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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
You know, as a foreigner (from the perspective of a U.S. citizen), I keep being surprised at how much there is that I don't know about U.S. politics.
It's like Marvel comic books—even if you've been a fan for decades, there's always a hero, or a villain, or an entire team of either, that shows up, and you go Wait, who's that?
Kemp is both stupid and corrupt. I'd argue he's possibly he's the worst current governor but the competition is fierce with Death Santis and Abbot.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."The problem with the sudden popularity of politics is that most people have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. After all, life is a never ending play with a rotating cast. Just because someone isn't in the spotlight doesn't mean they just stopped existing. For example, most people didn't know who Dr. Fauci was before the pandemic and now he has T-shirts.
Just Having FunShould be remembered, all bills in the current Congress expires when the next Congress is sworn in.
This is why bills like pet projects and impeachment are reintroduced every two years.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."So I just finished reading an article that I think helped relax me about Biden winning in November. It turns out Trump's tactic of trying to delegitimize the Election isn't the first time Republicans in the Modern Day have tried; in 1960 Nixon's cronies (with Nixon's blessing) tried to delegitimize his loss against John F. Kennedy
. Several Republican-led states ordered recounts in contested Districts, only to find no serious miscount or fraud, and in fact the only serious miscount was in Hawaii that Nixon then lost to Kennedy. Attempts by Nixon's aides to get Republican Legislators to just put in Republican Electors instead of the rightful Democratic ones were met with harsh rejection. Nixon, for his part, was smart enough to keep himself distant, so people only complained about his Aides acting like toddlers.
So while Trump and his cronies may attempt to delegitimize the Election, the odds are great that they will collapse, just as Nixon's attempt did.
The main danger is if the election were close, then Repbulican majority state legislatures trying to insert electors loyal to the party might tip the election the other way. There's also the probability that they will try to declare a lot of mail-in ballots void for whatever reason (but only in certain districts—you know which ones). If the election is not close, then even those tactics will not work.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.While I agree on the whole, it's important to remember that not all rules are created equal. Things like the size of the supreme court are longstanding norms but ultimately not important to the cause of just governance. Those sorts of norms shouldn't be thrown out for no reason, but changing them in order to address a wrong (eg, expanding the court to counteract McConnell and Trump's forcing through illegitimate SCOTUS nominations) is valid and legitimate.
Other things are important in and of themselves, and should not be changed even if doing so would give us an advantage. Gerrymandering, for example, is bullshit regardless whether it's Democrats or Republicans doing it — gerrymandering itself is a problem that needs to be eliminated. In other words, the reason we should oppose gerrymandering isn't because it lets Republicans win elections, the reason we should oppose gerrymandering is because gerrymandering is bad. So the solution isn't "gerrymander in favor of Democrats instead of Republicans", it's "don't allow gerrymandering".
There's no simple hard-and-fast rule for judging which norms are which. We can only take them on a case by case basis.
Edited by NativeJovian on Oct 11th 2020 at 9:14:10 AM
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Of course, with gerrymandering we run into an interesting point: in the absence of a system of multi-member constituencies (i.e. so long as it's FPTP—or, to be honest, that mixed member list system), is it good or bad to gerrymander a district such that you fit as many minority voters into one place such that they form a majority and are guaranteed to therefore get representation?
Even gerrymendering can have its legitimate purposes.
But, yeah, we need to keep in mind what we're talking here. Because I hear things like "stop playing softball" or whatever I go to "use the same loopholes they use to get in power" not things like "suppress Republican voters the way they try and suppress Democratic voters."
Obviously no one here was directly saying that, but these conversations can lead to that thinking if we don't keep things like that in mind.
Edited by LSBK on Oct 11th 2020 at 8:25:13 AM
Populations tend to cluster, it can be usefull to make sure that voting districts share a more even distribution compared to the whole.
Also just drawing squares on a map has issues with population density distribtution that means that your always going to need to use funky shapes to get any kind of equal voting districts out of it.
Bluntly, the only way to get decent voting districts is to let a machine handle it, because its just going to be a mess of caculating various things out.
Let's assume you have a region with five districts, and 80% of them are white and 20% of them are black. You can draw all five districts equally such that every district has 16% white voters and 4% black voters. Now assume that when all is said and done, you have a roughly 8% fixed support for each party in any given district, and the black voters tend to be 3:1 for Party A, making up 3% of one of those 8%'s and 1% of the other. In this scenario, whether any of the minority voters get a representative they voted for is completely down to the 4% of majority swing voters.
Or you can draw the districts to produce a map where most of the population is composed of minority voters, and they can therefore elect a representative that considers minority interests (because it's their entire constituency).
TL;DR: if you pack minority voters into one district, they can actually elect someone that cares about them.
In Canada, electoral districts are redrawn at predetermined intervals by a nonpartisan electoral boundary commission, taking into account multiple different factors (including “respecting communities of interest or identity”, i.e. endeavouring to keep natural groupings - like a neighbourhood with common characteristics - together). It works well.
https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=cir/red/bck&document=index&lang=e
Having them drawn by politicians who will favour their own party is a ridiculous way to do it.
Edited by Galadriel on Oct 11th 2020 at 10:42:38 AM
I guess that's why gerrymandering is so easy to pull off, fair districting has to find the balance between sticking all of one demographic in one district (so they only get one representative and spreading out that demographic as a minority among all districts (so they're always outvoted and don't get any representation). You can claim you're fixing the injustice of one extreme and hide that your solution is going to the other extreme.
Ah, that's how Trump is planning to hand out $200 drug coupons.
By raiding the Medicare fund for $8,000,000,000.
Yes it's an absolutely shameful stunt that could prove to be illegal...
...but for $200? I don't know anything really about drug costs in the US, but I somehow get the feeling that for quite a large number of people that's going to be a drop in the ocean when it comes to the cost of their medication. Sure, every little helps and all and most people won't say no to $200 but really I do think the whole thing could rebound on Trump as prima facie evidence that he doesn't understand medical poverty and quite a few people might consider the whole thing to be insulting.

He who fights monsters must see to it that they do not become monsters. But he who does not fight monsters is already one.
Leviticus 19:34