Slashdot Asks: Whom Do You Want To Ask About 2012's U.S. Elections? 343
For the next year, it will be hard to escape the political season already in full swing in the U.S., as candidates aim for the American presidency (and many other elected positions). There will be plenty of soundbites and choreographed photo-ops to go around. Candidates will read speeches from TelePrompters, and staffers will mail out policy statements calculated to inspire political fealty to one candidate or another — finding unscripted answers from most of the candidates is going to be tough. Slashdot interviews, by contrast, give you the chance to do something that interviews in more conventional media usually don't: the chance to ask the questions you'd actually like to have answered, and to see the whole answer as provided. But there's a hitch: we need to know which candidates or other figures we should attempt to track down for a Slashdot interview. So please help narrow the field, by suggesting (with as much contact information as possible, as well as your reasoning) the people you'd like to hear from. It doesn't need to be one of the candidates, either: if you know of a pollster, a campaign technical advisor, an economist (or even a politicians's webmaster, say) who should be on our list, make the case in the comments below. And if you represent or are affiliated with a particular campaign, that's fine — but please say so. We'll do our best to find a number of your favorites in the year to come.
Al Franken (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to be cynical and say that it doesn't really matter, since no politician is ever going to give you an honest or useful answer anyway (any written response won't even written by them, just some staffer, you know). But I will suggest one of the VERY few politicians at the top who actually seems to give a modicum of a shit about freedom, the little guy, and all that jazz. From his well-known editorial [huffingtonpost.com] on why he supports net neutrality to his fight against contractors and for regulation of the financial industry, Al Franken seems to be one of the few people in Washington interested in something more than just padding his pocket.
I would be particularly interested to hear more on the Net Neutrality issue, since he seems to be one of the only politicians, Republican or Democrat, actively supporting it.
Yes, he is a little batshit from time to time and prone to saying some crazy shit. But in his defense, they did a LOT of coke on SNL back in the day. He's lost a few brain cells. Poor Chevy Chase is MUCH worse.
Ron Paul (Score:3, Interesting)
Rebecca Mercury (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not ask Rebecca Mercuri [wikimedia.org]? She is a voting expert, and if indications are correct, the last couple of voting exercises were not exactly as clean as they were supposed to have been.
You can ask politicians whatever you want, I would suggest you become more interested in assuring that your vote actually goes where it is supposed to go.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:0, Interesting)
He may be radical to the status quo, but he's anything but crazy. I served in the Army for over 8 years, and have had opportunity to talk to several CIA analysts, and have heard many station chiefs basically echoing everything Ron Paul says about foreign policy, all that in addition to my first hand experience of how this shit we're doing doesn't work and coming to the same conclusions. As far as monetary policy, it's anything but crazy. Google/ Read Hayek's "Use of knowledge in society" http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html (it's short and easily read) as well as "A free market monetary system" http://mises.org/daily/3204. Ron Paul is far from crazy, and once you start to learn more, you'll find it's the other way around.
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you make a good point. Therefore, I suggest we interview Jon Stewart and/or Stephen Colbert.
Ask them all this.... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Why did it take a constitutional amendment to ban, then un-ban alcohol in the US....yet marijuana and other intoxicants since then, have been banned/regulated on the whim of the US legislature or executive order? Why is a constitutional amendment no longer needed for banning an intoxicant?"