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annabelteague02

Libertarians relish spoiler role in Kentucky governor's race as Bevin trails | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...oilers-kentucky-governors-race

kentucky governor race fox news

shared by annabelteague02 on 06 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • In the contest, Democratic state attorney general Andy Beshear leads Bevin by 5,333 votes out of more than 1.4 million cast, with 100 percent of precincts reporting in the Kentucky election.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 06 Nov 19
       
      seems like he has fairly won, i do not understand why Matt Bevin will not step down
  • Beshear – the son of a former two-term Democratic governor -- on Wednesday told reporters that “last night the election ended” and said “it’s time to move forward with a smooth transition.”
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 06 Nov 19
       
      is the election actually over? i'm confused
  • reporters
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “Had Matt Bevin not ditched his liberty Lt Governor for a Mitch McConnell picked anti liberty, corrupt running mate who has tried to eliminate Kentuckians jury trial rights, had Matt Bevin not presided over a huge sales tax increase, had Matt Bevin supported any of our key issues on criminal justice reform, marijuana legalization, expanded gaming, cutting taxes, or acted with the least bit of civility, we probably would not have run a candidate,” the party emphasized.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 06 Nov 19
       
      so.... are liberatarians happy that the democrat won?
  • (Fake News will blame Trump!).
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 06 Nov 19
       
      president showing blatant disrespect for democratic governors..... lovely! he always thinks everyone is trying to attack him. it is getting old.
  • “It’s always better to win than lose obviously but Matt Bevin was a historically unpopular figure running in a state where Democrats have dominated at the state level for the past 100 years. There have only been four Republican governors elected in Kentucky since 1920. Every other statewide candidate won in Kentucky,” he said.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 06 Nov 19
       
      he is probably right. i would be shocked if kentucky became a blue state anytime soon.
carolinehayter

This one tweak to our voting system could change everything (opinion) - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

voting change trump history US politics gop election opinion

shared by carolinehayter on 30 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Next week brings yet another highly charged election, described by many as the "most important of our lives," with the future of the country feeling very much at stake.
  • But after an ugly, divisive and anxiety-inducing campaign season, Americans are also looking to the future and asking big questions: What comes next? How do we begin our political healing? And how do we restore our collective political voice, without being drowned out by those who shout loudest?
  • The answer is that we need to update our electoral system -- and ranked-choice voting is a promising way forward.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • t is harder to understand how our political system became so broken, and so distant from the concerns of everyday Americans. But if we want a better future, we must not only assess the character of the people in our political system, but also the rules under which they operate.
  • Alaska and Massachusetts
  • Voters there will be deciding whether they want to conduct their future elections under new ranked-choice voting rules. Though this might seem like a wonky change in process, it is actually a profound step toward a more positive, problem-solving style of politics.
  • Ranked-choice voting -- which already exists for state primary, congressional and presidential elections in Maine and a number of large cities in local elections -- is a small tweak to existing voting rules. Under current plurality voting, your ballot offers a list of candidates, but you can only choose one. Most people choose a Democrat or a Republican, because these are the only two parties most people believe have a shot of winning, and so anything else is just a wasted vote, or worse, a spoiler vote that winds up helping the candidate you absolutely don't want.
  • Any vote cast as a message of protest -- such as one for a third party candidate -- comes at a very high cost. And yet, more and more Americans are dissatisfied with and feel unrepresented by the two major parties.
  • Ranked-choice voting offers a way out and a way forward. Under ranked-choice voting, you rank the candidates in order of preference.
  • If Massachusetts and Alaska both adopt ranked-choice voting, expect more states to give a closer look to upgrading their voting systems, too.
  • Consider a progressive Democratic voter in 2020 who is less than enthusiastic about Joe Biden, but despises Donald Trump. This voter will almost certainly support Joe Biden. But under ranked-choice voting she could also choose a more progressive candidate as her first choice pick, and if that candidate is eliminated, her vote could transfer to her second-choice pick, Joe Biden. She can express her genuine preference, without wasting her vote.
  • Though Biden faces no meaningful third party challengers in 2020, Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign faced a challenge from Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Al Gore's 2000 campaign faced a challenge from Ralph Nader.
  • And yet, those third-party candidacies also represented something important -- a way for Americans dissatisfied with the two major parties to offer new ideas and different visions.
  • Under ranked-choice voting, more of these new ideas would enter the political conversation. Third parties and independents would no longer be spoilers. Voters could better express their preferences, and send a clearer message. Political leaders would be forced to take note.
  • Politicians would also be driven to campaign differently, too. Under our current plurality rules, campaigns often play the "lesser of two evils" game, filling the airwaves with negative campaigning that casts the opposing candidate and party as dangerous, extreme and radical, encouraging voters to fear and loathe the other party.
  • This negative campaigning only works when there is no threat of a third party vote. But there is no phrase "lesser of three evils." Under ranked-choice voting, the incentives push candidates to build broader coalitions. A "base first" strategy only works with plurality voting.
  • If no candidate gets a majority of first choice votes, the election becomes a runoff, with candidates eliminated from the bottom up.As candidates are eliminated, no vote is wasted. It is simply transferred to the voters' next choice until one candidate gets an actual majority of all the votes cast. Requiring candidates to win with a majority of the votes rather than a plurality is hardly a radical idea!
  • And they should. Ranked-choice voting is simply a better way to vote. It gives everyone more choice and more voice. And it encourages candidates to build coalitions and broaden their appeal, instead of pushing division and hatred. If we are going to come together as a nation after this election, we need a voting system that encourages compromise. We need ranked-choice voting.
proudsa

