Yeah, well I suggest you take a reality pill to snap you out of this GOP induced haze you seem to be in. Besides, I will accept being damned for eternity before I take advice from YOU on the subject of civility. I am sorry that you cannot seem to understand a well written article, but your lack of reading comprehension is apparent by the commentary you started this thread with. T_J has just admonished ME to remain civil. All together now.
Yeah, I figured that out just as I clicked Post. Damned edit button malfunction. Or the total lack of any response from you whatsoever to the Krugman thread. DEBUNKED!!!
Flores admits that she came across this idea of <B>ballot confusion</b> during the last election: She clearly did this in order to confuse voters into splitting their votes between the contender Bill White and the Acres Home William "Bill" White. The latter wanted Turner to win according to his common-law wife: There is no evidence that Bill White paid this money out of anything other than extortion and the hopes of a fair election.
Why hasn't anyone jumped all over this lady yet? You'll don't think putting someone with the same name on the ballot just to confuse voters is wrong (assuming the second bill white has no interest in being mayor)?
Can someone, anyone, please explain how they think it is acceptable for Bill White to handle this situation in the manner in which he did? How can paying someone off in a secret transaction be the preferred solution to taking this to the appropriate authorities? When considering Bill White's involvement in this, some of you are completely missing the point. The point is not that he was extorted, the point is *how he dealt with it*. As voters evaluate who they want in City Hall, an important componenet of that evaluation is honesty, integrity, and accountability. Bill White has demonstrated that he deals with problems in a less-than-transparent manner by squashing the issue with a five thousand dollar payment. Is this an appropriate use of campaign funds? Don't you think donors would have liked to know that their money was being allocated in this fashion? The key issues here are that Bill White tried to kill an issue in all the wrong ways. He wilted under the pressure and gave in to Flores' dirty tactics. Why didn't he have the strength to fight her head on? Why didn't he have the courage to take the issue public? Does Bill White not trust our justice system? Why does he feel the need to take matters into his own hands, and not let the public in on the decision-making process? These are the issues that speak to Bill White's character and integrity. These are the key issues that the liberals have *ignored* in this thread.
Had he not "wilted," Flores would have gone ahead and put her White on the ballot. It was a very time sensitive issue that needed to be dealt with right then. The justice system works, but it works slowly. White could have fought it in the courts but by then, as in so many other cases, it would have been too late as the ballot already would have been obfuscated. Besides, how do we know that White isn't the one who leaked this to the press? Flores is the only one who is demonstrably at fault unless someone from Turner's campaign really was involved, but even that hasn't been proven yet. (I decided to answer this thread again because T_J finally admitted that White was an extortion victim. See, T_J, it isn't hard to accept reality.)
