Re: Some questions for the DPL candidates
On Thu, Mar 08, 2001 at 11:58:21PM -0800, Seth Arnold wrote:
> * Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> [010308 23:24]:
> > a sentence can be used to avoid answering a question. anyone who has
> > observed a politician in action for 5 minutes will have seen several
> > examples of this behaviour.
>
> I would like to think that none of the DPL candidates would engage in
> this behavior.
unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening. i asked a direct
question requiring a yes/no answer and as a reply, i got a short
sentence which avoided answering it.
> I think we could avoid the whole diatribe against politicians by
> recognizing that the question is too complex for a single-word to be an
> adequate answer.
what is it about "do you intend to take any action?" that is too complex
for a yes/no answer?
it's a really simple and straight forward question. either there is an
intention to take action ("yes"), or there is not ("no").
that simple yes/no answer could then be followed with as much (or as
little) explanatory information as seems necessary.
> By allowing the candidates to fully explore the situation in detail,
> we can avoid entirely the "broken promise" syndrome. With a paragraph
nobody said he couldn't explore the situation in whatever detail he
wanted. what i asked for was a yes or no answer, with optional extra
comments.
> or two, a candidate could describe entirely and succinctly his or
> her approach to non-free.
the candidate in question has made a few statements on the non-free
thread which added up are quite ambiguous. the first statements
indicated a "leave well enough alone" attitide, but recent ones
indicated a more "gung-ho" attitude. that is why i wanted clarification
on his position.
> By asking for a single word, I would argue that you are forcing the
> candidate to be *more* like traditional politicians because the
> candidate *cannot* describe his or her position with 'yes' or 'no'.
you can argue whatever you like, but you'd be wrong.
normal politicians give me the shits, which is *precisely* why i want a
clear and direct answer to the question.
i see now why they get away with it - even in a "place" like debian
there are people willing and eager to leap forward and defend a
candidate's "right" to not answer questions in whatever evasive and
meaningless manner they like.
> Please reconsider what you are asking; ask for a short response,
> perhaps in the length of a single paragraph.
i asked for (mandatory) a yes or a no, and (optional) extra comments.
i got neither....i got a content-free evasion.
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
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