well-respected. The commission is controlled by the DNC and the RNC, so it is not exactly impartial.

Edit: Here's their own website: Link

 

Here's the overview on the debates from the commission's website. It says...

... which seems like it has to be five specific polls that they chose, but I still don't see which ones they are.

 

As much as I hate to say it, I've been almost impressed with Fox News this election. They're the only ones with the guts to run with negative Hillary stories while everyone else ignores them or spins the stories more and more desperately to try and make her look good. The town hall that Fox held between Hillary and Bernie was the only really fair one (probably because they hate both of them, but I'm cool with that).

I'll do some digging and see if I can't find out which polls are being used. I would assume they would be ones from as close to the scheduled debates as possible.

 

From what I've seen, more than a few Bernie supporters feel that way. That's not to say that Fox News is good, exactly. Just that in this case, they stand out from amongst the rest of the dog shit. All of the mainstream media has been garbage this year (and probably longer, but I paid attention this year).

 

Has anyone been watching the debates? I've just been catching up on them the next day because I figure I have better things to do than spend an hour and a half being lied to and watching the candidates spin non-answers to every question. The only reason I'm even tempted to watch them is because I'm hoping Hillary keels over, but I guess her handlers have doped her up pretty good since she collapsed at the 9/11 memorial, so it probably won't happen.

Also, does anyone even care about Trump's taxes? As a small business owner, I'll tell you that we always try to write off as much as we possibly can when we file, and I don't see why a larger business owner would be any different. No one wants to pay more taxes if there are legal ways around it, and Trump apparently had good accountants who were able to find those loopholes and take advantage of them. If anything, people should be pissed at Congress for refusing to close these loopholes and allowing the wealthy to get away with this, but since the majority of congressmen are millionaires, and they also kiss corporate money's ass, why would they do anything?

 

If you mean Bernie's plans like tax-funded health care and college, he laid it out pretty clearly on his website how he would pay for it. If you mean his idea of a "revolution", or taking the government back from the oligarchs, I don't think in reality it would take billions of dollars. It would involve getting like-minded people to actually run for office and getting lazy citizens off their asses and to the voting booths. Already in some states, people with similar platforms have won their primaries for local and federal offices, and ballot initiatives in a few states over marijuana legalization, state-funded health care, and bills to limit charges from Big Pharma are on the ballot. It's just educating people to get them to vote for those people and initiatives. Politicians who are no longer representing us need to be primaried/voted out, and term limits and a move to a different voting system like ranked choice voting would help keep the garbage out. Automatic voter registration and a state/federal holiday on voting days would help encourage people, too. I don't think it will be a quick fix, but I think once the Boomers die out, or at least become a much less powerful group of voters, we will see progress. They're ruining everything for the rest of us.

I doubt Trump does everything legally, but so far he hasn't been caught doing anything bad enough for people to raise hell about enough to damage his campaign for good. Hillary does have her family charity- the Clinton Foundation. However, I think it's mostly a front for pay-to-play politics and selling influence. And she has a "business", giving speeches to Wall Street for $225,000 a pop, and then refusing to release the transcripts.

I don't think Bernie is wrong. The wealth inequality in this country seems pretty real to me, and when the majority of the leaders of your country are incredibly wealthy, it seems to me that even if they wanted to make policies that would help average citizens, they are probably pretty out of touch with the issues a lot of us face, and have been for a long time. And to me, this current crop of losers running the show don't even seem to want to pretend to care about us. I think we need politicians who are actually representative of the country's entire population.

 

Yeah, if you want to post a link, I'll take a look at it. The way it was explained on Bernie's website made sense to me, but it would have required the cooperation of Congress. 'Course, that goes for whatever plans the other candidates have, also. Gotta say, though, I find it funny how no one asks "how are we gonna pay for that?" when Congress is voting for more wars, but when the question is "how can we stop millions of our own citizens from dying because they can't afford health care?" suddenly there's no money for that. I think it is pretty clear what our current politicians value.

Ah. I don't know how much of it is Bernie fanning the fires, or if it is just Bernie speaking out loud what people have already been thinking for a while now. I don't think the people scraping by on $7.25 an hour needed anyone to tell them that they're fucked. But Bernie is certainly vocal and he doesn't give a shit about calling out people like the Walton family, and a lot of people have heard his speeches.