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Trump Orders Government To Stop Work On Y2K Bug, 17 Years Later (bloomberg.com)
The federal government will finally stop preparing for the Y2K bug, seventeen years after it came and went. Yes, you read that right. Bloomberg reports: The Trump administration announced Thursday that it would eliminate dozens of paperwork requirements for federal agencies, including an obscure rule that requires them to continue providing updates on their preparedness for a bug that afflicted some computers at the turn of the century. As another example, the Pentagon will be freed from a requirement that it file a report every time a small business vendor is paid, a task that consumed some 1,200 man-hours every year. Seven of the more than 50 paperwork requirements the White House eliminated on Thursday dealt with the Y2K bug, according to a memo OMB released. Officials at the agency estimate the changes could save tens of thousands of man-hours across the federal government. The agency didn't provide an estimate of how much time is currently spent on Y2K paperwork, but Linda Springer, an OMB senior adviser, acknowledged that it isn't a lot since those requirements are already often ignored in practice.
It's almost here!
As another example, the Pentagon will be freed from a requirement that it file a report every time a small business vendor is paid, a task that consumed some 1,200 man-hours every year.
So they layed off one guy...whoopdedoo! Looks at those savings! Who wants a paper-trail of who the pentagon pays money too anyway?? What a zany idea.
The electronic surveillance type.
Signed and dated: 6/15/17
Seriously? Is there anything else they are preparing for that has already come and gone?
Gotta keep track of those unsigned 32-bit int timestamps, they're going to creep up on you in 2038.
I don't trust Trump to make smart cuts. He's not a details and logic guy, and he or his minions favor "trickle down" solutions over those that benefit the little guy directly. He might accidentally get a few right, but so would blindfolded dart throwers.
Table-ized A.I.
Suddently paperwork for my next Exascale Supercomputer became easier...
:-D
The reason we need the small business paperwork: Before this rule came into effect those businesses were owned by big pocketed donors. Some of which were the ones charging $50 for a $5 screwdriver.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
The issue isn't that this is bad per-se. It's that it's not very good. As the article points out, no one was really applying these regulations. Ultimately, this is grand standing more than anything else.
I'm always happy to see redundant legislation go away, but don't get grand delusions that this is Trump somehow removing burdens and making the government magically super efficient.
Seems a bit premature.
-- Adrian Tyvand
Have gnu, will travel.
By "gamed the system", you mean "followed the system in place for 200+ years", right? And, according to your losing candidate, questioning this system is âoehorrifyingâ and "talking down our democracy" as recently as 2 weeks before the election?
Got any other deep thoughts to share?
It is evident that you don't understand how the Governments work. Unneeded/unenforced are traps for people/organizations that are targeted. An unused or little known regulation can wreck havoc with "out of favor" people and organizations. Laws that aren't enforced should be removed so that people/organizations can live and work in a functional manner.
Sounds like typical govt work ethics.
They'll burn all the hours saved recovering from their impending shutdown.
We'll never cut enough to cover the cost of Cruz's last shutdown.
Republicans are a cancer on government function and efficiency.
Not even American... but I do remember something about him losing the popular vote. And his approval ratings have been in the sewer at all points in his leadership. This is probably a great thing he has accomplished though. It'll be nice for him to get something done in his first year in office. He hasn't done anything other than golf and sign executive orders so far.
"As an innovation we spent 6 highly paid full time equivalents budget in meeting hours and discovered that we could, in theory, save 1/4 FTE or 50 MD (or 1200 MH, the figure is bigger) on procedures no one is applying"
Welcome back to 99 where "cost cutters" were all the rage and any cost cut is a legend.
No news here, absolutely none, just standard administrative practice move along
2%?? Linux is a lot bigger in servers / embedded systems. And a lot of embedded systems.
I hate identity politics of any sort, but as usual, there's complete and absolute dementia for the past 8 years of our purportedly muslim lizard infidel head of state that is trying to destroy our country with non-christian values.
It's not hard to see how someone thinks if they have no filter
The American people have spoken and want Donald Trump as President. Get over yourselves.
Just wait until Nov 2018...
Luckily the century turned a year later...
Sig?
This kind of thing is pervasive in government. Whenever something bad happens, or almost happens, or might happen, a bunch of administrative or real active requirements are created. Once in place they almost never go away. There is no cost-benefit analysis, after all, you can never be too careful. This goes for the obvious financial stuff, requiring all kinds of kooky "checks and balances" to real stuff, like inspections for a crack on part X because one happened once, despite never being documented ever again and part X being completely redesigned to eliminate any chance of cracking. As a government worker it is very hard to buck the system. You know you are doing stupid stuff that has no real benefit, but you little motivation to say that report you do every year that takes several man-weeks of labor, and is required by some OMB rule that is derived from some obscure CFR, that gets it's authority from some equally obscure law, is a stupid waste of time. You just do it. My favorite example is the $600 toilette seat from the 1980s. This resulted in Defense acquisition reform, and now toilette seats only cost $400, which is well documented and has $1000 worth of "process" behind it to justify the cost.
No matter what he does or how much sense it makes, the Democrats will find a way to bash Trump.
IKR ... who would have thought the streets would be filled with placard waving, molotov-cocktail throwing leftist crowds, just because Trump cans the Y2K regulations?! I mean 'cmon!!
My advice is just stay in your basements today ... it's murder out on the streets after this latest provocation from Trump.
I hate identity politics of any sort, but as usual, there's complete and absolute dementia for the past 8 years of our purportedly muslim lizard infidel head of state that is trying to destroy our country with non-christian values.
Sorry, but that's the worst computer generated poetry I've ever seen!
to get the main point:
" the Pentagon will be freed from a requirement that it file a report every time a small business vendor is paid"
I foresee a _lot_ of 'small business vendors" cropping up over the years now.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
a task that consumed some 1,200 man-hours every year
So, one single person working 24 hours a week. No wonder the US debt is so high.
Trump/Kushner 2020!
Well, the Y2k stuff being removed is great. But the bit about reports for small business payouts? 1200 man hours == ~30 weeks of 40 hours/week work. Ie, you managed to cut one job That's great if it was redundant work--and honestly it should be. So great for Trump. Let me guess, I'm not leftist enough so it doesn't count?
One, Washington has been a massive partisan witch hunt since at least the 1990s (probably since 1790, but I can personally verify since the 1990s). Two, the rhetoric during Obama's years made him out to be the anti-christ. Not to say Bush's years were very stellar either--the Hitler references don't do anyone any good. You see a pattern here?
I can readily bring myself to admit that regulations, like these, should be eliminated. I have no problem with the notion that Trump can do good.
Because...?
Yep, President. And as President, he has a lot less power than he imagines. Unlike his claims about President Obama, Presidents aren't kings nor can they really act like them. There's two other branches of government which will quickly dispel the notion that one can just Executive Order one's way into doing whatever one wants. Since Congress is so dysfunctional, that general leaves the courts to challenge and establish the Executives powers.
Honestly, given the scope of surveillance the NSA, CIA, and FBI have done on the American people, the power of the President needs slam downed hard. Too bad the courts seem very unwilling to actually follow through on that.
PS - Really, if all you listen to are partisan hacks, you're part of the problem. But, yea, whatever. Obama spying on Trump was good because, you know, NSA surveillance is good. Except it's bad because the President [Trump] shouldn't have that power going forward.
Or maybe it's okay some of the time with a warrant. Particularly describing the things to be searched. Not a retroactive fishing expedition into the pre-recorded phone calls, internet searches, etc of all Americans. Seriously, if Trump is so against what Obama did,
he actually has the power to stop it from happening again for a long time. You know, instead of dick around in immigration law which is the purview of Congress.
That again? When the country's basic workings were still being laid out there was a conflict between raw population and geographic distribution. There still is. Do you think the less populated farming and industrial regions would be all that happy about a handful of small but densely populated east & west coast cities calling all the shots? I think not, justifiably so. That's why there's a balance in state representation: two senators for all with a population dependent number of House of Representatives. There's clearly merit to both sides, which is why mutual understanding and balance are so important.
If you have something productive to add, that's fine and dandy, but if you are suggesting that popular notion that we unbalance the system because your candidate this election cycle couldn't be bothered to campaign in Wisconsin, then kindly bugger off.
That again? When the country's basic workings were still being laid out there was a conflict between raw population and geographic distribution.
It was an argument back then, and it will probably be an argument for as long as the country is in existence. At least it gives us something to argue about.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The reason we need the small business paperwork: Before this rule came into effect those businesses were owned by big pocketed donors. Some of which were the ones charging $50 for a $5 screwdriver.
Yeah, $5 for the screwdriver and $45 for the necessary government paperwork.
Shut the fuck up you vatnik retard. You and the rest of the ACs (oh and that guy with the binary name) need to collect your rubles and fuck back off to reddit, because nobody with an iota of critical thinking is eating your shit here.
Not even American... but I do remember something about him losing the popular vote.
The popular vote is trivia. No one was trying for it, both sides were fighting for the electoral. If the popular had been the goal both sides would have waged very different campaigns, spent time and money very differently, visited different towns, cities and states, etc. And thus the popular vote in such a scenario would be completely different than in the actual election.
Talking about the popular vote is like saying after losing a football match, well we controlled/moved the ball for more yards/meters. Sure, OK, but that wasn't the goal was it?
And his approval ratings have been in the sewer at all points in his leadership.
Just like Bill Clinton's about this time into his presidency, high 30s for both.
As the article points out, no one was really applying these regulations. Ultimately, this is grand standing more than anything else.
In other words, it's the greatest accomplishment of Trump's administration!
I stole this Sig
"Trump Orders Government To Stop Work On Y2K Bug, 17 Years Late"
Damn, there goes my lucrative government job. I knew it was too good to last. Maybe I can get a contract for the Y3K bug.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Simply switching to a 64 bit linux will be enough for linux users to avoid the bug
Technically that's not a fix, it just delays the problem. Admittedly it's a delay of about 292 billion years but still...
"Unlike Android and Chrome OS, Fuchsia is not based on Linux—it uses a new, Google-developed microkernel called "Magenta." With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0."
https://arstechnica.com/gadget...
If anyone failed to meet a measure that is 17 years old then, honestly, fuck them.
Why didn't we let this shit pass so long ago? Oh, well there was an idiot as our president. He was followed by another idiot. And oh, fucking spoiler... we have another fucking idiot as president! Wow! You are surprised!
"Google, never one to compete in a market with a single product, is apparently hard at work on a third operating system after Android and Chrome OS. This one is an open source, real-time OS called "Fuchsia." ... Unlike Android and Chrome OS, Fuchsia is not based on Linux—it uses a new, Google-developed microkernel called "Magenta." With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0."
https://arstechnica.com/gadget...
It is bad. Trump has proven himself a moron that is 17 years out of date. He still thinks it is 1999. Him and his supporters be so stupid.
So the year 2000 was 17 years ago so the problem is solved, right? Everyone fixed it by doing the right thing, yeah? It's not possible that somebody, maybe, left the year as two digits and special-cased the values of, say, 0 to 20 by adding 100 to them so the math works out, eh? Have you ever worked in the field?
> Trump somehow removing burdens
He most certainly not removing burdens with the new burden that government software will now have y2k problems again. He has destroyed our IT infrastructure by removing the requirement it work with "unusual" dates like today or tomorrow. In Trump's American, government software can't even damn handle today's date.
Seriously? Is there anything else they are preparing for that has already come and gone?
Well reputedly in 1803 the British government prepared for the potential invasion of Napoleon by creating a civil service position for someone to stand on the white cliffs of Dover with a spyglass and ring a bell if they saw Napoleon coming. The position was finally cancelled in 1945, 124 years after Napoleon died.
No matter what he does or how much sense it makes, the Democrats will find a way to bash Trump. This is an obsolete piece of regulation, but Democrats will somehow spin this into something bad. Washington is turning into a massive partisan witch Hunt thanks to the Democrats and their hatred for anything and everything Donald Trump does. There are regulations like this that need to be eliminated, but the left cannot bring themselves to admit that Trump might do something good. You leftists should be ashamed of yourselves. The American people have spoken and want Donald Trump as President. Get over yourselves.
Quit crying, snowflake. If criticism was good for Obummer, it should be good for Drumpf as well. That's the price of becoming president. Deal with it!
You're just as pathetic as the liberal snowflakes you despise.
You seem a little gullible.
"There are regulations like this that need to be eliminated, but the left cannot bring themselves to admit that Trump might do something good"
You might actually want to read the order. It is an extensive review of existing rules to create a written report to see if they can't reduce the amount of waste (waste in extensive reviews and written reports). i.e. wasted budget dressed up as budget saving.
Classic middle manager using up his full budget. If his boss said "tackle Y2K" then this report would be studying Y2K, instead Trump says "don't waste money" so his budget will be used up making reports on how not to waste money.
The man puts a sentence in "in support of President Trumps agenda", and that is enough for you to be fooled. Honestly you seem a little gullible.
" The American people have spoken and want Donald Trump as President."
No they didn't, "the people" rejected Trump, the legal construct called "The Electoral College" did... but then again, he's not one for obeying the laws and this EC legal construct can't waive the emoluments laws or the treason laws or give the executive branch powers it doesn't have.
I think a lot of Republicans would prefer Pence, and a lot of Democrats would prefer anyone by Putin at this point. But the legal processes need to be done, without special dispensation for Trump and without RNC interference in the prosecutions. It'll be for the best if everyone does their jobs and kicks him out, and gets on with their legislative agenda.
That's like $95 for a single $5 screwdriver for the US tax payers! ;) Seriously speaking, governments could get some insights from the banking and insurance sectors about the fraud detection in the gloriously digitally transformed future government, empowered by consultants. Now if only issues related to systems and software would be taken seriously by the elected politicians instead of playing "all your encryption are belong to us" games.
I'm afraid that trying to fight with Parkinson Law, Trump would make himself a lot of enemies.
Bureaucrats would plot to shoot him as Kennedy have been shoot.
Trump is destroying America with crap like this.
I got a Y2K bug in 2013 - stupid fucking flexnet "licencing" software designed to punish the honest decided the perpetual licence of the software I wanted to run expired in the year 2000.
Modes of failure like that can still run if the developers of the software are idiots and the QC people do not exist.
This. Not requiring software to work proves he is a joke.
I would disagree most strenuously. For the left, being a violent kook is now mainstream. Just listen to the 24/7 nonsensical conspiracy theories about Trump on CNN/MSNBC, etc, and huge mobs of leftist psychos and BLM supporters marching and calling for cop killings (which they got). Compare that to 8 years of the insufferably arrogant, worthless community agitator. No one in the mainstream conservative movement did anything like pretend to behead him, threaten to kill his supporters, etc.
Your idiotic gibberish about Russians is pretty typical, and ignorant. Trump didn't go to the Russians with a mispelled "reset" button and Trump didn't tell Medvedev he would "have more room to maneuver after the election" - or later try to side with ISIS in a civil war. The Trump/Russian collusion conspiracy was blown completely out of the water and even worthless lefties like Feinstein admit there is not a shred of evidence to support ot.
He most certainly not removing burdens with the new burden that government software will now have y2k problems again.
One thing the simpler man doesn't understand is that problems like Y2K (or 2038) don't go away once the date has passed. Too small storage containers used in already existing data won't magically transform. Someone needs to make that happen, each and every time old data is accessed. Do a study of things like census records, and you'll be hit by the Y2K bug.
The very preparation for Y2K caused additional problems. Uncoordinated preparation caused forms that suddenly changed from YY/MM/DD to mandatory YYYY/MM/DD at arbitrary dates in the late 90s.
This means that you'll run into the problem when handling and comparing data from the same sources from before 2000.
Relatedly, the "2038 problem" will also still be with us long after 2038, because of all the data stored in signed 32-bit time format won't magically transform. Someone needs to make sure it's done.
The regulations are probably too specific, and focus on the specific instance of the problem when a generic regulation[*] would have been better. But then again, politicians who couldn't see the bigger picture existed back then too.
[*]: Like "All data is to be converted to representations not subject to container size prior to processing, or a justification for and implications of the limited container size must be documented."
