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State gerrymandering is destroying our democracy and leading to single-party strangleholds all over the country. Let us fix this by returning more power to the states so they can suppress the vote directly and bring back Jim Crow.
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Apr 14, 2015 00:36
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Locke Dunnegan posted:How do states suppress votes more than national government? And how would giving state governments more rights to govern themselves lead to bigoted laws? I don't follow. Yeah I guess if I cut out the parts of my brain that know about the last 250 years of American history I can see your point.
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Apr 14, 2015 00:47
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Locke Dunnegan posted:What point do you think I'm making? I keep asking honest questions and I'm getting hilarious one-liners in response. The majority of the last 250 years of American history has been under a strong central national government, so Jim Crow, Japanese-American internment during WWII, fuckery of Native Americans, the drug war, the Great Depression, and others. Yes there have been leaps and bounds in personal freedoms (some more than others), but there's still seemingly systemic problems that hold us back as a nation, and I figured I had a good point for discussion. Or at least I could educate myself about related topics through getting schooled with knowledge instead of GoOn IrOnY. What? Who do you think was doing Jim Crow? What do you think the federal Civil Rights Act, or the Voting Rights Act were intended to do? Why do you think Supreme Court decisions like Loving v Virginia were necessary? Who do you think sent these soldiers, and do you think it was state or federal officials shutting down schools and blocking down doors to keep out the blacks?  But okay, history isn't your thing. Did you know gay people were still criminals in ten states (guess which ones) until the feds made them knock it off? Have you perhaps noticed that the bigot states and the Jim Crow states are still fighting to keep their bigot laws on the books and trying to overturn local anti-discrimination ordinances? Hm, funny how the party of local government actually wants to override local governments that give rights to anyone Republicans don't like, isn't it? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 01:12
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Yeah but I get to smoke weed and put up "no darkies" signs in my smoke shop, so the chaos and insanity is worth it.
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Apr 14, 2015 01:31
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Locke Dunnegan posted:It should have been obvious by now but I meant the initial post to be taken as a straightforward request for information relating to the topic of discussion. I don't quite get how it could have been taken as a tongue-in-cheek "take that, atheists" type of post, but here we are. I'd like to assume you all are just raring for a good roast on a random dude you can make assumptions and stereotypes about as a retarded edgy echo chamber clusterfuck, but considering only a couple posters have deigned to give me anything resembling a proper response and the shitposterest of shitposts haven't been probated or anything, I think I just hosed up somewhere. It was a sloppy first post but it was meant to be in good faith, I'm sorry if I offended anyone or made people think I had ulterior motives. Well okay look, one of the big problems with your OP is that it was vague and unfocused, and just kind of mixed everything up into "government bad". You said that gerrymandering is corrupting our federal government...but gerrymandering is something that states do. State governments are gerrymandered as badly or worse. Michigan gerrymander posted:State House: 1,536,711 (51.2%) total votes cast for state House Democratic candidates that resulted in 47 Democratic House seats (43%) Do you know what the biggest restraint on state gerrymandering is? Baker v Carr and Reynolds v Sims, two federal cases that required districts to be equal population for the first time. Before this, states were able to effectively disenfranchise the cities with poo poo like quote:
All six million people in LA used to send exactly one representative to the California senate, equal in vote to a county of 14,000 people. It's bad enough that some 90% of my city (Austin) is represented by horrible Republicans tea partiers because our districts snake out of the city and encompass huge tracts of rural land out towards Houston, Lubbock, and Ft Worth to outvote us. Going to a confederation means giving the state back the power to give a city of millions of people a single state rep, while every cowtown and ranch gets to send its own inbred shitkicker to run the government.
