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Political Slantings...

This may just be my opinion, but it seems to me that much of this page is in the format of defending Al Gore against political attacks made on him in the past. Now, I don't consider myself to be a conservative, and I'm not really that concerned about it, but it seems to have a large bias, which I don't believe is in the spirit of an encyclopedia. As random example that sort of stuck out:

"Gore left Vanderbilt Law School because he decided to run for Congress instead. It was therefore unfair to accuse Gore of being an academic failure for not completing his law degree.

Therefore, Gore advocates claimed, it was reasonable to assume that Gore was intelligent and academically successful, although perhaps not exceptionally so. "

The "unfairness" is a rather subjective term, and using, "therefore" implies the conclusion was based on pure logic. While it certainly seems as if his critics were overreacting, it is far from an airtight conclusion. In the next paragraph, at least the opinions given attributed to "Gore advocates" but it still smacks of bias, since much of the page contains opinions or accusations by opponents of Gore, but very few which are not followed up by twice as much reasoning (by Gore proponents) as to why those opinions and accusations are false or misleading. The most balanced section seems to be the Military Service section, which appears rather objective. By that I mean relating to controversy, not sections like biographical data etc.. I actually like Gore, so I agree with most everything said about him, its just that I think political leanings should be put aside for an article like this.

  • No article here is ever finished. No article here belongs to an individual. Please make the changes you feel are necessary. But also please anticipate that some of your changes will be changed by others in the future. Kingturtle 17:32, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
    • I agree with Kingturtle, but I'd add that an unbalanced article should be corrected through the augmentation of the POV that's missing, not through the deletion of valid information. Despite that principle, there may be places in this article where passages perceived as pro-Gore could reasonably be trimmed. The one that occurs to me is the comment about his testimony to the 9-11 Commission. That he testified is worth noting, but I'm undecided about the sentence, "In a statement after the three-hour session, the commission said he was candid and forthcoming, and it thanked him for his 'continued cooperation.'" Is a politician's failure to lie and stonewall so unusual as to be worth mentioning? JamesMLane 17:44, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
    • Yeah, that's basically all I was talking about, mainly that some information seems extraneous, unless one is trying to promote Gore in some way.

A little context: If you inspect the edit history of this article around the time I started editing it, you will find that I added the sections regarding accusations made against Gore in response to people who lifted passages and right-wing spin from Gore attack sites and the like. I could have simply deleted these passages, but instead I did research and rewrote the article accordingly. Anybody who feels (s)he has facts that rebut those in this article should add them. Similarly, if you or anyone else has suggestions for ways to make the wording of the article more NPOV, while maintaining the current level of factual information, go ahead and edit. More power to you. The particular sentence you cite could probably stand to be rewritten in this fashion. I will, however, counter any edit that removes substantive and relevant encyclopedic content. NPOV does not mean that we give equal weight to factual presentations and non-factual ones, nor does it mean we omit relevant facts simply because people of a particular political persuasion find them distasteful. k.lee 02:49, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

    • Wikipedia has many articles that are imbalanced because proponents of one POV have been more industrious than the other side at making sure that the facts they deem important are included. I agree with you about not trying to balance such articles by removing "substantive and relevant encyclopedic content." I'm not sure whether the sentence I quoted meets that test, though. If it doesn't, I don't see how it could be rewritten. The only remedy would be to delete it. JamesMLane 04:49, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Query re national debt

Chris added this item as a Clinton/Gore economic accomplishment: "Paid off $360 billion of the national debt." I think the whole list is tangential to the Al Gore article; even a President has only limited scope for influencing macroeconomic performance, let alone a VP. As to this specific item, though, it would suggest to me that the total accumulated national debt was $360 billion less in January 2001 than it had been eight years earlier. Is there support for that assertion? Clinton/Gore inherited a huge annual deficit from 12 years of Reagan/Bush. The federal budget can't be turned around on a dime; the 1993 tax increase began the process of bringing the budget into balance, and the annual deficit declined each year thereafter, but it was still a deficit until the last year (maybe last two years) of the administration. I find it hard to believe that the tail-end surpluses equaled the total of six or seven years of deficits plus $360 billion. If the statement means, for example, that a FY 1992 deficit of $280 billion became a FY 2000 surplus of $80 billion, it would be more credible, but that's covered in the next item and wouldn't constitute paying off $360 billion of the national debt. JamesMLane 06:21, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Paid off $360 billion of the national debt Between 1998-2000, the national debt was reduced by $363 billion — the largest three-year debt pay-down in American history. We are now on track to pay off the entire debt by 2009. ChrisDJackson 10:43, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

