What does it take to be an educated voter?

It takes one or more of the following:

• (1) concern (not just yourself, but future generations; we are threatening the future and security of the nation)


• (2) patriotism (just wavin' a flag doesn't cut it; research your government and find ways to educate others, promote common-sense, no-brainer ways to make government more transparent, accountable, and responsible)


• (3) outrage (if you are not outraged (by stuff like this), then nothing will)


• (4) curiosity (what you don't know can hurt you; ignorance is not an excuse)


• (5) action (don't be so lazy; understand how laziness is at the root of most of our problems; learn how corruption in government is hurting and costing you, and threating the future of our children)


• (6) pain and misery (if we don't learn the smart way, pain and misery is always a very effective teacher . . . at least until we forget (again))

My fear is that "(6) pain and misery" (above) will be what it takes to motivate people to care. But, we don't know that for certain, so resigning to futility is not a wise option. But, if we ever do learn to take steps before it is too late, it will be history in the making. We should learn from history. Progress is slow (2 steps forward, 1.999 steps backward). When will we recognize the lessons of history, government FOR SALE, lack of transparency in government, and do the smart thing to avoid another painful lesson?

How can we help educate voters about the
irresponsibility of incumbent politicians?
Hmmmmmm. Some don't even know or believe we have any serious issues.
Still, polls show most think politicians are irresponsible and/or corrupt.

The best way to prove incumbents ARE irresponsible
is to show the many ways HOW they are irresponsible and/or corrupt.

It's not hard. Fortunately, most incumbent politicians have been so kind to
provide us with an overwhelming examples of unethical, illegal, fraudulent, immoral, and irresponsible behavior. Why is that? Power corrupts. Lack of Education and Transparency breed corruption, and diminish Accountability and Responsibility.

For those that give a damn, the first step is Education.

Several good sites for learning what is really going on is the first step:

• http://cagw.org (Citizens Against Government Waste; this is an excellent site)
• http://www.issues2000.org (lots of good data here).
• http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/bg1840.cfm (10 examples of government waste)
• http://www.opensecrets.org (a.k.a. center for responsive politics)
• http://www.pogo.org (Project On Government Oversight)
• http://www.akdart.com/gov1.html (a huge list; government growing to nightmare proportions)
• http://www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/DonorDemographics02.asp (83% of donations)
• http://www.castlecoalition.org/past_abuses/index.html (eminent domain abuse)
• http://maps.castlecoalition.org/ (maps of eminent domain abuse)
• http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html (Debt)
• http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ (Debt clock, bills by Congress to increase spending & debt)
• http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt/debt-nat-a.htm (this guy did some good research on debt)
• http://www.corporations.org/campaign$$/ (research politicians' voting and big-money trolling)
• http://www.tray.com/fecinfo/ (big money in politics)
• http://www.corporations.org/system/ (how things [don't] work)
• http://www.cusdi.org/reelection.htm (the incumbent's advantage)
• http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~vburris/whorules/money.htm (guide to Power structure)
• http://www.cato.org/ (for limited government)
• http://www.taf.org/pagethree.htm (fighting fraud)
• http://www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx (what public integrity?)
• http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/CurrentInflation.asp (current inflation)
• http://bolson.org/gov/us/senate/BySenator/ (list of all politicians and voting records)
• http://www.firstgov.gov/ (lists and addresses of all politicians, dept., agencies, etc.)
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetTableListServlet?_ds_name=ACS_C2SS_EST_G00_&_type=table&_lang=en&_program=DSS&_ts=48452924571 (American Fact Finder)

And, here's my recommendation to voters. It will take a bit of work, but do you want to mistakenly vote for the wrong person? Don't just lazily pull the party lever, or vote straight ticket. That's how incumbent politicians continue to secure their cu$hy, coveted seats of abused power. That's why over 90% of long time incumbents think they can do anything they want. That is why they are so arrogant. Look at how politicians vote. Look at the ways they have stacked the deck to make their cu$hy incumbencies more safe and secure. You may be surprised to discover that you are voting for a person that does things you don't approve of.

____________
P.S. When doing searches in most internet browsers,
and to zero in on specific data faster, be sure to use
capitalized boolean operators (e.g. AND , OR, NOT, NEAR, ).
For example:

debt AND "social security"

The quoted string requires that specific phrase (exactly).
Compare the search above with the results of simply:

debt social security

The first search will typically get fewer, but more related articles.
In Yahoo!, the first search gets 537,109 hits.
The second gets 1,064,051 hits because not all hits are related.

Another technique is to use the + character.

+debt +"social security"

Or, use a - or NOT charater to exclude a word:

-debt +"social security"

Another useful option is the single characters wild-card character: ?
For example, search for bmw and then try b?w

And an * can be used for one or more wildcard charactars:
For example, search for bmw and then try b*w

Google and other sites have advanced search pages with other options.http://www.google.com/advanced_search

Here's some info on the best search engines ...