[EM] Wilson-Pakula - an odd New York law

[Fred Gohlke]

Good Afternoon, Dave

Thank you for the Vito Marcantonio story.  The story is not unique, but 
it is a good example of how political parties make rules and enact laws 
that give them a stranglehold on our political infrastructure.

Parties are institutions of humans.  They function precisely as a 
thoughtful person should expect them to function; they put their 
interest ahead of the public interest ... always.  It is amazing so few 
people recognize (or are willing to acknowledge) that political parties 
are profoundly anti-democratic.

For the most part, the commentary on this site concerns itself with 
gaining some form of representation for purportedly under-represented 
partisans.  I suspect that effort is driven by the quest for power by 
those who feel they are disenfranchised by the present system.  We would 
be better served if they sought the benefit of society rather than some 
subset of it.

It is unwise to continue to ignore the very obvious fact that parties, 
themselves, are the problem.  In the United States, we have just 
watched, helpless, as our elected representatives placed an enormous 
burden on us and our progeny, not because of conviction it was necessary 
to do so, but because they were given 100 billion of our dollars as bribes.

How can sane men watch such travesties and not realize that the pursuit 
of self-interest, which is a very natural and important trait in each of 
us, is the force we must learn to harness?  The notion that our 
government can be improved by forming additional centers of oligarchical 
power is ludicrous.

We can not, and should not, deny our own tendency toward partisanship. 
Instead, we must devise an independent process that includes all of us 
and harnesses our natural tendency to seek our own interest.  We must 
make self-interest a tool in our arsenal rather than leaving it for 
others to wield against us.

Fred