I think if there's an office where they're dissatisfied with the major candidates, they might actually endorse YOU for that one. The Daily Cal likes to endorse qualified independent candidates sometimes to make a statement.
How not? You are not really running but you are still qualified.
Your strong grasp of the ASUC rules and constitution makes me think if they endorse you for anything, it would be for Executive VP. This is often where they have endorsed non-major-party people in the past.
Anyway, I hope you are right about the CalSERVE sweep of endorsements (not that endorsements ever matter) -- I just think it's possible they will endorse you for something and then you would get like 600 votes instead of the 300 you would have otherwise or something.
i have read your blog for quite some time, and i've always wondered whta you look like. osrta like ohw you envision radio announcers, yknow? anyways, i went to hte dail cal forum, and saw that you were juts how i envisioned you. typical comp sci grda studint. also, i am sober. do me.
I'm not quite sure I get the obsession with seeing Beetle in the flesh or the accusation that he's a negative campaigner followed up by a bunch of fourth-grade personal attacks.
This year is better than last year, but I'm really bothered by the almost complete lack of substance in the ASUC elections year after year. It feels like if people talk about issues, they're one of two things: Something really small and stupid like barbeques, or something really vague and general like "connecting with diversity."
I think it's because the elections are so obviously about facebook and phone-whoring and making connections that the effort required to really come up with a good set of substantive policies and ideas is considered tangential and not worth the time.
I mean you could spend a week coming up with really good proposals, or you could spend that week visiting co-ops and making friends and that's gonna get you a lot more votes.
I'm not really saying anything that hasn't been said before, I think it's just what really makes ASUC politics feel so high school and leaves such a huge percentage of the voters disinterested.
I disagree, Simon. I think substantive issues are being discussed by many of the candidates, bbut they are just not being reported on in enough detail by the lame-o Daily Cal for most people to notice, and most people are also not taking the effort to read platforms. Substantive isssues include:
- Lower Sproul revitalization and seismic upgrading, including what should be expected in it (multicultural center? 24-hour study space?) and whether students should foot the bill without any guarantees about it
- Lots of achieveable things in CalSERVE's "five steps to change", such as longer business hours on Telegraph (City can do this with student pressure at council meetings), more affordable housing both on and off campus (City can permit this, University can also contribute to this, with student pressure), and lowering excessively textbook prices by supporting a statewide bill to that effect -- in addition to more difficult goals such as lowering student fees
- Several great ideas from Eric Marshall, such as a high school internship program in the ASUC, being a better neighbor to the city, and electing ASUC Senators by constituency
- SQUELCH!'s call for more publications funding
- On the level of Senate campaigns, many many substantive ideas too, some good, some not so good (like the BART pass -- ugh)
As usual, I typed too quickly ... That should be, "lowering excessively *high* textbook prices", and apparently the statewide bill in question would do things like de-bundle CD-ROMs from textbooks and require textbook publishers to clearly disclose differences between new editions and old editions.
I also want to say that the SA commenters' personal attacks on Justin are way more "negative" and "campaigning" than Justin's blog, which is selfess pursuit of the student interest in bringing attention to the effects of ASUC bills and actions week after week on student fees and such, whether election time or no -- except not nearly as self-important as I'm making it sound.
I am always impressed with Beetle's wealth of information (amazingly, derived from paying attention -gasp- to the happenings of the people who control our money).
When do you graduate, Beetle? I hope you're around for the next couple elections. I predict more fun.
The textbook issue is of concern, and it would be hard to get the university/sacramento on our side. Berkeley profs supplement their public school salaries with royalties from the sales (largely to CA students), so any plan to cut those royalties would face opposition from the university (who would claim it makes them less competitive to top faculty).
The statewide bill does good things, but the effects would be mitigated unless such policies are enacted on the federal level. Speculators in CA could buy debundled books and sell them at a mark-up to students in other states. The textbook publishers could then justify raising the sale price of debundled books in CA, and nothing would be cheaper (I wish I had a whiteboard right now).
If CA wanted to lead on this issue, I think it is a good idea to encourage/force professors to teach less to textbooks and more to lectures for a semester or two (think how the College Board reacted when UC threatened to make SATs optional). The textbook companies would lose a lot of sales (profs would lose royalties, but maybe they'd suck it up for a few months to send a message).
Simon,
You hit the nail on the head when you spoke about vague platitudes and barbeques.
I think CalSERVE's issue areas are the ones we should be dealing with, but their "Five Steps to Change" platform is simply a list of values (at best) or promises (at worst). Nowhere on the flyers or the website (which is a collection of PDFs of the flyers) do they actually propose any detailed ideas or solutions. Saying something like "reshape admissions policies", and not articulating your vision for those policies and how you plan to accomplish that vision is irresponsible, untransparent, and ultimately leads to unaccountability.
As for everyone's favorite party, I encourage folks to look up Bread & Circuses on Wikipedia, even if you know what it means. The description is wonderfully relevant.
While I hate to use Beetle as a campaign platform, I will say there is a candidate in the race who actually spent a few weeks combing through the Daily Cal archives, researching the CA LAO's website, and visiting some other campuses (albeit part of his spring break) to come up with a set of DETAILED proposals to which said candidate can be held to account if elected.
It's late, this is long, I have more, but I'm annoying. The "10-word answer" doesn't exist in my mind. Sorry.
That's not my plan. That is a course of action CA can take if they wanted to lead on this. Personally, I like textbooks a lot and would find it difficult to learn without them.
I support federal leadership on this issue, as the incentive for interstate arbitrage is too great with only statewide price controls. Also, I didn't think of this last night, but the bundling of CD-roms with textbooks doesn't really fall under anti-competitive behavior, so it would be easy for publishers to defend their right to package and price their product the way the market demands.
And since that demand is manufactured by professors who teach large classes, and "Professors don't do things they're told," perhaps we are at an impasse.
"Nowhere on the flyers or the website (which is a collection of PDFs of the flyers) do they actually propose any detailed ideas or solutions."
To be fair, CalSERVE does propose a few policy ideas: "webcast senate meetings" and "host statewide legislative conferences." I'll just leave it at that
Oh yeah, another comment I wanted to make is, I think Simon you are giving "real world" elections too much credit by making them sound a lot more substantive than they are. Corporate PACs often giving to whoever is most likely to win, not based on issues; 30-second negative ads, or postive ads/mailers with soundbites about "responsibility" or "opportunity", showing a candidate's family; and people voting for someone because they are a movie star or talks like them or "feels your pain" -- that's not too substantive either. There are somewhat more detailed platforms and plans, and more important issues, discussed in "real world" elections, and findable on some obscure part of the candidate's website -- but real discussion is often by the loser. For example, Phil Angelides's detailed positions and excellent track record with "smart growth" investments as State Treasurer were simply ignored by the media. Instead, everyone just thought he would raise taxes because that's what Arnold Scharwezenegger said he would do. That's substantive?
Also, once someone is elected in the real world, many of a platform's specifics are not followed anyway, only the general principle (for example, a "middle-class tax cut", but not the same definition of that as during the election), because of the need for political bargaining with the legislature. And a lot of that comes from schmoozy personal relationships and face time -- not what is best policy.
I'm not saying this is right, I'm just saying that I don't share this view you seem to imply Simon, of "real world" elections being very substantive.