Among the effects, this could lead to a resurgence of BCD and CPUs who handle them natively again, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.
Washington is turning into a massive partisan witch Hunt thanks to the Democrats and their hatred for anything and everything Donald Trump does.
I dunno where the fuck you've been for the past eight years, but we're loooong past that point, and it wasn't the Democrats who brought us there. Or have you forgotten the fella with the skin that was noticeably darker than any other US president and what a Republican Congress did to him? But no, let's go much further back. George W. Bush deserved the shit he got. "Heckuva job, Brownie" earned him that. Let's go back to Bill Clinton. Couldn't keep his dick in his pants like, I dunno, half the US Presidents before him, but what does another Republican Congress do for years but fucking obsess over it, instead of goddamned governing like they were elected to do.
That's when it started, and it was Republicans that started it in the modern era. Nobody gave Reagan that much shit. Nobody gave Bush Sr. that much shit. Hell, nobody even gave Carter that much shit until he was out of office. Nobody remembers Ford. Nixon got some shit, and deserved every bit of it. Johnson got a little bit of shit for the Vietnam war, and probably deserved it. Kennedy and Eisenhower are both revered. Truman, I dunno and at that point we've passed out of living memory.
But Democrats vs Trump turning Washington into a partisan witch hunt? Bitch please.
You do have to wonder WTF he is thinking. New software must be y2k compliant.
Not an american but you guys should seriously consider getting rid of the electoral college. I'm no expert on american political history but it is my understanding that the system was originally put into place to safeguard a takeover by a tyrant. That is, the founding fathers were smart enough to understand that there are times in which the democratic will of the people may be hijacked, and this is where the electoral college could step in and make a more rational choice.
However, has it ever actually worked that way? No. Has the electoral college ever actually had any will of their own? No. It's simply made american elections to be this weird-ass game in which it's possible to win by getting less of the popular vote b y playing essentially moneyball with the election as Trump successfully did. Twice in the 2000s the EC has resulted in the candidate with less votes winning the nomination. It's a catch 22: supposing the candidate that wins the popular vote wins the EC as well, the EC cannot then vote against the candidate even if there's good cause to suspect he/she is a risk to the nation because that would go against the will of the people. If the candidate that wins the EC and loses the popular vote as with Trump the EC still can't do its job and vote any differently because that would be seen as 'changing the system" and there'd be a massive outcry over a hijacked election.
Now think about it, Trump would have been a perfect case for the EC to step in: he's clearly an unstable individual, lacks any political experience and his 'proposals' are for the most part rather insane and there's a good case to be made that he may in fact be suffering from an onset of Alzheimer's (disjointed speech, erratic personality, highly limited covabulary and repeated use of generic words such as something, anything etc.). Less then third of the country actually supported him and the other candidate in fact got MORE votes, so the EC siding against Trump because he's unfit to rule and siding with the majority of the voters would be rationally and democratically justified. Like, a more clear-cut example case of why the electoral college exists cannot be found in recent history. However did they do it? No, because as I said the EC has just become a stamping mechanism which currently makes the votes of individuals count less in some states than in others. In fact when this possibility was brought up aqfter the elections it was held as layghable by most. "What, actually electing the person who got the most votes? Don't be kidding, we have to elect the unstable raving orange dude, I mean, he won 'the system'. Nothing we can do. Rules is rules." And because they cannot deviate from voting according to the rules of the game, the people in the EC might just as well be kicked out and the system changed so that votes are valued differently based on the states. I mean, it'd be de facto the same thing as the current model. It makes absolutely no sense from the point of view of democracy, and it does not further the benefit of the american people, from my view.
It should not be possible in a democracy for a person to be elected into the most powerful seat in the land by getting less votes. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...", if your vote counts less than someone else's because you live in California and not Ohio, you are not equal. The system that was originally pout in place to safeguard the republic from tyranny has now been morphed into something which actually makes it easier for any would-be tyrants to step in because you don't even have to win the popular vote.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Here's my contribution: the Trump administration finally found something so trivial that they have a slim chance of getting it right.
It's not like you have a chip on your shoulder over this. "Boo-hoo-hoo, people are being mean to the president. It's not fair, how could anyone be so cruel? Anyone who says anything negative about the Fearless Leader is a Bad Person." I visualize you pouting and stamping your foot in frustration while you are whining about this outrage.
It's the bully/coward syndrome. Bullies can dish it out, but when they get a dose of their own medicine they squeal like a stuck pig. It applies to Trump and it applies to you.
Why is Snark Required?
If the densely populated areas have more people then it stands to reason they'll have more votes. I assume you don't have a problem with the idea of "one person, one vote"?
The electoral college system is "one person, one-and-a-bit" votes, where the smaller the state's population the bigger the bit.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, If the situation was reversed - you'd have a lot of upset Trump supporters - but they'd grin and bear it. You simply don't get that same deranged anti-democratic sentiment from the Right when they lose. Where were the riots in the streets when Clinton or Obama won?
Time for an analogy: pruning old legislation is worthwhile like pruning dead code in paths that never get used. Even if obsolete clauses were being ignored in practice, and have no effect on performance, removing them makes it easier to understand the legislation/code when a new person reads it.
It's ''wreak havoc''. If you wrecked all the havoc that would leave only order, implying that everything was A-1, tickety-boo, shipshape & Bristol fashion.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But in Trump's America, dates don't have to be accurate.
What is your point? First you state that the democratic will of the people is sometimes wrong and the electoral college should correct it. Then you say that the populist vote should win no matter what in a democracy.
These are conflicting.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal
The declaration of independence is not a legal document. If it were, we would not have had a need for that pesky civil war. An honest mistake.
The electoral college system, like nearly all political systems, was put in place as a compromise of many views. Preventing tyranny, as you put it, was just one view. The most important part of the electoral college was its design in being an extension of the bicameral congress. One side represents states as population dictates, the other does not. Reasoning behind this is two fold:
The US is a federation. The president is elected by the states, not the people. It just so happens that everyone agrees in letting people have a say anyway, as opposed to many parliamentary systems where the leader is chosen by the winning party.
Small population states still matter and the people that live there deserve to be heard. If we went full democratic, only a handful of counties in the country out of thousands would have their values respected and listened to while the rest will be ignored or abused. Clearly not a good outcome, and so people in different states do have different weighting by design: to ensure the people that produce the food which everyone survives with gets to have their say in how the country is run.
A stopped clock is right twice a day. On average.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
How's that kool-aid?
Take a breath, you're sounding pretty flustered and a bit crazy.
The left considers violence wrong except in very specific circumstances. This guy was just a nut-job and whatever he (or you) may say he is no representative of the left.
No, I did not say that's what I think, I said I'm under the impression that that's the reason behind EC's existence. But to clarify yes the people can sometimes be cheated into voting for candidates that should not be allowed to rule because they hold immoral/unconstitutional views (see, third reich among other things, Adolf was democratucally elected). HOWEVER, this is not the case now as what's happened in the 2000s is that the EC does the reverse, helping to automatically nominate a person that gets less of the votes without it having anything to do with consideration of the candidates but simply following preset rules.
No they are not. See, what I'm saying is precisely that the EC does not prevent a populist from winning in is current shape, it makes it easier by shrinking the amount of the popular vote one needs to secure to win the nomination. The EC on paper is an organ of governance which is supposed to be able to affect the outcome of the election based on their own judgement of the candidates, but it does not do so under any circumstances so it's just become an automated engine for wannabe-populists to gain power by winning the 'right' votes. This makes no sense and is in contradiction with what I understand to be the point of something like the EC.
I never claimed it is legally binding, I just loaned the phrase from there to reflect the fact that i do not think the EC in its current function serves the american ideal of people being equal.
They won't be ignored or abused. In a popular vote the vote of everyone counts the same, no matter the location. The idea of a democracy is that everyone has an equal say in the matter on the vote. The fact that a city has millions of people living in it does not logically translate to 'therefore the people in the countryside need to have more votes." The geographical location you inhabit should not bear any weight in a democratic vote in my view, It doesn't do so here (Finland) or anywhere else in the west, and you don't see the people in the countryside being 'ignored or abused'. The people in the countryside hold power in proportion to their numbers and still have the local municipal governments to represent them on a national level.
But this turns the system on its head giving undue power to those people. Why should someone living on the countryside have any more say in who rules over the entire country? The people in the cities are just as much citizens as the people in the countryside. Just because someone lives in a sparsely populated area does not mean their opinion of who should rule should count any more. That's what equality means, that's what democracy as a decision making method means.
There are other means of making sure that the majority cannot override the rights of the minorities. That's why countries have constitutions which guarantee rights to people and protect them from being eaten by majority votes. You're arguing that in addition to this the people on the countryside deserve to get to choose the president moreso than the people in the cities, which makes no sense to me.
I understand why the system is the way it is, I just think it'
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Not a change, get rid of the Electoral college and a few big cities run the nation. Most of said cities being deeply in debt, with uncontrolled crime (despite ever more draconian gun laws).
The fact is the Electoral college worked exactly as it was supposed to. But if we did not have the Electoral college Trump would have campaigned differently and likely would have still pulled out a win. He knew CA and NY were automatic losses, so he didn't spend much time campaigning in those states (but he didn't totally ignore them). Meanwhile Clinton ignored several smaller states that had previously voted Democrat, and she lost in those states. Not visiting Wisconsin and other states hurt her and cost her those states. Trump campaigned to match the rules of the game and won the only popular vote that mattered; he won the popular vote in 30 different states earning those Electoral college votes, to Hillary winning 20 states (and DC). Thus he won more electoral college votes. The overall vote does not matter because even though we all vote on the same day we are not voting in a single election but in 51 elections (50 states plus DC).
The EC is not a static body as you seem to think with your comment that the EC should have stepped in. The Electors of each State are appointed by and from the Party that wins the election in that state. Thus the EC will represent the President. Except for the occasional faithless elector, of which there were more Democrat electors who chose to be faithless than Republican Electors. Funny the losing candidate was so bad that she had more electors refusing to vote for her than the Boorish and widely disliked President did.
I suggest you study our system a little better, you'll find out that it worked exactly as designed, ensuring a broad nationwide support for the President, not just a few High population centers. And there is no need at all to eliminate or modify it at all.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
No they won't. Get rid of the electoral college and everyone gets an equal say in who rules. The fact that more people live in place A than place B does not mean that the people in place B should be given more power in a democracy,
Please explain to me how having less than a third of the populace support the president translates to 'a broad, nationwide support'?
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Nope. Only in place since 1929.
The apportionment act of 1929 broke the electoral system which had previously been in place.
We need to fix that or we will continue to see larger and larger popular votes denied representation (and not just in the electoral vote- also in congress).
Eventually- that will lead to violence because suppression of representation is tyranny.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Not an american but you guys should seriously consider getting rid of the electoral college. I'm no expert on american political history but it is my understanding that the system was originally put into place to safeguard a takeover by a tyrant.
Welp, you're definitely not an expert.
The electorl college had fuck-all to do with being a safeguard against tyranny. Fuck. All.
Take your ignorance elsewhere ya cunt
your router, your network switch, your PVR,
In theory : yes.
In practice : those will probably have been changed a couple of times between now and 2038.
Officially on the ground of "new standards and feature"
(read: DRM scheme changing requiring you to rebuy PVR and set-top boxes)
your car,
Though note that a car is actually a data center on wheel full of different computers.
Linux is usually very popular on the infotainment system (the big screen with your music player and satnav)
But on the low-level critical components, other OSes (mostly real-time OSes like QNX) are popular too.
So you might end with a car that functions perfectly well, but has it's infotainment screen black or stuck in a boot-loop.
your medical equipment etc.
Given how badly some of them are designed, it won't be surprising if they actually did restart from epoch 0 (or some hard-coded arbitrary point like date of product launch) each time they got power cycled.
These *won't even notice* that the 2038 is a problem.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I would go further and remove the "Winner takes all" that is heavily biassed for a bi-party system. Politics should not be that you do what the majority wants, but to do what most people want. Yes, there is a differnce and in politics you should be able to negotiate to what you and others want.
There are plenty of countries where multi-party systems work. It also gives people who see some thinks they want in party 1 and also so,e things they want in party 2 a way to let their voice hear.
The obvious next big thing is to not only have a separation between state and chuch, but also state and business.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
For the left, being a violent kook is now mainstream.
A suspected Anarchist did kill US president at the turn of the previous century. So there is really nothing new here. They are still in Europe as well, but the access to weapons is limited, police is actively monitoring them during the events and the political compromises over the decades have significantly reduced the popular support for such movements and tactics. That didn't stop the effect of the Bolsheviks on the minds of young radicalized activists in the communist parties of various countries, or to those of the RAF members, for example. Of course, the right wing radicalized activists have been as violent during the time here, in the Old Continent at least in terms of bombs, beatings and pyromania. Assassinations and kidnappings seem to be more of the left wing thing.
And the right hated Obama for everything he did.
Granted I think Y2K readiness is now time to put away.
But if I felt like it I could bring up those legacy mainframes who's Y2K patches only extended the problem out with a 2015, 2020, 2050 cutoff and rollover. With logic like
If year > 20 then
Set Fullyear = 1900 + year
Else
Set Fullyear = 2000 + year
Endif
So when these dates hit the programs will have issues.
But I doubt this problem should be a government priority.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
2%?? Linux is a lot bigger in servers / embedded systems. And a lot of embedded systems.
Not to mention embedded systems.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
No, you are just experiencing cognitive dissonance. I don't think anyone has ever seen this level of widespread mass hysteria. It's like the Salem witch trials, but spread across an entire nation.
Liberals really need to get their shit together or they are going to get themselves killed in a civil war they initiate because they just couldn't stand to lose a fucking election.
I gotta be quick and post this before 1999 ends!
I believe ISIS were meant to be long gone by now. I assume Trump has completely destroyed them as a force.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
>Very specific circumstances
Like when you are dealing with a NAZI!!!!!???????>??>::LML>M?MKKNLKDf;/kzsjdfgv/lzsdkjf/lksjnv/kmfg
ANYONE THAT ISN'T HARD, VIOLENT LEFT IS A NAZI AND HAS TO DIE!!!!@!!@!!!!!!
*lights someone else's hair on fire*
*squirts urine on opposition commentators*
*attempts to murder free speech protesters with a bike lock*
*shoots at cars on the road for having MAGA stickers*
*destroys all credibility*
*opens opportunity for the right to roll back 7+ decades of progressivism*
True genius.
2%?? Linux is a lot bigger in servers / embedded systems. And a lot of embedded systems.
Not to mention embedded systems.
And then there are also the embedded systems to account for!
Ah, there's the spin.
You forgot to file your TPS report before posting that comment. I'm afraid that means a $10,000 fine and six months in jail for you!
Stop the foul language.
Republicans impeached Clinton because he committed perjury.
There is no evidence that Trump has committed a crime, yet we had Democratic representatives talking about impeachment more than a month before his inauguration. And they have tried to follow through. Utter deep state madness, and the Bushes are in on it. When you, as a liberal, find yourself on the same page as the Bush crime family and John fucking McCain, you need to take a little bit of pause.
Yeah! Yeah ! Genius! You tell 'em! Ooooh, burn!
Yeah!
Poor Kiuas. :-(
It's happening already.
Happening in front of our very eyes.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
No, entirely WRONG, the electoral college is there to balance big/small states. Can you imagine what happens if 20 small states are outvoted continously by 2 huge states? Those 20 small states will leave.... get it ?
The fact that more people live in place A than place B does not mean that the people in place B should be given more power in a democracy
Well that really depends, when you live in place B and you have no power because place A rules all, you might reconsider. Democracy can have both tyranny of a majority or a minority. Pick your poison.
Explain how a Jr, Senator of the minority party caused a shut-down.
