Why would that surprise you? Shipped cargo isn't inspected at all. (Well, except once it lands at customs)
This is because, it's totally impossible for a bomb to be in shipped cargo and...wait, no...
This is because inspecting cargo before shipping would not be visible to the American people, nor would it involve herding them around like cattle so they accept whatever you choose to do to them without warrants, like sexually molest them.
And hence there's no spending money on that part of security theater.
In fact, such a thing might inconvenience an Almighty Corporation, so that's doubly bad.
Sometimes I think the best way for a terrorist to act would be to incorporate and just kill people that way. Or just blow up the economy. Or destroy all real estate records so no one knows who owns what.
Why would a terrorist blow up a Walmart instead of a TSA screening line? Hundreds of people, packed close together, instantly shut down the entire air transport system...
You'd be stupid not to see that this still is a factual threat (as recent days have shown).
Ah, yes, in recent days, where we were reminded that any personal intrusion in fine, but scanning shipping? Why, that would interfere with commerce and cost companies more money! So let's not bother with that at all, ever.
You'll notice that no one seems to be proposing a solution, either. Everyone's just sorta hoping it will go away and we'll all forget the fact most of us didn't know: That while they're scanning us down and stripping us naked and fondling us and taking our checked luggage apart, they're putting shipping in the luggage compartment without bothering to check it at all.
They're incompetent people implementing an incompetent system. Even the ones that are competent can't change the fact they in something that obviously can't work. Banning weapons? Really?
I say give everyone a tiny club. Something about a foot long, with weight in the end. Or, rather, have it detachable from the seat.
It's utterly impossible to hold anyone hostage with that, (Or, at least, it offers no benefit over just threatening to punch them or holding them by the throat.) but it sure as hell is possible for a group of people to beat the shit out of hostage takers with it.
Incidentally, for all the money we spent on security at airports, we could have given police officers and whatnot permission to fly armed and just hired thousands of rentacops for any extra flights.
PHP isn't as shitty as people want to make it out to be.
It's certainly an inconsistent language, but arguments being in weird orders and some function having _ and some not doesn't really make a language 'shitty'. Especially now that it's a real OOP and if you actually use that part it's pretty consistent.
And thanks to HTTP's shittiness and web servers being bitches it often results in PHP being not being stateful either, but that's not really PHP's fault. None of the 'cgi' languages are stateful, and even if the language is, like Perl, you're not using that statefulness in web-based programs.
Since Obama's been elected, I've come to realize it was a Democrat trick also.
Witness failing to revoke DADT.
The only problem is that Democratic voters appear to be paying a lot more attention that Republican voters, or perhaps Democratic promises were much more specific and attainable, so failure to do them is a lot more obvious and really pissing people off.
So are you saying children who are too young to vote should not be counted as well?
I wouldn't have a problem with that change. I'm just not that worried about that either way, because proportionally, it doesn't do much. (Unlike the 'prisoner counties' which hold super prisons.)
I think we should recognize that representation is, or should be, due to eligible voters, not due to population.
Sadly, there's no way to actually change this. Constitutional amendments that reduce a state's representation require that state to authorize it, so to change this would require literally every state agreeing.
In Oregon felons are not allowed to vote while in custody but once they are released they are allowed to vote. That seems reasonable to me.
Like I said, I don't really care one way another, but as we can't reduce the representation of prisoners, we really should let them vote.
Consider our world-record prison population, perhaps it might be better if prisoners could actually vote and figure to a way to reduce said population. Right now, there are entire districts that run prisons, whose entire economy are based around said prison, and get represented based on said prison, so, of course, vote for anything to increase prison population!
Incidentally, if we'd based it on voters, we'd have had nowhere near the fight to get women the right to vote. Hell, we had to compromise the constitution about slavery over this exact issue. Perhaps it's time we stood firm and say 'In a representative democracy, places only get to claim as much people as they let vote, period.'
A fun idea might be to based it on registered or even actual votes cast. (That gets last tricky, though.) I don't see why people who don't vote get represented at all.
Oh, I don't want to remove all liability protection.
I just want to make a specific exception that company owners are personally liable for lies about specific people that they've paid other people to air.
Companies really don't have any business justification to run ads about individuals anyway.
In fact, I'd love to see the IRS and/or stockholders step in with lawsuits, because spending corporate money on candidates is a clear violation of laws, but we've gotten well past that happening thanks to corporate control of the government.
I think it's unlikely that any court would agree that a private company could face dissolution by an executive branch without being able to challenge that dissolution in a court of law.
Who said anything about not having a day in court? I'm talking about court.
Corporations have to follow their corporate charter. They were licensed to exist based on that charter.
Unless the charter states otherwise (I.e, if they are a non-profit), they have a fiduciary duty to make as much money as possible for the owners. If they're publicly traded, that means the stockholders.
If the corporation is operating contrary to that, the courts may step in and prescribe any remedy, anything from removing the board of directors to dissolve the company, selling the assets, and reimbursing the stockholders.
Do you think that's just? Would it be OK for the agency that grants incorporation in a state to deny incorporation to a group of businesspeople because one of the proposed directors is black, or is a registered Democrat?
The government couldn't discriminate on race or political grounds like that, because of the Equal Protection clause of the constitution...if it lets people have corporations, it has to let all people have them, or at least not discriminant against protected classes. But it doesn't have to let anyone have them at all, or let them exist for any specific purpose, such as political reasons.
The entire system of corporations is a law, period. The government could, tomorrow, abolish all of them. Poof, magic, all gone. (And due process wouldn't stop this, as long as they turn over corporate assets to the stockholders.) It could abolish all of them except corporations that build bookcases. It could allow any corporations except ones that make cellphones or ran animal shelters. It can do whatever the fuck it wants, with whatever rules it wants. (Barring violating other laws, like anti-discrimination laws, which are a red herring here.)
