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Arianna Huffington and Harry Shearer

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Re: Election Day

By Harry Shearer
Posted Tuesday, June 2, 1998, at 1:07 PM ET

Just reviewing the voter's pamphlet now, I swear. Actually, the profusion of propositions asking us questions someone else should answer is proof of a sad fact: political reform rarely works. Here in California, the reform capital of the nation, reformers thought giving the people the right to decide on weighty issues would free debate from the special interests that ply legislators. All we got for the change is that instead of plying by food, drink and miscellaneous favors of the night (which at least involve someone enjoying himself), we are plied by TV spots. Not a good trade-off. The same reformers thought it would clean up city politics if parties were removed from the process, and what we got for that in non-partisan L.A. is a city politics so Byzantine in its complications (no party labels to sort things out) that only the players pay attention.

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Back to China for a minute. As an actual satellite viewer (big dish, please), I can see what the benefits were of letting the butchers do the cut-rate launches. Had we not done so, syndication costs of your favorite sitcoms and roaming fees for your pages might have been inching up by now. Conclusion: there's no such thing as a free launch. I'll go vote now.