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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (14578)	3/13/2006 6:22:03 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542951

Deteriorating situation: washingtonpost.com (excerpt): "The past two weeks have changed the war in Iraq, shifting its focus from a U.S.-driven fight against Sunni insurgents to a direct battle for power and survival between Iraq's empowered Shiite majority and disempowered Sunni minority. On Sunday, three car bombings in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City killed about 50 people, the deadliest string of sectarian attacks since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra touched off a wave of retaliatory killings. The bombing, which blew the gold-plated dome of the Askariya mosque into naked gray concrete, did not set off the battle between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite blocs. Their enmity stretches back centuries, and ever since U.S. troops overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, the two sides have been grappling to find their new footing. But the bloodshed that has followed the shrine bombing, as Shiite religious parties unleashed their militias on a large scale in Baghdad for the first time, laid bare the sectarian rift -- and worsened it. Some Iraqis and international figures have expressed worry whether Iraq, having come to the brink of civil war, can keep itself from sliding in."

To: Dale Baker who wrote (14578)	3/13/2006 6:27:46 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542951

You would have to allow private funds for the signature drive If private funds were used for the initial steps, becoming known and collecting signature, then independent candidacies would be essentially privately funded until they qualified for public funding and major party candidacies would be entirely publicly funded. Or maybe major party primary races would be privately funded, too, and it would only be the actual election that was publicly funded. I bet we would end up with the parties pushing their primaries back to right before the election so that they could get the most mileage out of private funding. I'm sceptical.