Bernie Sanders's Political Revolution Nears Its End - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484439

revolution bernie atlantic

shared by proudsa on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • This is Sanders’s last stand, according to the official narrative of the corrupt corporate media, and if there is anything we have learned in the past year, it is the awesome power of the official narrative—the self-reinforcing drumbeat that dictates everything.
  • Sanders continued: “I believe that if we win here in California, and if we win the other five states that are voting on June 7, we’re going to go marching to the Democratic convention with a hell of a lot of momentum. I believe that if we do well here in California, we’ll march in with momentum and we’ll march out with the Democratic nomination!”
  • Sanders and his people have their own sets of rules. All you have to do is unskew the delegate counts, they explain, take out the superdelegates, imagine they all vote for Sanders, imagine certain primaries had been conducted according to different rules.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The Bernie-or-Bust-ers tend to be young, male, and white; few describe themselves as Democrats, and many are new to voting. Women, people of color, and Democrats seem more open to Clinton.
  • They’re both challenging the system. We are people who don’t believe in the system! We want to make a new system where people take care of each other.”
  • The Sanders movement has become impervious to reality. Some have even called into question the nature of reality itself: “Bernie Sanders’ ‘political revolution’ is political only inasmuch as thought is political,” a self-described “metamodernist creative writer”
  • A spate of recent polls have shown Clinton tied with or slightly trailing Trump in November matchups, the apparent effect of a Republican Party that has unified and a Democratic Party that remains fractured.
  • Sanders has repeatedly said he will not play the spoiler—by running as an independent or backing a third-party candidate such as Stein. He says he will do everything in his power to defeat Trump.
  • Many Sanders supporters told me they had once liked Clinton, but over the course of the primary they have come to dislike and distrust her.
  • It seems fitting that this potentially final battle royale should take place in California, a big, liberal state populated by all the various Democratic tribes: the kombucha-sipping hipsters of San Francisco; the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; the limousine liberals of Hollywood; the large black and Latino populations.
  • A poll of the state conducted earlier this month gave Clinton an 18-point lead over Sanders, but in a new poll released Thursday, that had narrowed to just two points.
  • This week, he was given five slots on the Democratic platform committee, which will allow him to influence what the party stands for—presumably an important goal.
  • “I was very loving toward Bernie Sanders until about a week ago, but now he’s working to elect Trump,” said Kathy Katz, 73, of Temecula. “We’re all way more liberal than the Democratic Party, but some of us realize you can’t win an election that way!”
  • Clinton, for her part, has taken to pretending Sanders does not exist. In her speech, she referred only to Trump, whose candidacy, she said, “may have started out as entertaining, but now it’s really, really concerning.” She added, “We have a bully pulpit in the White House—that doesn’t mean we want a bully in the White House!”
  • Sanders was introduced by a blind Filipino delegate and a gay actress who spoke passionately in favor of transgender rights and compared Sanders to a unicorn, because “he seems too good to be true.”
  • proudsa on 26 May 16
     
    "This Is How a Revolution Ends" - keep in mind the revolutions we have studied throughout the year (notice the differences and similarities)
Javier E

Opinion | Election's Over, Let's Have a Rant - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...third-party-midterms.html

3rd party elections lesser of two evils history

shared by Javier E on 10 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • about third parties. There are ways to deal with them without totally discounting a lot of votes. Maine has come up with a system where everybody can rank their preferences on the ballot. If nobody gets over 50 percent of the first choices, the last candidate gets tossed out and her supporters’ next preferences come into play.
  • “A third party will always be a spoiler one way or the other,” said Sean Wilentz, an expert on American political history at Princeton. In the end, Wilentz said, people who vote for a third party often wind up helping the candidate they’d least like to see win.
Javier E

