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[smjjames]

Not sure what his view on environment is though..... otherwise, Republican.

[Loud Whispers]

Government Secrecy and Whistleblower Protection are kind of mutually exclusive, at least idelogically.

I wonder if there is some way to find a middle way on that. Perhaps this could quite easily be done by promising fair trials for whistleblowers?

[SalmonGod]

Government Secrecy and Whistleblower Protection are kind of mutually exclusive, at least idelogically.

Ideologically, but a person can be a whistleblower on organizations other than the government.  Protections for corporate whistleblowers are pretty weak, also.  In many cases, it's blatantly illegal to even try to collect data on how industrial practices are effecting the environment.

I'm against mass surveillance
against government secrecy
against police militarization
against the military-industrial complex (needs reduction in size and re-structuring so that there isn't a huge industry with powerful lobby incentivized to push for conflict)
for whistleblower protection
for environmental protection

And yeah, I'm surprised anyone whose been on B12 for a while wouldn't know this stuff by now
I'm about as leftist as it gets on most issues.  And I can accept when the representation available may be generally on my side on an issue, just not to the extreme that I'd like.
What I can't accept is that I feel like I have almost zero representation on these issues, and these are most of the most important issues to me.

[sluissa]

I'm going to guess that very few people who refer to it as "Military-Industrial Complex" are in favor of it.

Environment is also one of those kind of vague issues. For example, I doubt you'll find many people that would say "The environment just isn't dirty enough, we should go dip some penguins in crude oil."

[smjjames]

I just wasn't really sure and couldn't recall exactly, but okay. Also, those are mostly in line with me anyhow.

For environment, Green party, definetly.

Edit: Well, either the Green party or Libertarians. I really only looked at the ones which actually have ballot access.

[smjjames]

I'd like to point out, RedKing, that you would really, really like Gary Johnson. I finally remember why I liked the guy- even though he runs under the Libertarian ticket, he seems mostly just to embody the "third party" ticket. Hell, he sued the national debate for not letting him join.

Larry Lessig should have done that.

Also, the thing is, while Gary Johnson did say 'maybe I'll run in 2016', he's not actually running.

On the Green party side, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Stein#Positions seems pretty good. Although she would probably only have a real chance if Juggernaut Clinton wasn't running.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah, I voted for Jill Stein in 2012.  Along with, IIRC, around a dozen other people in my whole county.

[RedKing]

Heh...I think I was the one who posted Johnson was running, based on his Twitter feed.

I've voted Libertarian before (last two NC gubernatorial races, for example) but I'm generally not feeling it. Like the emphasis on keeping government out of people's bedrooms and medicine cabinets, but I'm not a fan of unregulated capitalism and the "invisible hand".

[Loud Whispers]

I'm going to guess that very few people who refer to it as "Military-Industrial Complex" are in favor of it.

I've heard some people who use that term to propose making it efficient so money isn't just thrown down the well

[origamiscienceguy]

Why doesn't the OP mention Ben Carson at all?

[sluissa]

Why doesn't the OP mention Ben Carson at all?

It hasn't been updated since mid-august. Still says "Jeb Bush" is the front runner... obviously in need of some updating.

[TheBiggerFish]

Why doesn't the OP mention Ben Carson at all?

It hasn't been updated since mid-august. Still says "Jeb Bush" is the front runner... obviously in need of some updating.

[Flying Dice]

@FD: um...the Bankers' Plot was the 1920's version of "jet fuel can't melt steel beams". No credible evidence that it was anything beyond a wild idea. And I've never actually seen Prescott Bush mentioned in connection with it before. Now, the financing the Nazis thing is legit, but he was hardly the only American (or Brit) with a fondness for the Nazis up until the war broke out. Jews weren't exactly popular here either, and things were in the shitter such that many people yearned for a strong leader.

http://tippie.uiowa.edu/economics/tow/papers/gmathy_jumps_uncertainty-fall2013.pdf

General Smedley Butler,
who had been active with the Bonus Army, would later be approached by a group of executives
and conservatives opposed to Roosevelt. The \Business Plot" was to have Butler lead a veterans'
group in overthrowing Roosevelt and imposing a fascist government more favorable to government.
While this plan was largely ridiculed at the time and even today, when Butler testied in 1934,
an ocial government investigation found these allegations to be true (Schlesinger, 2003b).

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack-Dickstein_Committee

In their final report, the Congressional committee supported General Butler's claims on the existence of the plot, but no prosecutions or further investigations followed, and the matter was mostly forgotten.

At his death, Butler was the most decorated U.S. Marine in history, and had a strong history of fighting the attempts of big business to control and direct U.S. foreign policy and military power. There's just a hair of difference between a highly respectable public figure claiming something and being supported by Congressional investigation versus wingnuts crying false-flag on conspiracy sites.

I'll concede that Bush was not directly named in relation to the business plot; he was "only" under investigation for deep involvement with funding and supplying Nazi Germany right up until the declaration of war with Japan made it unfeasible to continue.

[RedKing]

They found that one guy had talked to Butler about some pie-in-the-sky idea of a military coup. That's as far the evidence ever went.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

To be fair, the "evidence" was also at least portrayed to all be in the form of conversations between powerful industry figures in an era where all evidence of conversations died with them, so there's no way to be absolutely certain even if it was all true. And the Bonus Army event happened years previously, which is suspiciously similar to the plan detailed by Butler.