Perhaps more to the point, it can disallow corporations that exist to promote a political message. The goals of a corporation are entirely up to the government to allow or disallow. Try to make a non-profit to create more homeless people, see how far you get with that before the government says 'Um, that doesn't really appear to be in the public interest' and denies that corporate charter.
This is why the Citizens United decision is idiotically surreal. Things the government create under law cannot have constitutional rights. They aren't even constitutionally mandated to be allowed to exist!
However, what hypothetical corporations that might exist to promote a political message aren't really the issue. That's like the Sierra Club and the NRA, and you know where the money is going when you give it to them, and they have no shareholders expecting profits.
The actual issue here is for profit corporations promoting a political issue in violation of their charter, which needs to be cracked down on. For profit corporations are supposed to use money for a) business expenses, including salaries, and b) profits to the owners.
Any other use of corporate funds of a publicly traded company is theft. Any use of private corporate funds, by the owners, is not quite as bad, but is, at least, tax fraud. (Just like having the corporation buy you a house.)
Yeah, it's not as simple as it seems. I was really half joking...not only could people run fake things to get people punished, but any law would require 'knowingly' in it, so all anyone would have to do is not inform the candidate they were doing anything, and just do it, and the candidate can't get punished.
Incidentally, we already do this in theory. Candidates cannot 'coordinate' with people running ads on their behalf, or they will be in violation of election laws.
It's just no one seems to care about this law at all.
Like I said, I think it would be better if we'd stop pretending that libel and slander don't exist, and politicians actually sue some of the people with lying ads.
In fact, strengthen the law, removing the corporate veil these assholes hide behind and sue them personally.
Actually, I just said it like it was true, and it was. The Progressive movement was huge on what we'd call 'direct democracy'. They're also the reason we end up voting for dogcatcher in some places.
You can argue it went too far in some places, but whatever. I was just stating a fact: The Progressive era resulted in the direct election of Senators.
By the time the 19th was passed, in most states women already had the legal ability to vote.
Well, excuse me for simplifying. I didn't say it solely gave women the right to vote.
But the difference is meaningless anyway. Progressives were responsible for the 19th, but they were also responsible for most of the local victories before that. For example, the Chicago Political Equality League in Illinois, progressive organization that resulted in women's right to vote in 1913 there.
And Arizona and Oregon passed women's suffrage as a result of a ballot initiative, which, of course, the Progressive movement had just created there. So that was, in a way, a double Progressive victory...they created the process to pass the law, then got the law passed.
The only states that had female voting without the Progressive movement's involvement were those weird western outlier states that passed it 20 years, in the 18th century, before everyone else. No one is quite sure why this is, but a theory exists that, due to the shortage of women, they were attempting to 'bribe' women to come there. And thanks to that shortage, women wouldn't be as much a political threat anyway.
In fact, when you look at history, an argument can be made that the Suffrage movement caused the Progressive movement, that it birthed the Progressive movement and then was subsumed by it, and then it managed to start having victories. And then it disbanded after it won, obviously.
I don't think it's quite that simple, I suspect the Progressive movement was going to happen after the Gilded Age no matter what, but the Suffrage movement certainly ended up with a large hand in its creation. And a very large hand in the issue that finally ended it, Prohibition, which was the other issue these women's suffrage groups cared about. Well, along with the abolition of slavery, but that obviously was a moot point by then.
Incidentally, whenever I talk about 'Progressive' back then, I'm pretty much talking about Republicans.
Both parties are so... weird... right now that I don't even know how to approach it.
Indeed. And to this post I'll mention fact I'm a Democrat and usually called myself 'Progressive' because things like health care and jobs are the most important to me, and those are 'Progressive' issues, at least now. (In fact, both those appeared as issues in the original Progressive Era.)
The "tea party" folks almost sound like a wing of the Libertarian party, but chances are they would drop their distaste in "big government" in a heartbeat if you brought up any of the traditional conservative sore points: religion, abortion, drugs, etc. Big government is just fine if it is keeping the drugs out!
The Tea Party is, at this point, literally another phrase meaning 'the Republican base', except it's slipped out of control of the Republicans.
The people controlling the Tea Party, and by which I mean the monied interests who invented the entire thing, are desperately trying to make it solely about economic issues, which is all they care about...but the actual people are having no part of it, and religious fringe people seems just likely to run on 'Tea Party' support as likely as 'all taxes are bad people'. Witness O'Donnell for example.
Over the last two decades, the Republicans 'outsourced' running the Republican base to various conservative commentators who spewed nonsense that the Republican party could then disassociate themselves from...but I doubt they ever realized that those people would steal their base. It's rather hilarious.
The Dems are even weirder. So fractured, they can't even get stuff done with a super-majority in congress and the Whitehouse. They've always had trouble being the "big-tent" party, but they've gotten so many special interests in their tent that they can't actually say or do anything. You can't even apply the word liberal to them anymore, since they seem almost devoid of ideology.
I'm noticing that, just like the Republicans like to preach about all the stuff they'll when they takes office, like banning abortion and whatnot, but then mysteriously fail to do it...the Democrats are exactly the same way.
The Republicans blame Democrats to keep from passing stuff they pretend to want to pass, but the Democrats do the same thing by pretending to be very very very stupid, and 'compromising' with Republicans who then don't pass stuff anyway.
