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Is Al Gore haunted?

Sun, 03/11/2007 - 05:35 — augustin
This blog entry is related to the poll:2008 U.S. Presidential Poll (Total: 10 posts)
It is discussing the poll options:
General topics
  • Al Gore (2 posts)
  • environment (2 posts)
  • incinerator (1 post)
  • pollution (1 post)
  • toxic waste (1 post)
  • Waste Technologies Industries (1 post)
  • WTI (1 post)

I am personally a big fan of Al Gore: he is a man on a mission and I like his mission as much as he seems to believe in it.

Yet, a friend send me the following information, with a link to an article named The town that haunts Al Gore.

My friend wrote:

The above link is to a web article about East Liverpool, Ohio; Al Gore; a
company named WTI, and its huge toxic waste incinerator. It's a tragic
account, for the people who lived there, and it isn't the only stain on Al
Gore's green cloak.

Jim Hightower, in his book _If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote, They Would
Have Given Us Candidates_, details the sad events. Read his account in that
book, if you can obtain it, beginning on page 34.

Hightower quotes Gore saying, "We must make the rescue of the environment
the sole central organizing principle for civilization." And "The
environment is much more than a policy position to me; It's a profoundly
moral obligation."

But Hightower says, "While Al wore a cloak of green, he had sewn large
pockets into it to store campaign funds slipped to him by oil, chemical,
development, timber, mining, agribusiness, and other polluting interests.
From the earliest days of the Clinton-Gore administration, Gore began
sniffing the money and backing off."
People who were hurt by Gore's actions and inactions began
attending his staged events and shouting , "Read your book!".

I am not sure yet what to make of this information. Character assassination is easy, and we have all made mistakes in the past that we may regret today. The real question is: what kind of man is Al Gore today? Is he as sincere, devoid of questionable ulterior motives, as he seems to be? I still think so, but I can be wrong.

It is in fact too easy to smear people and misrepresent some facts. See the videos:
Colbert Exposes More Al Gore Hypocrisy
Olbermann on Gore’s Energy Use: Setting the Record Straight.

I still voted "I like" for Al Gore. This site allows me to change my vote anytime, anyway: I can still change my mind.

Comments

Sat, 07/14/2007 - 14:58 — David Greenson

This is one reason he doesn't want to run

Not so much the potential for dirty character assassination -- I have no idea whether the allegations are true -- but the "reality" of campaign finance in the United States at the present time. Gore refers to himself as a "recovering politician," and I think part of what he is glad to be free of is the constant whoring for money that is necessary to be competitive for national office in this country. He knows that as soon as he declares his candidacy, he will be sucked back into that game. I don't think this is because he is tempted by greed or other dark intentions. It's because it's almost impossible to get elected in the U.S. (and get re-elected) without corporate backing.

I think this is primarily because so much of the public is so disengaged. They pay very little attention to the political scene. As a result, they are very susceptible to being manipulated. As a result, campaigns are won and lost based on the power of the candidate's media presentation. As a result, candidates have to raise huge sums of money to pay for television advertising. In the end, you have a deadly combination -- because the citizenry is largely not paying attention, there is very weak incentive to make their needs and wants your first priority. Because you need to raise huge amounts of money, there is powerful incentive to turn to people who have a lot of it and who are definitely paying attention.

It is a tight circle and thus very hard to break. Sites like minguo.info are a good start because they offer the possibility of engaging people. We have a long way to go, but every step is important!

Sun, 07/15/2007 - 10:56 — augustin

I personally believe Al Gore

I personally believe Al Gore is sincere. He is of course a very good politician, but I don't believe is "mission" is only a facade only for electoral purposes.

Again, it is a sad trait of our political system that we can't avoid doubting the sincerity of a man. We see deviousness everywhere.

Character assassination is only one facet of negative campaigning. And the Plurality Voting system in use strongly encourages negative campaigning: you one get to have one credible opponent, and every vote he doesn't get is a vote the other one will get.

Negative campaining would quickly backfire with a voting system like Emocracy, as used here. You can have much more than one credible opponent and taking time to criticize them all would turn off the voters. Even if a candidate were successful in bringing down one opponent, 1) there would still be other candidates to beat you, and 2) it would still not be a guarantee that his own ratings would go up.

Maybe the public would not be that disengaged if they could be made to feel that voting was actually useful, that they had an actual choice.

Changing the voting system will certainly not solve all the problems, but they will alleviate much of the ills you mention.

Yes, we are in the middle of a vicious circle, and I am glad that you see minguo as a small tool to break it with, together will all the other like-minded web sites. :)