[Peace-discuss] Weinberg's law of twins and ballot access
E. Wayne Johnson
ewj at pigs.ag
Tue Aug 10 13:38:01 CDT 2010
The Huffington Post picked up the thread about the GOP challenges to
ballot access today...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/09/illinois-republicans-lead_n_676232.html
On 8/10/2010 3:25 PM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> Gerald Weinberg is a ancient computer programmer (he and some of the
> computers he programmed) who worked on the Edsel project, Project
> Mercury, for IBM, and is an at times excoriating social critic and an
> ex-(ex-patriot) who wrote some interesting books on the psychology of
> computer programming, a quite remarkable book called "Introduction to
> General Systems Thinking", and several other "how to think better"
> books. He is also famous for a few of "laws" or "principles" which he
> formulated. One of his "laws" that got some attention is "Weinberg's
> Law of Twins"---(originally from the 1979 "On the Design of Stable
> Systems")... Wikipaedia notes:
>
> *Weinberg's Law of Twins* states that most of the time, no matter
> how much effort one expends, no event of any great significance
> will result. *Weinberg's Law of Twins Inverted* states that
> occasionally---particularly when one isn't expecting it---a
> significant event occurs.
>
> Gerald Weinberg <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg>
> invented the law and described it in his book /The Secrets of
> Consulting/ (1986), in which he explains the origin of its name.
> He reported that, while riding a bus
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus> in New York City
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City>, he observed a mother
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother> with eight small children
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child> embark. She asked the driver
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_driver> the amount of the fare;
> he told her that the cost was thirty-five cents, but that children
> under the age of five could ride for free
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis>. When the woman deposited
> only thirty-five cents into the payment slot, the driver was
> incredulous. "Do you mean to tell me that all your children are
> under five years old?" The woman explained that she had four sets
> of twins <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin>. The driver replied,
> "Do you always have twins?" "No," said the woman, "most of the
> time we don't have any."
>
> Democracy as we know it seems to be about limiting debate and limiting
> real choices while maintaining, via a massive education and PR
> campaign, the thin facade that the system gives a ripe red rat's ass
> about the Vox Populi. Of course the system does welcome the Vox
> Populi as long as it is sufficiently squelched and massaged to support
> the notions of the Masters.
>
> Government in Illinois is no exception. The system is rigged to
> maintain the power of the two-headed one-party system and to make sure
> that the hopes of 3rd party ideologies are dashed to pieces on the
> rocks of the Illinois ballot access process. Non-conformist
> candidates are forced to get many times the number of signatures
> required by "candidates" of the Illinois Combine. The next step in
> the "democratic process" is for the Democrat party to file objections
> to the signatures on the petition. The objections to Rich Whitney's
> petitions filed by the "Democrats" in 2006 is the classic case. But
> with the emergence of the Tea Partiers and the R[3voJ]uition-aries,
> even the GOP feels threatened by this new Spectre of Democracy which
> seems to be slowly spreading its dark shadow across the tidy gaming of
> the electoral process.
>
> Threatened by several emerging candidates for US Senate and other
> races, the Illinois Republican Party is stepping up to show they too
> have a can-do attitude when it comes to stamping out participatory
> democracy
>
> But here is where Weinberg's Law Inverted may be taking hold. It's
> quite possible that the people are starting to stir a bit and even
> express a bit of righteous indignation. Doug Ibendahl grew up on a
> cattle farm in southern Illinois and is now a Chicago attorney and was
> at one time General Counsel for the Illinois Republican Party. That
> is to say he knows too much about the inner workings of the beast and
> he knows where the bodies are buried. Doug is a traditional
> paleoconservative and a tireless reformer who hates machine politics
> and its dirty tactics and wants to return the voice in government back
> to the people. We wanted to get Doug on at the Midwest Liberty Fest
> but he was not available.
>
> Interestingly, Doug is now representing the Constitution Party against
> the petition challenges filed by the Republican Party. I think its
> interesting because Republican Doug is stepping up to cry foul and
> oppose the corrupt system. Doug writes at his blog:
>
> No one was happier than I when Republican Cedra Crenshaw
> <http://www.cedracrenshaw.com/> recently won her court fight and
> the right to appear on the ballot as the GOP candidate for State
> Senate in the 43rd District. Cedra's now officially facing
> incumbent Democrat Arthur Wilhelmi in what has already become an
> exciting race. If any Republican can take that seat this year,
> it's Cedra Crenshaw. The Democrats' attempt to keep Crenshaw off
> the ballot was wrong. It was doubly wrong for the incumbent
> Wilhelmi to pretend (at least for awhile) that he had nothing to
> do with the objection filed against Crenshaw's petitions.
> Fortunately that one turned out for the best -- eventually --
> after much time, frustration, and expense. You were probably
> already aware of the good news story regarding Cedra Crenshaw.
> You've likely heard all about how evil the "Democrat Machine" was
> for attempting to deny ballot access to a bright political
> newcomer. That's all true. But what you probably don't know is
> that the Republican Machine is putting the Democrat Machine to
> shame right now in terms of petition challenges filed. The
> Illinois Republican Party is behind 11 petition challenges right
> now, all of which are in litigation at the State Board of Elections.
>
> And note that those 11 challenges include a lot more than 11
> candidates. The Illinois Republican Party is currently attempting
> to keep the entire Constitution Party slate and the entire
> Libertarian Party slate off the ballot. Each of those counts as
> one case only -- even though each party's statewide slate has 7
> candidates. So think about that for a moment. We already knew
> that Pat Brady is against the idea of Republicans voting in their
> own Illinois Republican Party. Brady still opposes passage of
> SB600 <http://republicannewswatch.com/wp/?p=4738>. But now Pat
> Brady is heading the effort to keep Constitutionalists and
> Libertarians from having a vote too -- for ALL of their candidates...
>
> How do I know so much about this topic? Because I'm the lawyer
> representing the Constitution Party and its candidates in their
> defense of the petition challenge. I'm very proud to be doing so.
> I think what my Illinois Republican Party is doing right now is
> entirely wrong, on several levels. First off, I think a little
> healthy competition would make the "established" parties better.
> Further, maybe if our Illinois Republican Party would clean-up its
> act and stop doing self-destructive things like constantly rigging
> party conventions and intra-party votes, maybe there would be less
> to fear from new entrants to the political marketplace. I can
> also see as clearly as anyone that our GOP has at least two
> candidates on the statewide ballot who aren't even Republicans in
> any sense of the word. I'm talking about Mark Kirk and Judy Baar
> Topinka. At a minimum, I personally want another choice when it
> comes to those two.
>
> Finally, I'm representing the Constitution Party in this because
> quite frankly I've always liked the underdog. Randy Stufflebeam is
> the Constitution Party's candidate for U.S. Senate and I've gotten
> to know him extremely well this past month or so. Randy is a good
> man and one of the most honest I've met. They say once a Marine
> always a Marine and no one exemplifies that idea better than Randy
> Stufflebeam. In fact all of the folks I've met on the Constitution
> Party side are truly decent, God-fearing people. They don't
> deserve the disrespectful treatment they are getting from Pat
> Brady and a handful of his Republican pals.
>
> The pooh-bahs of the Illinois GOP see things differently of
> course. They want to strangle-off the competition so we Republican
> saps have no place else to go. They hope that if the ballot's
> cleared we'll have to hold our nose and vote for their boy Mark
> Kirk and others. Maybe some will, but I won't -- no matter what. I
> will not vote for any candidate who has lied to us like Mark Kirk
> has so many times...
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20100811/074b05c3/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the Peace-discuss
mailing list