Answer he didn't, neither did Utah's Mike Lee. In fact the actual blame for the shut-down if it can be assigned to any one person would be to Sen Harry Reid (D), the Senate Majority leader at the time. He refused to let any house budget bill he didn't like even be debated. Yes the House's first budget, demanding total recall of the ACA was too extreme. But that's negotiating, you start out asking for everything knowing that you'll compromise. The House then did compromise, passing multiple replacement budgets gradually diminishing their demands, Reid refused to let any of them be debated let alone voted on. He forced the shutdown and maintained it until the house leadership caved in.
Cruz and Lee had NOTHING to do with any of that process. They had zero say in any of the Budget bills passed by the House, and zero say in what Reid let onto the floor of the Senate for debate.
Guess who the real cancer on efficiency is. it's not the Republicans.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
The electoral college is working as designed. If one were to ignore the votes in New York City and Los Angeles -- not even the states of New York and California, but just the two most populous cities across the fruited plain -- Trump wins by half a million votes.
The electoral college is an ingenious solution to the problem of small clusters of populations imposing their will on an entire nation.
Well, Trump destroyed the job of at least one person :D :D :D
all large organizations are rife with inefficiencies like this, it is definitely not unique to gov't, so much so that at one job we created Remy's Rule in honor of Clarke and a wise old mentor I worked with early in my career:
Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from government
Nobody gave Reagan that much shit.
Ok, kid, go back to bed now, the adults are talking.
It is obvious that you were not alive in the 80s when Reagan was President, or you'd remember the huge piles of shit he got. A jumped up actor as President? Oh, and remember how stupid he was, and a war monger, and racist, and his economic policies were going to permanently destroy the country, and his foreign policy was going to ruin alliances and star WWIII, and he was just a corrupt slave of the megacorps and bankers, and demented besides, and...
George W. Bush was elected in a closely contested election, and between November 2000 and September 11th, 2001, the standard Democrat call was "Not my President" and "Selected not Elected". After September 11th, it was "Bushitler" and murderer and warcriminal, and stupid, and chimp pictures. Plus, of course, all the usual "Republicans are evil corporate stooges that want to kill your grandma".
Obama? He got nothing worse than what those that came before.
The only thing new with Trump is the sheer degree of it. Obama never had a single month with 90% negative coverage from a major news network, much less 6 months. Averaging 80% negative coverage over the industry? That's crazy. NIXON had better press coverage while he was on his way out of office than Trump does.
Bitch, please. Shut your fucking mouth, and listen to your elders.
The electoral college system is because the US doesn't have one presidential election. It has 51 elections, that have a weighting applied, to determine the final outcome.
The fact that you don't understand even that means you utterly fail to understand even the basis of the legal and governmental structure of the United States, and certainly should not be making suggestions on how to change it.
This is very simple, actually. The problem statement is, "how to best conduct a single majority vote election across multiple, independent entities of varying sizes and densities of the population"? The answer is, "hold a majority election in every independent entity and the winner overall of each election is the winner overall of the race." But what if the entities are of _vastly_ different sizes and densities? Then the answer is, "weight the individual elections by population."
The Electoral College is a perfectly legitimate solution to the problem. Maybe you're getting confused by the notion of a "College". There is a body of people that forms a College, but exists only as a formality, because someone must keep a record and report the results of the election. The College, for example, is temporary and changes at every election. It is honorary.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
>...but it is my understanding that the system was originally put into place to safeguard a takeover by a tyrant...
The electoral college is an attempt to balance political power between rural and urban voters. Its an adjustment to a pure democracy designed to weaken the "Tyranny of the majority".
The biggest challenge the founding fathers faced was balancing power between urban and rural constituents. This is arguably our greatest challenge today. This is why each state has 2 senators regardless of population and representatives based on population. The number of electors in the electoral college in each state is the sum of its U.S. senators and its U.S. representatives.
In our last election, rural voters preferred Trump and that is why the rural voter trumped the urban voter to override the popular vote.
Greed is the root of all evil.
But the EC is NOT a deliberative body. It is an honorary one. There's the source of your misunderstanding, I think.
The members of the EC are picked by the winners. Membership is temporary, the entire EC is dissolved once the election results have been reported to Congress. In fact, the ACTUAL vote to confirm the election is done by Congress, not by the EC. And yes, it is an actual show-of-hands vote. The job of the EC is to simply report the official results of each state.
That is why any electors who don't report properly are called "faithless" electors. They literally make a promise to faithfully report the results when they are appointed.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I'm always happy to see redundant legislation go away, but don't get grand delusions that this is Trump somehow removing burdens and making the government magically super efficient.
The journey of a thousand miles and all. It's clear that this is different than previous administrations. I can maybe even see the beginning of GWB's second term being not terrible for any lingering Y2K issues that might have still been around, but by 2012, all of these rules should have been rescinded.
Will this go far enough? That remains to be seen but a strategy that goes far enough would look like this in the beginning.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's called Federalism. It's the United States of America, not, "America". A federation is a form of government where a collection of independent, equal states act as one on some issues and otherwise act independently internally.
Every State in the USA has its own court system, its own military, its own political body, its own police, and on and on, PLUS the federal government. People pay both State taxes and Federal taxes. They follow both State laws and Federal laws.
And the most important feature of Federalism is that the States are equal to one another, from a Federal perspective. They are like the partners in a partnership.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I think you're forgetting all the servers.
And, might I add, if the European Union was more like a Federation, if its leaders had to undergo popular elections across the entire EU every 4-6 years, then it would probably be more resilient. The US has survived for 238 years in its present form, the longest-running representative democracy in history. Federalism works.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I know that he barely fucking thinks. Does that count?
Only in our estimations of your lack of thought.
Just because a duck decided to land on the road in front of my car as I was driving does not mean my language was unwarranted!
The headline is literally a stab at Trump to make him look like an idiot for touching on something that's 17 years gone, but the fact that worthless required documentation is being removed from government should be celebrated as a move towards efficiency. A government that is willing to admit stuff is useless and scrap it is a lot more useful than a government that bloats itself with process.
I'm waiting for everyone to come in and tell me everything Trump has done wrong now, but that's not my point whatsoever, so enjoy. (I probably will!)
I tend to rant.
the EC does not prevent a populist from winning in is current shape, it makes it easier by shrinking the amount of the popular vote one needs to secure to win the nomination.
I largely agree with your comment and reasoning, but the above is false. The EC has nothing to do with securing the nomination. Party nominations are done through party-specific processes which admittedly include delegate systems that look sort of EC-ish, except that those delegates actually do exercise free will in casting their ballots, so function more like the EC was intended to function. But changing or abolishing the EC would have no effect on the nomination processes.
Personally, as a resident of a small state, I'd like it if the EC were retained but EC votes were allocated proportionally to the per-state popular vote. One of the theories behind the construction of the EC was that it would give slightly more weight to the opinions of the voters in low-population states. In practice, the method of allocating all of a state's votes as a bloc causes the system to do exactly the opposite, which is why it's always a handful of large "swing" states that decide the election. Proportional allocation would give the small states a larger voice, and motivate candidates to actually campaign in them.
Failing that, simply going to a pure popular vote would also improve the small states' voice, just not as much. But it's clear that the EC, in its current form and application, is bad for everyone.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Looking though the comments in this so far, yup, you were 100% accurate.
The left considers violence wrong except in very specific circumstances.
Of course (Vol. I)!
From John Hawkins
1) "Michele (Bachmann), slit your wrist. Go ahead... or, do us all a better thing [sic]. Move that knife up about two feet. Start right at the collarbone." -- Montel Williams
2) “F*ck that dude. I’ll smack that f*cker’s comb-over right off his f*cking scalp. Like, for real, if I met Donald Trump, I’d punch him in his f*cking face. And that’s not a joke. Even if he did become president — watch out, Donald Trump, because I will punch you in your f*cking face if I ever meet you. Secret Service had better just f*cking be on it. Don’t let me anywhere within a block.”– Rapper Everlast on Donald Trump
3) “I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow.I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” — Bill Maher
4) “I know how the ‘tea party’ people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their “Obama Plan White Slavery” signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.” — The Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy
5) “F*** God D*mned Joe the God D*mned Motherf*cking plumber! I want Motherf*cking Joe the plumber dead.” — Liberal talk show host Charles Karel Bouley on the air.
Will see how much forgetting about Y2K saves us on YKxx in the future....
The left considers violence wrong except in very specific circumstances.
Of course (Vol. II)!
From John Hawkins
6) “Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and we’re sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and it’s about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every – They’re gonna say some Palestinian being too radical — well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet.” U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American intifada
7) "That Scott down there that's running for governor of Florida. Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he's running for governor of Florida. He's a millionaire and a billionaire. He's no hero. He's a damn crook. It's just we don't prosecute big crooks." -- Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa
8) “..And then there’s Rumsfeld who said of Iraq ‘We have our good days and our bad days.’ We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say ‘This is one of our bad days’ and pull the trigger. Do you want to salvage our country? Be a savior of our country? Then vote for John Kerry and get rid of the whole Bush Bunch.” — From a fund raising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club
9) “Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” — The Village Voice’s Michael Feingold, in a theater review of all places
10) “But the victim is also inaccurately being eulogized as a kind and loving religious man. Make no mistake, as disgusting and deservedly dead as the hate-filled fanatical Muslim killers were, Thalasinos was also a hate-filled bigot. Death can’t change that. But in the U.S., we don’t die for speaking our minds. Or we’re not supposed to anyway. Thalasinos was an anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy, who posted that it would be “Freaking Awesome” if hateful Ann Coulter was named head of Homeland Security.” — Linda Stasi, New York Daily News , on a victim murdered in the San Bernadino terrorist attack
The left considers violence wrong except in very specific circumstances.
Of course (Vol. III)!
From John Hawkins
11) “Cheney deserves same final end he gave Saddam. Hope there are cell cams.” — Rep. Chuck Kruger (D-Thomaston)
12) “If I had my way, I would see Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell strapped down to electric chairs and lit up like Christmas trees. The better to light the way for American Democracy and American Freedom!” — Democratic Talk Radio’s Stephen Crockett
13) “May your children all die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases.” — Allan Brauer , the communications chair of the Democratic Party of Sacramento County to Ted Cruz staffer Amanda Carpenter
14) “Violence solves nothing. I want a rhino to f*ck @SpeakerRyan to death with its horn because it's FUNNY, not because he's a #GOPmurderbro.” – Joss Whedon
15) “I hope Roger Ailes dies slow, painful, and soon. The evil that man has done to the American tapestry is unprecedented for an individual.” — Think Progress editor Alan Pyke
The left considers violence wrong except in very specific circumstances.
Of course (Vol. IV)!
From John Hawkins
16) “But, you know, the NRA members are the current incarnation of the brownshirts from Germany back in the early ’30s, late ’20s, early ’30s. Now, of course, there came the Night of the Long Knives when the brownshirts were slaughtered and dumped in the nearest ditches when the power structure finally got tired of them. So I look forward to that day.” — Mike Malloy
17) "Or pick up a baseball bat and take out every f*cking republican and independent I see. #f*cktrump, #f*cktheGOP, #f*ckstraightwhiteamerica, #f*ckyourprivilege." -- Orange is the New Black star Lea DeLaria responding to a meme about using music to deal with violence
18) “I wish they (Republicans) were all f*cking dead!” — Dan Savage
19) “Sarah Palin needs to have her hair shaved off to a buzz cut, get headf*cked by a big veiny, ashy, black d*ck then be locked in a cupboard.” — Azealia Banks advocates raping Sarah Palin over a fake news story
20)” Yes, I’m angry. Yes, I’m outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House, but I know that this won’t change anything." -- Madonna
The biggest challenge the founding fathers faced was balancing power between urban and rural constituents. This is arguably our greatest challenge today. This is why each state has 2 senators regardless of population
The rural voters in upstate New York and the Central Valley of California are kinda miffed at you for thinking the urban/rural divide happens along state lines.
Why does the vote of a farmer in New York count less (when voting for President) than the vote of a farmer in Iowa?
I haven't run the numbers, but I'm guessing there's more rural/agricultural workers in California than there are in Wyoming, but somehow the rural Californians have to share their Senators (and their electoral college vote) with the hippies and yuppies in SF and LA. Does that seem reasonable to you? Say you're a rural Republican in California - does the fact that the current President basically wrote off your vote make you feel more represented, as a rural person?
Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't it Obama who said "I will not negotiate with Republicans" in regards to debt ceiling and budget? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2013/09/16/obama-i-will-not-negotiate-on-the-debt-ceiling/
Looks like to me that in your own partisan mind you can't realize that both parties are the problem. I'm sure you'll say the Republicans started it, but we'll be going back and forth quoting people back to when it was the federalists and the democrat-rebpulicans. Face it, your party is just as bad as the other party. I don't even need to know which party is yours, that statement is universally true.
The Electoral College is a perfectly legitimate solution to the problem.
Is it? Seems like it is added complexity that is subject to gaming if not implemented with enough precision.
Why go through all that effort of weighting when you can just simply do one-man, one-vote?
Of all the democracies that have followed the establishment of the USA, none of have adopted an electoral college system. That's because, at best its a no-op, and as we've seen here, its quite lame.
Somehow I place bets on the guy who is out there putting his cards on the table over the opinions of another Slashdot loud mouth. While I don't see Trump as a great guy I can atleast say that he's putting himself into the game instead of being another random voice in the peanut gallery.
"no one was really applying these regulations"
Kinda like the Paris Accord, eh?
"Ultimately, this is grand standing more than anything else."
Kinda like saying you support the Paris Accord, right?
Get back to us when there's a President of the European Union elected by popular vote.
-Dave
Laws that aren't enforced should be removed so that people/organizations can live and work in a functional manner.
This is of course true. The parent also pointed out that it was probably more grandstanding than substance. For instance, someone could say he removed a peace of dead code in a computer program. Well, it may not have been slowing down current people since they ignored it, but would be harder for new people to know does nothing. Removing it is still correct, but one peace of dead/bad code/law/etc is not a grand improvement in government. We probably need decades of work to address the technical debt.
More importantly, it is not just laws that aren't enforced that are the problem. It is laws that no longer either serve the net public interest or protect fundamental rights. There are just too many laws period. Of course in this area you have to be careful of the partisan nut jobs who just look at the ones they don't like, such as Trump's effort to avoid all reasonable environmental efforts.
Removing technical debt, no matter where it is at is time consuming and expensive but also necessary. This step of the government sounds like a basically good thing, but we need like 95% effort and 5% of time spent saying how cool their effort was, not the other way around. I'm not going to give Trump a gold star for sub par work.
If he could admit how he won was totally wrong and unacceptable and then put in some effort to be honest and to stop trying to intimidate investigators, then there might be hope, but I doubt it is going to happen. He lacks the skill set to do a job like this. His skills with the long con can only take him so far, hence his current problems.
Municipal night court judge Munroe Slemp of Snakebit, NV has already responded to a petition from COBOL programmers by blocking Trump's order, citing his lack of IT expertise. The Ninth Circuit is expected to review the decision by sometime in November.
The biggest challenge the founding fathers faced was balancing power between urban and rural constituents.
That is some serious historical revisionism that doesn't even pass the laugh test.
Every state has rural and city populations. The EC does nothing to balance them out because it works at the state level, not the district level.
The real reason the EC was created was appeasement of slavers. The infamous 3/5ths clause in the constitution let slave states count their slave population when apportioning EC votes even though slaves themselves did not get a vote. This perverse calculation gave whites in slave states more voting power than people in free states.
The EC's origin is inherently undemocratic and even today the winner-takes-all nature violates the basic democratic principle of one-man, one-vote since a popular vote split of 49/51 would ignore the will of 49% of voters in that state.
So brave. thanks for turning /. into reddit.
"it is my understanding that the system was originally put into place to safeguard a takeover by a tyrant"
That's incorrect. It was put into place to bribe the small states into going along with the Constitution. It intentionally overweights the votes of residents of small (in population, not size) states over large ones. In practice, this keeps the country from being dominated by large cities and ensures that the interests of rural Americans are given equal weight.
This is a fundamental part of the American system and should not be changed under any circumstance (and I say this as a resident of a major metro area in a "large" state).