Why Is This Hate Different From All Other Hate? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...erent-from-all-other-hate.html

anti-Muslim anti-Semitism xenophobe trump nationalism

shared by Javier E on 02 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • The president and his associates mix anti-Semitic dog whistles with frank attacks on Muslims, immigrants and refugees. The paradox is that in today’s America, coded anti-Semitism is more of a political taboo than open Islamophobia. We spend a great deal of time and energy parsing the semiotics of Mr. Trump’s role in stoking anti-Jewish sentiment, while Muslims and immigrants can be defamed with impunity. The risk here is that we’ve been distracted by the anti-Semitism controversy from the ways in which other groups are being demonized as Jews once were.
  • In his definitive 1994 book “Anti-Semitism in America,” Leonard Dinnerstein describes American anti-Semitism reaching a high tide in the early 1940s. The country was traumatized by the Great Depression and apprehensive about war in Europe. Reactionaries imagined themselves squeezed between globalist Jewish bankers above and subversive Jewish refugee hordes below.
  • The America First Committee, formed to keep the United States out of World War II, was full of bigots and Nazi sympathizers; Mr. Dinnerstein quotes the chairman of the Terre Haute, Ind., chapter saying, “Jews were now in possession of our government.” There were widespread assertions that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was secretly Jewish; anti-Semites insisted his real last name was Rosenfeld.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Demagogues found popular support for their demand to keep Jewish refugees out of the country. Mr. Dinnerstein describes an anti-Semitic speaker warning of “200,000 Communist Jews at the Mexican border waiting to get into this country,” adding that “if they are admitted they will rape every woman and child that is left unprotected.
  • Today, these tropes feel familiar but in a new context. Mr. Trump started his political career by amplifying rumors that President Barack Obama was secretly Muslim. He resurrected the disgraced slogan “America First.” In October, he warned that Hillary Clinton was meeting “in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.” Mr. Trump called for refugees to be kept out of the country, smearing them as agents of a sinister foreign ideology. Breitbart, the website formerly run by Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, has run a stream of alarmist articles about refugee rapists
  • In the Trump administration’s conspiratorial nationalism, avowed anti-Semites hear their overarching narratives reflected back to them, their prejudices tacitly approved.
  • During the presidential campaign, Michael T. Flynn, who would briefly serve as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, retweeted someone attacking CNN with the words, “Not anymore, Jews, not anymore.” (Mr. Flynn later apologized.)
  • Under Mr. Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart defended online anti-Semitism as subversive good fun and published a column attacking the conservative writer Bill Kristol as a “renegade Jew.”
  • When the National Cathedral hosted a Muslim prayer service in a gesture of ecumenical good will, Mr. Gorka published a Breitbart column headlined: “Muslim Brotherhood Overruns National Cathedral in D.C.”
  • At an inauguration ball, Sebastian Gorka, a Breitbart editor who was soon to become a White House adviser, wore a medal associated with a Nazi-collaborationist Hungarian group, the Vitezi Rend. The Forward, a Jewish newspaper, reported that Mr. Gorka was a sworn member of the group. (Mr. Gorka claimed he wore the medal to honor his father, from whom he “inherited” Vitezi Rend membership.)
  • This is where we are now: A senior administration official dons fascist paraphernalia, defends himself by saying he did so out of filial loyalty, and suffers no political repercussions
  • Naturally, many Jews find this chilling, but we should not lose sight of the real import of Mr. Gorka’s appointment. He may flirt with anti-Semitic iconography for sentimental reasons, but he owes his career to his apocalyptic view of America’s war with radical Islam. The Islamic State, he claimed last year, “is already well entrenched on the shores of the United States.
  • In power, the new administration, too, seemed to be trolling the Jewish community. In January, the White House released a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day that failed to mention Jews. A spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, told CNN the omission was intentional, because the administration “took into account all of those who suffered” — echoing the position of neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers who seek to play down the genocide of Jews.
  • Last year, Michael Anton, now a White House national security staffer, wrote a pseudonymous essay arguing that “mass immigration has overwhelmed, eroded, and de-Americanized formerly American communities.” He was particularly contemptuous of Muslim immigration. Yes, he allowed, “not all Muslims are terrorists, blah, blah, blah, etc. Even so, what good has Muslim immigration done for the United States and the American people?”
  • To be an American Muslim or a brown-skinned immigrant and know that people like this are in power must be terrifying. Mr. Trump and his appointees have consistently denigrated and dehumanized these minorities in ways we’d never tolerate if they were talking about Jews.
  • The president and his cronies talk a lot about representing “the people,” but they don’t mean all Americans. “The only important thing is the unification of the people,” Mr. Trump said at Eugene, Ore., campaign rally last year, “because the other people don’t mean anything.”
  • Naturally, a government that decides certain groups of people “don’t mean anything” shakes many Jews to the core. But the horror of the president’s vision isn’t that “the other people” might include Jews. It includes people. Even in this brutally tribal moment, that should be enough.
lmunch

