Voting your conscience

cymrullewes posted on why she's writing in her vote for President this election.  And you know what?  I'm there too.  Because you have to start voting your conscience sooner or later if you ever want things to improve.

I know lots of people who are dissatisfied with the offerings of the two major political parties.  Very few of them are voting their consciences this election.  "Because", most of them say, "the $XXX candidate is just so awful that it's vital to vote $YYY this time around to keep him out.  I can vote my conscience next election; there's plenty of time."

But that's what almost every one of them said in 2004.

And in 2000.

And in 1996.

And in 1992.

Do we begin to see a pattern here?

I'll put it as plainly as I can:

As long as they can keep you voting for "the lesser evil", they can keep you voting for things to get worse and worse and worse.  Because a vote for the lesser evil is still a vote for evil.

It's a vote that says you're OK with things getting worse every year, so long as it's your party doing it, and so long as they do it mostly to the other guy.  Then when the other party gets in power and does unto you in turn, because you're "the other guy" now, you'll whine about how unfair it is that your rights are being trampled.  Just like your party trampled the rights of "those other people" for the previous four years.

But there are no "other people".  There's just US.  We're all "us".  And we all have to stand up for each others' rights, if we expect anyone to show any respect for our own.

You want change?  Vote for change.  Not for the status quo with a shiny new face up front and a promise that it'll be better this time, and he'll stop beating you this time, honest, it was an accident and he meant to hit "those other people".

American voters are in an abusive relationship with their major political parties.  And it's time to stand up for yourselves and throw the bastards out.

Risk calculation

bruce_schneier posts a revealing excerpt from the ANSI Cyberrisk Calculation Guide.

Here's the sentence from the ANSI Guide that leapt out at me:

If risk can be transferred to other organizations, that part of the risk can be subtracted from the net financial risk.

I don't know about you, but to me, that sounds disturbingly like "If a risk can be made into somebody else's problem, then screw it, it's no longer OUR problem."  Which is exactly the kind of thinking that got us into the current economic mess.

Felony stupid in California

Yahoo News reports on the fight over California Proposition 8.  Lest you be unfamiliar with it, it's a ballot initiative that, if successful, would ban gay marriage in California, overturning the existing law that legalized it in June.  The "No on Proposition 8" organization has been fighting it hard (you may have seen the slogan, "Whose rights will we vote on next?").

Well, it seems the folks backing Proposition 8 — that's the folks who want to ban gay marriage, remember — have screwed up.  Badly.

Leaders of the campaign to outlaw same-sex marriage in California made an offer to businesses that have given money to the state's largest gay-rights group: Give us money or we'll publicly identify you as opponents of traditional unions.

[...]

Certified letters from the group this week asked companies to withdraw their support of Equality California, a nonprofit organization that is helping lead the campaign against Proposition 8.

"Make a donation of a like amount to ProtectMarriage.com which will help us correct this error," reads the letter.  "Were you to elect not to donate comparably, it would be a clear indication that you are in opposition to traditional marriage. ... The names of any companies and organizations that choose not to donate in like manner to ProtectMarriage.com but have given to Equality California will be published."

That, friends, is extortion via the mail.  And that is both a State and Federal felony, and — since it was a planned action by the organization — may possibly even fall under RICO statutes.  And they're not trying to lean on just the small fry, either — they're trying to extort money from companies as big as Comcast, Time Warner, PG&E and AT&T.

FAIL.

Do not pass Go.  Do not collect $200.