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Apr 14, 2015 02:37
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Locke Dunnegan posted:I don't think everyone is out to get me, and your summary of my argument isn't, uh, my argument. Project your issues with the state of political discourse on someone else, obvious straw men is less attractive to read than ignorant what ifs. "Ignorant what-ifs" such as "we already tried your idea and it created a horribly broken country that lurched from one economic crisis to the next until we created a real government". Oh wait, I forgot your stunning rebuttal of "yeah I've never even heard of the Articles of Confederation but that doesn't stop me from assuming maybe it'd be different this time I bet". Also "well I don't know who was responsible for Jim Crow, but instead of opening a book I'll assume it was Lincoln and the feds"
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Apr 14, 2015 03:16
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Mister Macys posted:Honestly, just read about Yugoslavia. Balkanization is not cool. That sounds hard, instead just going to toke up and think of ways to totally disrupt Obama's police state maaaaaan  Whoah, like what if there were like no governments, whoah
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Apr 14, 2015 03:47
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Look I know we bag on this poo poo all the time but maybe this once we should give the goober half a chance? He did back down on a number of things after I laid it out. Okay you're right, I'm sorry.
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Apr 14, 2015 03:50
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My Imaginary GF posted:How much money you give to your local Democratic party? If you ain't a stakeholder in the Democratic process, you're entitled to no say in the processes of our democracy. I don't think you understand the "demo-" part of that word.
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Apr 14, 2015 04:32
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Crowsbeak posted:Good to see someone else gets it. Also we need to make it so that our client states understand that they are clients, not equals, and only exist to pay us tribute. This. We're paying billions to Israel for the privilege of protecting them, when that money by all rights should be coming back the other way.
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Apr 14, 2015 07:07
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My Imaginary GF posted:Gerrymandering isn't a problem, until your team loses its statehouse during a census year and you suddenly find yourself That's some crap right there. Realpolitik doesn't allow for introspection. When the other team is gerrymandering and you can't break it, call them every name in the book and push ballot initiatives to take that power away from the legislature. What good is a congressional power if the other team controls it? You don't wish on a star and think what you would gerrymander if only you could win, you get in there, fight dirty, and who cares if you take over a House that has one less power than before: you just brought a ton more powers to into your column. Gerrymandering is a corruption of our democracy because Republicans are the ones doing it, and we will attack it as long as they're the ones doing it.
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Apr 14, 2015 07:43
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feeling unentitled
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My Imaginary GF posted:Here's a better realpolitik solution for ya: don't be so poo poo you loving lose power during a census year. When your state is somewhere full to the brim of talent, like Illinois, you don't worry about those cornballer league political considerations, you focus on the business of government administration. Woulda coulda shoulda. It happened. When we were the only ones with The Bomb, we used it. And then we didn't wait for a surrender, we glared straight at the Russians and killed a few hundred thousand more Japanese civilians just to show Stalin what's what. Then the enemy got The Bomb. Did we say "oh well, we shouldn't have had poo poo counterintelligence and this never would have happened, but fair's fair now they get to use it?" Hell no, we demonized the gently caress out of The Bomb and anyone who would dare use it, without a hint of irony, and we browbeat the enemy into arms limitation treaties. Who gets the most benefit from gerrymandering? The enemy. Who controls the US House no matter which party gets the most votes? The enemy. Now that Gerrymandering is a weapon for them, we become the defenders of democracy and the Will of the People. When we're in power again, the Gerrymander becomes the best hope of minority representation and it's time to crack and pack.
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Apr 14, 2015 08:58
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Locke Dunnegan posted:I choose not to. If you'd like my reasoning, you might find it in the untranslated "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" or maybe "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" series  Why won't anyone take my ideas seriously?Oh no thanks, I don't want to read any history about what was happening in the country when it was run like I want. Articles of Confederation, is that a new reality show?
