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Discendo Vox posted:Don't cite to Russia Today. But then how will we know Dear Leader's thoughts on American law?
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Aug 17, 2016 21:08
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RT is the direct mouthpiece of the Kremlin and absolutely nothing produced by them should be taken at face value without other sources. My current struggle is explaining to berniebros why RT is a bad source of info of how Clinton rigged the primary against Bernie.
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Aug 17, 2016 21:08
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BiohazrD posted:Why don't we just say gently caress districts all together? Take the number of seats and if the split is 50% D 50% R give half to the Democratic party to assign and half to the Republican party to assign. Most people are trying to aim for more representative, not less. Giving sole power to decide elected officials to two small non-representative, not necessarily democratic groups seems... not that. Saying "gently caress districts altogether" might be part of a better plan, but "just let the party bosses decide who makes up the government, screw what the public thinks" does not.
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Aug 17, 2016 21:08
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Mors Rattus posted:But then how will we know Dear Leader's thoughts on American law? Listen to a Trump speech
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Aug 17, 2016 21:09
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GlyphGryph posted:Most people are trying to aim for more representative, not less. Giving sole power to decide elected officials to two small non-representative, not necessarily democratic groups seems... not that. Saying "gently caress districts altogether" might be part of a better plan, but "just let the party bosses decide who makes up the government, screw what the public thinks" does not. Yeah that's a good point, but I'm not really sure how you get there. You could have people run for the seat as a member of the party but if you constrain who can vote for them geographically then, congratulations you just recreated districts. The other option is to put everyone who runs on the same statewide ballot. You'd have a lot of candidates changing their names to "Aaron Aardvark"
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Aug 17, 2016 21:19
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Mors Rattus posted:But then how will we know Dear Leader's thoughts on American law? Just follow Wikileaks and Julian Assange on Twitter.
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Aug 17, 2016 22:43
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EwokEntourage posted:First Liberty (formerly the Liberty institute)  You can be smug after the 8th circuit rejects the appeal. Seriously, though, do you honestly believe the IRS is in the business of evaluating organization's claims of being a religion?
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Aug 18, 2016 00:35
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Keeshhound posted:
As it pertains to Title 26 of the USC....yes?
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Aug 18, 2016 00:40
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Just because it’s a religion doesn’t mean it’s tax exempt. The IRS can reject tax exempt status without declaring “that isn’t a religion”.
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Aug 18, 2016 00:44
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Are there examples where the IRS has said that something was tax exempt as a religious organization, but another part of gov't held that it wasn't a real religion?
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Aug 18, 2016 00:50
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GlyphGryph posted:Most people are trying to aim for more representative, not less. Giving sole power to decide elected officials to two small non-representative, not necessarily democratic groups seems... not that. Saying "gently caress districts altogether" might be part of a better plan, but "just let the party bosses decide who makes up the government, screw what the public thinks" does not. Have the party members elect the slate of candidates representing the party in the primary through preference based voting. The candidates get ranked from most to least preferred and get seated in that order based on the number of seats the party wins.
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Aug 18, 2016 01:15
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Potato Salad posted:Would it still be as bad, however, as "this fish-hook-attached-to-a-firetruck-with-the-ladder-extended is my district" gerrymandering? Cities kinda lumping together liberal voters and large swaths of countryside lumping together conservative voters still sounds very representative as there isn't an intentionally, precisely-tuned border that puts safe-but-close wins in some districts and large losses in others. The one you're probably thinking of from Chicago was specifically requested by its district members because that was the only way to get a Hispanic Representative in Congress.
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Aug 18, 2016 01:18
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I'm pretty sure NC and Virginia ...yeah the shapes I'm referring to are everywhere -- unless you mean there's a district that actually looks like a fire truck and ladder.
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Aug 18, 2016 01:30
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Mr. Nice! posted:RT is the direct mouthpiece of the Kremlin and absolutely nothing produced by them should be taken at face value without other sources. My current struggle is explaining to berniebros why RT is a bad source of info of how Clinton rigged the primary against Bernie. If they're still supporting Bernie, I'm not sure what there is to salvage there
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Aug 18, 2016 01:32
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Keeshhound posted:
Lol almost wish I had picked before organizations to donate to but a guy arguing about religious freedom donating to the liberty institute is too good
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Aug 18, 2016 01:47
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Discendo Vox posted:Don't cite to Russia Today. Russia Today is hilarious and without it I would never know about the glorious
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Aug 18, 2016 01:51
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Keeshhound posted:It was facetious in that you don't need to do that to get protections for your ideological identity, but you can absolutely declare whatever you want a religion. I can declare myself a worshiper of orange juice as a divine fluid, and as long as I don't harm or severely inconvenience anyone in the pursuit of my newfound faith, I will receive the exact same recognition and protections that a practicing catholic would. Namely, none, and if I could prove that I had been discriminated against for my beliefs, I could sue in the same circumstances the catholic could. Good luck convincing a judge that it's a sincere, devoted religious belief and not some bullshit you made up to circumvent some rule or annoy someone.