    • My original comment addressed this point, when I stated that the current wording "would suggest to me that the total accumulated national debt was $360 billion less in January 2001 than it had been eight years earlier." I think that's the most natural interpretation of the passage I deleted. Your citation confirms what I thought -- that the sentence, if so interpreted, is false. Instead, the basic patten is what I suggested -- that Clinton/Gore inherited an accumulated debt and a huge annual deficit; that the annual deficit was reduced during the first years of the Administration, but was still there, so that the accumulated debt grew rather than being paid off; that the budget moved into surplus only toward the end of the Administration, so that the reduction of the accumulated debt that occurred was less than the increase that had occurred in the first years of the Administration, i.e., Clinton left the debt larger than he found it.
    • This isn't a slam at Clinton (still less at Gore). Twelve years of unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility under Reagan and Bush couldn't be reversed in a moment. The federal government is like a huge ocean liner that takes time to change direction. But the correct statement of the Democrats' accomplishment is what's in the next item: "Converted the largest budget deficit in American history to the largest surplus." In this context, running a surplus naturally involves paying off debt. The $360 billion item adds nothing except confusion.
    • If, for some reason, you see value to the reader in re-inserting it, then it would have to be qualified so that the article correctly states the overall course of the debt during the Clinton/Gore years. It would read something like: "Paid off $360 billion of the national debt (although total national debt at the end of the administration was still approximately $1.5 trillion dollars higher than at the beginning)." (You can find the change in the debt as between any two dates at http://www.publicdebt.ustreas.gov/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/~www/opdpen.cgi -- the $1.5 trillion figure is the increase from January 1993 to January 2001.) If you re-insert the sentence in that form, I'll defer to your desire to include it, but I think the article is better off without it. JamesMLane 15:37, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Facts: http://www.lafn.org/politics/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html

United States National Debt - (1938 to Present)

http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=139

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/3880

http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus

ChrisDJackson 03:52, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/debtclock020711.html