#MA^C^C NO CARRIER
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Just to be clear, are we talking about Barack HUSSEIN Obama, the Kenyan Moslem who put death panels in charge of American health care and assassinated anyone who objected to the secret implementation of sharia all over the USA?
"And if Clinton had been discovered doing even half of all the corrupt bullshit Trump has been caught doing, she would have been impeached already"
Okay, what corrupt bullshit has he been caught doing? The majority of people in DC (including lots of GOP members) and most in the media want him impeached. If there was anything they could potentially impeach him on, it would be all over the news 24/7.
get rid of the Electoral college and a few big cities run the nation
No they won't. Get rid of the electoral college and everyone gets an equal say in who rules.
Campaigning would only occur in major cities, so they would have a much larger impact than now.
The fact that more people live in place A than place B does not mean that the people in place B should be given more power in a democracy,
It's called federalism, and it was put in place for a reason. The founding fathers realized that even though we are one country, we are composed of several different cultures with different values. A law that might make sense in a metropolitan area might not make sense in a rural area, so you don't want the population centers making all the rules for everyone else.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Who said I don't understand it, you arrogant fat cunt? I understand it but I don't agree with it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You think and speak like a child.
I used to work for the Federal government some years ago. In no way does this surprise me. A lot of Federal requirements take on a life of their own and keep going long after they've lost relevance. The Federal excise tax on telephones was started to fund the Spanish-American War in 1898 and we still have it. Spain has been a NATO ally longer than most people here have been alive and we still have a tax that began to pay for fighting them.
Not a change, get rid of the Electoral college and a few big cities run the nation.
Actually, no. Getting rid of the EC would increase the voice that small states have.
Part of the EC theory was that it would boost the voice of small states, but modern mathematical analysis, using tools like the Banzhaf Power Index prove that the actual effect is the opposite. The reason is because EC votes are allocated as a bloc (by all but a few states), and bloc voting significantly increases the power of the bloc.
Mathematical analyses aside, this effect is quite visible in practice. Notice also how every election ultimately gets decided by a handful of populous swing states. Notice also how little time the candidates spend in small states during the general election, because they know that the EC makes them almost irrelevant to the overall decision.
Yes, I know that you think the outcome of the 2016 election would have been worse without the EC, but you could just as easily end up with the opposite situation, in which the voters in the big swing states -- which are swing states precisely because they could fall either way; no red sinecures there -- decide to go for the Democrat. Right now we're in a particular situation where the EC allocations favor the Republicans, but that will not last.
If we wanted to use the EC to actually boost the vote of small states, what we need to do is to get all states to switch to a proportional allocation system, where each state allocates its electoral votes proportionally to the popular vote in that state. This would actually increase the power of small states.
However, it seems unlikely that we'll muster the political will for that sort of change. It's far more likely that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will attract enough support to simply make the EC irrelevant (signatories to the compact commit to give all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the votes in their states, once there are enough signatories to give the compact > 270 votes). This will be a win for small states' influence, though not as big a win as proportional allocation.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
And rightfully so. Trump has brought this all upon himself.
The electoral college was put in place to balance power between the small and large states. It is still performing that function. The US is not a Democracy, it is a Republic.
Did you ever take a civics class in high school? Because just based on those two statements it surely does not seem like it.
No matter what he does or how much sense it makes, the Democrats will find a way to bash Trump. This is an obsolete piece of regulation, but Democrats will somehow spin this into something bad. Washington is turning into a massive partisan witch Hunt thanks to the Democrats and their hatred for anything and everything Donald Trump does. There are regulations like this that need to be eliminated, but the left cannot bring themselves to admit that Trump might do something good. You leftists should be ashamed of yourselves. The American people have spoken and want Donald Trump as President. Get over yourselves.
If anything, this story shows Trump in better light than either Bush or Obama that he finally did something about it. The criticism of not overhauling this bureaucratic requirement can safely fall on bipartisan shoulders - both Bush Republicans and Obama Dems. In truth, I doubt any of the presidents themselves took the initiative here, although I wouldn't put it past Trump to have noticed it (the person who noticed the number of door hinges in his hotels might have caught this as well). Nonetheless, it's a welcome change that they noticed it
The approval polls are by the same media outlets that falsely claimed Clinton would win in a landslide so I wouldn't put too much faith in their accuracy.
We know Russia interfered in US elections, and it's easy to see that Trump is their favorite candidate, which is circumstantial, but still.
No, you don't! Nobody knows that Wikileaks got their info from Russia. This is not something where you need a 7' guy slipping polonium tablets into your drinks: any guy in his mom's basement w/ enough brains can do it, and Wikileaks is far more than that. Plus the Obama intel agencies were heavily politicized and not above manufacturing evidence to suit the claims of their higher ups.
Furthermore, that Trump basically ignored American citrus farmers makes some of these points salient. Though he won Florida, so who knows.
When formerly sovereign states chose to submit themselves, even in part, to a federal government, there is tension between "all the states are equal" and "some states are larger (in population)". This is not just a rural vs urban situation. Each State has distinct state interests, but also share interests with other States. In the US Congress, this tension is reflected in part by the Senate having two members per state, regardless of population, as the Senate represents the States and the House having members apportioned based on population (but with the total number of Representatives capped) as the House represents the people.
As and aside, the member countries of the EU have distinct national interests but also share common interests with other EU members. Thus in the European Parliament, each member state has a minimum fixed number of MEP, regardless of population, with additional MEPs allocated based on population, but with the total number of MEPs capped. Each of the 28 member nations has at least 6 MEPs, with Germany--the most populous member nation--receiving the maximum of 96 votes. The President of the European Commission is the most powerful position in the European Union, controlling the Commission which collectively has a monopoly on all Union legislation and is responsible for ensuring its enforcement. This person is elected based on the same sort of apportionment. Virtually the same mechanism as the US Electoral College--in terms of balancing states vs population--is used to elect the EU President, except it is the Parliament that elects the EU President and not a separate body specifically for the purpose. But the mechanism is very similar.
In the federal government we have in the USA, each State in the Union gets a say in the election of the President. Each State has its own distinct interests but also share common interests with other States. The total number of members of Congress each state has is the basis for the total number of votes for President each state has in the Electoral College. Since each State has two Senators and at least one Representative, each state receives a minimum of three votes, with California--the most populous State receiving the maximum of 55 votes. The number of Representatives is currently capped at 435 (the apportionment of Representatives to States is adjusted every 10 years, based on the census), and the number of Senators is currently 100 (as we have 50 States), and the District of Columbia is also given 3 votes for a total 538 which implies that 270 votes are needed to win the EC. One interesting feature of the EC is that it is transient and the Constitution bars any federal official, elected or appointed, from being an elector. We could have just used Congress directly instead of the EC, but this helps prevent any sort of tit-for-tat manipulation like "if Congress elects me, I will sign whatever bills Congress passes".
Under the Constitution, each state is free to determine how they appoint their Electoral College voters and how they are supposed to vote: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector." Currently, every State uses a popular election to select EC voters (and all but two use a winner-take-all method), but there's nothing preventing a State from passing a law allowing the Governor to simply appoint whomever he chooses (i.e., no popular election at all) or from using a proportional assignment based on election results.
The electors meet and cast their respective votes for President, and assuming there is a majority winner the process is just about complete.
The EC is not usually deliberative, especially since most Electors are Party faithful who are almost guaranteed to do their appointed job. But there are fall-back rules if
The result was in the margin of error for most trusted polls, so can we please put this silly argument to bed? :)
Admittedly, the college as a group of people should probably be abolished, the idea of a state granting votes to a candidate can stay.
Putting that much power into the hands of ~600 people is crazy. At least some states put limitations of what an elector can legally do (though it would only punish them for wrong doing after the election took place).
Since there are different solutions that would have shifted, rather than solved the problem, why not solve this by having two fields addressing time? One being date, and another being year? Date can be a data type dependent on year, so that it'll know when to include Feb 29th, and so on. The year can be an unsigned integer starting from 0 and ending at year 2^64. That way, in the year 2^64, all that people will have to do would be make a simple change to the year field to make it 2^128, and so on.
Yeah, I'm ignoring the doomsday prognostications that predict that the earth will be toast in a few billion years: the idea is to make this a simple to solve issue in future.
It's not about rural vs urban, per se.
Wikipedia:
The...Great Compromise...was an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that in part defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution. It retained the bicameral legislature as proposed by Roger Sherman, along with proportional representation in the lower house, but required the upper house to be weighted equally between the states. Each state would have two representatives in the upper house.
On May 29, 1787, Edmund Randolph of the Virginia delegation proposed the creation of a bicameral legislature. Under his proposal, membership in both houses would be allocated to each state proportional to its population; however, candidates for the lower house would be nominated and elected by the people of each state. This proposal allowed fairness and equality to the people. Candidates for the upper house would be nominated by the state legislatures of each state and then elected by the members of the lower house. This proposal was known as the Virginia Plan.
Less populous states like Delaware were afraid that such an arrangement would result in their voices and interests being drowned out by the larger states. Many delegates also felt that the Convention did not have the authority to completely scrap the Articles of Confederation,[1] as the Virginia Plan would have.[2] In response, on June 15, 1787, William Paterson of the New Jersey delegation proposed a legislature consisting of a single house. Each state was to have equal representation in this body, regardless of population. The New Jersey Plan, as it was called, would have left the Articles of Confederation in place, but would have amended them to somewhat increase Congress's powers.[3]
At the time of the convention, the South was growing more quickly than the North, and Southern states had the most extensive Western claims. South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia were small in the 1780s, but they expected growth, and thus favored proportional representation. New York was one of the largest states at the time, but two of its three representatives (Alexander Hamilton being the exception) supported an equal representation per state, as part of their desire to see maximum autonomy for the states.
An article presenting a Trump action in a positive light...on SLASHDOT??? Pink elephants must be ice skating in hell.
Hyperbole aside, this is but one example of how ridiculous the "administrative state" has become in America. Ronald Reagan once said "a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth." This Y2K requirement is perhaps one of millions of such examples. I'm not particularly fond of Trump himself but anything he does to reduce the awful sprawl and inefficiency of government is something we should all be in favor of regardless of which side of the aisle our politics fall on.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
At some point, completely uncritical thought actual renders you not truly conscious.
The Electoral College does not require any state to have a "popular vote" at all, let alone a country-wide popular vote.
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."
California could tomorrow pass a state law that says that the sitting Governor will appoint all the state's electors. No election at all. New York could pass a law tomorrow that says that the State Legislature will be allowed to act as Electors and cast their vote based on their personal decision. No election at all. Imagine they had both done that 5 years ago. The election results in the EC are the same (Clinton still loses) but without the "popular vote" counts from those two states (heck, from just California) there is no "popular vote" plurality for Clinton.
There is no requirement for a popular vote because, Constitutionally speaking, the President does not represent the people. He (or eventually she) is more like the CEO of federal government. Just look at the Presidents powers and duties:
Section 1
1: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.
Section 2.
1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
Section 3
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
Section 7
1: All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
2: Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be recons
you left out tip-top
Though "Bristol fashion" should be made popular once more.
I wonder if there was some other motive for this activity. (Possibly classified). While I guess it's possible this was a project that just went on automatic pilot, it seems more likely there was a side benefit some group in government was using. Time could well prove this is yet another example of how Trump does/says things without understanding them. It's odd that 2 other presidents could miss something like this. Although they perhaps were doing more important things.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
He's also stopped research on the wheel...and fire as well.
Wow. You sure spent a LOT of time writing all that, just to say absolutely nothing of relevance.
Its really quite bizarre.
you seem more of an expert than many who claim to be. :D
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
So the average 40 hour a week American works 2,000 hours a year. So he saved the Pentagon the equivalent of 1 person. 1,200 man hours is nothing
Would someone think of all the people becoming unemployed due to this? That 1200 (wo)main-hours/year alone is a part-time job in itself, helping a poor family make ends meet. What will their children eat now, you traitor?.. Will the employee now have to find work in Walmart, or — as is more likely — in one of Trump's hotels?!
Eliminating government jobs lowers the salaries in the job market — as the laid off bureaucrats desperately seek new employment however inferior to the good solid jobs they held, have you thought of that? Of course, you didn't, you bible-trumping redneck!!..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why didn't two republican and two democrat presidencies, and 32 congresses do anything about it?
Yeah, they make too much law to ever manage efficiently or effectively.
It would be nice if half of all American citizens, uniformly randomly selected, could fully know and grasp all of American law without disruption to their quality of life, or the quality of life of others.
No nation can do this. Humans are unmanageable by humans. .. Sad!
Obviously the parts specific to the Y2K problem are pointless, but they're only a small part of what those documents mandate. Most of what's in them is, by modern standards, best practices or common sense:
* Keep an inventory of the systems you manage.
* Document the links of each system to core business processes and other systems, and understand the potential impact of the system becoming unavailable.
* Develop contingency plans for each system becoming unavailable.
* Determine whether you can access the underlying data held by each system and if necessary convert it to different formats. Be prepared to move away from it.
* Document potential maintainability problems with each system, such as access to source code and the ability to run on new hardware and operating systems.
* Develop formal test plans and policies for new software, including unit, integration, and system tests.
* Adopt formal configuration and change management systems.
You could edit out the references to Y2K, and about 95% of what the documents mandate still makes sense. This is probably why nobody ever bothered to formally retract these guidelines.
The question is, are there other guidelines that still mandate these commonsense best practices? Quite likely. But the point is it isn't as simple as looking at the title of the document and say, "we don't need that any more." You need to think about what's actually *in* the document.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And where can I buy a Fuchsia device? Are there already billions of them in the world?
There is no evidence that Trump has committed a crime,...
apart from the considerable evidence of obstruction of justice.
Not an american but you guys should seriously consider getting rid of the electoral college.
Not likely to happen. Only the winner of an election could change the rules, and no one would change a system that allowed them to win.
Sure, the Tea Party. Full of protestors out silencing people using violence, claiming that if a law gets changed people will literally die (count all the Progressives/Dems who claim that thousands to millions will die if ACA gets changed, or from the US pulling out of the Paris Accords), threatening to blow up the White House, and claiming that the streets should be full of violence due to an election.
That is snark, just in case you miss it.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Lets see, at this point of his presidency Obama was getting flack for being a "secret Muslim", failing to cough up his full birth certificate & putting the wrong kind of condiments on his hamburger. Trump conversely is under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice, possible (if unlikely) Russian election meddling collusion, Trump university fraud, mental health concerns, influence peddling, etc. Complaining about "unfair coverage" between the two of them is like trying to say that the media is being unfair for failing to give equal airtime to one story about someone guilty of forgetting to tip their waitress and another story about an armed bank robber running through downtown waving around a lit flamethrower screaming racial slurs interspersed with "pro-US" statements. Trump isn't being targeted, he just does soooooooo much stupid/criminal stuff that there is simply more to cover.
What? When the EC was invented, "urban voters" where a tiny minority.
You are justifying an ancient strange system based off some current quirks of what it does, and pretending that is "why".
The electoral college is working as designed. If one were to ignore the votes in New York City and Los Angeles -- not even the states of New York and California, but just the two most populous cities across the fruited plain -- Trump wins by half a million votes.
This is an argument I don't quite understand. Why do people keep on making these absurd comments: "If you remove this carefully defined stronghold of one of the candidate, then the other one would have won." That is usually what happens in close races when you remove strongholds. Every time I hear that argument come by, what I really hear is "I don't like this vote, so I am going to pretend it does not exists".
Also, note that the electoral college, does not give more power to rural areas. It gives more power to low population states.
What gives more power to rural areas is the winner takes all rule. By congressional district, you would still have an electoral college with a reinforcement of less populated states, but you would have an election that represent better the population decision.
Winner takes all, and gerrymandering are just tools for the minority to impose its will in a broken electoral system.
Both sides hypocritically switched positions on a dime when the current turn of events came up, but the sheer depth of hypocrisy of Republicans keeps managing to astound me
So by your own admission they're both hypocritical fucks, but the Repubs are somehow worse about it.
THIS is everything wrong with American politics BOTH sides are fucking horrifying, but each is supported because hey, the other guys are worse, right?