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Aug 18, 2016 03:28
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in retrospect, I feel bad about you giving money to the liberty institute, so please donate the remaining 50 to freedom from religion foundation to balance it out https://ffrf.org/
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Aug 18, 2016 03:31
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Hold on, was this originally about tax exemption or the right to worship Kleenex and have a nice little meaningless nod of legitimacy from a tired [City Name Here] Federal Building employee with absolutely no bearing on your tax status? I think the goalposts have been moved.
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Aug 18, 2016 04:17
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Potato Salad posted:I'm pretty sure NC and Virginia ...yeah the shapes I'm referring to are everywhere -- unless you mean there's a district that actually looks like a fire truck and ladder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois%27s_4th_congressional_district
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Aug 18, 2016 04:20
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Potato Salad posted:Hold on, was this originally about tax exemption or the right to worship Kleenex and have a nice little meaningless nod of legitimacy from a tired [City Name Here] Federal Building employee with absolutely no bearing on your tax status? I think the goalposts have been moved. His contention was that you could declare yourself a worshipper of orange juice and then have all the same legal protections of the Catholic Church. I cited tax rulings as an example of courts determining the legitimacy of religious beliefs in relationship to legal rights
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Aug 18, 2016 04:21
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Potato Salad posted:Hold on, was this originally about tax exemption or the right to worship Kleenex and have a nice little meaningless nod of legitimacy from a tired [City Name Here] Federal Building employee with absolutely no bearing on your tax status? I think the goalposts have been moved. The key issue at play was his claim that the courts never ever differentiate between an actual religion and something someone is just claiming as a religion to avoid regulation/laws.
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Aug 18, 2016 05:07
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Discendo Vox posted:Yes, which should tell you something about their merit. Think of it this way: which should be used, and why? I don't think a politician (or group thereof) refusing to consider a solution to a problem is a valid reason to discount its merit at all. Please see the vast majority of healthcare, environmental, fiscal and social welfare policy that's currently in the mainstream among politicians in the US for examples.
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Aug 18, 2016 06:48
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BiohazrD posted:Yeah that's a good point, but I'm not really sure how you get there. You could have people run for the seat as a member of the party but if you constrain who can vote for them geographically then, congratulations you just recreated districts. You can give everyone one single vote, but have more than one winner. (Single non-transferable vote) You can give everyone multiple votes, and let them spread them out or dump them all on one candidate. (Cumulative voting) You can give everyone a ranked ballot, and have excess votes for the winners spill over to second choices. (Single transferable vote) None of these methods even require voters to declare explicit parties. There would be no need for primaries, since having "too many" candidates who agree with you doesn't break the election the way it does with only one winner.
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Aug 18, 2016 08:17
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Potato Salad posted:Rephrased: we see lots of fish-hook-shapes gerrymanders as red states and blue states try to put wealthy white suburban doughnuts around cities into districts, and we see large pizza slices or meandering rivers where someone's trying to negate the blue weight of a city itself. Having the areas simply lumped separately without intentional, far-reaching blending borders seems more representative as it wouldn't be artificially imposing blended suburbanite/urbanite near-contest-but-safe districts that are the foundation of rigging by gerrymandering. But why stop or reduce gerrymandering? If we actually believe in representative democracy, then perhaps we should get rid of districts altogether and use a better method of selecting representatives.
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Aug 18, 2016 08:22
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Munkeymon posted:I don't think a politician (or group thereof) refusing to consider a solution to a problem is a valid reason to discount its merit at all. Please see the vast majority of healthcare, environmental, fiscal and social welfare policy that's currently in the mainstream among politicians in the US for examples. You're kinda missing my point here. Proportional representation systems are similarly ideologically and theoretically laden-it is no more objective than other approaches to the representation question. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 17:38
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Representative democracy is a poo poo show from first principles and you're all arguing over what shade of lipstick to put on this pig. Just embrace sortition as the true form of democratic governance and get on with it.
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Aug 19, 2016 18:03
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Geographic districts are literally the worst, at least when they’re used for both chambers of the legislature.
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Aug 20, 2016 00:42
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Discendo Vox posted:You're kinda missing my point here. Proportional representation systems are similarly ideologically and theoretically laden-it is no more objective than other approaches to the representation question. That's true, but if you establish some measures for what you want to achieve, you can at least prove a computer program fulfills them fairly and consistently, unlike a bunch of people going to town on a map with pencils.
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Aug 20, 2016 01:16
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Munkeymon posted:That's true, but if you establish some measures for what you want to achieve, you can at least prove a computer program fulfills them fairly and consistently, unlike a bunch of people going to town on a map with pencils. The problem is never that the people don't fulfill their objectives fairly and consistently. It's that the objectives are themselves not fair.