    • Firing off a barrage of URL's without addressing the substantive point I'm making is, IMHO, an unhelpful procedure. Nevertheless, I've now waded through all this stuff. For the benefit of Talk page readers who don't want to waste as much time as I just did, here's what I found at each site.
    • http://www.lafn.org/politics/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html
      • Chart showing annual (not total accumulated) deficits through 1996. According to my eyeball estimates of the chart data, total additional debt incurred during the first four years of the Clinton Administration was about $1 trillion, which is consistent with my comments. Deficit spending didn’t end in 1996, but apparently the chart wasn’t updated thereafter.
    • http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
      • Graph of total national debt, which shows (eyeballing) that debt during the Clinton Administration rose by about $1.4 trillion, in line with the more precise figure I cited from the Treasury website. Text accompanying the graph refers to “Clinton, who raised the national debt an average of 4.3% per year....” Both the graph and the text are further corroboration of my statement that it would be misleading to give the impression that the net effect of the Clinton Administration was to pay off part of the debt. Also note that footnote 1 explains the difference between proposed budget and actual (sometimes unexpected) spending, which may well explain the chronological discrepancy between the other sites each of us cited earlier. An alternative explanation is that there are different ways of accounting for Social Security (see Hightower article from alternet, discussed below).
    • http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm
      • This is the Treasury website that I relied on, only this particular page within the site restricts you to ascertaining the debt as of September 30 of each year for the pre-2003 period. I used instead http://www.publicdebt.ustreas.gov/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/~www/opdpen.cgi because you can pick any date, so as to coincide the computation with Presidential inaugurations. At any rate, even your citation shows the misleading nature of the current text of the article. The debt as of Clinton’s inauguration was presumably somewhere between the figures for September 30, 1992 ($4.06 trillion) and September 30, 1993 ($4.41 trillion). The bracketing dates for Bush’s inauguration were: September 29, 2000 ($5.67 trillion) and September 28, 2001 ($5.81 trillion). Thus, the net increase in debt during the Clinton Administration was on the order of $1.5 trillion, as I stated.
    • http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=139
      • Article slamming Bush for lying on television about comparative growth of discretionary spending in his administration versus Clinton’s. Chart and commentary ignore receipts and nondiscretionary spending and so don’t address annual or accumulated deficits. It’s irrelevant to our current discussion. (It makes a good point about yet another instance of deceit by Bush, though. It might be worth mentioning in the George W. Bush article if that article isn’t already groaning under the weight of such examples.)
    • http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/3880
      • This Jim Hightower article, from April 2000, says that the Clinton Administration’s reported budget surplus wasn’t genuine, but rather was achieved by some accounting flim-flam involving Social Security. I'm surprised you list it, because it further undercuts the challenged item in the Al Gore article about supposedly paying off part of the national debt.
    • http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus
      • This news story about a White House press announcement in the waning months of the Clinton Administration reports the claim that, toward the end of the administration, part of the debt has been paid off. Let’s assume for a moment that Jim Hightower’s criticism (previous citation) was completely wrong and that the Clinton claim is legitimate. The press release is still not a comprehensive look at the debt during the entire eight years of the administration. Instead, it focuses on the time period that makes Clinton look good. I have no problem with that – it’s not an outright lie, like Bush’s comment, and the White House PR people are entitled to accentuate the positive to try to make the President look good. Wikipedia, however, is not in the spin business. If we’re going to address the subject of the course of the national debt during the Clinton Administration, we should give the full picture, combining good years and bad years. (That’s a big “if,” by the way. I still think this whole subject is pretty much worthless in an article about Al Gore.)
    • http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/debtclock020711.html
      • Article from 2002 about the debt clock in Manhattan – it comments that debt levels started to decline in 2000 but are “now” (i.e., in 2002) rising again. The only point to this article is that, by the end of the Clinton Administration, the annual deficit had turned into a surplus, which is not in dispute and which is stated in the very next line of our article.
    • In sum, the current text of the article, if left unqualified, is seriously misleading. I’ve wasted enough time on this and I don’t want to get into a revert war, given that you will apparently just keep restoring the sentence without ever explaining what it adds. Therefore, I’ll add the information about the overall course of the debt, so that we aren't leaving a misleading impression. Your edit summary of July 22 said, “James, quit removing facts,” so I assume you won’t violate your own advice by removing this fact. JamesMLane 06:09, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

On why Gore lost the 2000 election.

Although I think we can all agree that ChrisDJackson has done a lot of good work on this article, I believe the most recent change (on why Gore lost) is a bad idea. I think what was there before is more NPOV. Here's why:

  • "Some contend that. . . he actually won". It would be better to say who contends this. Although I know of many celebrities who claim this, I don't know of any media outlet, think tank, or other responsible, rational group that claims Gore actually won. Gore doesn't contend this, for example. (My own POV is that Gore should have won, but didn't actually.)
  • The use of the word "technicality" is NPOV in my opinion. It's the way voting in America works. I would think a technicality would be more akin to "Massachusetts submitted its vote without signing" or somesuch. The fact that Gore received a minority of the electoral vote doesn't seem like a technicality to me.
  • "Some call this fact irrelevant". The Constitution calls this fact irrelevant. Who doesn't call this fact irrelevant?
  • "and that Al Gore should not be faulted for 'losing'". I don't like this phrase. It assumes someone else is claiming that it was his fault, and it seems a tad defensive.