I.e., health care and the lies about the public option, or, hell, the fact they didn't start at nationalizing the entire system and compromise to single payer or at least public option. I though at the time they were total fucking imbeciles, accepting compromises that the right wanted but then didn't vote for the bill, but I've since learned they got exactly what they wanted...no single payer, but it looked like they 'tried' to get it.
OTOH, the Democrats are the only people who are willing to state what the actual problems are and propose actual solutions to them, even if they're not actually willing to pass said solutions, so I have to vote for them. The Republicans either pretend problems don't exist or pose nonsensical solutions.
Firstly, corporations endorsing candidates isn't really the issue, and they could already do that. No one has a problem with a corporation saying 'We endorse this guy', and newspapers and unions have done it forever.
The problem is corporate money creating shell companies that then run ads on behalf of the candidate, utterly outside campaign finance laws and totally undisclosed.
See, the thing is, we're attacking this from the wrong angle. Everyone has the right to say whatever they want, but, and this is important, not everyone has the right to run for office in the first place to start with.
There is no 'the government can pass no law abridging the freedom to get elected' right.
So forget regulating any speech at all. Instead, put the requirement on the person running for office. If you get outside help, not via the election law, to get elected, you have to pay a fine.
And then if someone runs ads, they entered a conspiracy to get other people to violate the law.
Yes, that seems crazy, but it is, indeed, entirely constitutional. People just need to realize we're not trying to regulate speech, which can't be done, we're trying to regulate an election, which is entirely within constitutional purview. Part of this regulation of the election is how and when people can help you get elected.
Stop punishing 'speech', punish the people who benefit from the speech, which is entirely constitutional.
Or, as a more serious solution, start actually enforcing libel and slander laws, and stop letting corporations spread lies in ads. Get rid of the lying, and you've solved 90% of the problem.
You're assuming the limits would be set too high, which is an implementation issue. In fact, it's already an issue with ballot access.
Those laws need to change, period. The bar should be much much lower to getting on the ballot, and the same bar should get you X minutes advertising on TV and a seat at the debate.
You're also assuming it would be proportional how much money people get, which doesn't make a lot of sense. We've never implemented a system like that, although our current system is sorta like that by accident. (If you can only get X money from each supporter, obviously people with more supporters will get more money.)
And why would 'religious parties' not get any money? What the hell are you talking about? Are you asserting there are political parties that are churches? I'm having a hard time imaging what you're talking about.
More to the point, I fail to see how third parties could possibly be worse off under this system. Third parties already can't afford political ads.
I agree. The government should not have the right to regulate any group that has the right of speech.
Sadly, as corporations are a government creation to start with, and the government regulates how they operate and who's in charge and whatnot, we're going to have to totally disband them.
People have the right to peaceably assemble and that group to say or print whatever they want.
They don't have a right to joint property ownership or limited liability or any of the other 'incorporation' stuff that government regulation has created, because, obviously, that would interfere in 'free speech'.
I agree. the government should not be in the business of regulating speech. Because it is unconstitutional to regulate speech.
Ergo, if a corporation wished to make 'speech', it is unconstitutional for the government to regulate how it operates, because that regulates what speech it makes.
So no corporation that makes 'speech' must not be regulated in any form, at all.
However, corporations exist solely because of the government, and thus exist due to 'regulation'. Regulation stating how they operate, even.
As they exist because of regulation, the fact no one can 'regulate' them means they don't exist.
So they're going to need to be disbanded. Or something.
In fact, it's looking like speech's protection is a lot like religion's protection. We've always really interpreted the freedom of speech as 'Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of speech'.
Now we've got the implied other half: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of speech'.
I believe you mean 'run'. A lot of corporations are owned by a hell of a lot of people, aka, stockholders
That's why I like Franken's bill, which required all owners of a corporations to agree before political campaigning, thus resulting it being functionally impossible for publicly-owned companies.
And it's functionally impossible for a reason no one can argue with. If I own stock in a company, I clearly should get a say before they use my money for an expense that isn't slightly a 'business expense'. The company exist to make me money, period. All spending of the company should go towards that goal, period.
Sadly, people managed to killed that bill.
It's possible illegal anyway. Witness Murdoch asserting that he used News Corps as a personal piggy bank to make a million dollar donation to a friend.
That's outright illegal, and in any sane universe ought to result in shareholders winning a lawsuit. Sadly, News Corps in incorporated in Delaware, not in a sane universe.
Here's a fun question for people who think corporations have 'rights': Corporations have to have stated businesses purposes that are authorized by the state.
The state can dissolve corporations that do not follow said purpose. In practice, they only do this to non-profits, as the stated purposes of for-profit businesses is generally 'make money', but in actuality they can do it to any corporation.
What if the state refused to allow such corporations to exist that either a) stated they were for using raised money for political purposes, or b) used money for those purposes without stating it?
The second is clearly allowed...the government can dissolve businesses that spend their money on anything outside the scope of a business. Try starting a corporation and having it pay for your vacation. You can't do that, so why would it be allowed to pay for political campaigning?
Businesses have to spend money on businesses expenses, even if it's 'your' business. You want to do something with the money, the business has to pay you income or dividends or something, and then you can do it.
As for the first, a business with the hypothetical goals of pushing an political agenda...well, firstly, such for-profit businesses don't exist, or at least aren't really the giant multi-national businesses that have injected so much money in our political process.
But an argument could be made that, if they do have that as a business goal, then running political ads is a 'business expense'.
Of course, governments don't have to approve business licenses in the first place. So could just decide not to allow any business with political goals they don't like.
You fools see the problem of a government created entity having free speech rights? The government has power of life and death over corporations already, for pretty much any reason. The idea that a fictional entity the government creates has 'rights' the government can't infringe is sheer nonsense.