Wolf & Carafano: Biden border crisis - incompetence or part of president's plan? | Fox ... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...-plan-chad-wolf-james-carafano

immigration Biden crisis culture Policy

shared by lmunch on 12 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • There is an unprecedented flood of illegal crossings at the U.S. southern border. Those in the media not obsessed with canine evictions at the White House or the Meghan-Harry interview are starting to ask if this is President Biden’s border crisis. 
  • he president’s press secretary even claims they didn’t know how the number of daily illegal entries – as though the White House doesn’t know what the Department of Homeland Security knows. (Spoiler alert: illegal crossings have soared to about 6,000 per day, six times the level that the Obama administration considered to be a crisis.)
  • This approach differs dramatically from how previous administrations responded to chaotic border conditions. Rather than rushing to secure the border, the Biden team appears to be sending processors to the border for the purpose of moving illegal immigrants into the U.S. as quickly as possible. 
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The current flood also creates an unprecedented public health challenge: as many as 25% of those entering illegally are COVID-positive. Illegal crossings also pour cash into the cartel coffers.
  • What’s happening at the border is not in the best interests of all Americans. It is unfair to taxpayers. It makes our communities less safe and, it adjures the rule of law, making everyone who waited their turn to come here legally just a sucker. 
katherineharron

Hillary Clinton and Tulsi Gabbard: their crazy fight (Opinion) - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

election

shared by katherineharron on 23 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Here's a 2020 election story I didn't see coming: Hillary Clinton suggesting that Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset, and Gabbard, who is polling at just over 1%, responding by saying Clinton is secretly running against her for president and that "it's now clear that this primary is between you and me."
  • It was obviously a mistake for Clinton to say what she did. She may not have used Gabbard's name, but she said that one candidate was "a favorite of the Russians," implied that she's an asset, and said that the candidate (clearly Gabbard), was prepping for a third-party spoiler run.
  • A number of Gabbard's views are disturbing. And it is clear that bad actors are using Gabbard's candidacy to continue to sow disinformation and division among the American public generally and the American left specifically, a tactic that proved remarkably successful in 2016.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • It's doubtful that the average American grasps those nuances, instead hearing "Russian asset," with respect to Gabbard, as "working for the Russians." There are better ways Clinton might have explained the issue: focusing on Russia as the bad actor and emphasizing its efforts to interfere with American democracy; pointing out that Russia's bolstering of the Gabbard campaign is one data point in this larger effort (it's certainly not the only one). That's the route Clinton should have taken. Instead, she turned the spotlight on a relatively inconsequential congresswoman, and opened up an opportunity for right-wing media scavengers to elevate her.
  • Gabbard, it should be noted, is polling so badly that she hasn't yet qualified for the November Democratic primary debate. Hillary Clinton, it shouldn't need to be said, is not running for president, and not even in a position to be puppeteering the race from behind the scenes.
  • Gabbard may very well launch a third-party run, quietly backed by all kinds of nefarious troublemakers. But that run will only be a threat if Gabbard has some fire behind her campaign. Right now, she's flaming out. Best to not give her any more oxygen. /* dynamic basic css */ .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-widget-items-container {margin:0;padding:0;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-widget-items-container .ob-clearfix {display:block;width:100%;float:none;clear:both;height:0px;line-height:0px;font-size:0px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-widget-items-container.ob-multi-row {padding-top: 2%;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-dynamic-rec-container {position:relative;margin:0;padding;0;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-dynamic-rec-link, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-dynamic-rec-link:hover {text-decoration:none;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-rec-image-container .ob-video-icon-container {position:absolute;left:0;height:50%;width:100%;text-align:center;top:25%;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-rec-image-container .ob-video-icon {display:inline-block;height:100%;float:none;opacity:0.7;transition: opacity 500ms;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-rec-image-container .ob-video-icon:hover {opacity:1;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_what{direction:ltr;clear:both;padding:5px 10px 0px;} .AR_36 .ob_what a:after {content: "";vertical-align:super;;;background-image: url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/achoice.svg');background-size:75% 75%;width:12px;height:12px;padding-left:4px;display:inline-block;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:right center;border-left:1px solid #999;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_what a{color:#757575;font-size:11px;font-family:arial;text-decoration: none;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_what.ob-hover:hover a{text-decoration: underline;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_amelia, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_logo, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_feed_logo, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_sfeed_logo, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_text_logo{vertical-align:baseline !important;display:inline-block;vertical-align:text-bottom;padding:0px 5px;box-sizing:content-box;-moz-box-sizing:content-box;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_amelia{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_16x16.png') no-repeat center top;width:16px;height:16px;margin-bottom:-2px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_logo{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_67x12.png') no-repeat center top;width:67px;height:12px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_text_logo{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_text_logo_67x22.png') no-repeat center top;width:67px;height:22px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_feed_logo{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_feed_logo.png') no-repeat center top;width:86px;height:23px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_sfeed_logo{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_smartFeedLogo.min.svg') no-repeat center top;width:140px;height:21px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_sphere_logo{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_sphere.svg') no-repeat center top;width:93px;height:27px;vertical-align:baseline!important;display:inline-block;vertical-align:text-bottom;padding:0px 0px;box-sizing:content-box;-moz-box-sizing:content-box;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box;} @media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),(min-resolution: 192dpi) { .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_amelia{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_16x16@2x.png') no-repeat center top;width:16px;height:16px;margin-bottom:-2px; 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katherineharron