Because of this, I'm reverting. I don't mean to be rude; I just think the previous version told the facts and showed multiple opinions without overstating or restating bits. Quadell (talk) 13:35, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)

  • FYI, I have nothing to do with this section. If it needs fixing, please do so. ChrisDJackson 01:32, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Lately there's been a string of edits in which anon users delete each other's external links and aubstitute their own. I gather it's a turf war among different groups of Gore supporters.

Wikipedia is not a collection of links, but each of these sites seems to me to be an inclusion I can live with, although not with any peacock language (as in the latest addition, describing that anon's favorite site as "the largest grassroots site of it's kind on the net").

I suggest listing each of these sites in "External links" without puffery. As for the listing of speeches, perhaps the title of the speech (unlinked, but while you're at it add the date), followed by footnote-type links (number only) to each site on which it's found. That's an ugly solution but it gives readers the option and stops the incessant back-and-forthing. JamesMLane 14:40, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

  • James, apparently 207.202.146.79 is Dylan Malone from AlGoreDemocrats (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=G&q=%22207.202.146.79%22) and 192.195.64.72 is another person from the same site. They are being very childish, by is everything they can do bash other Gore sites on the web. He is going out his way to find sources of links to other Gore sites, then delete them apparently. I would advise a ban on this person because they have nothing to contribute to Wiki except these little games, which is not helpful. ChrisDJackson

Indeed, there has been a string of edits by anon users. I was one of them. I'm deeply involved in other web projects and didn't think it would be necessary to create a WikiPedia account, I was not attempting to actually remain anonymous. (It was simplicity itself to register, so that's done). A user emailed me a week ago pointing out that while there were numerous links to another site, there were none to the principle site. We ADDED a link to the larger site.

Several times, the link was removed and has been restored. Of course, any significant Gore site should be included. As for the language describing the sites, I'm flexible... AlGoreDemocrats.com is certainly a much larger site which has generated a lot more press coverage, etc. (including visits from other Presidential candidates during the primaries!). I'd welcome brief four or five word descriptions of the major sites written by a Wikipedia enthusiast other than young Master Jackson of the "Gore Support Center". Thank you, Dylan Malone.

Dylan, thanks for responding. You're right that anon edits are generally OK. On the specific point of adding external links, though, we often have anons show up to insert what are basically advertisements, so an anon who does nothing but insert a link raises an automatic red flag. In this case, though, your site is noncommercial, which makes a difference. In terms of a description, I think that what you've written ("AlGoreDemocrats- Organize, Discuss, Act") pretty much does the job. This article is about Al Gore, not about any of the sites. An encyclopedia article about Gore doesn't need to report the number of hits or VIP visits of various supporters' sites. As for Chris Jackson, I don't always agree with him, but he's made significant contributions to this article, so I think it's reasonable for his site to be listed ahead of a similar site that doesn't have that factor going for it. In my capacity as self-appointed arbiter, having no tie to either site, I'm putting yours below his, but I think both should stay in the list. (While I was writing the above, Chris switched the order himself, but I'm leaving my comment in to provide a neutral imprimatur to that action.) JamesMLane 22:05, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your reply James. Also, thanks for the support. I have done alot of good work for this article and I feel that there should be some reconition for that. I also use Wikipeida's article on my site, which is linked. But this is just ludacris. I have told him I am not in this for my reconition or any praise, I am in it for Al Gore and the spreading of his vision. He has made comments in the past week urging all Gore sites to cease and join them because the are inferior. However, as I have pointed out we have more members, better on GooglePageRank and Yahoo. Now he is following me around and removing my links and inserting his which is very childish. As I also told him, I could care less if both links are there, but when he removes my link in spite, that is vadalism. It shouldn't be about that, however, he wants to make it a competition. You can tell by his comments above he is in spite about something. However, like I said this boils down to his comments earlier this week about other Gore sites.

I also don't apprecaite him coming here, incognito, and changing things. I have not only edited this Gore page extensivly, but other pages. I don't think anyone likes an anon reverting or vandalizing pages.