> The American people have spoken and want Donald Trump as President.
46.1% of American people, you mean.
Buy your popcorn early on 18 Jan 2038 folks, the festivities start a little after 7pm PST.
At our level (200 personnel) we had 2 people dedicated to keeping track of such things as one of their primary duties and another 15 as a part time duty. Can't tell you how much time I wasted on this kind of paperwork over a twenty years but it was substantial.
and you are a retard 24/7
No, If the situation was reversed - you'd have a lot of upset Trump supporters - but they'd grin and bear it. You simply don't get that same deranged anti-democratic sentiment from the Right when they lose. Where were the riots in the streets when Clinton or Obama won?
There were no riots when Trump won. Your point is?
Are you talking about the Democratic nomination Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton?
The fact is the Electoral college worked exactly as it was supposed to.
Did it?
Did the writers of the constitution want a winner-take-all system for the electoral college votes in a particular state, or were they thinking that the obvious way would be to divide electoral college votes proportionally?
The fact that EC votes are by state also gives more power per voter to voters in less populated states. Is that fair?
You did not respond to the substance of the assertion that big cities run the nation. All you did was say "no" and then proceeded to view this as an expression of power for some reason.
As of May 27, 2017, the United States has a total resident population of 325,120,392, making it the third most populous country in the world.[1] It is very urbanized, with 81% residing in cities and suburbs as of 2014 (the worldwide urban rate is 54%).
And the wikipedia citation leads to this graph by the UN.
How is it possible that 81% of the population would not rule the nation? Supposing that "cities" is defined very loosely, the top 3 classes of city size compose 50-60% of the urban population. That's 40.5-48.6% of the population. How do you expect that the interests of the other people would be represented? How do you say "no" to this premise?
Geography is one of the most important factors in your views and the things that you think are important because most problems are localized. Big cities might have issues with terrorism or gang violence and farms in the middle of nowhere are likely to have big issues with weather or pollution. There's no jihad on the Nebraska farms. Precisely how is this not relevant to selecting politicians?
Additionally, there's no reason why a plurality can't be broad, nationwide support even if it's not a majority.
Also, a lot of people miss that the United States wasn't set up to allow direct selection for the President. The states themselves are supposed to cast votes for the President and the federal government is supposed to be lightweight, essentially handling the common defense and not a whole lot else. This is why the Electoral College was set up, to handle the selection of President by the states. The states actually have no requirement to take a popular vote, it's just that they all do by convention. This leads to secondary effects like the ability to go against the will of the people in that state, but those are secondary effects and not the reasons for it in the first place.
What you should really be arguing for if you're interested in expression of voting preferences as "power" is a removal of the first past the post system. Proportional representation and other systems allow more political choice than two crap ones. Not the removal of the Electoral College.
The electoral college is not meant to stop a tyrant. It was to keep populous states from being the only voice heard, and giving sparsely populated states a seat at the table . USA is a democratic republic. Democratic at the state (popular vote wins at state level), and representative at the federal ( every state get a vote at the federal level). I also doubt your claim to not be an american. Your opinion is too deep to be someone with a casual interest. Where your understanding of american politics comes from? If your source of knowledge, only denotes something a bad ( with an exception for a very few subjects) , then your source is an opinion and only half complete . I pose this question to you. What would be something positive for having an electoral college?
I think it is important to note that even with this system there still a secession and a subsequent Civil War that was triggered by the election of a divisive President.
This means that the DoD can start using two digits for dates again. And while that won't happen much it WILL happen. And old people or people injured in a previous war, etc. will get screwed in some way.
Does it really hurt to force them to keep their Cobol/other stuff pushing fixed text records around using 4 digits?
You don't seem to understand the federal elections happen at the state level. You don't understand the constitution.
You really are going to say there were no riots a>
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Nobody cafés about Y2K bug anymore.
This is a stand for the nest election: Trump had signed more laws then anyone else did.
This is an easy target. Expect more laws
tot follow.
You seem to forget that the Unites States of America are not one state. It is, as the name already suggests, a UNION of states.
The POTUS is elected by the states, not by the people. Democracy only happens inside the states by choosing which side the state shall vote for.
States get a certain amount of votes by default, then they get additional votes determined by their population.
Why that is a good thing can be shown in the following hypothetical scenario:
You wake up and the USA have changed. Suddenly there are small states that control 12% of the territory of the USA but harbor 60% of the population, who are living in hyperurban megacities.
30% are controlled by 30% of the population who mainly live in suburbs.
58% are controlled by 10% who live in mostly rural areas.
Ok, a new election cycle has begun when... Oh no, we need new money! Fast, who are we going to tax to keep the union from failing?
Now say we have 300 electoral votes in total. But since this utopia is a direct democracy, we can just get rid of them and choose the President by popular vote.
One candidate says: Tax everyone the same amount, this way everyone will be happy. But no one is happy getting taxed more.
Number two says: Tax the urban population the most. Well I guess, this guy ain't gonna be the preezy
Third one: I say we tax the rural and suburban faglords into oblivion. BAM! 60% of the votes, whe have a winner!
Fuck the guys living in rural areas. They chose this for themselves.
Doesn't sound like such an utopia.
Now let's say every state gets the same amount of votes, population isn't a factor.
Now you have a union where the farners and rednecks decide pretty much everything.
Fuck those guys living in the cities. They chose to have their voice be worthless by living there.
We have the territory, we get to control the ressources of the union!
Seems pretty dystopic to me.
Ok, let's try it again.
Every state get's 3 votes by default (150 votes distributed) and the rest according to population.
The Rurals now have 15(Pop) + 87(Ter) = 102 Votes
The Suburbans have 45(Pop) + 45(Ter) = 90 Votes
The Urbans lead with 90(Pop) + 18(Ter) = 108 Votes
Oh look, now we can't have a group imposing their will on the everyone else. Just how did this happen? It's almost as if someone actually put some thought into the system.
Want to fuck the Urbans? I guess they'll be fucked. The other two groups have more votes.
Want to fuck the Suburbans? Works too.
Rurals? Yep.
But wait...
Fucking with the suburbans (mid Pop, mid Ter) isn't as lucrative in the long run. Instead we can use them to swing the votes on matters like fucking with the other two groups. And that's what are called SWING STATES.
And the other groups know, that if they vote only for their own good, the Suburbans decide the outcome; their power is gone.
What happens? Urbans and Rurals have to sometimes vote against their own interests and be good to each other so that the suburbans don't get to fuck them both over.
And just like that they have to look at problems not only with their own eyes, but also think how it will effect the others.
In this configuration neither land nor people, but a healthy mix, get to say what happens.
Well, that's a system i can get behind.
tl;dr: The USA are NOT a democracy and never were supposed to be.
Then the answer is, "weight the individual elections by population." The Electoral College is a perfectly legitimate solution to the problem.
No, as has been mentioned, the EC does NOT weight the votes by population.
Guess who the real cancer on efficiency is. it's not the Republicans.
Bullshit.
If anything Republicans are the architects of government inefficiency. Democrats are only marginally better since they generally don't do stupid shit like holding votes to repeal or gut the ACA when there is no way the Senate or POTUS would go along with it. If the politician's goal was efficiency they would be working together to hammer out compromises before putting bills to a vote.
Reid had every right to do what he did, just as Lott, Daschle, and Frist did before him and McConnell does now. Just because a member of the other tribe had control of it then doesn't make it a good or a bad thing. I do agree that having one guy able to hold things up is not good, but it needs to apply to both tribes.
The House passing a bill that is completely unpalatable to the opposition that controls the Senate and/or the POTUS is fucking stupid and a complete waste of time. Pass something that doesn't contain poison pill amendments completely unrelated to the bill. Pass something that doesn't contain items completely antithetical to the other tribe's view.
In other words: Work together for the people, you fucking fucks.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
It should not be possible in a democracy for a person to be elected into the most powerful seat in the land by getting less votes.
Trump did not get less votes. He won 306 to 232.
Without the EC, only major urban areas would receive any attention, leaving smaller States to be subjects of the whims of the larger states.
TARP passed under Bush. Obama voted for it. I'm not even going to get into the weeds of establishing whether the clash-for-clunkers did anything worthwhile, slower than usual job growth that happened to go on for a long time, exactly how non-mainstream burned and lynched effigies of Obama were, or any of the other questionable assertions in your comment.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Try reading the federalist papers number 68. You may think you are having a intelligent debate, but you really sound like a moron. Much brighter minds have battled wits on this subject for year, and you barely grasp foundation of the concept.
This is just another example of the inherently racist nature of the Trump administration. We need another special council appointed immediately. We all know that Russia was behind Y2K. We need to understand what was going on here so we can get back to the important issues of trains (and trans) to nowhere and gender neutral restrooms!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Wrong. Its not on average.
It is right exactly twice a day. Exactly.
No matter what he does or how much sense it makes, the Democrats will find a way to bash Trump. This is an obsolete piece of regulation, but Democrats will somehow spin this into something bad. Washington is turning into a massive partisan witch Hunt thanks to the Democrats and their hatred for anything and everything Donald Trump does. There are regulations like this that need to be eliminated, but the left cannot bring themselves to admit that Trump might do something good. You leftists should be ashamed of yourselves. The American people have spoken and want Donald Trump as President. Get over yourselves.
I *WILL* bash Trump for:
- Not having any idea how to do his job, and not having the humility to learn from more experienced people, or even from his own mistakes
- Forcing those around him to constantly toss his salad, even unto the entire cabinet on national television (that was bizarre)
- Nepotism and cronyism to an extreme degree
- Constant, easily refuted lies, even about things that have no meaningful effect (e.g. crowd size)
- Complete lack of self-control
But this? This isn't so bad.
You're arguing with yourself. Leftists, and what a loaded term that is, haven't said shit.
And as a leftist who was crawling around under desks 17 years ago unplugging PC's at the request of a paranoid manager, I'm glad to see bad rules go away.
Talk about knee-jerk right wing snowflakes.
Explain how a Jr, Senator of the minority party caused a shut-down.
In this case, the procedural process called unanimous consent. Not to mention their own words and testimony. THEY CLAIMED THEY WANTED TO DO IT. And then they did it.
Perhaps you fell asleep?
Answer he didn't, neither did Utah's Mike Lee. In fact the actual blame for the shut-down if it can be assigned to any one person would be to Sen Harry Reid (D), the Senate Majority leader at the time.
Nope! He wanted to pass a bill to continue spending. But not the reckless, insane, moronic, House version.
And they wouldn't back down.
He refused to let any house budget bill he didn't like even be debated. Yes the House's first budget, demanding total recall of the ACA was too extreme. But that's negotiating, you start out asking for everything knowing that you'll compromise.
Nope, that's insanity. You start out with an extreme position, you put the other person in a position where they think less of you, since you're so outrageous. Then when they say no, and you redouble your efforts, as the House, actually did, twice, you convince them that you're further beyond the pale.
Real negotiations recognize the perils of such demands as you make, as you convince the other side that you are crazy.
The House then did compromise, passing multiple replacement budgets gradually diminishing their demands, Reid refused to let any of them be debated let alone voted on. He forced the shutdown and maintained it until the house leadership caved in.
Nope. The House multiple times, kept adding back in their demands, and even increased them. The Republicans in the House, even REFUSED to let anyone other than the Majority Leader in the House, Eric Canton(or someone Cantor said was his designee), offer a compromise. They changed the rules specifically to prevent any other group from coming together.
Cruz and Lee had NOTHING to do with any of that process. They had zero say in any of the Budget bills passed by the House, and zero say in what Reid let onto the floor of the Senate for debate.
Well, that means you're calling Cruz and Lee liars. Which I admit, they are, but they did claim they were responsible for the shut-down, that it was their purpose and intent. They weren't lying about that.
They put it in writing.
And they weren't the only ones.
Sorry, but the GOP picked up the Shutdown gun, and waved it, in their attempts to force their demands on the rest of us.
Guess who the real cancer on efficiency is. it's not the Republicans.
Sorry, but your completely "alternative" facts, doesn't pass the whiff test.
Shutdowns are Cruz's bread and butter. Yet he avoids responsibility
I get it though, the GOP doesn't want to admit to its own faults, so you try to blame anybody else. You did it for Trumpcare. You did it for the Iraq Withdrawal. You did it for Newt Gingrich's adultery.
Look, I get it, you're used to tweeting whatever you want, and nobody questioning it, but just like the Muslim Ban, what you say matters, and not everybody has the attention span of a goldfish.
What YOU fail to understand is that in a popular vote system the urban voters would ALWAYS decide the election in complete ignorance of the rural voters.
Not quite, to the federal government a "small business" depending on the sector can be $5 million to $50 million in size so a normal persons idea of a small business and there's is wildly different.
You motherfucking repugs whined and cried for 8 years over everything President Obama did. Now the tables are turned an you want everyone to stop complaining about Donald?
We had to listen to you guys for eight years. You'll only have to listen to us for four, . . . hopefully less, if some disgruntled 2nd amendment person riddled with buyer's remorse can figure out a way to assert their influence. (I'm sure there are plenty of them).
And, yes, the American people have spoken and their 37% approval rating says they want Donald out.
Fuck you, very much.
P.S. - Can't wait 'till mid-terms
Linux got 99.60% on the TOP500 list.. (the top 500 supercomputers)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You've been added to the list of possible deranged angry lib shooters. The FBI will be in touch shortly.
One guy here, one guy there, and suddenly you have a mass layoff.
I think everyone is missing the point of the EC.
News flash.... We are not a Democracy, we are a Republic with democratic principles.
The original colonies got together for mutual defence but were very concerned about other colonies not telling them how to live their lives.
Thus, each state would hold an election and send representatives.
Sure, some of it is bogged down in the technology of the era (how else do you do this back before even telephones,) but at the root is the fact that the people arent electing a president, the States are.
And personally I think that is a good thing. Its one more "inefficiency" the founding fathers baked into our government to prevent "the Tyranny of the majority."
This is a common misconception about the Presidential election.
The Senate and the Presidency were never meant to be elected directly by the people. In fact, the original process was for the State Legislators to select the Senate members for the State. Likewise, the election for the Presidency was to be done at the State level. That's why the Electoral College exists; to ensure that the person who gets the most State votes wins, and so that every region of the nation has a roughly equal voice. If this was not the case, all it would take is for someone to win the majority of the 8 largest cities, leaving entire regions of the country effectively voiceless when it comes to selecting the President.
Instead of one national election, think 50 State elections.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
He obstructed an investigation that never existed by merely expressing his wishes to a man who testified multiple times that he has NEVER been witness to obstruction of justice, including in that specific instance.
Truly a magical man, that Trump.
You need to get over your Trump Derangement Syndrome before you do something you can't take back.
But, for instance, that episode at the start of the series where he makes Comey admit that he's not under investigation over the Russia thing, then fires him, for which his staff give plausible reasons, then Trump says, no, I fired him because of the Russia thing, for which he's now under investigation. Is that closer to genius or imbecility?
You shouldn't need reminding that Russian interference in US elections was far more than Wikileaks.
No matter what he does or how much sense it makes, the Democrats will find a way to bash Trump.
Oh common. If there's one thing that's been made perfectly clear it's that everyone is happy to bash the orange blob equally. Democrats, republicans, foreign powers, news media of all sides. Lately the comedy of the Trump administration is the one thing that unites us all.
Our amazing illustrious and tremendously dear leader has slashed the federal budget to the tune of a 50% employed clerical worker, otherwise known as a TAKER. There is NO WAY that those reports could prevent more than $15,000 in fraud and abuse by a department with a paltry $523,900,000,000 budget. No way. God Damn, America is Great Again!
Trump could cure cancer and the left would be like "Trumps puts thousands of doctors out of work"
This is a common misconception about the Presidential election.
Actually, the misconceptions here are yours.
The Senate and the Presidency were never meant to be elected directly by the people.
The whole US government was constituted before there was an emphasis on the concept of universal suffrage, the same with states.
In fact, the original process was for the State Legislators to select the Senate members for the State.
Yeah, the state legislators FAILED in that, to the point where the people clamored for the direct election of Senators through the passage of the 17th Amendment.