Frankly, I'm wish Al Franken's bill would get considered again. It required businesses to get permission from all owners before doing political campaigning. (It is, after all, spending their money, and the internal structure of how a corporation operates is certainly subject to law.) Which would be hilariously impossible in a publicly-traded company.
Valid point. Currently, that's something that would be considered more 'liberal' instead of 'progressive'.
Although right now trying to figure out exactly what the difference is is rather hard...plenty of 'liberal' ideas only became part of this country (Despite them originating in classic liberal thought.) due to Progressives. I mean, if you had a time machine to ask John Locke who should be picking the people on the ballot, the people, or party leaders, I think we can guess what he'd say.
But it's all mixed up now, thanks to conservatives rejecting both progressivism and liberalism and thus them being shoehorned into one party for decades.
Frankly, we shouldn't have anywhere near the number of people living in this country who cannot vote. It produces scapegoats and an underclass to be abused.
I guess, if the US government isn't going to fix the problem by either making them legal, or making them not here, it's up to the local governments to give them some say on local issues. I'd really rather the problem be solved some other way, but whatever.
Although I'm sure that the OP was trying to imply local communities were letting them vote in national or state elections, which of course they aren't, but it's a good scapegoat issue.
I don't have a problem with felons not being allowed to vote.
I do have a very large problem with the fact jailed felons are counted in representation. You'll have a distinct with a jail holding 100,000 felons, and 20,000 staff of the jail, and 10,000 random people, and they get to elect someone worth 130,000 people.
I have the same problem with the fact visitors to this country, both legal and non-legal, are counted.
I'd like to see a constitutional amendment that people who do not vote are not counted for purposes of representation. Sadly, I'm pretty sure that falls under the 'reduced representation' amendment exception, so all states with prisons would have to approve it.
If we're not going to do that, we should require that they can vote.
Also FFS have the elections on a weekend or holiday, ditch the stupid machines and get organised enough that you don't have lines stretching for hours.
Here in Georgia we have, for a month beforehand, early polling, from 9-5 every weekday.
This is possibly the stupidest schedule I've ever heard of. It's incomprehensibly stupid. It's 40 fucking hours entirely during the workday when people can't get there.
At the very least, run it 12-8. Although it would be a lot saner to vary on different days.
Yes, yes, people 'wouldn't want to look up the schedule' or some other nonsense. And you can't, for some reason, add more hours (Despite the fact we somehow went from 10 hours to 40 hours, we can't go to 60.)
So just make it two weeks, noon to eight every weekday, but also some days are 4am-noon also, and others add 8-4am. And be open on the weekends, of course. Could be the same number of hours, and a much better chance of people actually being able to go there.
You insist the poor are being penalized. A state id costs something like $15 and is good for something like 8 years here. There are multiple DMV locations around town, near bus routes. I can't imagine there is a location here in Omaha that doesn't have a DMV within 10 miles.
Well, that's nice in Omaha, but not everyone lives there, do they?
Here in Georgia, we have no goddamn buses, and here you can't register at the DMV, and here the Republicans try, continually, to require people to have a license or government ID to vote.
So poor people would have to get a ride 30+ miles to the DMV for an ID, and then get a ride to the courthouse to register, and then get a ride to the vote.
Originally, people had to pay $15 for an ID, but that law was struck down as a poll tax, so now they have to provide free IDs.
* You prefer a system where people can get a non-provisional ballot with no ID an without registering to vote.
Yes, because it let's more eligible people vote, you fascist.
* You prefer that people be able to register same-day, even if that means more less-informed voters dilluting the effects of people who planned to vote in advance.
Yes, because it let's more eligible people vote, you fascist.
* You believe no one has attempted to vote fraudently in 30 years despite record examples that it does occur.
The only examples you've cited are some sort of voter registration screw up. There is no actualfraud consisting of people voting when they shouldn't. A case argued before the supreme court managed to find one instance of impersonation to vote in recent history.
* You said one side is obessed with conspiracy theories while the other hasn't, when both parties in reality has committed and accused the other side of voter fraud.
No, the Democrats point out actual voter suppression when it happens. (As do the Republicans.)
The Republicans also claim problems that don't exist so they can enact laws making it harder for the poor to vote.
* You prefer hyperbole and flames over reasonable discourse.
Whereas you think somehow being 'uniformed', aka, not able to spend any time and money on voting, means you shouldn't be able to vote.
I'd much rather had a nation of me then a nation full of people who think they're in charge of what citizens can vote.
* You're a hypocrite accusing others of being conspiracy theorist while assigning far-fetched conspiracy motives to others.
Really? I live in a state that implemented a poll tax in 2005. The court said so.
I don't think I need to invent conspiracy theories about keeping the poor from voting.
Right, and convicted felons, and mentally incompetent people. The right to vote can still be denied to citizens on many basis.
Just not the ones laid out in the constitution, either a) explicitly via 'the right to vote shall not be denied...' amendments, or b) via the Equal Protection clause, which would probably stop people being denied the right to vote based on religion(1), for example, or c) via the Due Process clause, which stops states from denying that right without an actual trial of some sort(2).
1) I don't know that this has actually ever come up, though. The Equal Protection clause would appear to stop that sort of thing, though, if the 1st amendment didn't do it all by itself.
2) Kids, don't get your hopes up. You can, indeed, sue the government for the right to vote...which you will lose if you're under 18 and the court can demonstrate it. If you're not under 18, but the government says you are and can't vote, feel free to sue. (This is probably only relevant to time travelers.)
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Why would that surprise you? Shipped cargo isn't inspected at all. (Well, except once it lands at customs)
This is because, it's totally impossible for a bomb to be in shipped cargo and...wait, no...