Again, thanks James. Like you said, we don't always see eye to eye on the issues, but we do agree that is petty and should be resolved. ChrisDJackson

  • James, thanks for your hard work on the amazing Wikipedia. As for the other comments, that sort of infighting is inappropriate for a Gore supporter, and I'm ignoring it. I see from the other entries on this page that the author has been a controversial figure since long before this came up. I was only attempting to restore the link to an unofficial Gore site, and choose not to challenge the ill conceived notes above.
      • Oh yea Dylan, everything is so ill conveived about what I said. Well, here is your little vendettative post about how you wish all the other Gore sites would just stop and join you. It also proves you have motive for your actions:

"Actually, the issue of "other" Gore sites brings up mixed feelings for me. This site - when launched years ago as AlGore04.com (renamed now for obvious reasons), was the combination of two other sites - AlGore-04.com and Al-Gore-2004.org. That was progress, in my opinion... the goal was to create something bigger and more organized than individuals could realistically do on their own. We approached other websites at the time, but most didn't respond.

Strangely, every now and then, somebody creates a site with it's own "news" and message boards. It takes a fair bit of time to do that, which would have been better spent chipping in here -- we have a list of at least a dozen projects we'd love to have competent help with. It's a fool's errand in some ways to launch these mini-sites... they've only a fraction the traffic we do, and they're only re-inventing the wheel.

There's no human way you could improve on the job Janet Hessert does with the news here-- she tracks Gore's every move with better precision and accuracy than Tipper does! LOL And our fourms, chat rooms, etc. are as good as web tech can offer... so why bother?

Anyhow, the redesign is very close now, and when it's done I intend to renew my call to unite anyone with a shred of interest in contributing to the Gore web. I'll be adding a place to check in and look for volunteer opportunities. Gore needs a large, unified, and organized community of support. That's what we offer, and hope to expand dramatically in the years ahead."

Now, do you want me to add in all the emails you have sent me saying the same thing among other things? ChrisDJackson 00:09, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Al Gore's views

There was a separate article on Al Gore's views, with a cross-reference in the main Al Gore article under "Views and controversies". On August 26, Poccil edited the other article by inserting the "merge" template ("This article should be merged with Al Gore"). On August 27, Jiang turned Al Gore's views into a redirect here, without merging any of the content. CDN99 then edited this article to remove the cross-reference, which had become a self-reference.

I hope this link will show the Al Gore's views article as it was immediately before it was converted to a redirect.

There are three main alternatives here:

1. Restore the separate article on Al Gore's views, with a link to it from Al Gore.
2. Leave Al Gore's views as a redirect but incorporate much of its content into this article.
3. Status quo -- all the material that was in Al Gore's views is essentially gone.

These three are listed in my order of preference. I favor the general approach described in Wikipedia:Summary style of having a "top-level" article (like Al Gore) with general summary information, and more detailed treatment of subtopics included in daughter articles (like Al Gore's views). I don't see a good rationale for the change that's been made here. Before reverting it, though, I'd like to hear others' comments. JamesMLane 11:14, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Al Gore's views is just a bullet point list and not an article. Unless someone can immensely improve it, it doesnt deserve to stand alone. That said, I didnt do my job and failed to merge the content (not the bullet point list). The views section should be at least a couple paragraphs long. Ill try to get to it... --Jiang 11:24, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The trouble is that if you merge in every point, it will clutter the main article, and if you select a few, the rest of the information will be lost. I think that even a collection of bullet points, with a link from the main article, is acceptable as a way of making the information conveniently available. Virtually no one would come upon Al Gore's views except by following the link from Al Gore, and, for those people, a bulleted list is much better than nothing. JamesMLane 15:17, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Readers of an encyclopedia are interested in the summary, not every single fact on a subject. The political views should be probably integrated into the various time periods (mention what policies Gore helped enact or advocated for). Gore is no longer running for public office. Politicians tend to flip-flop over time so a bullet point list like the one in the article is not helpful. Compare: http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761553525/Gore_Al.html --Jiang 19:56, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
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