Canada elections: Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh in the 'election abou... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

election

shared by katherineharron on 21 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • Canada votes in a general election on Monday, and the campaign rhetoric to this date has been toxic and "a desert from a public policy point of view," says veteran Canadian pollster Nik Nanos of Nanos Research. All that has undeniably turned off Canada's voters, and added another layer of complexity to one of the most unpredictable Canadian elections in recent history
  • The two top contenders are Liberal leader and incumbent Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. Through it all, they've been tangled in a virtual tie for the popular vote. Neither has a clear path to governing in Canada's parliamentary system. "If people were to describe the election, it would be 'Indecision 2019'," says Nanos.
  • Canada's election takes place in 338 ridings or seats across the country, and preliminary results should be announced around 8pm on election night. One hundred and seventy seats are needed to be able to form a majority government, and polls show neither Trudeau nor Scheer are anywhere near that threshold.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Justin Trudeau could have never imagined this time last year that he'd be fighting for a political future. He has been humiliated and diminished by scandals in recent months, all of them unforced errors. In 2015, he managed to awaken the 'Trudeaumania' that brought his late father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to power in the 1960s. But this time there's no mania, just moodiness -- even among those in his base.
  • In a humiliating act of contrition last month, Trudeau had to apologize not just for wearing blackface during a school event nearly 2 decades ago, but admitting he had no idea how many times he had chosen to do so in his life. It was an embarrassing look for his campaign, which has focused on digging up dirt opponents, and the revelations disappointed many voters and likely contributed to the Liberals losing ground in the last few weeks.
  • Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer has tried and failed to capitalize on the scandal and other criticisms of Trudeau. His campaign has fiercely and consistently attacked Trudeau, but the negative emphasis hasn't engaged voters the way Scheer had hoped. Nor has it made his policies more appealing -- he is fiscally and socially conservative, offering a no-nonsense, stable government with tax cuts and eventually, balanced budgets. Crucially, voters in Quebec and Ontario, Canada's two largest provinces, haven't warmed much to him or his policies.
  • The rest of the contenders wouldn't normally be very consequential. But this time around, as a minority government is the most likely outcome, the smaller parties and their leaders could be election day spoilers.
  • Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party, is trying to convince Canadians that she and her party are about much more than the environment. Support for them has been growing steadily -- even if they win only a few seats, the Green Party could have a strong voice in Canada's next parliament. And then there is Quebec. Always a singular, distinctive place where voters often surprise. This time is no different. In Quebec, Bloc party leader Yves-Francois Blancet, a Quebec separatist, is nearly tied with Trudeau and the Liberal party. Blancet has made short work of the both the Liberals and the Conservatives in this campaign. And his popularity in a vast province a pivotal reason why it's unlikely any party will win a majority of seats this time around.
kaylynfreeman

The problem with changing the Electoral College (opinion) - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US politics trump

shared by kaylynfreeman on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The Electoral College has been a controversial topic over the past few years. People tend to have very strong opinions about the institution, which, in most instances, comes down to who citizens believe is advantaged or disadvantaged by it. Ideally, a good electoral system should be neutral, where no party, candidate or region is advanced at the expense of another. Yet, this is among the chief criticisms we hear about our system.
  • This has recently led many to call for the abolition of the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote. Yet, critics realize how resilient the institution has been, surviving nearly 800 attempts to amend or abolish it over the course of our nation's history. Most changes that have occurred have happened at the state level.
  • Because so many states are not competitive, many voters in these states may feel like their votes are wasted. This is reflected in President Trump's recent claim about the Electoral College system that "The Republicans have a disadvantage.
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  • In 2008, Barack Obama captured an electoral vote in Nebraska's second congressional district. In 2016, Donald Trump earned an electoral vote in Maine's second congressional district. This year, both of these congressional districts have received attention from the presidential campaigns.
  • All other states use the winner-take-all method, which awards all of a state's electoral votes to the ticket that earns a plurality of the vote in the state. This method can lead to some pretty disproportionate outcomes which most often work to amplify the difference between a candidate's popular vote total and electoral vote total.
  • First, it is important to recognize that the Electoral College process leads candidates to ignore a majority of states across the country
  • Concerns over gerrymandering have persisted in American politics for two centuries. The term is attributed to Elbridge Gerry and it refers to the practice of drawing legislative districts to favor one political party over others.
  • A second potential problem could be found in the role of third-party spoilers. It is conceivable that third parties or independent candidates could have strong showings in a few highly conservative or liberal congressional districts and ultimately claim a few electoral votes.
  • A third concern is that moving to a district selection process could lead to even more misfire elections --elections where the winner of the national popular vote does not win in the Electoral College.
  • These outcomes underscore the role gerrymandering by state legislatures would have on the presidential selection process. It also suggests why Reince Priebus supported having some states adopt the district plan when he was the head of the Republican National Committee in 2013.
lmunch