This is because inspecting cargo before shipping would not be visible to the American people, nor would it involve herding them around like cattle so they accept whatever you choose to do to them without warrants, like sexually molest them.
And hence there's no spending money on that part of security theater.
In fact, such a thing might inconvenience an Almighty Corporation, so that's doubly bad.
Sometimes I think the best way for a terrorist to act would be to incorporate and just kill people that way. Or just blow up the economy. Or destroy all real estate records so no one knows who owns what.
Airlines are not in charge of TSA, and have no ability to do anything like you're describing.
That's just dumb.
Why would a terrorist blow up a Walmart instead of a TSA screening line? Hundreds of people, packed close together, instantly shut down the entire air transport system...
No, but Janis Joplin said that.
I don't understand how your third paragraph logically follows from the second.
You'd be stupid not to see that this still is a factual threat (as recent days have shown).
Ah, yes, in recent days, where we were reminded that any personal intrusion in fine, but scanning shipping? Why, that would interfere with commerce and cost companies more money! So let's not bother with that at all, ever.
You'll notice that no one seems to be proposing a solution, either. Everyone's just sorta hoping it will go away and we'll all forget the fact most of us didn't know: That while they're scanning us down and stripping us naked and fondling us and taking our checked luggage apart, they're putting shipping in the luggage compartment without bothering to check it at all.
They're incompetent people implementing an incompetent system. Even the ones that are competent can't change the fact they in something that obviously can't work. Banning weapons? Really?
I say give everyone a tiny club. Something about a foot long, with weight in the end. Or, rather, have it detachable from the seat.
It's utterly impossible to hold anyone hostage with that, (Or, at least, it offers no benefit over just threatening to punch them or holding them by the throat.) but it sure as hell is possible for a group of people to beat the shit out of hostage takers with it.
Incidentally, for all the money we spent on security at airports, we could have given police officers and whatnot permission to fly armed and just hired thousands of rentacops for any extra flights.
PHP isn't as shitty as people want to make it out to be.
It's certainly an inconsistent language, but arguments being in weird orders and some function having _ and some not doesn't really make a language 'shitty'. Especially now that it's a real OOP and if you actually use that part it's pretty consistent.
And thanks to HTTP's shittiness and web servers being bitches it often results in PHP being not being stateful either, but that's not really PHP's fault. None of the 'cgi' languages are stateful, and even if the language is, like Perl, you're not using that statefulness in web-based programs.
I know, that's my point.
I used to just think that was a Republican trick.
Since Obama's been elected, I've come to realize it was a Democrat trick also.
Witness failing to revoke DADT.
The only problem is that Democratic voters appear to be paying a lot more attention that Republican voters, or perhaps Democratic promises were much more specific and attainable, so failure to do them is a lot more obvious and really pissing people off.
So are you saying children who are too young to vote should not be counted as well?
I wouldn't have a problem with that change. I'm just not that worried about that either way, because proportionally, it doesn't do much. (Unlike the 'prisoner counties' which hold super prisons.)
I think we should recognize that representation is, or should be, due to eligible voters, not due to population.
Sadly, there's no way to actually change this. Constitutional amendments that reduce a state's representation require that state to authorize it, so to change this would require literally every state agreeing.
In Oregon felons are not allowed to vote while in custody but once they are released they are allowed to vote. That seems reasonable to me.
Like I said, I don't really care one way another, but as we can't reduce the representation of prisoners, we really should let them vote.
Consider our world-record prison population, perhaps it might be better if prisoners could actually vote and figure to a way to reduce said population. Right now, there are entire districts that run prisons, whose entire economy are based around said prison, and get represented based on said prison, so, of course, vote for anything to increase prison population!
Incidentally, if we'd based it on voters, we'd have had nowhere near the fight to get women the right to vote. Hell, we had to compromise the constitution about slavery over this exact issue. Perhaps it's time we stood firm and say 'In a representative democracy, places only get to claim as much people as they let vote, period.'
A fun idea might be to based it on registered or even actual votes cast. (That gets last tricky, though.) I don't see why people who don't vote get represented at all.
Oh, I don't want to remove all liability protection.
I just want to make a specific exception that company owners are personally liable for lies about specific people that they've paid other people to air.
Companies really don't have any business justification to run ads about individuals anyway.
In fact, I'd love to see the IRS and/or stockholders step in with lawsuits, because spending corporate money on candidates is a clear violation of laws, but we've gotten well past that happening thanks to corporate control of the government.
I think it's unlikely that any court would agree that a private company could face dissolution by an executive branch without being able to challenge that dissolution in a court of law.
Who said anything about not having a day in court? I'm talking about court.
Corporations have to follow their corporate charter. They were licensed to exist based on that charter.
Unless the charter states otherwise (I.e, if they are a non-profit), they have a fiduciary duty to make as much money as possible for the owners. If they're publicly traded, that means the stockholders.
If the corporation is operating contrary to that, the courts may step in and prescribe any remedy, anything from removing the board of directors to dissolve the company, selling the assets, and reimbursing the stockholders.
Do you think that's just? Would it be OK for the agency that grants incorporation in a state to deny incorporation to a group of businesspeople because one of the proposed directors is black, or is a registered Democrat?
The government couldn't discriminate on race or political grounds like that, because of the Equal Protection clause of the constitution...if it lets people have corporations, it has to let all people have them, or at least not discriminant against protected classes. But it doesn't have to let anyone have them at all, or let them exist for any specific purpose, such as political reasons.