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Apr 14, 2015 23:54
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Locke Dunnegan posted:Is that seen as a good start by a lot of people? There didn't seem to be anyone else supporting his choice in literature so it came across as a random dude pimping an old textbook and then sitting there tapping his foot until I did what he wanted. When the level is discourse is as lovely as it has been anyone not in the in crowd knows who to trust to not be an elaborate troll. Trolling is useless and fucks things up for people on all sides of debate which is why I'm not excited about continuing discussion. Just trying to get my view across as best I can. I mean, if books are too long, I also gave you a couple of wikipedia links to descriptions of federal court cases that stopped states from doing even more egregious gerrymandering (giving whole cities of millions of people a single state representative, while every cowtown of 10,000 people gets one too, or just straight-up refusing to redestrict at all to keep population shifts from tilting power away from rural landowners), but you don't really seem interested in discussion or debate tbh
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Apr 15, 2015 01:53
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Locke Dunnegan posted:I specifically said that I now understand some potential problems with giving states authority to give the finger to federal legislation. The entire point of my post was to gain information and/or leads to find information through discussion on what could happen if the government of the USA was set up differently, and that goal was met. I apologized for being ignorant, and expressed interest in reading more on the subject. Okay, that's fair. As a side point, it's actually interesting/depressing how effectively the neo-Confederates have been able to disillusion people with the federal government by exploiting all of the checks and balances in the constitution to make it dysfunctional when they're out of power, and by doing such horrific poo poo while they're in power that to the average American, the federal government bounces between impotent and evil.
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Apr 15, 2015 02:14
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Considering there's about 7 Billion people on this planet at the moment, this is a good thing. OK, you go first though
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Apr 15, 2015 06:16
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tsa posted:Like if states rights all of a sudden exclusively favored progressive causes any opposition here would evaporate instantaneously. No it wouldn't because that wouldn't change the historical fact that the Confederation was a broken dysfunctional clusterfuck of a country, and the CSA was too.
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Apr 16, 2015 00:44
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computer parts posted:Literally everything to do with marijuana in the past 4 years or so is directly "states flaunting federal authority and getting cheered on by progressives". Nope.
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Apr 16, 2015 13:19
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And they're not nullifying federal drug laws. They're just refusing to duplicate some federal laws, which is a common thing states do all the time and isn't some hypocritical neo-Confederate act.
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Apr 16, 2015 13:22
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computer parts posted:Is it possible to nullify a federal drug law, and how would you do it if so? Same way South Carolina threatened to nullify the tariff. Arrest any federal agent who tried to enforce it, and secede if the federal government tries to compel them to stop. So, you know, not "liberals sometimes have differing state and federal laws, what hypocrites herpderp"
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Apr 16, 2015 13:42
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Colorado isn't threatening to secede or stopping federal agents from enforcing the law like South Carolina planned to do. The decision not to enforce the laws is Obama's and if he changed his mind, Colorado wouldn't use force to stop him. The states asking the federal government nicely to do something isn't a return of the Confederation. No one is arguing the federal government doesn't have the right to enforce the law because States' Rights.
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Apr 16, 2015 13:49
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States having different laws is not flaunting authority. It's actually called "the way things are", or "something you should have learned in high school civics". Again, no one is arguing that the federal government doesn't have the right to enforce drug laws.
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Apr 16, 2015 13:52
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None of that is states' rights. States' rights is the doctrine that the federal government doesn't have the right to interfere with state law. Colorado has not made that argument, liberals are not making that argument. States' rights is a very specific (and bad) doctrine. What is happening in Colorado is federalism: the state does a thing and it is allowed only because the federal executive decided to let it happen.
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Apr 16, 2015 14:05
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You're not a hypocrite about it though, because I'm p sure you are some flavor of libertarian.
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Apr 16, 2015 15:04
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Devolution isn't really the same thing as states' rights or confederation though. The UK Parliament still retains control, can legislate for Scotland when it wants, and is free to undo devolution at anytime without the consent of Holyrood as I understand it. Towns have mayors and can pass city ordinances, which means some power has devolved upon them. That doesn't make states mini-confederations, it just means that in some cases the larger government has decided certain things are more efficiently handled at the local level.
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Apr 18, 2015 09:10
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The individual can still be outvoted in a city-state. The only defensible local government is the absolute sovereignty of the individual, with the only law a ban on the initiation of force.
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Apr 21, 2015 17:10
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down with slavery posted:who the gently caress cares, the whole point is to remove the influence the shittier parts of the US have. I don't care if Alabama goes to hell, if you aren't actively planning to escape a region like that you're just a moron That's cool, I'm going to support civil rights for me and my friends in Texas anyway though, good luck with your neo-confederate drivel.
