|
comes along bort posted:Here's some light reading for ya: Note that gerrymandering does nothing for Senate seats which is the more pressing concern right now.
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 17:47 |
|
|
computer parts posted:Note that gerrymandering does nothing for Senate seats which is the more pressing concern right now. The Constitution effectively gerrymanders the Senate by insisting on giving empty land equal votes as a packed megalopolis.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:23
|
|
|
So following on from this mornings post on Republicans pushing to encourage wage theft. Detroit has a number of claimants on money owed. Their pensions are incredibly underfunded to the tune of ~14 Bln. The negotiations of how to handle this have been lengthy, with the push to slash them and how much to meet their obligations. Finally though a deal was reached: 195 million in private donations, 195 million matching from the state, selling off the city's art assets and museum collections for a chunk of money, and pensions would be cut by 4.5% and COLAs ended. The deal loving sucks, because we are talking about failure to honor a work contract, failure to pay for services already rendered, people who owing to age can't go back into the workforce, and there is something disgusting about pillaging the culture from a city to sit in the halls of the rich. But as it all sucks, this was the least worst option (alternatives were a 34% pension cut for non emergency services retirees and a 14% cut for police and firemen) Koch backed Americans for Prosperity is rallying to block settlements that will pay the pensioners* The bond holders are getting 74 cents on the dollar for their claims. They are pissed that the pensioners are getting smaller cuts and have said they are "examining their legal options" to challenge that the pensioners aren't getting completely shafted so the bond holders get everything back and the interest payments on bad adjustment deals keep flowing to Wall Street. But in addition to that now they are going political to block the deal. Let's put this as starkly as possible - out of state billionaires are doing everything they can to make sure impoverished retirees aren't paid the money they earned while working. *yes, it's C&L. But google and you will find the same press release cited in numerous papers. This is legit.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:39
|
|
|
Stultus Maximus posted:The Constitution effectively gerrymanders the Senate by insisting on giving empty land equal votes as a packed megalopolis.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:43
|
|
|
Fried Chicken posted:So following on from this mornings post on Republicans pushing to encourage wage theft. Here's a TPM Link http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/koch-brothers-group-fighting-detroit-bankruptcy-deal The Koch brothers are literally comic book villains at this point. The only thing missing is a thin mustache to twirl.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:44
|
|
|
computer parts posted:Note that gerrymandering does nothing for Senate seats which is the more pressing concern right now. It also makes it easier for a concentrated GOTV effort to take the seat.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:46
|
|
|
Sword of Chomsky posted:The Koch brothers are literally comic book villains at this point. The only thing missing is a thin mustache to twirl. My rational brain says "don't focus too hard on the Koch brothers, there are lots of other slightly less ideological billionaires and corporate boards that are just as rapacious," but on the other hand, this, gently caress them. They've basically turned "freedom" into another word for "robbing the elderly of their pension money."
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:46
|
|
|
Sword of Chomsky posted:Here's a TPM Link http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/koch-brothers-group-fighting-detroit-bankruptcy-deal I know it's the reaction they want, but when I see political cartoons with them portrayed as "wittle Koch bros being ganged up on by mean ol' liberals  " it makes me seethe with rage. They are so unashamedly evil, if we lived in an action movie, their part of the story would end with them falling out of a window to their horrible demise (I hope that doesn't count as murder porn  )
Eggplant Squire fucked around with this message at 18:50 on May 20, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:47
|
|
|
JT Jag posted:Things would be a lot more democratic if all House districts were drawn up by mathematical formula and the Senate was just abolished. This wouldn't change things that much because much of the country is self-gerrymandered due to the concentration of Democratic voters in large cities. You could eliminate some of the worst abuses, but any reasonable drawing is going to have multiple all-urban districts containing a huge Democratic majority. The most democratic solution would probably be some form of proportional representation, but I think we all know how likely that is.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:49
|
|
|
Oh, and NPR just axed Tell Me More and fired 28 people who worked on it to "reduce their deficit" Tell Me More was focused on stories that deal with issues of interest the the people of color communities. It was basically their Black/Latino/Asian programming block. It is also the third PoC focused segment to get cancelled. They are keeping host Michel Martin on and the plan is little segments throughout the day on nonwhite issues, but that is a huge gap. Also, TMM was (unsurprisingly) largely staffed by nonwhites, who just got the axe.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:54
|
|
|