The entire system of corporations is a law, period. The government could, tomorrow, abolish all of them. Poof, magic, all gone. (And due process wouldn't stop this, as long as they turn over corporate assets to the stockholders.) It could abolish all of them except corporations that build bookcases. It could allow any corporations except ones that make cellphones or ran animal shelters. It can do whatever the fuck it wants, with whatever rules it wants. (Barring violating other laws, like anti-discrimination laws, which are a red herring here.)
Perhaps more to the point, it can disallow corporations that exist to promote a political message. The goals of a corporation are entirely up to the government to allow or disallow. Try to make a non-profit to create more homeless people, see how far you get with that before the government says 'Um, that doesn't really appear to be in the public interest' and denies that corporate charter.
This is why the Citizens United decision is idiotically surreal. Things the government create under law cannot have constitutional rights. They aren't even constitutionally mandated to be allowed to exist!
However, what hypothetical corporations that might exist to promote a political message aren't really the issue. That's like the Sierra Club and the NRA, and you know where the money is going when you give it to them, and they have no shareholders expecting profits.
The actual issue here is for profit corporations promoting a political issue in violation of their charter, which needs to be cracked down on. For profit corporations are supposed to use money for a) business expenses, including salaries, and b) profits to the owners.
Any other use of corporate funds of a publicly traded company is theft. Any use of private corporate funds, by the owners, is not quite as bad, but is, at least, tax fraud. (Just like having the corporation buy you a house.)
Yeah, it's not as simple as it seems. I was really half joking...not only could people run fake things to get people punished, but any law would require 'knowingly' in it, so all anyone would have to do is not inform the candidate they were doing anything, and just do it, and the candidate can't get punished.
Incidentally, we already do this in theory. Candidates cannot 'coordinate' with people running ads on their behalf, or they will be in violation of election laws.
It's just no one seems to care about this law at all.
Like I said, I think it would be better if we'd stop pretending that libel and slander don't exist, and politicians actually sue some of the people with lying ads.
In fact, strengthen the law, removing the corporate veil these assholes hide behind and sue them personally.
You say that like it's a good thing. It's not.
Actually, I just said it like it was true, and it was. The Progressive movement was huge on what we'd call 'direct democracy'. They're also the reason we end up voting for dogcatcher in some places.
You can argue it went too far in some places, but whatever. I was just stating a fact: The Progressive era resulted in the direct election of Senators.
By the time the 19th was passed, in most states women already had the legal ability to vote.
Well, excuse me for simplifying. I didn't say it solely gave women the right to vote.
But the difference is meaningless anyway. Progressives were responsible for the 19th, but they were also responsible for most of the local victories before that. For example, the Chicago Political Equality League in Illinois, progressive organization that resulted in women's right to vote in 1913 there.
And Arizona and Oregon passed women's suffrage as a result of a ballot initiative, which, of course, the Progressive movement had just created there. So that was, in a way, a double Progressive victory...they created the process to pass the law, then got the law passed.
The only states that had female voting without the Progressive movement's involvement were those weird western outlier states that passed it 20 years, in the 18th century, before everyone else. No one is quite sure why this is, but a theory exists that, due to the shortage of women, they were attempting to 'bribe' women to come there. And thanks to that shortage, women wouldn't be as much a political threat anyway.
In fact, when you look at history, an argument can be made that the Suffrage movement caused the Progressive movement, that it birthed the Progressive movement and then was subsumed by it, and then it managed to start having victories. And then it disbanded after it won, obviously.
I don't think it's quite that simple, I suspect the Progressive movement was going to happen after the Gilded Age no matter what, but the Suffrage movement certainly ended up with a large hand in its creation. And a very large hand in the issue that finally ended it, Prohibition, which was the other issue these women's suffrage groups cared about. Well, along with the abolition of slavery, but that obviously was a moot point by then.
Incidentally, whenever I talk about 'Progressive' back then, I'm pretty much talking about Republicans.
Both parties are so... weird... right now that I don't even know how to approach it.
Indeed. And to this post I'll mention fact I'm a Democrat and usually called myself 'Progressive' because things like health care and jobs are the most important to me, and those are 'Progressive' issues, at least now. (In fact, both those appeared as issues in the original Progressive Era.)
The "tea party" folks almost sound like a wing of the Libertarian party, but chances are they would drop their distaste in "big government" in a heartbeat if you brought up any of the traditional conservative sore points: religion, abortion, drugs, etc. Big government is just fine if it is keeping the drugs out!
The Tea Party is, at this point, literally another phrase meaning 'the Republican base', except it's slipped out of control of the Republicans.
The people controlling the Tea Party, and by which I mean the monied interests who invented the entire thing, are desperately trying to make it solely about economic issues, which is all they care about...but the actual people are having no part of it, and religious fringe people seems just likely to run on 'Tea Party' support as likely as 'all taxes are bad people'. Witness O'Donnell for example.
Over the last two decades, the Republicans 'outsourced' running the Republican base to various conservative commentators who spewed nonsense that the Republican party could then disassociate themselves from...but I doubt they ever realized that those people would steal their base. It's rather hilarious.
The Dems are even weirder. So fractured, they can't even get stuff done with a super-majority in congress and the Whitehouse. They've always had trouble being the "big-tent" party, but they've gotten so many special interests in their tent that they can't actually say or do anything. You can't even apply the word liberal to them anymore, since they seem almost devoid of ideology.
I'm noticing that, just like the Republicans like to preach about all the stuff they'll when they takes office, like banning abortion and whatnot, but then mysteriously fail to do it...the Democrats are exactly the same way.
The Republicans blame Democrats to keep from passing stuff they pretend to want to pass, but the Democrats do the same thing by pretending to be very very very stupid, and 'compromising' with Republicans who then don't pass stuff anyway.
