Framing the question (political)
I've been reading a lot of (democratic) political sites recently, and more and more of them are accusing the media and the white house of manipulating the discussion by framing the question. What they mean by this is, for example, that someone will bring up a topic in a certain way, and then that is the way it will get discussed, even if a different way of looking at it is more relevant. A subset of what they mean are the strawman arguments that are so beloved by everyone in politics, but it is often more subtle then that.
I think this emphasis on looking at not only what side is right and which is wrong, but also how the whole question of the way the question was framed in the first place, is a very important point. Just looking at language itself there are certain concepts which can't be expressed in some languages (I think I heard that Navajo does not have the same concept of the passage of time), and others which have many subtle nuances in certain languages (types of snow in eskimo), so just speaking about those things (or not speaking about them) in those languages is already a form of "how the question is framed".
Perhaps it's only because I was thinking about this topic, and maybe this isn't at all original, quite possibly I'm being very stupid and overlooking something very big and obvious, but when I saw an article/essay/post about the public nature of political contributions it got me to thinking. It was on a bloggers site, and I'd love to give credit, but I'm afraid the guy's name escapes me (I think I only visited it the one time). Anyway, this person was discussing the fact that political contributions could not be made anonymously, while voting was always anonymous, and that the reason for this was that, though we didn't really care about the measly $2,000 that individuals might contribute, we were very concerned with what groups, in general, contributed to politicians' campaigns. The author was arguing that though this informatin being so public wasn't necessarily a good thing, it was currently the only way to get at the information of which politicians got large-scale contributions from which groups/organizations, and so we needed to keep it.
However, there's a simple, if very radical, solution the author never mentions: what if we simply make all political contributions illegal. Nobody is allowed to collect money for their campaign. How would this change things? Well, first of all, unless we also prevented politicians from using their own money to support their campaigns we would get an even worse situation then we currently have, so the law would have to prevent all private uses of money for politics. Does this mean nobody can run a campaign at all? No, the government (either state, local, or federal) supplies the money to help inform it's citizenry of the stances of the various people who are going to serve the public. How do upcoming politicians get funding? Well, initially they need to get a certain minimum number of signatures in support of their candidacy, that would entitle them to a certain level of funding which might allow them to get more signatures to get a higher level of funding, and so on, until their names will appear oin the ballot and they are getting the funding needed to be a valid candidate for that office. Note that high offices on the federal level would require a candidate to get more signatures (and, hence, probably run through more iterations of this cycle) then lower offices at the local level, but the principle would be the same.
So what about someone needing 50,000 signatures to become senator for his state? How can he get those without funding, and if you give him that funding what prevents Joe Shmoe from applying for the funding and running off with the money? Even if Joe Schmoe uses the funding for legitimate purposes, if 100,000 people decide to run for senator it bankrupts the country, doesn't it? These are legitimate questions which the astute reader will notice I already answered in the above paragraph. To reiterate, even a candidate running for president of the US would only need to get, say, 100 signatures to get the ball rolling. The candidate would need to get those 100 (or whatever minimum number to start with) without any funding at all, just personally spending time, but no money, asking people to sign him up, but then he gets the first level of funding, which is enough for him to try for getting, say, 5,000 (just picking a number off the top of my head here) people vowing their support of his candidacy, which would then get him the second level of federal funding, which might be enough for him to get, say, 200,000 people agreeing to support his candidacy, which would then be enough to get him the third and last level of federal funding, which would be enough for him to legitimately campaign as president. This is just a hypothetical example, there might be more cycles involved for the presidency, but fewer to, say, become a local town selectman. The signatures would have to be verified as belonging to actual people who did not endorse other candidates.
Of course, this points up a flaw in the plan. The people who endorse their candidate need to go on the public record and so we have a similar problem to campaign contributions. Ideally the number of endorsees would generally be less then the number of people making campaign contributions.
Any other problems with this idea? Enforcement would be difficult. I suggest that any money spent on campaigning would need to be scupulously recorded and presented to public view. Money left over would need to be returned to the government (city, state, or local) that provided it. Perhaps it would not be entirely out of line to require that anyone who wishes to be a public servant needs to acquire the public's trust by being willing to disclose all major financial transations including tax statements during their lifetime, all major property bought or sold, stocks/funds/other investments of substantial worth (say, more then $1,000), etc. Government is hard to trust, and large corporations even more so.
This would solve several problems. First, campaign contributions (being nonexistent) would no longer need to be exposed publically, preserving individual rights to privacy. Second, any forms of graft or payoffs are going to be a little bit harder to hide once all of a politicians finances are exposed to public scrutiny (what happened to the right to privacy? That applies a little less to people who agree to serve the public interest and get paid for it by the public). Third, it discourages the lopsided system of one dollar-one vote in favor of the more equitable system of one person-one vote.