Kanye West's Perplexing Run as a Potential 2020 Election Spoiler - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...kanye-west-president-2020.html

kanye politics us pop-culture

shared by lmunch on 16 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • Mr. West, the billionaire hip-hop artist and fashion mogul turned Christian revivalist, is not running for president, but “walking,” as he puts it.
  • His party is called the Birthday Party. His first piece of campaign art included pictures of that well-known populist Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, and of the actress Kirsten Dunst, who was puzzled. (“What’s the message here,” she tweeted, “and why am I apart of it?”)
  • Because a variety of allies and supporters of President Trump are working on the ground to advance his campaign, many Democrats view his candidacy as a dirty trick by Republicans, a notion Mr. West has rejected.
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  • A number of consulting firms are aiding his candidacy. Mercury Public Affairs, a prominent bipartisan New York political consulting firm, played an organizing role, though the firm was dismissed last month and was reluctant to discuss the matter.
  • “The reason why I know eventually — eventually could be three months, eventually could be three and a half years — the reason why I eventually will make a great president is because I’m sensitive,” Mr. West said. “I’m here to serve. Even as a Gemini, I feel the energy in the room, I read body language, I read this energy, and I hurt. I hurt for the country, I hurt not just Black people, but all people of America. And I hurt for all people of the world.”
Javier E

Opinion | Why Barbie and Ken Need Each Other - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...barbie-ken-ideology.html

partnerships partner couples happiness male female marriage feminism patriarchy

shared by Javier E on 10 Aug 23 - No Cached
  • Between the middle of the 1970s and the late 2010s, in their responses to the General Social Survey, American women reported themselves to be steadily unhappier. The trend was not drastic, but it was consistent: Women were less happy in the 1980s than they were in the 1970s, less happy in the Obama era than the Clinton era, and still less happy under Trump.
  • For men, the trend was more complex. They started out slightly unhappier than women and then made gains in the Reagan and Clinton years, while female happiness declined. But then male unhappiness plunged between the 9/11 era and Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, before stabilizing a bit thereafter. By the pre-Covid period, the sexes were close to parity — sharing more reported unhappiness than either had been experiencing 30 or 40 years before.
  • These figures are drawn out of a fascinating new paper, “The Socio-Political Demography of Happiness,” from the University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman
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  • a different trend covered in the Peltzman paper: the persistent happiness advantage enjoyed by married couples over the unmarried, which has slightly widened since the early 1970s and now sits at around 35 points on a scale running from -100 to 100.
  • Over that same period, Americans have become much less likely to be married overall. In 1970, just 9 percent of people ages 25 to 50 had never tied the knot; in 2018, it was 35 percent.
  • the simplest possible explanation for declining happiness: For women maybe first, and for men too, eventually, less wedlock means more woe.
  • Barbieland itself is a female-first utopia that looks fundamentally dystopian — plastic, denatured, death-denying, cut off from love and procreation. The way that Barbiedom marginalizes images of pregnancy and motherhood, to say nothing of literal baby dolls, is a running preoccupation of the film
  • Is the Greta Gerwig movie proudly feminist, crypto-conservative or somewhere in between?
  • The simplest reading is the feminist one. The movie depicts a dolltopia where Barbies occupy every important job and office (with their Kens as arm candy) and tell themselves that their example has solved all of women’s problems in the real world, too — only to discover, when Margot Robbie’s “stereotypical Barbie” goes on a quest into our own contemporary reality, that sexism still exists, the patriarchy is disguised but maybe still resilient, the board of Mattel is proudly “feminist” but all male, and early 21st-century women are being asked to do it all for meager recompense.
  • Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire claims, “conservative, anti-feminist, pro-family, pro-motherhood” themes
  • In part, the conservative spin comes from the sheer fun of Gosling’s performance
  • I want to talk about these findings in the light of the running debate about the true ideological perspective of the billion-dollar box-office juggernaut “Barbie.”
  • Ken’s plight is treated sympathetically — he’s mostly running his coup to impress Barbie, and what are men for in the post-sexual-revolution landscape, anyway?
  • Barbie’s own arc is away from the female-dominated dystopia and back toward embodied womanhood, the real world with all its patriarchal holdovers
  • “Barbie” is a movie with a feminist default, but also complicated and sometimes muddled feelings about what the sexual revolution has done and where feminism ought to go.
  • It’s against the resilient patriarchy, but wary of the girlboss alternative
  • It wants womanhood and motherhood, but it doesn’t want the Kens back in charge, and it doesn’t really know what purpose men should serve.
  • In each narrative, the one way that the current dissatisfactions of women and men can’t be resolved is with the happy ending that even stories about the battle of the sexes used to take for granted — not a rearrangement of political power but a romantic partnership, not one sex’s rule but both sexes’ contentment.
  • so the movie ends — again, spoiler — with Barbie out of Barbieland but on her own, seeking out some sort of reproductive destiny at the gynecologist with a mother-daughter cheerleading squad beside her and no Ken in sight.
  • There’s an interesting parallel to the ending of Lena Dunham’s series “Girls,”
  • A guy can literally organize a revolution and it still isn’t enough to make Barbie see him as a lover, a romantic partner, an erotic object, a husband or a father.
  • In the movie they made, “Barbie and Ken” is a statement of reverse subordination, female rule and male eclipse. But in reality, nothing may matter as much to male and female happiness, and indeed, to the future of the human race, as whether Barbie and Ken can make that “and” into something reciprocal and fertile — a bridge, a bond, a marriage.
Javier E