Likewise, the election for the Presidency was to be done at the State level. That's why the Electoral College exists; to ensure that the person who gets the most State votes wins, and so that every region of the nation has a roughly equal voice. If this was not the case, all it would take is for someone to win the majority of the 8 largest cities, leaving entire regions of the country effectively voiceless when it comes to selecting the President.
You are severely mistaken, if you think that the Electoral College serves in any way to ensure that the person who gets the most State votes wins, or that ANY region of the nation has a voice. In reality, only 11 states are necessary to win the Presidency. I'm not sure how many of the largest cities are needed, but you claimed it ensured something. It does not. The Electoral College offers no such assurances. It has no controls or effects that would lead to that, none at all. There isn't even a defined method for the apportionment of the House, which is why we're stuck at 435 members.
This was actually one of the grievances of the Civil War, that Lincoln did not win a Southern State. In fact, there were proposals before the Civil War, to do something to reflect the regional divisions in the country.
Instead of one national election, think 50 State elections.
And by this system, we get less than 25% of the vote. Not even a run-off is necessary.
I'm sorry, GlennC, but you've bought into the myth of the Electoral College, to the point where you are stating factual untruths, and you may sincerely believe them, but you are severely mistaken. Only happenstance even keeps the 11 most populous states as diversely situated as they are, and even that isn't much.
That's a nice anecdote, but it doesn't matter who you trust. You aren't the decider of who should be the president.
Since you are not American I understand but the executive orders that he is signing are the ones that are rolling back the regulations.
So you call bailing out the car industry a good thing after bailing out the bank industry failed so miserably? Do you know what GM was pondering to save their company? Electric, they put that on the back burner after the bailout because they could simply continue mismanaging the existing lines.
Do you know which companies didn't fail? Tesla, Ford, Volkswagen, Nissan, ... Would the world have been worse off without GM and Chrysler? Probably not, they're the shittiest cars contributing the most to pollution and garbage. Did it save any jobs? No, the now-bailed-out car companies took the money and moved their factories to Mexico and beyond and imported large swaths of foreign workers for any technological job, job growth was at best anemic during Obama's presidency and only after he declared that people that haven't been in the work force for 6 months are no longer unemployed, but higher taxes and employer costs drove any natural growth back into the ground.
There's no smoke in Russia, the whole thing is blown out of proportions by the media, they're fanning at a tree log hoping it will spontaneously combust. We've had weeks of Congressional hearings, even Comey had nothing interesting to say other than conjecture. Even the GOP doesn't want Trump but both of them combined can't find anything remotely impeachable. If you're talking about smoke, we KNOW Hillary had involvement with the Russians and a bunch of others to influence both Obama and the Hillary elections because she fucking wrote it in an e-mail.
Find me an e-mail from Trump to the Russians, even Obama ordering the NSA to spy on Trump (or as the media likes to call it "uncover the identities of collateral spy action against potential American citizen terrorists on American soil") couldn't find any hard evidence. We can find Weiner's dick pic but we can't find electoral fraud on massive scales?
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So you're saying if we got rid of the extra 2 electoral votes per state then Trump would have lost. This is false. Hillary won about 20 states to Trump's 30. Subtracting out the extra two votes gives Trump 246 and Hillary 192.
The real issue was the winner take all part of the system. With winner take all it is mathematically possible to win 25% of the popular vote and still win the election. With the extra 2 votes, it's even worse.
Chris Mesterharm
If you're getting paid to troll, your benefactor should know they're not getting their money's worth, with lame, half-hearted shots like that.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The fact is the Electoral college worked exactly as it was supposed to.
In that the Electoral College has no express purpose or intent in which its design actually functions, I suppose you could say that is true.
The fact is, even the founders knew it was bogus, as soon as the Election of 1800.
But if we did not have the Electoral college Trump would have campaigned differently and likely would have still pulled out a win.
Speculation, isn't it?
He knew CA and NY were automatic losses, so he didn't spend much time campaigning in those states (but he didn't totally ignore them). Meanwhile Clinton ignored several smaller states that had previously voted Democrat, and she lost in those states. Not visiting Wisconsin and other states hurt her and cost her those states.
Sure man, and did you notice that Trump in 2016 (1,405,284) got fewer votes in Wisconsin than Bush did in 2004(1,478,120)?
I bet you never even thought to look!
The EC is not a static body as you seem to think with your comment that the EC should have stepped in.
That's what the people who purport the EC as a deliberative body claim, now isn't it?
The Electors of each State are appointed by and from the Party that wins the election in that state. Thus the EC will represent the President.
And that's why the EC is NOT a body of Deliberation, KIUAS was actually pointing that out for you, you just didn't listen.
Except for the occasional faithless elector, of which there were more Democrat electors who chose to be faithless than Republican Electors. Funny the losing candidate was so bad that she had more electors refusing to vote for her than the Boorish and widely disliked President did.
The electors were acting merely in a political pique, to make a point. Too bad you ignored it, and decided to interpret it as supporting your preferred narrative.
I suggest you study our system a little better, you'll find out that it worked exactly as designed, ensuring a broad nationwide support for the President, not just a few High population centers.
I suggest you study the system a little better, you'll find out that it failed exactly as pointed out already in 4 previous elections, and furthermore, I suggest you study the vote, and realize that BOTH candidates had broad nationwide support, but also BROAD nationwide opposition, even to the point of a loss of turnout. That's right, as Kiuas pointed out, the number of people supporting either candidate was not even a majority of the vote.
You should also study what Kiuas is saying, but I suspect you can't, because that would require you to face up to the idea that you have to think about what you're saying and doing, and be responsible for it.
And there is no need at all to eliminate or modify it at all.
And this is stupid, the failure to properly apportion the House alone is quite evident, check out the Wyoming Rule.
There is no reason to fix the House at 435 members, and we should change that, if nothing else.
But you're too stuck in the idea that you can't change anything, you can't fix anything, because there's nothing wrong.
That's mindless zealotry.
And frankly, the most telling point of all this comes from mpercy:
The Electoral College does not require any state to have a "popular vote" at all
That is the truth that exposes the problem.
If there is one thing I've learned about US politics, is that nothing is ever done unless it somehow benefits those who are putting it forward.
I suggest you take a deep, long look at your statement and examine why you're posting the way you are. Much less on a tech. site of all places.
Alas, I know you won't examine this, since right leaning people tend to lack the ability to perceive alternate viewpoints that may, or may not, contradict their own.
Best of luck in your myopic future!
Y2K was shorthand for Year 2000.
Y2K38 doesn't save you any space at all, the K does nothing and makes it unnecessarily confusing.
Y2038 or just 2038 bug would be sufficient I think.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Huh. Encoding issues from a diehard "Trump supporter" spouting propaganda.
Why EVER could that be?
You can also argue that Reagan's economic policies very much did harm the country. He set back solar power decades, eliminated the ability for us regular folk to deduct our credit card interest, don't forget Iran Contra.
No President is perfect, Bill Clinton allowing the divide that kept investment banking separate was completely moronic and very much lead to the economic crisis that Bush Jr did absolutely nothing to abate and a whole lot to promote.
This is why political parties are stupid in the first place. This idea that conservatives are 100% conservative and that liberals are 100% liberal is crazy. The voting population keep voting for people that won't work with the other side, as result we can bad laws regardless of who is in power. You also can't stop people from assembling into groups since that is just their freedom of expression.
Congressman from Alabama talking about the shooting recently I think said it well, while I definitely don't identify with most Republicans I can agree with him on this point. Freedoms have costs and downsides, nothing we do will be 100% good for everyone. The gun violence in this country we largely accept because cure is considered worse than the disease. The 2nd amendment is important and part of the Constitution so we should respect it. If too many people don't treat their gun ownership seriously though further regulation will happen as the downsides of freedom start waying more than the upside. As a Vermonter, gun safes are extremely common and a very basic way to secure your firearms. This idea that you're going to shoot an intruder in your home needs to stop. For every person that does that there are millions that don't or worse, harm someone else as they shoot through a wall.
People need to act responsibly or they will find they can't have nice things. As someone that prefers guns to remain legal I wish more people would take it seriously. The NRA does more harm than good at this point.
You are probably correct. However, when the system finally fails it might force an upgrade/replacement or retirement of the system. Sometimes catching fire is the only way we cook our sacred cow burgers.
Or the old guy retires.
Seriously - I've seen this happen. "Most Important Process" in the place is handled by "one" person who quits because s/he can't get away from doing the process. No matter how many times they brought it up for review, nope "this is the most important process" - even attempts to be promoted to a new job/role and management sticks the task with them. So they quit. Then nobody is assigned to do the job (maybe a few cracks at it on a volunteer basis) - but in the end the task goes undone for an extended period of time before finally somebody officially declares it obsolete.
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Sounds like a lot, I guess.
The F-35 Is a $1.4 Trillion Dollar National Disaster — April 2017
So if we amortise the JSF program over 40 years, the $1.4 trillion outlay / pork gravy works out to $1100/s (more than even Eliza "meth" Millipede can make stuffing fliers at home).
Is 1200 hours/year of accounting oversight on a relatively small financial leak unjustified?
Personally, I'd crank some numbers before jumping to a hasty conclusion, because this is the ultimate haemorrhage in all of recorded history.
I happen to mostly take complaints about the information system with a grain of salt. Integration problems are hard, and things will probably improve with a combination of time, experience, and more $$$ guzzling everywhere (perhaps in some cases to good effect).
Incompetent epsilon-signature airframe, abetted with movable mission goalposts, have a far worse long-term prognosis.
But no, apparently the problem here is too much picayune cost control.
Personally, I'd crunch some serious numbers before supporting that assertion in any direction.
Actually, neither a majority nor plurality of the American people who voted did not want Trump as president, but Trump won the president game, playing by the rules. Nevertheless, what the American people want is orthogonal to what is good or wise policy, because most Americans are idiots.
Every single republic I can think of makes it possible to win with less popular votes.
The USA is not unique, or even rare in that respect.
If you read that article you will find that it only supports the parent. Obama didn't refuse to negotiate with Republicans. They refused to fund a bill that had passed the house, senate, and supreme court. There was nothing to negotiate at that point.
Obama famously tried to negotiate with Republicans early in his Presidency which ended up crippling Obamacare. Everytime he tried to collaborate with Republicans they bit his hand as hard as they good. Mitch McConnell said outright in the very beginning he would do everything in his power to obstruct Obama from accomplishing any of his goals. Hillary even had the famous statement, if they go low, we go high. She lost because taking the high road doesn't work out anymore.
Republicans are much more organized than Democrats, that is the main reason they keep winning. Both parties have their problems but you're kidding yourself if you think they are equally bad.
Just like the question of gerrymandering. Both parties do this and it is bad for everyone, Republicans do it on a much larger scale though because again, they are organized and work together. Slightly less so these days as Trump has an amazing ability to make everyone hate him. You can't support the guy because one minute he wants to do one thing for reason A, the next minute its for a completely different reason Z. So jumping in only makes you look like an idiot who is just kissing up to the President.
The Mayans had a similar issue with the 2012 bug.
Since they ran out of room on the huge rock they carved the calendar on, they just figured time would end and they'd never have to worry about 2012.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
By that comparison Timothy McVay should make all liberals wet their pants. Wack jobs are wack jobs whatever their political affiliation. You should try to realize that most people are inherently good. The left most definitely does not condone violence, a few years ago people were making fun of leftists because they would fall down over least upsetting things. Now they are murders and thugs and rioters.
Their are bullies on both sides of the isle. I would argue that the left has no equal to Rush or Newt, or Ann Coulter, or even Tomi Lahren. Who on the left have you ever heard sound that angry all the time? Who on the left is publicly calling for violence? You can always find Internet tough guys but that is hardly representative and certainly not listened to by the millions like the audience for Rush Limbaugh. Ironically I used to listen to his radio show more than 20 years ago, he was much more reasonable then. He, along with Ann Coulter realized they could make a lot more money dialing up the partisan rhetoric. Who is making the same money on the left? Democrats outnumber Republicans in this country so in theory the audience for consuming that should be even greater.
Right, the Republicans are so wonderfully non-partisan. That's why everything is always the Democrats fault. Honestly, do you even read what you write?
While I agree with your assessment the parent was not talking about it is so much as how is was supposed to be.
Right now with the system the way it is a minority is holding sway over the majority. A majority of this country understands that pesticides so toxic the EPA recommends they be outlawed should actually get outlawed, a minority of people, mainly Tim Pruitt went on to allow their use anyway. This is a direct result of the states that went for Trump.
This has been happening consistently since the 90s and has been getting worse. Personally I don't understand how you vote for someone that has absolutely no qualifications to be President but enough people did and here we are. I only hope the country doesn't suffer as much as a lot of people think we will with increasingly evidence to support the assertion.
The reason we need the small business paperwork: Before this rule came into effect those businesses were owned by big pocketed donors. Some of which were the ones charging $50 for a $5 screwdriver.
Yeah, $5 for the screwdriver and $45 for the necessary government paperwork.
This is the most true statement on this page.
The electoral college is an attempt to balance political power between rural and urban voters.
That's what many US school history books say. However, US school history books have to be approved by groups of political appointees in every state who are kind of famous for not wanting any uncomfortable truths put into them.
Turns out we have extensive documentation over the constitutional deliberations on this matter. A simple plebiscite for President was preferred initially by some, but would not fly with the slave states. At the time, only land-owning (white) men were generally allowed to vote, and the plantation society in those states was centered around a very few big landowners and oodles of landless workers/slaves. This meant in a simple popular vote for POTUS, slave states would have almost no say. Northern free states with their small family farms and shopkeepers would vastly outvote them. Their only hope would be to enfranchise their slaves (which of course is essentially an oxymoron).
The Electoral College's entire purpose in its weird indirect design was to give slave states a voice in electing a POTUS proportional to their population, rather than to the amount of humans they actually allowed to vote. Slave states were even allowed to include their slaves (well, 3/5 of them) in this count. During elections, if some states didn't even have a vote for POTUS (and many didn't for the next 100 years) that was their business.
Certianly there are other justifications for the EC that you hear today (if there weren't we would have ditched it long ago). However, Slavery is the reason it came to be in the first place.
First you state that the democratic will of the people is sometimes wrong and the electoral college should correct it
No, I did not say that's what I think, I said I'm under the impression that that's the reason behind EC's existence.
That is, the founding fathers were smart enough to understand that there are times in which the democratic will of the people may be hijacked, and this is where the electoral college could step in and make a more rational choice.
A lie.
I understand why the system is the way it is, I just think it's never worked as intended and is in fact hampering political progress in the US by making you guys far more susceptible to weak forms of populism wherein people can game the populace of the sparsely populated areas into voting them into power and then screw not just the country folks but everyone over. It's utterly nonsensical as a mechanism.
You ignored why the electoral college system was put in place, ignored the bicameral congressional system and argued post hoc from the false premise that enforces your original position even after someone explained why it was false.
If the US had a direct equal vote all that a politician would have to do is pander to the desires of the top few cities and the other 95% of the us would have no say. By having the election system that you want, the negative outcome you are trying to avoid is guaranteed.
Finally, what is this bashing populism nonsense. Democracy is a subset of populism. Everyone's everyday concerns deserve to be heard. There is nothing wrong with caring about everyone's values, even if a portion of people share a minority of values.
Really this whole engagement has been willfully ignorant on your part to enforce a foregone conclusion that is self-defeating. A very frustrating conversation to have when one values logic, reasoning, and is educated on the issues by books, history, law, and higher education instead of merely informed by news articles and political gamesmanship.
Still, you will still likely win support from the uninformed via an ironic use of the same populist tactics you abhor. After all 53% of the US voting population are biased in your favor and the majority of the world uses even more biased parliamentary systems and loves getting on the US hate train. Such is human nature, wanting your view to win regardless, knocking whomever is in power down a notch, bias first, reasoning later, honesty last of all.
How important is it to balance the urban & rural votes?. If we ever get to the point where 90% of the population lives in cities and 10% are rural, should the vote of the 10% count as 50% of the electoral college?