I.e., health care and the lies about the public option, or, hell, the fact they didn't start at nationalizing the entire system and compromise to single payer or at least public option. I though at the time they were total fucking imbeciles, accepting compromises that the right wanted but then didn't vote for the bill, but I've since learned they got exactly what they wanted...no single payer, but it looked like they 'tried' to get it.
OTOH, the Democrats are the only people who are willing to state what the actual problems are and propose actual solutions to them, even if they're not actually willing to pass said solutions, so I have to vote for them. The Republicans either pretend problems don't exist or pose nonsensical solutions.
Firstly, corporations endorsing candidates isn't really the issue, and they could already do that. No one has a problem with a corporation saying 'We endorse this guy', and newspapers and unions have done it forever.
The problem is corporate money creating shell companies that then run ads on behalf of the candidate, utterly outside campaign finance laws and totally undisclosed.
See, the thing is, we're attacking this from the wrong angle. Everyone has the right to say whatever they want, but, and this is important, not everyone has the right to run for office in the first place to start with.
There is no 'the government can pass no law abridging the freedom to get elected' right.
So forget regulating any speech at all. Instead, put the requirement on the person running for office. If you get outside help, not via the election law, to get elected, you have to pay a fine.
And then if someone runs ads, they entered a conspiracy to get other people to violate the law.
Yes, that seems crazy, but it is, indeed, entirely constitutional. People just need to realize we're not trying to regulate speech, which can't be done, we're trying to regulate an election, which is entirely within constitutional purview. Part of this regulation of the election is how and when people can help you get elected.
Stop punishing 'speech', punish the people who benefit from the speech, which is entirely constitutional.
Or, as a more serious solution, start actually enforcing libel and slander laws, and stop letting corporations spread lies in ads. Get rid of the lying, and you've solved 90% of the problem.
You're assuming the limits would be set too high, which is an implementation issue. In fact, it's already an issue with ballot access.
Those laws need to change, period. The bar should be much much lower to getting on the ballot, and the same bar should get you X minutes advertising on TV and a seat at the debate.
You're also assuming it would be proportional how much money people get, which doesn't make a lot of sense. We've never implemented a system like that, although our current system is sorta like that by accident. (If you can only get X money from each supporter, obviously people with more supporters will get more money.)
And why would 'religious parties' not get any money? What the hell are you talking about? Are you asserting there are political parties that are churches? I'm having a hard time imaging what you're talking about.
More to the point, I fail to see how third parties could possibly be worse off under this system. Third parties already can't afford political ads.
I agree. The government should not have the right to regulate any group that has the right of speech.
Sadly, as corporations are a government creation to start with, and the government regulates how they operate and who's in charge and whatnot, we're going to have to totally disband them.
People have the right to peaceably assemble and that group to say or print whatever they want.
They don't have a right to joint property ownership or limited liability or any of the other 'incorporation' stuff that government regulation has created, because, obviously, that would interfere in 'free speech'.
I agree. the government should not be in the business of regulating speech. Because it is unconstitutional to regulate speech.
Ergo, if a corporation wished to make 'speech', it is unconstitutional for the government to regulate how it operates, because that regulates what speech it makes.
So no corporation that makes 'speech' must not be regulated in any form, at all.
However, corporations exist solely because of the government, and thus exist due to 'regulation'. Regulation stating how they operate, even.
As they exist because of regulation, the fact no one can 'regulate' them means they don't exist.
So they're going to need to be disbanded. Or something.
In fact, it's looking like speech's protection is a lot like religion's protection. We've always really interpreted the freedom of speech as 'Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of speech'.
Now we've got the implied other half: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of speech'.
relatively few people who own the corporation
I believe you mean 'run'. A lot of corporations are owned by a hell of a lot of people, aka, stockholders
That's why I like Franken's bill, which required all owners of a corporations to agree before political campaigning, thus resulting it being functionally impossible for publicly-owned companies.
And it's functionally impossible for a reason no one can argue with. If I own stock in a company, I clearly should get a say before they use my money for an expense that isn't slightly a 'business expense'. The company exist to make me money, period. All spending of the company should go towards that goal, period.
Sadly, people managed to killed that bill.
It's possible illegal anyway. Witness Murdoch asserting that he used News Corps as a personal piggy bank to make a million dollar donation to a friend.
That's outright illegal, and in any sane universe ought to result in shareholders winning a lawsuit. Sadly, News Corps in incorporated in Delaware, not in a sane universe.
Indeed.
Here's a fun question for people who think corporations have 'rights': Corporations have to have stated businesses purposes that are authorized by the state.
The state can dissolve corporations that do not follow said purpose. In practice, they only do this to non-profits, as the stated purposes of for-profit businesses is generally 'make money', but in actuality they can do it to any corporation.
What if the state refused to allow such corporations to exist that either a) stated they were for using raised money for political purposes, or b) used money for those purposes without stating it?
The second is clearly allowed...the government can dissolve businesses that spend their money on anything outside the scope of a business. Try starting a corporation and having it pay for your vacation. You can't do that, so why would it be allowed to pay for political campaigning?
Businesses have to spend money on businesses expenses, even if it's 'your' business. You want to do something with the money, the business has to pay you income or dividends or something, and then you can do it.
As for the first, a business with the hypothetical goals of pushing an political agenda...well, firstly, such for-profit businesses don't exist, or at least aren't really the giant multi-national businesses that have injected so much money in our political process.
But an argument could be made that, if they do have that as a business goal, then running political ads is a 'business expense'.
Of course, governments don't have to approve business licenses in the first place. So could just decide not to allow any business with political goals they don't like.