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Aug 20, 2016 01:26
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Munkeymon posted:That's true, but if you establish some measures for what you want to achieve, you can at least prove a computer program fulfills them fairly and consistently, unlike a bunch of people going to town on a map with pencils. Computers haven't really changed or improved things that much- objective ways of achieving different goals have been around for centuries. The underlying problem is that no one agrees on the measures for what is supposed to be achieved. That's the representation problem. The folks with pencils approach has the advantage of being an impermanent and openly imperfect answer to an unsolveable problem. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Aug 20, 2016 |
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Aug 20, 2016 06:01
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Blue Footed Booby posted:The classic example is inventing a religion to claim conscientious objector status to avoid the draft. Before the draft ended this happened all the time. It typically didn't work, because government officials aren't robots and can totally say "lol you just made that up." Even if it goes to court, judges can examine your lifestyle and see if it squares with the principles you claim to hold so dear.
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Aug 20, 2016 06:44
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Kalman posted:The problem is never that the people don't fulfill their objectives fairly and consistently. It's that the objectives are themselves not fair. I'm sure you thought this was clever but it doesn't mean anything. The issue people in this thread seem to have with districts is that they don't accurately represent the preferences of the population. There are definitely issues with fulfilling this goal accurately and consistently. The problem is that these objectives aren't shared by everyone. If you could magically convince everyone to agree on their priorities it probably wouldn't be too difficult to find a workable solution. Discendo Vox posted:The folks with pencils approach has the advantage of being an impermanent and openly imperfect answer to an unsolvable problem. This isn't an advantage, and this method carries the major disadvantage of openly biasing elections. Having an independent commission draw districts via whatever method is equally impermanent and imperfect but is no longer a directed effort by the party in power to retain power. Do you honestly think there are no possible improvements to be made?
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Aug 20, 2016 09:00
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Yashichi posted:I'm sure you thought this was clever but it doesn't mean anything. The issue people in this thread seem to have with districts is that they don't accurately represent the preferences of the population. There are definitely issues with fulfilling this goal accurately and consistently. The problem is that these objectives aren't shared by everyone. If you could magically convince everyone to agree on their priorities it probably wouldn't be too difficult to find a workable solution. The concept of "accurately representing" is doing work in a bunch of illegitimate ways here. Again, there isn't a particular valid answer to this. Yashichi posted:This isn't an advantage, and this method carries the major disadvantage of openly biasing elections. Having an independent commission draw districts via whatever method is equally impermanent and imperfect but is no longer a directed effort by the party in power to retain power. Do you honestly think there are no possible improvements to be made? The method matters. I have been arguing against the idea that a particular method of drawing districts is better or more fair. Setting aside the fact that not all forms of gerrymandering are illegal, the advantage of the current system is that its open variance and politicization means that one holds the false belief that it is objectively unbiased. All answers to the representation problem are political.
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Aug 20, 2016 16:33
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Discendo Vox posted:The concept of "accurately representing" is doing work in a bunch of illegitimate ways here. Again, there isn't a particular valid answer to this. Your "we can't have a perfect system ergo all systems are imperfect" is doing a lot of work here, specifically smearing together that there are more and less imperfect ways to do it. There are no compelling arguments for why gerrymandering so a minority can get a majority of the seats. There are many ways you can consider "accurately representing" the population and there's ones that are a lot more solid than others. For example, a system where I represent the entire population and pass that right on to my heirs is, in a certain sense, somewhat representing the population. I cast the vote for the whole population, it's my job. But that's a lot more imperfect than gerrymandered districts, which is a lot more imperfect than systems that generally have some form of proportional representation or are more likely to award control to the genuine majority.
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Aug 20, 2016 16:48
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All human systems of government are imperfect even in theory, so we may as well keep sacrificing virgins to the volcano god and interpreting His will in their entrails.
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Aug 20, 2016 17:13
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VitalSigns posted:All human systems of government are imperfect even in theory, so we may as well keep sacrificing virgins to the volcano god and interpreting His will in their entrails.
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Aug 20, 2016 18:24
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Dead Reckoning posted:You of all people making this complaint is hilarious, when seven pages ago you were arguing that Supreme Court justices should dispense with the notion of neutrality because no person can truly be a neutral arbiter of the law. Believing that there is no perfectly neutral legal philosophy also means you should never strive to improve democracy? How in the gently caress did this sound remotely reasonable in your head?
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Aug 20, 2016 18:48
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Ten days ago, VS was arguing that jurisprudence was inherently political, and it was therefore acceptable for SC justices to have a nakedly partisan agenda because true neutrality can't exist and it's foolish to pretend otherwise. Today, DV is saying that the representation problem is inherently political and that we should abandon attempts to dress the process up as "neutral." VS thinks that's absurd. Where is your realism now?
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Aug 20, 2016 18:59
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Dead Reckoning posted:Ten days ago, VS was arguing that jurisprudence was inherently political, and it was therefore acceptable for SC justices to have a nakedly partisan agenda because true neutrality can't exist and it's foolish to pretend otherwise. Today, DV is saying that the representation problem is inherently political and that we should abandon attempts to dress the process up as "neutral." VS thinks that's absurd. Yeah, I guess that is one interpretation.
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Aug 20, 2016 19:17
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