For those that are more science-y or have a medical background, I have some questions about lethal injection: 1. If done properly, is it actually painless? From my understanding, the person is basically paralyzed. I imagine you can be paralyzed and still be in pain. 2. Also from my understanding, people may react differently to different drugs. Would it be possible that the drug used to put a prisoner to sleep might not put him to sleep? Do some states run tests on a prisoner first to see if the sleep drug will work? 3. From a medical standpoint, would killing someone via guillotine cause them less physical pain than killing someone via lethal injection? 4. The procedure regarding lethal injection seems pretty complicated and easy to screw up. Is this the case? Do we have some metrics on how often procedures run into complications? I'm not sure how complicated operating a guillotine is, but it seems pretty simple. I understand the main reason for using lethal injection is because it makes the perpetrators feel less squeamish and better about themselves. But I'm interested in how "humane" it is compared to other forms of execution in terms of the pain it causes, considering the laughable ruling by SCOTUS hacks.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:55
|
|
|
Fried Chicken posted:Oh, and NPR just axed Tell Me More and fired 28 people who worked on it to "reduce their deficit" She should move to PRI; they've been putting out better shows than NPR for a while now.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 18:59
|
|
|
blackmongoose posted:This wouldn't change things that much because much of the country is self-gerrymandered due to the concentration of Democratic voters in large cities. You could eliminate some of the worst abuses, but any reasonable drawing is going to have multiple all-urban districts containing a huge Democratic majority. The most democratic solution would probably be some form of proportional representation, but I think we all know how likely that is.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:04
|
|
|
JT Jag posted:Oh, sure, first past the post is hosed from the get go, my proposal is just the way to get the most out of it. To get the most out of it you just make the districts absurdly small - 40,000 people per rep or so. You can't gerrymander easily at that high of a resolution.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:18
|
|
|
computer parts posted:To get the most out of it you just make the districts absurdly small - 40,000 people per rep or so. You can't gerrymander easily at that high of a resolution.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:23
|
|
|
computer parts posted:To get the most out of it you just make the districts absurdly small - 40,000 people per rep or so. You can't gerrymander easily at that high of a resolution. Yeah, this is really one of the things that fundamentally broke our political system when we scaled it up. As originally conceived, representatives each had about 30-40k constituents and the system works OK at that level of granularity. Having that many reps would be a challenge in some respects, but would be advantageous in other ways. Constituent service would probably be easier for one.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:25
|
|
|
On the other hand, with America's current population that'd give us a Congress with like 10,000 people in it. Which sounds horrible.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:26
|
|
|
What does easily have anything to do with it? Computers do all the work of gerrymandering anyway.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:28
|
|
|
sejoonki posted:This article makes me so angry and disgusted I want to bash my head against the wall. I just... don't know what to say. The fact that there is an organized movement to deny people fair wages for their work, and nothing being done to address the general wage stagnation and growing income inequality gap is just really depressing and discouraging. Ugh. I like how this very constructive post got overlooked in the course of two irrelevant derails. It goes to show why "progressives" and "leftists" can't get poo poo done in America. Even if there weren't oligarchs arrayed against any kind of political change, we're all so busy infighting that we ignore any kind of dialogue that might result in actual change and then complain about how no one wants to do anything except complain and drink while the world goes to shambles. "In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve", indeed.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:28
|
|
|
loquacius posted:On the other hand, with America's current population that'd give us a Congress with like 10,000 people in it. Which sounds horrible. Junior legislators already wield very little power, most of the actual work is done at a party level or by a relative handful of powerful committee members anyway (essentially the same as the former). Sure, they can introduce bills if they want, but the first step is to bounce it to one of those committees and if it makes it out of committee it's at the mercy of the Speaker or the Senate Majority Leader to schedule a vote. We're already living in that particular dystopia.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:29
|
|
|
Paul MaudDib posted:Junior legislators already wield very little power, most of the actual work is done at a party level or by a relative handful of powerful committee members anyway (essentially the same as the former). We're already living in that particular dystopia. No, it could get much worse.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:30
|
|
|
Cheekio posted:What does easily have anything to do with it? Computers do all the work of gerrymandering anyway. Easily as in "it's really hard to divide up districts to support conservatives when districts have to be contiguous and you can get a district's worth of people in a few square miles of a city". I mean you could get situations like this Colorado map if you really tried but it's a lot harder than even the silly stuff we have now. In addition, a lot of the extreme gerrymandered districts are as such because they're made to be heavily minority. By making it more granular you can get those same minority districts without making the borders weird. computer parts fucked around with this message at 19:36 on May 20, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:31
|
|
|
Stultus Maximus posted:No, it could get much worse. That's a fundamentally different political system with a bunch of things different from the Federal system. For example, seats are elected at-large rather than first-past-the-post, so not even the basic setup is really comparable. If anything that's a window on what the US would look like if every state had 11 Senators, not more representatives. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 19:35 on May 20, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:33
