Carter’s Administration

— Agustin De Mello

1. If reports are correct, David Koch spent $2.1 million of his own money to achieve 1% of the total vote. But to achieve victory, surely he would have to spent at least as much per vote as did Jay Rockefeller procuring his re-election victory in West Virginia this year: a mere $50 per vote. At that rate, we figure that for a measly $2 billion of his personal fortune, David could buy us victory in 1984!

2. Some of our fuddy-duddy libertarian lawyers are horrified at this proposal. They point out that the “reasonable doubt” standard only applies to criminal law; in civil cases, in cases of torts, the weaker “preponderance of the evidence” rule has applied. But there is no reason that libertarians should advocate current legal rules when they are incorrect, since we believe in fusing crimes and torts anyway, we should apply the innocent-until-guilty rule to tort as well as criminal cases.

“If we get less than a million votes, we blew it.”

– Ed Clark, November, 1979