This gets particularly problematic as the cities are increasingly where the action is, economically, while rural areas cling to fading industries and also-ran ways of life. Hell, the reason cities become cities is because of in-migration, typically because that's where the jobs are.
Balancing urban and rural means giving a louder voice to the ones that progress has left behind. Time to ditch that paradigm.
The left considers violence wrong except in very specific circumstances.
Of course (Vol. I)!
Of course (Vol. II)!
Of course (Vol. III)!
Of course (Vol. IV)!
Oh my, somebody is a quote-miner, and hoping to come up with gems? Sadly, you've got a bunch of duds!
You aren't even being honest about them.
Seriously man, hoping Ailes dies a painful death is not a call for violence. It is unsympathetic, but hey, guess what? It happens on your side. Nor is accurately describing a murder victim as a bigot a call for violence either. That's wanting to be truthful. Warts and all.
And Madonna's words were clearly describing a state of mind which she rejected as an action.
You shouldn't lie. Especially with the number of people on the right claiming their words were twisted and misrepresented. These were mentioned in comments about those quotes already, so you should know to look at them with more scrutiny yourself.
And of course, there are already lists pointing out the right's calls for violence, and their own vicious statements. Well, actually, they're a decade old by now.
You think people forget? Well, I can't say you are entirely wrong.
How many of these do you remember?
As they say, the log in your eye is quite conspicuous. Go compile a list of your own sins, then repudiate them.
You make the mistake most of the others on here make. The Electoral College may not boost the power of the VOTERS in the small states, but it does boost the power of the states.
As conceived by the Framers of the Constitution, the voters of the United States do not decide who the President will be, the States do. The fact that all states currently allocate their Electoral College representatives based on the results of an election does not change the fact that the Constitution gives each state legislature complete freedom to select their EC representatives in any manner they so choose.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If you want to get rid of the two party system, get rid of government support for party primaries. Let the parties select their candidates however they like...if they want to do it via an election, let the parties pay for that election.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
So you call bailing out the car industry a good thing after bailing out the bank industry failed so miserably?
If you wanted something different, you should have told us. Sadly, Mitt Romney only said "Let Detroit go bankrupt" which was a tone-deaf approach at best.
He was really just saying it because the party hated Obama, not because he had an alternative.
Do you know what GM was pondering to save their company? Electric, they put that on the back burner after the bailout because they could simply continue mismanaging the existing lines.
Republicans, besides hating Obama, also hate Electric Cars.
Do you know which companies didn't fail? Tesla, Ford, Volkswagen, Nissan, ...
Do you know which company needed millions in investment in 2009? Do you know which company had only shipped out a few hundred cars in 2009? Yeah, the first one you named. Tesla was totally irrelevant then, and even now, its sales are not terrible important.
Ford? Ford was in hock up to its EYEBALLs, and only survived because the dates were further off.
Volkswagen? It was recently caught in a emissions fraud, and have their own financial problems.
Nissan? Talk to the French and Japanese about that one.
No, the now-bailed-out car companies took the money and moved their factories to Mexico and beyond and imported large swaths of foreign workers for any technological job, job growth was at best anemic during Obama's presidency and only after he declared that people that haven't been in the work force for 6 months are no longer unemployed, but higher taxes and employer costs drove any natural growth back into the ground.
Sure man, it's not the dirt-cheap exploited labor overseas, or their own automation.
There's no smoke in Russia, the whole thing is blown out of proportions by the media, they're fanning at a tree log hoping it will spontaneously combust.
Russia is full of the tyranny that makes it worth resisting anyway.
We've had weeks of Congressional hearings, even Comey had nothing interesting to say other than conjecture.
Comey said he'd speak in closed session, and who knows what he said? Besides, Congress is half-assed about it, Republicans didn't help themselves by denying the investigation or running over to the White House to suck on Trump's cock.
Even the GOP doesn't want Trump but both of them combined can't find anything remotely impeachable.
The GOP wouldn't complain about Trump if he was pissing on their faces.
If you're talking about smoke, we KNOW Hillary had involvement with the Russians and a bunch of others to influence both Obama and the Hillary elections because she fucking wrote it in an e-mail.
Sure man, your history of misrepresenting emails and even the Uranium One deal really give your unsupported claim there.
Find me an e-mail from Trump to the Russians, even Obama ordering the NSA to spy on Trump (or as the media likes to call it "uncover the identities of collateral spy action against potential American citizen terrorists on American soil") couldn't find any hard evidence.
Because the evidence has been released and scrutinized? Huh? No, it hasn't. Trump hasn't even released his tax reports, but you know what he has done?
Started selling assets to mysterious shell companies with no defined owners.
Hmm.
We can find Weiner's dick pic but we can't find electoral fraud on massive scales?
Trump's the one who insists that exists, he's the one who wants it found. Because he wants his landslide.
Talk to Kobach if you don't like it. He's the man on the mission.
And where can I buy a Fuchsia device? Are there already billions of them in the world?
Fuchsia devices are only slightly behind Android 7 in terms of numbers. :-)
...They won't be ignored or abused...
I'm sorry... as a Fin you can't understand how wrong that statement is when talking about the US. The US is more than 11 times the geographical size of Finland and more than 300 times the population. The entire population of Finland could populate New York City and still have room to fit 300,000 more to match its current population. More than 62% of the entire United States Population, that's roughly 201,517,800 people, live in about 3.5% of the United States land area. That's move than 200 million people living in 126,657 square miles. 328,040 km^2. 200 million people living in Urban/suburban areas, working mostly in some form of commercial capacity: Retail, Construction, Industrial, Service, or Financial. Most of the people in these areas never venture out into the rural 96.5% of the country for anything more than a pass-through or pass-over...because that's boring, uninteresting, and not even worthy of a vacation. They do their vacation and business travel to other parts of the urbanized 3.5% ...where things actually happen and can keep them entertained. Because of this, those in urban areas don't usually give a rat's ass about what happens to 97% of this country so long as each of their personal wants are met (yay! runaway capitalism). Unless something is going catastrophically wrong out in the flyover states (the big open plain central area of the states that lie east of the Rockies and west of the Appalachians), like the dust-bowl of the Great Depression in the 30's, the majority of the population doesn't care if those in the rural areas have any kind of voice in politics...because those out in the rural 96.5% live boring, laborious, non-glamorous lives that the urbanites just don't want to deal with.
Why should someone living on the countryside have any more say in who rules over the entire country?
They don't. They only get more say in choosing who gets to put the rest of the population in check to keep the urbanites from overruling the farmers and ranchers. You're making the common mistake of seeing our President as the seat of America's power, when his power is actually very limited and easily reigned in by either Congress or the Supreme Court. See, our Congress is set up so that those who live in 3.5% of the territory get more seats in the House of Representatives than those who live in the 96.5% of the territory because there's more people living in the urban areas. This means that as a general rule, those who live an urban lifestyle have more power in Congress over those who live out in the rural areas. More simply, people who have absolutely no idea what it means to be a farmer or rancher have more ability to create regulations on what a farmer or rancher can and cannot do with their property, and the representatives for the rural area could be out-voted on the House floor. The House is the will of the people where the population gets its voice heard. Decisions made here get passed to the will of the States, the Senate, where every state has an equal vote (2 per state). In this way there's a bit more balance in the way Congress operates, but it is still VERY heavily population oriented. Congress is also where most of the power of the land rests. The President only gets to pick and chose which laws Congress comes up with actually make it into law. Executive orders directing the agencies of the Executive Branch (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc) are given more credit than they deserve. Congress can easily overrule them if they wanted to.
The check and balance to this in the Executive branch was for the EC to give more power to the rural areas on who gets to sit as President, as he's the one who gets the ability to Veto what he deems as an unfair law. In this way, the power of the president is supposed to be able to overcome the mob rule that could come through Congress, and only a sufficiently unified congress could override a Presidential veto.
Such as? And evidence?
As far as I am aware each state decides independently how their EC members are determined. They can do proportional, winner take all, a mix of the two or flip a coin. The only Federal rules are about how many representatives each state has in the EC. People who keep complaining about how the EC is run need to get out and push for reform on the State level, not the Federal.
As for a true popular vote, that is a failing solution on so many levels that it shouldn't even be mentioned in true electoral reform.
On just a pure size issue, a potential recount of 250 million votes would mean election results probably wouldn't be finalized until after inauguration day.
It also opens the floodgates for real voter fraud. Unlike the EC where local fraud has limited Federal impact (it can elect a single Congresspersons or even a Senator but could only impact a limited number of EC Presidential votes), in a popular vote system a few districts in a heavily populated areas could potentially impact the entire popular vote. The last election is a perfect example of this in that Hillary won the popular vote by upwards of 3 million votes but all of those votes came from a single state, California. In a pure popular vote system if a state that favors an R or D candidate decides to "loosen" their voter eligibility and let questionable voters cast ballots then potentially millions of votes would be illegally added to the federal count. Ignoring any of the as yet unproven claims about letting illegal immigrants vote in California, this type of relaxing of voter laws routinely happens even now in some districts (usually in the form of ignoring inmate rolls) but because of their limited impact nationally, all that usually happens is a couple of voter groups file lawsuits that go nowhere. If these votes were added to a federal tally then these lawsuits would most likely have to go all the way to the Supremes, adding even more time till a winner is determined.
The EC is not perfect but in a system made up of 50+ individual entities it may be as close as you're going to get.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
I wouldn't say challenge was balancing between urban and rural. It was balancing between states. The Constitution is sort of a treaty between states. It was dealing with some basic assumptions including:
1) Each state is sovereign and equal in sovereignty.
2) Trust no one.
First up: How do we legislate? Give equal representation to each state? Larger states saw that as unfair. Proportional to population? Smaller states saw this as unequal sovereignty. Screw it, let's just make things bicameral with each side using one of the representation rules. The Senate gets to represent states, Representatives represent the people of those states. Make both groups happy and you might have a good law that should apply to all states.
Next, how do we chose the president? Aw crap, same problems as before. How to balance equal sovereignty vs fairness to individuals. And whereas before deadlocks and impasses were ok for any particular issue, now we MUST make a decision. So how about a hybrid? EC is born.
Well, maybe the US Civil War was for the best. It's not good to compromise on everything.
Was it really about rural vs urban, or was it about state vs state?
Its interesting how you go out of your way to say that you are Finnish, and not as just a person from the EU. This means that you hold some allegiance to Finland and are proud of your country, and rightly so. This also probably means that you understand that the issues and needs of the people of Finland might be different than those of say, Greece.
Now, lets say that we do what you just said and merge all political power into the greater EU state. This means that 4 countries, Germany, Italy, France and England (if you still include them) control over 50% of the EU population. This means that they can group together and say, we are the most advanced, civilized part of the EU, unlike those backwards people from Frostover Country, and we should allocate most of the resources to central core. In fact, any ideals and values of those Frostover people, like Finland, are really silly and we should simply remove them. This is ok, because the people of France, England, Germany and Italy say so. They have more people after all.
If you are being honest, you will admit that as a proud member of Finland, you are not quite ready to abrogate all sense of history and identity. You like total population rule because 1. You are a member of the urban populace in Finland, not the sparse rural area, so it works for you. 2. You are not asked to yet asked to subsume your identity to a larger culture just because they out-breed you.
As a citizen of the U.S., I have lived in most of the regions of the country in my life. You may not understand this from afar, but the people of each state in our union have a different culture, ideals, and history than the other states. We are equally proud of our heritage and do not want to be forced by the whims of greater mass that out-breeds us. Especially one that has policies that lead to such human misery.
Also, for comparison, Finland has about the same population as the U.S. state of Minnesota. As the 22nd most populated sate, you would be apart of what New Work and Californians affectionately call flyover country. They say this because they believe all the people in the middle do not matter. Does this all make sense now?
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Butthurt rightwingnuts will get in their snowflakery before they're even attacked. At least the leftwing snowflakes wait until AFTER you say something to get offended and complain, but the rightwingnut snowflakes can't wait to be offended.
I was on a contract that most of the work technically ended years ago. The government keep funding the contract so each year the government and the contractors would find something to do with the money. The contract came up on a recompete. The government put out a RFP. The contractors company submitted a proposal along with a few other companies. One of the other companies was related to the Admiral that was over seeing the contract. The Admiral used his influence to select that company. When the other company took over that is when the government realized that the work ended years ago. So the new contractors had no jobs on the contract that they just won. The two companies and Navy went to court. That is how we found out the Admiral was related and he used his influence. Ruling was conflict of interest. Yet somehow we still lost the contract.
So I can see he y2k still sucking up money and still being funded. Some government and contractors are "working" and getting y2k money.
As far as I am aware each state decides independently how their EC members are determined. They can do proportional, winner take all, a mix of the two or flip a coin. The only Federal rules are about how many representatives each state has in the EC. People who keep complaining about how the EC is run need to get out and push for reform on the State level, not the Federal.
Nope! We need Federal Reform, for if no other reason, because the apportionment of the House is set by Congress. That we'd also need to replace the abomination that is the Electoral College is only part of it.
As for a true popular vote, that is a failing solution on so many levels that it shouldn't even be mentioned in true electoral reform.
You mean the Electoral College.
On just a pure size issue, a potential recount of 250 million votes would mean election results probably wouldn't be finalized until after inauguration day.
Goodness me, whatever would we do. They've never changed inauguration day before!
It also opens the floodgates for real voter fraud. Unlike the EC where local fraud has limited Federal impact (it can elect a single Congresspersons or even a Senator but could only impact a limited number of EC Presidential votes), in a popular vote system a few districts in a heavily populated areas could potentially impact the entire popular vote.
By Trump's own claims, the electoral fraud is nationwide, and thus calls into question the ENTIRE House and Senate, not just his own position.
We've got to take him at his word, and tear down the whole government. It's necessary.
The last election is a perfect example of this in that Hillary won the popular vote by upwards of 3 million votes but all of those votes came from a single state, California
Actually, the margin in California was 4,269,978. That's 1,401,287 more than the national margin of 2,868,691.
Maybe you should be asking yourself why Trump got fewer votes in California than Reagan in 1980.
And look at Wisconsin and Michigan. See a pattern?
Hmm. If you don't trust California, even though you have no evidence, why do you trust these other states?
Why do you mention California, and not anything else? Hmm.
In a pure popular vote system if a state that favors an R or D candidate decides to "loosen" their voter eligibility and let questionable voters cast ballots then potentially millions of votes would be illegally added to the federal count.
In our current system, our states are under fire for deciding to manipulate the voter eligibility ALREADY.
North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, Alabama they're all in court over their manipulations.
Both voter access AND legislative gerrymandering. We already have problems.
Ignoring any of the as yet unproven claims about letting illegal immigrants vote in California,
You mean the rampantly falsified claims? But you're ignoring the actually proven claims about denying people their right to vote in the aforementioned states...
I wonder why.
this type of relaxing of voter laws routinely happens even now in some districts (usually in the form of ignoring inmate rolls) but because of their limited impact nationally, all that usually happens is a couple of voter groups file lawsuits that go nowhere.
Oh, you mean Florida's illegal voter suppression? Where they falsely claimed tens of thousands of people were felons, when they weren't?
If these votes were added to a federal tally then these lawsuits would most likely have to go all the way to the Supremes, adding even more time till a winner is determined.
Lawsuits have already gone to the Supreme Court, and one electi
The entire population of Finland could populate New York City and still have room to fit 300,000 more to match its current population.
Correction on this. New York City has a population of about 8.5 million. So that means that there's a difference of 3,000,000 people between Finland and New York, NY; not 300,000.
If anything, this story shows Trump in better light than either Bush or Obama that he finally did something about it.
Meh. It's got nothing to do with the president; as you said yourself.
Its just low level bureaucratic machinery humming along. It didn't happen because Trump got elected; it wasn't his mandate. He just happened to be at the wheel the day it bubbled up through the works. Its certainly not Trump news. It's barely news at all, except in a 'fun fact' curiosity sort of way.
You sound like a n1gg3r lover.
