there are elections and then there are elections

just got home from some after work events...including discharging my civic duty...yep...election day...and the most useless and patently foul abuse of "the people's will" since the federalist papers or the seventeenth communist party congress in 1934...only three delegates crossed off kirov's name on the ballot but stalin won the election and somewhere over a thousand of the delegates were arrested during the following purges and many just plain disappeared...kirov was assassinated by some stalinist patsy and that left only trotsky to clean up...stalin's boys acted quickly to cover up the embarassing defeat and the covert party revolt was ruthlessly crushed...lake county doesn't need the nkvd or yagoda or beria to keepa lid on dissent...the party has less violent methods here...in two pages of ballot in the democratic ( oh please! ) primary i believe i saw three races in which the candidate was not running unopposed ( pete visclosky for instance was the only name on the ballot for district representative...my vote...or abstention for that matter...reduced to farce )...even stalin had kirov's name on the ballot for form's sake...and i have to wonder if that damned ass hamilton would have disapproved of any of it.

guardians of the law

"people may act as they think proper in their elections, and they still will do so. lawyers and merchants are generally their choice...lawyers have a keenness and a fondness for disputation. wrangling is their business. but long practice in supporting any cause that offers has obliterated regard to right and wrong. the question only is, which is my side?...o candor and integrity ...where are ye to be found? seldom in professional men." wilian maclay's journal of the first congress. 5 june 1789__________________________of the five hundred and thirty-five voting members of the current congress one hundred and seventy-three are lawyers...that's just under a third...over half are millionaires ( one presumes this excludes campaign funds ) this explains much and maclay provides a solid line of evidence that wealth and law were bedfellows from the start..."i fear we shall follow on nor cease until we have reached ...all the frivolities, fopperies, and expense practiced in european governments. i grieve to think that many individuals among us are aiming at these objects with unceasing diligence." hamilton's vision lives on.