Re: [FoRK] interesting video on Hillary >>   What kind of standing up and making it not so, do you have in mind?

Standing up and voting with your feet is one option.  I now live  
somewhere that's been playing around with versions of this freedom  
and democracy stuff since 1291, and in comparison with the 1776  
contingent, seems to be generally moving towards less, not more,  
oligarchy.

> A related eye opener came 10 years ago when I moved to Oregon. Voter
> based referendum/initiatives  and mail in ballots seemed a nice step
> up from what I had come to know back in NYC.

Being used to the lethargic pace alternated with silly seasons of  
stateside political process, it seems to me as if the swiss are more  
or less always voting on something or other.  Think continuous  
development as opposed to waterfall, and (if the analogy carries from  
development to politics) their system would appear to have some merit.

Referenda and initiatives are popular (sic.) here; initiatives are  
particularly interesting, because if I have the process right, after  
an initiative has received enough support, the government gets to  
propose an alternative, and then everybody votes on (a) the original  
(popular) initiative, (b) the government's (presumably implementable)  
proposal, or most commonly, (c) NOTA: "it ain't broke".

And as far as the lesser of two evils goes, the NZZ plotted out the  
national assembly on a left-right scale (1D, sorry libertarians)  
recently, and it was a pleasant surprise to see that, for all the  
swiss handwringing about how polarized their politics is becoming,  
there was actually a trimodal distribution, with a clump on the left,  
a clump on the right, and a nice clump still in the middle -- all  
distributed among 5 main parties and a good number of minor ones.

-Dave

:: :: ::

You know you've been in Switzerland too long when..
you don't get upset about US politics, because after all they're  
American.

(OK, maybe I haven't quite been here long enough for that one yet)