Kevin McCarthy Found Out He's No Donald Trump - 0 views

plus.thebulwark.com/...ccarthy-no-donald-trump-budget

congress GOP compromise commission politics US policy crisis

shared by Javier E on 07 Oct 23 - No Cached
  • Here’s the thing: MacGuineas, the GOP, most Democrats, and people like me, unnerved by the trend and worried that interest payments on the borrowed money will prevent spending on real needs, agree that we are on an unsustainable fiscal course. Gaetz & co. are not wrong to want to cut spending. They are just wrong about everything else—where and how much and how fast to cut, and their iron rule that taxes should never, ever be raised and should always be reduced, especially for corporations and the rich, who would use their new cash to create jobs. (Spoiler: They didn’t.
  • Trump theoretically was leading a GOP populist revolution, but in reality the massive tax cut he signed was more of the same deficit-swelling, trickle-down delusion.
  • As I wrote in my book on political negotiations, the conditions for success include patience, reliance on facts, and the maturity to understand that you won’t get everything you want—but that all sides need to walk away with a few things they can feel good about, or at least can defend to their supporters.
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  • McCarthy managed to do this with Biden on the debt deal, to the fury of Republican hardliners. But how else can you govern a country of 330 million? It’s hard under the best of circumstances, and it’s impossible when you only control a tiny slice of government—and not by much. Here we are talking about a 221-212 GOP majority in one half of one branch, Congress, in a government that has three branches.
Javier E

How inheritance data secretly explains U.S. inequality - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ritance-america-taxes-equality