|
|
|
Paul MaudDib posted:Junior legislators already wield very little power, most of the actual work is done at a party level or by a relative handful of powerful committee members anyway (essentially the same as the former). We're already living in that particular dystopia. It's much easier to take control over half of a few hundred people than a few thousand. The other major snag we're running into is that the government we're using now is based on one made by people that likely didn't bother to think about a planet with a population number in the billions. The population of the U.S. was less than 1% of what it is now in 1776. You can't just magically scale a government up like that and expect it to work. As the number of people represented by each representative gets larger and larger you have an increasingly separate class just by virtue of how numbers work. At this point the political class is basically completely separate from the rest of society.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:34
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:It's much easier to take control over half of a few hundred people than a few thousand. The other major snag we're running into is that the government we're using now is based on one made by people that likely didn't bother to think about a planet with a population number in the billions. The population of the U.S. was less than 1% of what it is now in 1776. You can't just magically scale a government up like that and expect it to work. As the number of people represented by each representative gets larger and larger you have an increasingly separate class just by virtue of how numbers work. At this point the political class is basically completely separate from the rest of society. That's why the federal government has powers that are limited and enumerated 
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:40
|
|
|
Dahbadu posted:For those that are more science-y or have a medical background, I have some questions about lethal injection: When done properly, ie in the way SCotUS approved, it shouldn't be painful. It can no longer be done that way, so no, it's probably not. quote:2. Also from my understanding, people may react differently to different drugs. Would it be possible that the drug used to put a prisoner to sleep might not put him to sleep? Do some states run tests on a prisoner first to see if the sleep drug will work? No, it's not a medical procedure. quote:3. From a medical standpoint, would killing someone via guillotine cause them less physical pain than killing someone via lethal injection? Yup. Being shot in the heart would be less painful. Either way, you die instantly. quote:4. The procedure regarding lethal injection seems pretty complicated and easy to screw up. Is this the case? Do we have some metrics on how often procedures run into complications? I'm not sure how complicated operating a guillotine is, but it seems pretty simple. It's not a procedure. It's misusing drugs to end someone's life. The only protocol is drugs in -> dead guy out. quote:I understand the main reason for using lethal injection is because it makes the perpetrators feel less squeamish and better about themselves. But I'm interested in how "humane" it is compared to other forms of execution in terms of the pain it causes, considering the laughable ruling by SCOTUS hacks. It's just a way to make people feel better about the state murdering mostly poor and minority prisoners.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:41
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:It's much easier to take control over half of a few hundred people than a few thousand. The other major snag we're running into is that the government we're using now is based on one made by people that likely didn't bother to think about a planet with a population number in the billions. The population of the U.S. was less than 1% of what it is now in 1776. You can't just magically scale a government up like that and expect it to work. As the number of people represented by each representative gets larger and larger you have an increasingly separate class just by virtue of how numbers work. At this point the political class is basically completely separate from the rest of society. Conversely though taking over one representative is a lot less meaningful when you have 7,850 of them instead of 435 (which would be the Originalist-sized House for current population). You'd have a power bloc that is roughly as influential as PETA, so what? In that situation we're already talking about a lot of majority-minority (racial and political), that's pretty much a feature not a bug. At the core this argument boils down to "representing the will of specific groups of people is bad because it's easy to influence people" and that's a sentiment that is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. I'm sure something similar was said about the Civil Rights Act, just with black pastors as the villain instead of megacorps. The problem of money influencing politics is fundamentally separate and can be attacked without gutting representative democracy. Another reasonable complaint is that it would lead to increased polarization. Yeah, it might destroy the consensus between the neoliberals and the far-right wing that coexists uneasily today. American political discourse is incredibly narrow by international standards and this would probably be a good thing in the long term, and it also might not change much at all. If we want an "averaging" or "smoothing" effect, large district sizes are not a particularly good way to do that and we should implement another mechanism anyway. I'm sure we can figure out something in the 21st century to allow reasonable numbers of people to collaborate on works together. It's a pretty well established problem in the software world and the resulting solutions (revision control) have already bled out into the literary world (they're commonly used for publishing). The current situation where one powerful senator goes off for a month with a bunch of lobbyists to write a bill is awful and it's really hard to see how the situation could get much worse. At least you're talking about needing to bribe more than one person in order to get results, and it would be easy to pin down which rear end in a top hat is inserting the offending language since the changes are tracked. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 20:11 on May 20, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:42
