ARTS & FARCES internet

In an editorial tomorrow morning, the Minneapolis StarTribune endorses Green Party candidate Andrew Koebrick for Secretary of State. This marks the first time that either of the Twin Cities dailies has endorsed a Green Party candidate for state office.

Observing that the Republican incumbent, Mary Kiffmeyer, “has exhibited partisanship in the promotion of precinct caucuses and an unwarranted fixation on preventing election fraud,” the StarTribune editorial states that Koebrick “best projects the partisan neutrality that fair election administration requires.”

The editorial acknowledges that Koebrick strongly supports instant runoff voting (IRV) and “has the know-how and communication skills to engineer a switch to a new voting method.” The Republican and Democrat political parties in Minnesota are grudgingly starting to support IRV, mostly because they rightly understand that such a voting system would give the elected a clear mandate to govern. In the short-term this will mostly benefit the two largest parties. Over time, however, the beneficial tide will swing to support the smaller parties. When IRV is combined with proportional representation, the citizenry just might actually wrest political control from corporate interests.

Minnesotans clearly want multiple choices on their ballots. In a late-September Minnesota Poll, 57% of those polled said the state is “better off with more than two strong political parties.” Only 34% of those polled said Minnesota is “better off with a traditional two-party system.” What’s especially surprising about this poll is that 77% self-identified themselves as Democrats or Republicans.

The StarTribune endorsement of Koebrick clearly recognizes the state’s demand for a multi-party political system: “[The findings of the September Minnesota Poll] means that more than ever, Minnesota needs election administration that is consistently nonpartisan, competent and inviting to all voters. Koebrick seems best able to provide it.”

Disclosure: Please note that I have done a small —very small, actually—amount of volunteer work on Andrew Koebrick’s website.

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The transcript of the Eldred v. Ashcroft oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court have been made available on the net.

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President Bush’s chief of staff used to be General Motors’ head lobbyist. So I guess it shouldn’t even raise eyebrows when last week the Bush administration went to court to fight California requirements that automobile makers sell electric cars.

California law says that 10 percent of all vehicles offered for sale in the 2003 model year have to be “zero emission vehicles.” It’s now abundantly clear that none of the automobile companies can meet that requirement. Accordingly, California lawmakers offered to let the manufacturers sell hybrid cars to meet at least part of the legal requirements. True to form, the automobile companies don’t want any quotas at all and filed a lawsuit, claiming that the offered relaxation of the law was a violation of federal law.

Under the proposed relaxation of the California law, the auto makers would receive credit toward the “zero emission vehicle” quota based on the fuel economy of the cars.

Last week the Bush administration filed a brief with the United States Court of Appeals in San Francisco in support of the automobile industry’s position. The Bush brief claims that the relaxed California law would amount to the state regulating fuel economy standards, something only the federal government can do.

The Bush administration and the GM lobbyist are right in this case: Setting automobile fuel requirements is the responsibility of the federal government. Similarly, California’s emission standards are the responsibility of that state. California should respond to Shrub’s mean-spirited attempt to subvert California’s emission standards by withdrawing the proposed relaxation of the law and holding the automobile manufacturers to the current law. Penalties for violation should be severe.

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Clay Shirky is one of those people that think deeply about the implications the net has on our lives. Earlier this month he released his latest thoughts, “Weblogs and the mass amateurization of publishing,” in which he makes the point that weblogs “make publishing a worthless activity.” I don’t believe that any more than I believe the advent of mass-produced and mass-marketed books made publishing worthless. It’s a hyperbolic statement, probably intended to engage the reader. And it does that quite well.

Shirky makes some interesting and important points in his essay, but I think he’s off-base on some of his conclusions, including generating direct and indirect revenues from writing on the web.

I’ll have more to say about this in the future, but it’s going to take some thought. I wanted to mention it here so it doesn’t slip off my radar.

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Remember the “Freedom to Innovate Network” launched in the late 1990s? It initially appeared to be exactly what it described itself to be: “a non-partisan, grass-roots network of citizens and businesses” opposed to the U.S. Department of Justice’s actions to restrict Microsoft’s abuse of its monopoly in computer operating systems and software.
As it turned out, the Freedom to Innovate Network wasn’t non-partisan or grassroots at all. Rather, it was an astroturf public relations campaign, funded and conducted by Microsoft itself. Astroturf, in this context, is a phony grassroots organization constructed by a company or industry consisting of generated “citizens” who lobby government and become media sources, parroting the interests of the company or industry. It happens all the time, although the astroturfing is usually much harder to spot because it’s usually much better done by big-gun public relations firms like Burson Marstellar and Hill & Knowlton.
By now, everyone on the planet is familiar with Apple’s “switch” advertising campaign, designed to entice Windows users to convert to the Mac OS. One thing that makes these advertisements so successful is that they use real people to tell believable stories.

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