inheritance inequality

shared by Javier E on 18 Nov 23 - No Cached
  • Every three years the Fed, with the help of NORC at the University of Chicago, asks at least 4,500 Americans an astonishingly exhaustive, almost two-hour battery of questions on income and assets, from savings bonds to gambling winnings to mineral rights. One of our all-time favorite sources, the survey provides our best measure of America’s ghastly wealth disparities.
  • It also includes a deep dive on inheritance, the passing down of the family jewels (or whatnot) from parents (73 percent in 2022), grandparents (14 percent) and aunts and uncles (8 percent).
  • The average American has inherited about $58,000 as of 2022. But that’s if you include the majority of us whose total lifetime inheritance sits at $0
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  • Since 1992, the number of people getting inheritances from parents has nearly doubled even as bequests from grandparents and aunts and uncles have remained flat. Your 50s will be your peak inheriting ages, which makes sense given that an average 65-year-old in the U.S. can expect to live to around age 83 and your parents are, sadly, mortal.
  • If you look only at the lucky few who inherited anything, their average is $266,00
  • And if you look only at those in their 70s, it climbs to $344,000. Of course, that’s the value at the time of the gift. Add inflation and market-level returns and many bequests are worth much more by the time you earn your septuagenarian badge.
  • when we ran the numbers, we found they weren’t random at all.
  • White folks are about three times more likely to inherit than their Black, Hispanic or Asian friend
  • it remains vast enough to help explain why the typical White family has more than six times the net worth of the typical Black American famil
  • Up and down the demographic charts, it appears to be a case of to whom much is given … much more is given
  • Folks in the bottom 50 percent of earners inherit at half the national rate, while those in the top 1 percent are twice as likely to inherit something.
  • he confirmed that inheritances make the rich richer. But a rich kid’s true inheritance goes far beyond cash value: In a million less-measurable ways, elite parents give you a head start in life. By the time they die and hand you a windfall, you’ve already used all your advantages to accumulate wealth of your own.
  • “It’s not just the dollar amount that you get when your parents die,” Ricco said. “It’s the safety net that you had to start a business when you were younger, or the ability to put down a larger share of your savings into a down payment and a house because you know that you can save less for retirement.
  • “Little things like that are probably the main mechanisms through which intergenerational wealth is transmitted and are not easily captured just by the final value of what you see.”
  • Just one variable — how much you inherit — can account for more than 60 percent of U.S. wealth inequality
  • So, if you had to guess someone’s economic station in life and you could peek at only one data point, inheritance would be a pretty good bet. It’s one of the clearest socioeconomic signals on the planet.
  • “They actually reflect many advantages, many inequalities of opportunities that we face.”
  • The U.S. tax system does little to temper our uneven inheritance. Consider the stepped-up basis provision, “one of the most egregious (tax loopholes) that we have,”
  • When you sell something at a profit, you typically pay capital gains tax. But you can avoid that tax by holding the asset until you expire. At your death, the cost basis of your assets gets stepped up to their current value — meaning your heirs avoid getting taxed on what might be a very substantial gain.
  • Say you’re a natural-soda fan who bought $1,000 of Hansen Natural Corp. stock in 2000. You watched your money grow to more than $1.15 million as sleepy Hansen became the world-eating Monster Beverage Corp. Selling the stock would force you to pay capital gains on more than $1 million in earnings, so instead, you took it to the grave
  • (If you needed cash, you probably borrowed against your stockpiled stock pile, a common strategy among the 1 percent.)
  • If your heirs sell it, they’ll pay no taxes. If the value of the stock rises to, say, $1.151 million, they would owe taxes only on that extra $1,000.
  • Now multiply that loophole by the millions of homes, businesses, equities and other assets being handed down each year
  • It encourages older folks to hoard homes and businesses they can no longer make full use of, assets our housing-starved millennial readers would gladly snap up.
  • Early on, Goldwein said, it may have been considered necessary because it was difficult to determine the original value of long-held property. Revenue lost to the loophole was partly offset by a simpler-to-administer levy: the estate tax.
  • For now, you’ll pay the federal estate tax only on the part of your fortune that exceeds $12.92 million ($25.84 million for couples), and rising to $13.61 million in 2024 — and that’s only if your tax lawyers aren’t smart enough to dodge it.
  • “Between politicians continuing to cut the estate tax and taxpayers becoming increasingly good at avoiding it, very few now pay it,” Goldwein said. “That means we now have a big net tax break for most people inheriting large amounts of money.”
  • Kumon presents a convincing explanation: If you didn’t produce a male heir in Japan, it was customary to adopt one. A surplus son from another family would marry into yours. That kept your property in the family.
  • In Europe, if an elite family didn’t produce a male heir, which happened more than a quarter of the time, the default was for a daughter to marry into another well-off family and merge assets. So while Japanese family lines remained intact from generation to generation, European family lines merged, concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands.
  • As other families compete to marry into the Darcys’ colossal estate — spoiler for a novel from 1813! — inequality increases.
  • Given a few centuries, even subtle variations in inheritance patterns can produce sweeping societal differences.
criscimagnael

In Concession to Poland, E.U. Opens Door to Frozen Funds - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nd-eu-ukraine-coronavirus.html

shared by criscimagnael on 02 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • About $38 billion earmarked for Poland from a coronavirus recovery fund had been blocked over judicial disputes. But relations with the bloc improved over Poland’s strong stance against Russia.
  • In a major concession to the Polish government, the European Union’s executive arm on Wednesday opened the door for the disbursement of billions of dollars in aid to Poland that had been blocked during a standoff over judicial independence in the country.
  • “The approval of this plan is linked to clear commitments by Poland on the independence of the judiciary, which will need to be fulfilled before any actual payment can be made,”
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Reflecting how divisive the issue is in Brussels, two commissioners voted against the approval of Poland’s plan on Wednesday, a first since the recovery fund was established, and two others sent letters expressing concern over the move.
  • Laurent Pech, professor of European law at Middlesex University in London called the commitments “vague, partial and easy to evade.”
  • the invasion of Ukraine by President Vladimir Putin of Russia changed everything, tilting the balance of power in Europe and reshuffling alliances.
  • The rule of law is an existential issue for the European Union: For the bloc to function properly, all member nations have to follow the same principles.
  • Last year, frustrated by Poland’s recalcitrance on judicial independence issues, the bloc started using the sharpest tool at its disposal: money, withholding much needed aid from the coronavirus fund.
  • “Poland simply deserves this money,” the country’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, told local media last week. “And now, with the war going on, Poland needs it even more.”
  • Poland and Hungary, led by right-wing authoritarian leaders who backed each other in conflicts with Brussels over the rule of law, took divergent paths following the Russian invasion. Under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary maintains close relations with Mr. Putin and has become a main spoiler of E.U. unity.
  • In response to the concerns by the European Commission, President Andrzej Duda of Poland put forward a bill amending the disciplinary system, which is expected to be approved by the Polish Parliament on Thursday.
  • But analysts say that Mr. Duda’s bill offers only cosmetic tweaks and does not resolve the fundamental issue identified by the European Court of Justice — pressure on judges to rule in accordance with the desires of the government.
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