|
|
|
PA just had its ban on marriage equality overturned.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:47
|
|
|
Fried Chicken posted:PA just had its ban on marriage equality overturned. I love a lot of stuff about the state of PA, I'm glad there's at least a few things about the government of PA I can like even if it had to happen by dragging people kicking and screaming into modernity.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 19:56
|
|
|
I just saw an article on CNN Money saying the Koch brothers and AFP are trying to derail a Detroit bankruptcy deal... I saw red and couldn't go any further.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:00
|
|
|
computer parts posted:Easily as in "it's really hard to divide up districts to support conservatives when districts have to be contiguous and you can get a district's worth of people in a few square miles of a city". Here's a fun one: my district is the blue one, which includes the impoverished areas of the I-95 corridor (but not the nicer parts of the corridor) and the empty bush country south of Lake Okeechobee. It's an absolute mess. It lumps a large portion of black and Hispanic communities in with the rural areas outside the city, mixing the interests of the city with the country, ensuring that neither constituency is represented effectively.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:02
|
|
|
SumYungGui posted:I love a lot of stuff about the state of PA, I'm glad there's at least a few things about the government of PA I can like even if it had to happen by dragging people kicking and screaming into modernity. Pennsylvania is a weird goddamned state. I keep hearing it describe as stuff like "Pennsyltucky" or "Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between." The cities and college towns are fairly liberal and modern. Everywhere else is like stepping backwards in time to varying degrees.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:10
|
|
|
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/BL-LB-48089 So the law against marijuana use is broken so often the the FBI wants to be able to ignore that its new hires are breaking the law. Sounds like a better idea would be repeal the law but that's just me
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:16
|
|
|
Fried Chicken posted:Oh, and NPR just axed Tell Me More and fired 28 people who worked on it to "reduce their deficit" On the one hand, I feel sad about this as subject diversity is important. On the other hand, when I did listen to the show, it was usually pretty awful, so
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:18
|
|
|
JT Jag posted:Things would be a lot more democratic if all House districts were drawn up by mathematical formula and the Senate was just abolished. While we're at it we should re-draw state borders along population lines without regard for any geographical features (other than probably watershed boundaries) and officially demote 'states' to 'administrative districts'. No, I'm being serious.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:23
|
|
|
the judge who just legalized gay marriage in PA with no stay was endorsed by Rick Santorum It isn't all bad you know
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:23
|
|
|
What have the Koch brothers been up to lately you might be asking. The answer is nothing good.quote:Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group supported by the Koch brothers, has launched an effort to torpedo a proposed settlement in the Detroit bankruptcy case, potentially complicating chances for completing the deal just as its prospects seemed to be improving. quote:Ten-year-old Americans for Prosperity, which plans to spend at least $125 million nationally helping conservatives in the midterm elections, is becoming more active in state politics. Its willingness to spend millions for advertising has made it a powerful player in political contests. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/koch-brothers-group-fighting-detroit-bankruptcy-deal Which then gives me the excuse to post this article, showing how Koch money trickles down to municipalities quote:The Tennessee Senate passed a bill last week that, if approved, would broadly ban mass transit projects in the region, an anti-transit effort that’s gotten some help in the state from Charles and David Koch. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/01/3421088/koch-brothers-tennessee/
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:27
|
|
|
Representative Ted Yoho (Pirate-FL), known hater of absentee voting, wishes to make voting tougher by limiting it to property owners. These comments were made during the 2012 election cycle, where he also stated “I fear for the country, two and a half years from now we may not be able to vote.” We have another year before we won't be able to vote anymore! Better show up for the midterms for your final voting. E: I really miss the GOP Rebuilding thread.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:35
|
|
SAVE_US.CHR
|
And yet we have folks who go crazy and shoot up schools instead. There is, and never was any justice in the world.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 17:47 |
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:Pennsylvania is a weird goddamned state. I keep hearing it describe as stuff like "Pennsyltucky" or "Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between." The cities and college towns are fairly liberal and modern. Everywhere else is like stepping backwards in time to varying degrees. I live in North Central PA and I can pretty well confirm this. Inside the cities or on certain campuses it's pretty good. You step out of them and you have solid chances of people talking about the niggers and spics in the cities taking our taxes. 
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2014 20:37
|
|
