The General US Politics Thread

Also, since winning a Senate seat requires a simple majority statewide, they can and do tell everyone else to go hang. It’s insulting how little my Republican Senators even pretend to give a shit about the 40% of the state that’s Dems.

The original idea of the United States was supposed to be something more like the EU: a federation of sovereign States with some federal regulation to streamline interstate trade. Over time, more and more federal powers have been added, making us more of a single nation.

The simple fact is that people's loyalties are no longer primarily geographical. Most people in the USA identify as "American" first and their State second. We think and speak in terms of what's best for the nation, not what's best for our State. With the advance of mass media, it's even likely that we share more culturally with people on the other side of the continent than we do with our immediate neighbors.

So while there's nothing wrong with the arbitrary administrative unit of the "State" I don't think a State's interest is such a singular thing that it makes much sense to try to preserve the power of the State as a unit. It's just counterintuitive for how we think of the nation these days.

Hey Charles, we should start a 'We Hate Our State' group.

I disagree, even as administrative units, the senate (should, but this is theory vs actual practice) should ensure that not just most of the people agree, but also that the areas agree. Florida isn't New York isn't Kansas isn't California and something that works for some may not work for others.

Honest question: Is the Chick-fil-A thing a possible freedom of speech issue since it's the city doing the banning?

Edited by sgamer82 on Mar 29th 2019 at 10:32:42 AM

If it's the state and the reason is what someone said, yeah it is.

Yes. Freedom of Speech applies to basically all levels of government, and overrides local laws.

It could be that, or it could be the fact that said stance ends up affecting how LGBT employees and customers end up being treated within the company and establishments. Or at least that's the kind of thing I would think the mayor would be using as a reason for banning it.

The problem is that the TLDR; is that it doesn't. If you want to go after companees mistreating their employees, Chick-fil-a is a bad place to start. From a 2015 article,

Daily Beast: It’s Time For Gays To Forgive Chick-fil-A

Edited by Soban on Mar 29th 2019 at 1:11:33 PM

Didn’t it turn out that a lot of that PR was spin and they were still donating to nasty anti-LGBT groups? Also, no one LGBT person gets to order the rest of us to forgive and forget.

Edited by wisewillow on Mar 29th 2019 at 1:16:41 PM

Oh, I dunno, HAVE THEY?! From what I know, the "gays eat at Chick-Fil-A" thing was specifically an IRONIC PROTEST against the company's anti-LGBTQ+ stance. From what I've heard, they STILL give money to anti-LGBTQ+ charities.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Mar 29th 2019 at 10:19:00 AM

If they want me to forgive them, they could start with firing the guy responsible like Papa Jhons did, that would be a nice start.

Soban, one opinion article from one woman is not exactly compelling evidence of... anything, at all. If your argument is that Chick-Fil-A isn't mistreating anyone, you should maybe give us some kind of a history of LGBT people actually employed there or something. Again, not an opinion article, which is literally just one woman's opinion. It's also five years old at this time, so I'm not sure why you're using it unless it's literally the only one you could find.

In any case, I was just suggesting what I think the mayor's reasoning was, because I think taking a step like that is a big one and they'd sensibly use something other than free speech/hate speech as an issue.

Edit: Having looked it, they're not specifically citing it as a free speech issue, but a violation of religious liberty issue. And it doesn't appear to be a ban from the entirety of San Antonio at the moment, (further edit) just a refusal to let them be part of what seems to be a bigger business deal with the airport.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/29/politics/texas-san-antonio-airport-chick-fil-a-investigation/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/03/29/chick-fil-a-was-banned-san-antonios-airport-texas-attorney-general-says-its-discriminatory/?utm_term=.8746d5b94c2f

I mean, a city does have a right not to do business with a fast food company, for whatever reason. That is part of the free market, after all. (And he does sort of have a point with the fact that Chick-Fil-A is closed on Sundays, which probably doesn't make sense in an airport.)

Edited by AceofSpades on Mar 29th 2019 at 11:27:48 AM

Someone mentioned a few pages ago that Adam Schiff made a really good speech recently. Can someone summarize what it was about and why it's "really good"?

One way to try and fix the senate while keep equal representation for each state would be to up the number of senators and use list voting.

So give each state 6 senators, with three up each time they’re up, than you do list voting which each party puts forward a list of candidates and you vote for a party. Look at how the EU elects members of the EU parliament, if there are enough senators to do lists (which would mean increasing the size of the senate) than you could easily end up with say Georgia electing two republicans and one democrat as their senate delegation.

Basically Schiff, after getting insulted by the president and called on to resign, told off him and the Republican party about their disregard for the fact that Russia has very likely meddled in past elections and are doing it again, and thus showing a disregard for our democracy and our national security. He basically said "shame on you."

I mean, that's the basics, but I'm bad at describing how cool it was.

List voting is very confusing to me. Are we literally just saying "we want a Democrat/Republican" and they choose who it is afterwards or are we voting indirectly for specific people? I always feel like there's a missing step people forget to mention when they describe this method.

Edited by AceofSpades on Mar 29th 2019 at 12:46:55 PM

The parties say “we want theses people in this order for the seats available”, you then go “I want this party” and a bunch of maths are done and you end up with a semi-representative mix based on the different ways people voted.

Remember all list constituencies are multi-member, so you’re never electing just one representative at once, it’s always multiple that cover the same area.

Edit: So for example, as “the party” we submit the TV Tropes Party list for the internet government election for a three member constituency, the list in order is Fighteer, Soban, Charles (names picked at random). The internet votes, if we get enough vote for all three seats then all three are elected, if we only get enough votes for one seat than one Fighteer is elected.

The maths can vary but is generally that the party with the most votes gets the first seat, the party with the second most votes gets the second seat and so on, though if you get loads of votes more than the next guy you can get two seats in a row.

Edited by Silasw on Mar 30th 2019 at 7:09:58 PM

IIRC even this was largely a PR move; the guy still has stock in the company or something like that.

apparently the Democrats are responsible if the NRA shuts down forever

Obviously this is scare tactic to get funding,but could you imagine if this was true?Without the NRA lobbying they might actually get gun control laws passed!

It turns out running your own television network that no one watches is problematic without Russian funding.

And that is a bad thing? I mean I'm pretty sure the Democrats are going to consider that as a free promotion and publicity.

Edited by SteamKnight on Mar 30th 2019 at 7:24:52 PM

I really hope this backfires on them and encourages Democrats to press harder, essentially creating a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

> And that is a bad thing?

I never said it was,just that it's untrue when they receive funding through all sorts of back channels,them crowing about running out of funding is lie to deceive gullible members

"If you haven't paid your membership fee we're going broke!"

Oh, don't worry. That question isn't meant for you. I'm just mind-boggled by is this really the angle that the NRA is going for here? After that fiasco with the One Nation, they really need to come up with something much better than this joke.

They’re just riling up the base. This kind of stuff plays well to nuts.

I’m not sure we’d be too happy if the NRA ended up getting replaced by one of the smaller advocacy groups though. They’re all far crazier and angling for the top spot.