You fools see the problem of a government created entity having free speech rights? The government has power of life and death over corporations already, for pretty much any reason. The idea that a fictional entity the government creates has 'rights' the government can't infringe is sheer nonsense.
Frankly, I'm wish Al Franken's bill would get considered again. It required businesses to get permission from all owners before doing political campaigning. (It is, after all, spending their money, and the internal structure of how a corporation operates is certainly subject to law.) Which would be hilariously impossible in a publicly-traded company.
Valid point. Currently, that's something that would be considered more 'liberal' instead of 'progressive'.
Although right now trying to figure out exactly what the difference is is rather hard...plenty of 'liberal' ideas only became part of this country (Despite them originating in classic liberal thought.) due to Progressives. I mean, if you had a time machine to ask John Locke who should be picking the people on the ballot, the people, or party leaders, I think we can guess what he'd say.
But it's all mixed up now, thanks to conservatives rejecting both progressivism and liberalism and thus them being shoehorned into one party for decades.
Frankly, we shouldn't have anywhere near the number of people living in this country who cannot vote. It produces scapegoats and an underclass to be abused.
I guess, if the US government isn't going to fix the problem by either making them legal, or making them not here, it's up to the local governments to give them some say on local issues. I'd really rather the problem be solved some other way, but whatever.
Although I'm sure that the OP was trying to imply local communities were letting them vote in national or state elections, which of course they aren't, but it's a good scapegoat issue.
I don't have a problem with felons not being allowed to vote.
I do have a very large problem with the fact jailed felons are counted in representation. You'll have a distinct with a jail holding 100,000 felons, and 20,000 staff of the jail, and 10,000 random people, and they get to elect someone worth 130,000 people.
I have the same problem with the fact visitors to this country, both legal and non-legal, are counted.
I'd like to see a constitutional amendment that people who do not vote are not counted for purposes of representation. Sadly, I'm pretty sure that falls under the 'reduced representation' amendment exception, so all states with prisons would have to approve it.
If we're not going to do that, we should require that they can vote.
Also FFS have the elections on a weekend or holiday, ditch the stupid machines and get organised enough that you don't have lines stretching for hours.
Here in Georgia we have, for a month beforehand, early polling, from 9-5 every weekday.
This is possibly the stupidest schedule I've ever heard of. It's incomprehensibly stupid. It's 40 fucking hours entirely during the workday when people can't get there.
At the very least, run it 12-8. Although it would be a lot saner to vary on different days.
Yes, yes, people 'wouldn't want to look up the schedule' or some other nonsense. And you can't, for some reason, add more hours (Despite the fact we somehow went from 10 hours to 40 hours, we can't go to 60.)
So just make it two weeks, noon to eight every weekday, but also some days are 4am-noon also, and others add 8-4am. And be open on the weekends, of course. Could be the same number of hours, and a much better chance of people actually being able to go there.
You insist the poor are being penalized. A state id costs something like $15 and is good for something like 8 years here. There are multiple DMV locations around town, near bus routes. I can't imagine there is a location here in Omaha that doesn't have a DMV within 10 miles.
Well, that's nice in Omaha, but not everyone lives there, do they?
Here in Georgia, we have no goddamn buses, and here you can't register at the DMV, and here the Republicans try, continually, to require people to have a license or government ID to vote.
So poor people would have to get a ride 30+ miles to the DMV for an ID, and then get a ride to the courthouse to register, and then get a ride to the vote.
Originally, people had to pay $15 for an ID, but that law was struck down as a poll tax, so now they have to provide free IDs.
* You prefer a system where people can get a non-provisional ballot with no ID an without registering to vote.
Yes, because it let's more eligible people vote, you fascist.
* You prefer that people be able to register same-day, even if that means more less-informed voters dilluting the effects of people who planned to vote in advance.
Yes, because it let's more eligible people vote, you fascist.
* You believe no one has attempted to vote fraudently in 30 years despite record examples that it does occur.
The only examples you've cited are some sort of voter registration screw up. There is no actual fraud consisting of people voting when they shouldn't. A case argued before the supreme court managed to find one instance of impersonation to vote in recent history.
* You said one side is obessed with conspiracy theories while the other hasn't, when both parties in reality has committed and accused the other side of voter fraud.
No, the Democrats point out actual voter suppression when it happens. (As do the Republicans.)
The Republicans also claim problems that don't exist so they can enact laws making it harder for the poor to vote.
* You prefer hyperbole and flames over reasonable discourse.
Whereas you think somehow being 'uniformed', aka, not able to spend any time and money on voting, means you shouldn't be able to vote.
I'd much rather had a nation of me then a nation full of people who think they're in charge of what citizens can vote.
* You're a hypocrite accusing others of being conspiracy theorist while assigning far-fetched conspiracy motives to others.
Really? I live in a state that implemented a poll tax in 2005. The court said so.
I don't think I need to invent conspiracy theories about keeping the poor from voting.
Right, and convicted felons, and mentally incompetent people. The right to vote can still be denied to citizens on many basis.
Just not the ones laid out in the constitution, either a) explicitly via 'the right to vote shall not be denied...' amendments, or b) via the Equal Protection clause, which would probably stop people being denied the right to vote based on religion(1), for example, or c) via the Due Process clause, which stops states from denying that right without an actual trial of some sort(2).
1) I don't know that this has actually ever come up, though. The Equal Protection clause would appear to stop that sort of thing, though, if the 1st amendment didn't do it all by itself.
2) Kids, don't get your hopes up. You can, indeed, sue the government for the right to vote...which you will lose if you're under 18 and the court can demonstrate it. If you're not under 18, but the government says you are and can't vote, feel free to sue. (This is probably only relevant to time travelers.)