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Apr 22, 2015 16:42
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down with slavery posted:like I know gay people being able to be married everywhere is the end all be all of political goals but maybe, just maybe, some of the more progressive states would be better off without Texas' electorate influencing their policy If the states were independent, Jim Crow for sure and probably slavery would be back within a decade, so I say no thanks to your little humanitarian disaster. Unless by "I don't want Texas influencing national policy" you mean disenfranchising the population and putting the South back under military rule until reconstruction is achieved, in which case okay that's fine.
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Apr 22, 2015 23:38
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Lots of morally abhorrent things would make the USA a more progressive place for those who remain, I agree that this is undeniable. For example, we could kick out all nonwhites, this is historically the most effective way to get whites on board with progressive social support. Or I suppose we could kill whitey since this is D&D
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Apr 23, 2015 00:12
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down with slavery posted:i'm not, i don't know why you guys keep making it about race, also my union would probably be bigger than the people we kicked out, I'm down with states from Cali to NY, there's just a few bad apples we gotta get rid of That's because there are people outside of the South than in it. If you kicked out the South, the US would have a higher proportion of white people.  Your proposal is to make it better for those people while sentencing mostly areas with the highest percentages of black and hispanic people to live in New White South Africa: Apartheid 2 Electric Boogaloo down with slavery posted:pre-secession, yeah, if you're not trying to gtfo of the south actively you're making poor life decisions, sucks if you can't make it out but I'm not really interested in waiting for your state to catch up to the 21st century before I can do things like provide a decent healthcare system for the people here 
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Apr 23, 2015 03:34
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Nintendo Kid posted:I have to say I appreciate that someone finally made a map where the percentages are actually split up in a sane way for race. It wasn't easy to find! Most of them lumped 50-80% into one color or did similar weird stuff
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Apr 23, 2015 06:09
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down with slavery posted:no i think there are legimately some people that are hosed, but like I said, there are people where I live that are hosed too because of the federal government's ineptitude Well if those people haven't moved to Canada or the UK or Sweden, that just goes to show that their own poor life decisions are responsible for their situation.
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Apr 23, 2015 06:43
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down with slavery posted:im pretty sure montana, wyoming, idaho, wva, the dakotas are all getting kicked out and are all white dominated, it's not JUST the south (although theres a lotta states there that have to go)  So you want to shatter America into disconnected pieces and leave the USA dependent on the goodwill of the horrible regressive GOP-run shitholes for transcontinental road and rail links, oil, food, the Mississippi river, and major ports. The states we kicked out who hate us. In other words: Nintendo Kid posted:Just saying but literal FEMA death camps for "bad people" would be a more practical and effective way to fix things Now PupsOfWar's "gerrymander the states" idea is equally realistic as kicking out over half the states but has a distinct advantage (that it would be awesome).
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Apr 23, 2015 08:01
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But that's how Obama is going to implement the UN's sinister Agenda 21!!!! He's in league with Iran and North Korea now!
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Apr 24, 2015 00:21
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Paranoia about the UN is one of the more charming of the absurd right-wing conspiracy theories out there. Oh no you guys, you can't give the UN more power: the organization created by America that reserves to America* an absolute veto on all action is going to enforce Juche and islamoshariafascism on America  *And China and various has-been european great powers
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Apr 24, 2015 00:31
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...which was a complete failure and the UN can do precisely dick to reign in a superpower, or even a moderate power, because only a few countries in the world have the ability to project force beyond their immediate borders. And when those countries get together and do something, it's called NATO. There is exactly one world power that can project force in North America, that power is the USA, and no agreement to increase UN authority is ever going to result in the USA giving up its military and Saudi Arabia sending troops to New York City to beat women who appear without the hijab. The South seceding a second time and winning is a more realistic fear than the US voluntarily dismantling its military and inviting in foreign troops to enforce martial law. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 03:55
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