You're basically proving my point about the issues with using the popular vote. Listing several states with still ongoing voting issues just goes to prove how long it would take to finalize a federal election based on popular vote. Taken at a state level, unless the number of affected votes would directly impact the results in that state, the court cases can continue while the state EC members could still be appointed. At a Federal level if any combination of results could tip the popular vote balance one way or the other then you could not finalize the election until all court cases and potential recounts are completed.
As for California, I mentioned them solely because they are an example of single state that pushed Hillary into the lead on popular vote. I don't know why you think strengthening my argument by showing they were actually MORE influential on pulling up Hillary's numbers helps your case? In fact as a few other people pointed out in this thread, if you want to go even further, New York City and Los Angeles county alone make up most, if not all, of Clinton's popular vote lead. The point is, if you make the Presidential election a popular vote contest then it takes only a few areas in the country where fraud has to occur to really impact the results.
With the billions spent on campaigning as well as the hyper partisanship from both parties at the State and local levels you don't think that if a few local politicians/campaign workers realize that they could pull a few strings to get more votes for their candidate and win the election that wouldn't happen? It already happens at a much smaller scale where the stakes are much lower (as you've so kindly pointed out with your links).
The EC effectively acts as a buffer to try and prevent local issues from becoming Federal issues.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
I imagine this one turned up because someone was given the task to look at all unnecessary regulations that can be undone, and the other ones just aren't as interesting/funny to report. If so it's the process that lead to this directive which is potentially useful.
can you show sources from places that are not as biased as breitbart and other rightwingnews?
you mean like obstruction of justice? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
You're basically proving my point about the issues with using the popular vote.
Not at all, rather the opposite. I'm pointing out that your confidence in a speedy return is misplaced, that your reliance on the Electoral College is a symptom of greater problems, and that we need to start caring more about the vote, overall, on a Federal level.
Listing several states with still ongoing voting issues just goes to prove how long it would take to finalize a federal election based on popular vote.
Gosh, if only we could move the inauguration date or something! But sadly, that's fixed in stone. Never changed, never can be changed.
Taken at a state level, unless the number of affected votes would directly impact the results in that state, the court cases can continue while the state EC members could still be appointed.
Actually, that's part of the problem, that the Electoral members CAN be appointed, even when the election is in doubt.
At a Federal level if any combination of results could tip the popular vote balance one way or the other then you could not finalize the election until all court cases and potential recounts are completed.
OMG, really? And? What's the problem? That was exactly what discredited the election in 1876 and 2000. They hurried, instead of doing things right.
Surely the New Hampshire Senate Election in 1976 is a better way to do things than just filling the seat.
As for California, I mentioned them solely because they are an example of single state that pushed Hillary into the lead on popular vote. I don't know why you think strengthening my argument by showing they were actually MORE influential on pulling up Hillary's numbers helps your case?
Because my case is based on your shallow analysis, your failure to actually look at the margin correctly, let alone consider the true ramifications of what happened in other states, is a problem. You don't even want to ask why Trump performed so poorly in California, let alone look at the drop in Wisconsin or Michigan, or any other state.
You just want to bring up California. That's all. Don't pay attention to anything else.
Maybe you should think about why you don't want to look at anything. And I haven't even begun to express my other concerns such as the low turnout, the lack of any run-offs, or any other measures that I'd prefer.
In fact as a few other people pointed out in this thread, if you want to go even further, New York City and Los Angeles county alone make up most, if not all, of Clinton's popular vote lead.
You mean the County with more population than 42 of the states has a big impact on the vote? Or the Five Counties with more people than 40 states?
Why don't you ask what happens when you remove over a million of Trump's voters?
Of course, if you really wanted to be honest, you'd admit that this election turned on less than 100,000 voters, which means a rainstorm could have changed the Electoral College results.
That's the sort of thing that makes me question the Election system we have, it does not inspire confidence.
The point is, if you make the Presidential election a popular vote contest then it takes only a few areas in the country where fraud has to occur to really impact the results.
The point is, if you contend there's potential fraud there, then why not look at the potential for fraud elsewhere? Oh wait, the REALITY of it.
With the billions spent on campaigning as well as the hyper partisanship from both parties at the State and local levels you don't think that if a few local politi
I'm sorry... as a Fin you can't understand how wrong that statement is when talking about the US.
I'm sorry, but as a person speaking for the US, you're more wrong than the Finn. Which isn't that much of a challenge, nor an accomplishment, others have done far far worse.
The US is more than 11 times the geographical size of Finland and more than 300 times the population. The entire population of Finland could populate New York City and still have room to fit 300,000 more to match its current population. More than 62% of the entire United States Population, that's roughly 201,517,800 people, live in about 3.5% of the United States land area. That's move than 200 million people living in 126,657 square miles. 328,040 km^2.
You should probably look at particulars of the population of Finland directly yourself, rather than just squeeze them into the bounds of New York City for no reason. It's kinda telling that you didn't mention how their population is distributed for some odd reason.
Or their history.
200 million people living in Urban/suburban areas, working mostly in some form of commercial capacity: Retail, Construction, Industrial, Service, or Financial.
Here's something else, most of the people living in rural areas are ALSO working in those capacities.
Farm labor is employing less and less. Tractors and Harvesters ahoy!
like the dust-bowl of the Great Depression in the 30's
The Great Depression and the Dustbowl were actually NOT related. Merely contemporaneous. And that marginal, since the Great Depression began in 1929, while the Dust Bowl would be 1932 or so.
But if you want to talk about how farmers wanted bailouts throughout history, look up the Cross of Gold speech.
It isn't news.
, the majority of the population doesn't care if those in the rural areas have any kind of voice in politics...because those out in the rural 96.5% live boring, laborious, non-glamorous lives that the urbanites just don't want to deal with.
Then you go look at the rural people who sneer at the city folks, and don't care about them, or their excessive, show-boating, parasitical lives that they don't want to deal with, that they're rather all be locked up and forgotten.
That happens too.
See, our Congress is set up so that those who live in 3.5% of the territory get more seats in the House of Representatives than those who live in the 96.5% of the territory because there's more people living in the urban areas.
Actually, thanks to Gerrymandering, it isn't so. Used to be even worse on a state-wide basis, just check out the process that lead to Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims.
But it's shifting back, because the methods are getting more and more careful.
What we really need is more vigilance.
More simply, people who have absolutely no idea what it means to be a farmer or rancher have more ability to create regulations on what a farmer or rancher can and cannot do with their property
Farmers and ranchers have always thought they know and understand more than anyone else, it's part of their own arrogance. It's what leads to them demanding massively disproportionate funding for themselves, and willful and deliberate attempts to punish cities, which they see as the root of all that is evil.
This started with the Immigration and Naturalization Acts, BTW. Before the 1800s.
You should check out what caused the Dust Bowl at that. Or that Cross of Gold speech.
The House is the will of the people where the population gets its voice heard.
Again, no, as Gerrymandering has lead to the disenfranchisement of the population on a state level.
Several states like North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Virginia, and Wisconsin have already had lawsuits determine the factuality of i
As far as I am aware each state decides independently how their EC members are determined.
Correct.
On just a pure size issue, a potential recount of 250 million votes would mean election results probably wouldn't be finalized until after inauguration day.
Recounts would still be done at the state level, if needed.
It also opens the floodgates for real voter fraud.
Meh, fraud done on a large enough scale to influence the national election would be blindingly obvious.
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The Electoral College may not boost the power of the VOTERS in the small states, but it does boost the power of the states.
It actually doesn't. If you compute the vote power indices at the level of the EC votes, the small states still have less power than they should. Bloc voting awards disproportionately greater power to larger blocs.
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Recounts would still be done at the state level, if needed.
Yes, but the problem would be that in a pure popular vote that recount would be done at the State level IN EVERY STATE. There would be no just fighting over Florida's recount procedures (which was a headache no one wants to repeat) you'd instead have people fighting over the recount procedures of every single electoral district in the country. With the 0.5% difference in popular vote in 2000, according to several State legislature laws, that would have triggered a mandatory recount. So you'd have State where the Statewide winner was never in doubt forced to do a recount of every ballot. To make it more painful in many cases recounts have to be done by hand and potentially verified by a ballot worker and a rep from each interested party.
As for the voter fraud, I should have been more general and include all voter suppression/allowances, once again using Florida as an example of how one area could screw everyone. During the lovely 2000 election the rolls for felons they originally used to eliminate voters was so flawed that in the end many if not most districts simply took it upon themselves to ignore them altogether. So you went from an example where the State could eliminate your right to vote to a case where they were letting people not legally allowed to vote all in the same election.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Yes, but the problem would be that in a pure popular vote that recount would be done at the State level IN EVERY STATE. There would be no just fighting over Florida's recount procedures (which was a headache no one wants to repeat) you'd instead have people fighting over the recount procedures of every single electoral district in the country. With the 0.5% difference in popular vote in 2000, according to several State legislature laws, that would have triggered a mandatory recount. So you'd have State where the Statewide winner was never in doubt forced to do a recount of every ballot.
A recount across the whole nation? Checking the results?
Good. The errors in that election were numerous and many, and the resolution was terrible. And people wrote it off, because well, it wasn't their problem. Heck, that Florida had such a "variety" of systems for counting votes was a problem, yet they could ignore it, and nobody bothered to care once the final result was in...
Which in turn, meant that 16 years later, we still have the problem.
To make it more painful in many cases recounts have to be done by hand and potentially verified by a ballot worker and a rep from each interested party.
Don't even get started on that one, due to the system we have now, some states have ZERO paper trail, ZERO at all.
You're encouraging indifference, pretending the problem is at the low levels, but not realizing the need for a fix on a national scale is well known.
Man of the Year was a work of fiction. The real story? It is a joke.
As for the voter fraud, I should have been more general and include all voter suppression/allowances, once again using Florida as an example of how one area could screw everyone. During the lovely 2000 election the rolls for felons they originally used to eliminate voters was so flawed that in the end many if not most districts simply took it upon themselves to ignore them altogether. So you went from an example where the State could eliminate your right to vote to a case where they were letting people not legally allowed to vote all in the same election.
At least you're learning something, and have realized that Florida actually did deny people their right to vote. Now you know you should consider how the current approach actually leads to situations where confidence is not present. Sadly, it hasn't hit people enough for them to stand up and fix it. It's like a slow leak, you pass it off instead of a repair.
Meh, fraud done on a large enough scale to influence the national election would be blindingly obvious.
Wrong attitude, fraud done on a small enough scale that nobody cares about it, is dangerously corrupting.
That we just had an election where a mere 70,000 votes could swing is it what is corrupting about the Electoral college.
Meh, fraud done on a large enough scale to influence the national election would be blindingly obvious.
Wrong attitude, fraud done on a small enough scale that nobody cares about it, is dangerously corrupting.
That we just had an election where a mere 70,000 votes could swing is it what is corrupting about the Electoral college.
If fraud on a very small scale will swing the election, then the fraud is irrelevant, because the people are so evenly divided that any random event, like weather, can swing the election. To actually undermine the democratic process, you have to have fraud on a scale that allows going against the will of the people even when it is clear.
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Yes, but the problem would be that in a pure popular vote that recount would be done at the State level IN EVERY STATE.
Generally, no, it would only be done in the states where there was some suspicion that it was necessary. And in any case, if it did have to be done in every state, so what? It's not like the recounts would be performed serially.
With the 0.5% difference in popular vote in 2000, according to several State legislature laws, that would have triggered a mandatory recount.
Nah, only a 0.5% difference in the state's popular vote would trigger a recount. The state laws don't take account of the votes of other states.
To make it more painful in many cases recounts have to be done by hand and potentially verified by a ballot worker and a rep from each interested party.
Which would be done independently in each state. In parallel.
As for the voter fraud, I should have been more general and include all voter suppression/allowances, once again using Florida as an example of how one area could screw everyone.
That's far *worse* with the EC, because the errors in a huge swing state like Florida are dramatically magnified by the EC bloc voting. With a national popular vote, 100K ballots one way or the other wouldn't matter at all except in an extremely close race -- and then it arguably doesn't matter that much anyway because the will of the people isn't clear to begin with. Random events like weather are as likely to swing it as fraud of that sort.
Note that I'm not saying fraud should be ignored. It should be identified and fixed as a matter of good democratic hygiene. But it's next to impossible to have fraud on a scale that would actually thwart the clear will of the people in a national election, EC or no EC (though EC does minimize the effect of fraud in small states and magnify it in large states, while without the EC the effect would be consistent nationwide).
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I seem to remember that the Republicans had a strategy of being against anything Obama was for. If the Republicans are reaping what they sowed perhaps they are the ones who should get over themselves.
...
It's called federalism, and it was put in place for a reason. The founding fathers realized that even though we are one country, we are composed of several different cultures with different values. A law that might make sense in a metropolitan area might not make sense in a rural area, so you don't want the population centers making all the rules for everyone else.
The only thing worse than the tyranny of the majority is a tyranny of a minority. There is no other alternative.
I think you misunderstood what I meant because I somewhat accidentally used the word nomination. I wasn't referring to the primaries, I was referring to the actual election and winning the presidency. I should have worded it '...to secure the presidency' but my brain misfired. That is, that the current setup makes it so that a populist candidate needs less of the popular vote to win the election.
My apologies for the confusion.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
How many people ever wrote: int time1 = clock(); int time2 = clock(); if(time2-time1>threshhold) do_something(); This could fail in 2038. A good coder would call an interval library that checked for rare, fatal cases. But I will not reveal that I ever wrote sloppy code ðYS
But we are almost 1/5 of the way to 2100: We should be prepared. [sarcasm intended]
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
The article headline (for both the bloomberg and the slashdot article) are misleading spin. They are creating the impression that Trump is heroically putting a stop to some vast group of inefficient government workers, that have been wasting time on the Y2k Bug for 17 years.
If you read the actual pdf, you will see that in fact it's rescinding 50 directives that were basically about trying to improve various aspects of IT management and reporting. Of those, 7 were about the Y2k bug, raised in 1999 and were not rescinded until now.
Has there been a significant amount of work spent on the Y2k bug in recent years? Almost certainly not, based on this quote from the bloomberg article:
"The agency didn’t provide an estimate of how much time is currently spent on Y2K paperwork, but Linda Springer, an OMB senior adviser, acknowledged that it isn’t a lot since those requirements are already often ignored in practice."
Is it a good thing to rescind the 50 directives that were trying to improve IT in general? It's very difficult to say without going into those directives in more detail, which the articles are making very little attempt at.
So in terms of real world effect, they are basically canceling some old directives that were trying to improve IT and that were mainly being ignored. Congratulations.
i'm agnostic about Trump, but notice how even this headline is negative. It almost seems to imply that the Trump administration is so slow in taking 17 years to stop work on Y2k. Where was the "After 16 years Obama administration still hasn't stopped work on Y2K?"
Face it, your party is just as bad as the other party. I don't even need to know which party is yours, that statement is universally true.
Well no, it's not. My party has never been in power, so that statement is untested.
As soon as you nationalize the vote you will nationalize the recounts. There is no reason to consider a vote in Maine any different from a vote in Nevada; they are effectively part of the same pool so any close elections will automatically cause both parties to start fishing for votes in whatever areas they favor. There is absolutely no reason a State would still restrict recount laws to their borders once the pool was nationalized; at that point their borders are irrelevant. And yes all recounts would be done in parallel but the shear number of court filings filed by both parties would clog up courts nationwide and slow everything down. It's bad enough when that limited to a single state (even then usually only a few districts) or even 2 but a national vote means all 50 states are automatically in play.
As for the EC being worse, by design it limits what any single state can do. Even a swing state like Florida can't exceed it's 29 votes. It's really only a "swing state" because it can easily swap from R to D on any given election; it can't on its own do much unless the election is close. In the last election even if Florida has gone D it still wouldn't have changed the outcome.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
What about the day where daylight saving starts or finishes?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If you must start a sentence with "and" at least capitalize it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Interesting. Is there any law requiring state governors etc. to be elected, or could Florida turn around tomorrow and decide it's a monarchy?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."