Politics and Social Movements

I think it might be possible to create a website for election night that uses previous election results and the incoming election night tally to accurately predict who will win (and vote percents).

The key is to use data from previous election nights. You want to know how many votes each party had every minute (or every 5 minutes). You can use this combined with where the votes are coming from (probably county level resolution is the best we could get) to accurately predict who is going to win.

I went to the US Social Forum this past week in Detroit along with the Energy Justice Network.

It was nice to see so many people and to get a taste of the industrial (and labor) spirit that defines Detroit.

The UK is having an election in 20 days.

Current Polling (Averaged)
Labour - 27% - 267 seats
Conservative - 33% - 255 seats
Liberal Dems - 29% - 97 seats
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/
and
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/ukpr-projection-2

Labour is in third place in the polls, but first place in the seats! Some of this bias makes up for the natural bias in electoral systems to the rich (as people who vote more often). However, in this case, the UK goes way beyond reversing the bias.

Cons (What the liberal media won't tell you)
Inadequate cost containment. Increase in healthcare as faster than inflation (6.7%/year vs 2% for inflation or 4% for GDP growth plus inflation). For many Americans, the government subsidies are a temporary stopgap. For the government to pay the the subsidy, they'll have to increase their spending (and thus taxes) at a rate faster than inflation - already a problem as the government has a massive deficit and is facing fast growth in medicare/medicaid and social security costs.

Obama is working on several initiatives to increase global warming at a rate faster than that of the Bush administration.

The US Military
They are the largest source of pollution and global warming of any of the federal government programs. Obama is increasing the military budget (currently at one trillion dollars when you count all of it) at a rate faster than inflation, and is promoting greater US involvement in the military occupation of Afghanistan.

Coal

I love polls. I can spend hours looking at the crosstabs. Unfortunately the issues that I care the most about are rarely asked in commercial polls. They miss the fundamental radical questions that get at the root of social problems.

I want to know
-what radicals think of Obama over time (and compare that to the Green Party, Ralph Nader, etc)
-how Trotskyites are doing versus anarchists and socialists
-what radicals think about LGBT marriage
-the ebb and flow of revolutionary sentiment (percent of activists who want to overthrow the US government)

Here is a brainstorm! I haven't seen anyone else write anything that gets at what a radical stimulus could look like.

1. A democratic stimulus empowers people to achieve their goals.

2. In some cases this means increasing economic output, in other places decreasing it. For instance, cutting the military is essential. Also increasing spending on healthcare is not as important as ensuring high quality national healthcare for all.

I've started tracking annual activist conferences to help populate the calendar. Here is my current list (obviously just a small fraction of all the conferences, but it's a start). Some of these have been going on for over ten years. Apologies for the bad formatting.

I welcome any additions!!!
Email me: aaron@campusactivism.org

Annual Conferences (sort by Date, or at least by season)

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Spring Annual Conferences
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NGLTF
http://www.thetaskforce.org/
January

After nine years, organizers have put a stop to organizing the annual DC "National Conference on Organized Resistance" as it grew into a massive project that relied upon non-student leadership.

I attended NCOR twice. During it's nine years it grew to be the largest anarchist-leaning conference in the United States, attracting a large number of people (my second hand guess is that attendance might have peaked at 1000).

There is a blog which explains this move:
http://ncor.wordpress.com/

Chocolate lovers are picking Obama chocolates 3 to 1 over McCain in an unscientific poll.