Of course, it'd never get passed. Neither our supposed "public servants" nor corporate interests want the public to really know where the money is coming from and going to. In all fairness, even withoput anything nefarious going on they would still object to it for legitimate reasons. Do these reasons outweight the public's right to know this information? In my opinion they don't.
I think this emphasis on looking at not only what side is right and which is wrong, but also how the whole question of the way the question was framed in the first place, is a very important point. Just looking at language itself there are certain concepts which can't be expressed in some languages (I think I heard that Navajo does not have the same concept of the passage of time), and others which have many subtle nuances in certain languages (types of snow in eskimo), so just speaking about those things (or not speaking about them) in those languages is already a form of "how the question is framed".
Perhaps it's only because I was thinking about this topic, and maybe this isn't at all original, quite possibly I'm being very stupid and overlooking something very big and obvious, but when I saw an article/essay/post about the public nature of political contributions it got me to thinking. It was on a bloggers site, and I'd love to give credit, but I'm afraid the guy's name escapes me (I think I only visited it the one time). Anyway, this person was discussing the fact that political contributions could not be made anonymously, while voting was always anonymous, and that the reason for this was that, though we didn't really care about the measly $2,000 that individuals might contribute, we were very concerned with what groups, in general, contributed to politicians' campaigns. The author was arguing that though this informatin being so public wasn't necessarily a good thing, it was currently the only way to get at the information of which politicians got large-scale contributions from which groups/organizations, and so we needed to keep it.
However, there's a simple, if very radical, solution the author never mentions: what if we simply make all political contributions illegal. Nobody is allowed to collect money for their campaign. How would this change things? Well, first of all, unless we also prevented politicians from using their own money to support their campaigns we would get an even worse situation then we currently have, so the law would have to prevent all private uses of money for politics. Does this mean nobody can run a campaign at all? No, the government (either state, local, or federal) supplies the money to help inform it's citizenry of the stances of the various people who are going to serve the public. How do upcoming politicians get funding? Well, initially they need to get a certain minimum number of signatures in support of their candidacy, that would entitle them to a certain level of funding which might allow them to get more signatures to get a higher level of funding, and so on, until their names will appear oin the ballot and they are getting the funding needed to be a valid candidate for that office. Note that high offices on the federal level would require a candidate to get more signatures (and, hence, probably run through more iterations of this cycle) then lower offices at the local level, but the principle would be the same.
So what about someone needing 50,000 signatures to become senator for his state? How can he get those without funding, and if you give him that funding what prevents Joe Shmoe from applying for the funding and running off with the money? Even if Joe Schmoe uses the funding for legitimate purposes, if 100,000 people decide to run for senator it bankrupts the country, doesn't it? These are legitimate questions which the astute reader will notice I already answered in the above paragraph. To reiterate, even a candidate running for president of the US would only need to get, say, 100 signatures to get the ball rolling. The candidate would need to get those 100 (or whatever minimum number to start with) without any funding at all, just personally spending time, but no money, asking people to sign him up, but then he gets the first level of funding, which is enough for him to try for getting, say, 5,000 (just picking a number off the top of my head here) people vowing their support of his candidacy, which would then get him the second level of federal funding, which might be enough for him to get, say, 200,000 people agreeing to support his candidacy, which would then be enough to get him the third and last level of federal funding, which would be enough for him to legitimately campaign as president. This is just a hypothetical example, there might be more cycles involved for the presidency, but fewer to, say, become a local town selectman. The signatures would have to be verified as belonging to actual people who did not endorse other candidates.
Of course, this points up a flaw in the plan. The people who endorse their candidate need to go on the public record and so we have a similar problem to campaign contributions. Ideally the number of endorsees would generally be less then the number of people making campaign contributions.
Any other problems with this idea? Enforcement would be difficult. I suggest that any money spent on campaigning would need to be scupulously recorded and presented to public view. Money left over would need to be returned to the government (city, state, or local) that provided it. Perhaps it would not be entirely out of line to require that anyone who wishes to be a public servant needs to acquire the public's trust by being willing to disclose all major financial transations including tax statements during their lifetime, all major property bought or sold, stocks/funds/other investments of substantial worth (say, more then $1,000), etc. Government is hard to trust, and large corporations even more so.
This would solve several problems. First, campaign contributions (being nonexistent) would no longer need to be exposed publically, preserving individual rights to privacy. Second, any forms of graft or payoffs are going to be a little bit harder to hide once all of a politicians finances are exposed to public scrutiny (what happened to the right to privacy? That applies a little less to people who agree to serve the public interest and get paid for it by the public). Third, it discourages the lopsided system of one dollar-one vote in favor of the more equitable system of one person-one vote.
Of course, it'd never get passed. Neither our supposed "public servants" nor corporate interests want the public to really know where the money is coming from and going to. In all fairness, even withoput anything nefarious going on they would still object to it for legitimate reasons. Do these reasons outweight the public's right to know this information? In my opinion they don't.