>Do you know why Robert Byrd
>gets re-elected every time he
>goes up in West Virginia?
> It's becase he's able
>to bring tremendous amounts of
>political pork home to a
>very rural state.

That's irrelevant. He still would do the same with a popular vote, given House elections are by popular vote, and chances are he would bring the same amounts back that he did before. Let's talk about the presidential election and the Electoral College, shall we?

>If you think there's a balance
>between rural and urban interests
>in this country, you're simply
>wrong. There is scholarly
>work after scholarly work that
>shows that, under our wonderful
>system, urban interests are underepresented
>and urban areas don't receive
>representation in governing bodies proprotional
>to thier population. They,
>along with residents of poor
>rural places like Appalachia, are
>also are poorest residents and
>could most benefit from representation
>and the help that would
>presumably go long with it.
> Instead we systematically discriminate
>against poor areas.

Discriminate? You're advocating distribution. Population is irrelevant; it's about how much money each region provides. If I'm in a region that produces a high amount of government revenue (aka taxes) then it should be expected that the money generated should be used in my district FIRST, and not some other area.

>Oh, and on the urban/minority difference--you're
>damn rght I'm using them
>in a similar fashion.
>Whether or not you know
>it, so are you.
>How many white kids you
>know live in your closest
>ghetto? Race, class, and
>regionalism are all tied up
>into one ugly thing in
>this country, keeping those who
>are nonwhite, poor, and urban
>in a shitload of trouble.
> When you celebrate the
>vote of rural areas, you're
>celebrating the system that keeps
>these people down. Deal
>with it.

Noone isn't keeping anyone down. As far as the word "urban" goes, urban does not equal ghetto. Every urban area does not consist of a ghetto, not to mention there are more than merely black people that live in ghettoes. And ya know what? Some Actually do quite fine while having a high population. So you can use urban = ghetto in your wording, but don't use it in mine.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship." - Alexander Tyler

"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." -Voltaire

"The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to "help." - Thomas Sowell

"Life is insensitive, and the truth can be highly offensive. To hide from either is to hide from the reality of life. Take pride in the fact that I am an equal opportunity offender. You today, someone else tomorrow. You have no constitutional right not to be offended." - Neal Boortz

Some of you still think America's a
democracy. Lemme break it down for
ya...

* Democracy:  Three wolves and a sheep
vote on the dinner menu.
* Democratically Elected Republic: Three
wolves and 2 sheep vote on which sheep's
for dinner. 
* Constitutional Republic: The eating of
mutton is forbidden by law, and the
sheep are armed.

The United States is a CONSTITUTIONAL
REPUBLIC. Not a democracy.

Yes....I am a PROUD Black Libertarian Conservative.