"There are certain phrases in the constitution that most definitely apply to literally anyone within the US, most notably those which reflect on "any person". In fact a large portion of the constitution falls into these categories."
True, very true.
Immaterial, however, as the ban is on people who are *not* in the US, and are *not* US citizens.
OP lost something in translation. The 3% number is misquoted:
From the source:
"Age. Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up nearly half of those paid the federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers (ages 16 to 19) paid by the hour, about 15 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3 percent of workers age 25 and older. (See tables 1 and 7.)
Some more
In 2014, 77.2 million workers age 16 and older in the United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.7 percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those paid by the hour, 1.3 million earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 1.7 million had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 3.0 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 3.9 percent of all hourly paid workers. The percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less declined from 4.3 percent in 2013 to 3.9 percent in 2014. This remains well below the figure of 13.4 percent in 1979, when data were first collected on a regular basis.
Among those making at or less than minimum wage, 23.1% had less than a high-school diploma. Another 31.4% had only a diploma and no further education. Of course this is consistent with under-25 comprising about half of those making minimum wage.
Here is an account from the economics writer Stephen Moore that was printed in the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Moore stated that he used to visit Milton Friedman and his wife, and together they would dine at a favorite Chinese restaurant: 2
At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
In 1996 an instance of the anecdote appeared in an article by Jerry L. Jordan in the Cato Journal of the Cato Institute, a prominent libertarian think-tank. The cogent remark was delivered by a businessman visiting China:
I am reminded of a story that a businessman told me a few years ago. While touring China, he came upon a team of nearly 100 workers building an earthen dam with shovels. The businessman commented to a local official that, with an earth-moving machine, a single worker could create the dam in an afternoon. The official’s curious response was, “Yes, but think of all the unemployment that would create.” “Oh,” said the businessman, “I thought you were building a dam. If it’s jobs you want to create, then take away their shovels and give them spoons!”
On September 13, 1935 William Aberhart gave a speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto. He recounted an anecdote in which he delivered a version of the saying: 4
One of the school graduates came to me to pay his respects to the school; he told me he was in charge of helping on one of the Dominion air ports. I said to him, “I suppose you use modern machinery in your air ports?” “No, sir.” “Why?” “Well,” he said, “if we used modern machinery in the establishment of air ports there would be very little need of men to help us to do it, for they would do it so rapidly and easily that there would be no need of man labour. We give them picks and shovels and put them out to do it in the old-fashioned way.” I smiled and said to him: “It would probably be just as well to give them spoons and forks; it would take them still longer to do it.” It seemed to me so ridiculous; we let modern machinery rust at the road side or air port and make those men bend their backs in order to give them the purchasing power to buy the necessities of life, and hardly that.
In 1966 a variant of the story was told in the Irish Parliament. The orator referred to an earlier incident that he said took place in the Parliament of the United Kingdom: 5
Mr. N. Lemass: Earl Attlee at one time suggested in the British House of Commons that instead of giving farmers tractors, they should be given shovels, thereby employing ten men instead of one, but the then Minister of Agriculture said: “Why not go further and give them spoons, thereby employing 100 men?” That is not the solution. The farming community cannot sustain as many people, if there is to be a more equitable distribution of our national wealth, and if the people living on the land are to have the high standard of living we would desire for them.
How many ditchdiggers were put out of work by a steam shovel? How many teamsters (mule team drivers) lost jobs when trucks became available? How many chandlers disappeared with the advent of the electric light bulb? Can you even find a cooper or cobbler anymore? Gas station attendants displaced by self-serve? Newsstand/kiosk operators killed off by vending machines? Elevator operators? Doormen? Footmen (the guys who ran out to put the steps under the carriage when it pulled up)? Typing pool replaced by Xerox machines, then computers?
I suppose it could something about mitigating the effects of AGW for a large portion of humanity.
Now, if only I believed that the people in charge actually cared a rat's ass about that portion of humanity likely to be most impacted. I.e., if the goal was to solve the economic problems that are associated with AGW.
Instead, I'm constantly being slapped by the obvious--and clearly stated by the "leaders"--notion that redistribution of wealth is the goal, and AGW is the crisis under which redistribution of wealth can be obtained. They don't care about people who will be impacted anymore than Stalin cared about the proletariat, and I think given half a chance would just as soon murder 20M people too (they clearly think about 5 or 6 billion need to go).
It might make some people happier about getting warmed-over, but is not a solution. By all means, let's talk about fusion, or solar power via panels or molten salt reactors, or wind power, or carbon sequestration, or carbon scrubbers, or even carbon taxes as a market-based forcing function to reduce carbon output. Let's even talk about orbital solar shades and/or mirrors and/or power generating panels (or combinations thereof).
The AGW movement is shot through with people who are not interested in *any* of the above, who's raison d'être is the socialization of (which is to say, bringing socialism) the world. The AGW "crisis" is the best most recent thing they can hide behind.
I'm pretty sure they'll only be happy when everyone is naked living in caves and eating dirt, so long as they can still get their wi-fi for their smartphone while they sip their latte feeling superior about themselves for their egalitarianism in making everyone equal at last. Some animals are more equal than others and all that.
Just 5 percent of the United States is experiencing drought conditions, the lowest level of drought here since government scientific agencies began updating the U.S. Drought Monitor on a weekly basis in 2000.
Many of them never came to pass. That perhaps the most generic "there will be extreme weather events" is one of the few that appears to have had merit is telling in itself. Even Miss Cleo could be right once in awhile "There will be a death in your family in the next few years..."
One of the things that fuels "deniers" is the failure of the climate models to make specific, verifiable predictions that actually occur when predicted. E.g. http://thefederalist.com/2014/...
Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses — 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources.
“Cities would be inconvenienced greatly and suffer some. Smaller cities would get it worse, but farmers would take the biggest hit,” said Maurice Roos, the department’s chief hydrologist. “Cities can always afford to spend a lot of money to buy what water is left.”
Roos, who has worked at the department since 1957, said the prospect of megadroughts is another reason to build more storage — both underground and in reservoirs — to catch rain in wet years.
In a megadrought, there would be much less water in the Delta to pump. Farmers’ allotments would shrink to nothing. Large reservoirs like Shasta, Oroville and San Luis would eventually go dry after five or more years of little or no rain.
Farmers would fallow millions of acres, letting row crops die first. They’d pump massive amounts of groundwater to keep orchards alive, but eventually those wells would go dry. And although deeper wells could be dug, the costs could exceed the value of their crops. Banks would refuse to loan the farmers money.
The federal government would almost certainly provide billions of dollars in emergency aid to farm communities.
“Some small towns in the Central Valley would really suffer. They would basically go away,” said Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis.
“But agriculture is only 3 percent of California’s economy today,” Lund said. “In the main urban economy, most people would learn to live with less water. It would be expensive and inconvenient, but we’d do it.”
Farmers with senior water rights would make a huge profit, he noted, selling water at sky-high prices to cities. Food costs would rise, but there wouldn’t be shortages, Lund said, because Californians already buy lots of food from other states and countries and would buy even more from them.
In urban areas, most cities would eventually see water rationing at 50 percent of current levels. Golf courses would shut down. Cities would pass laws banning watering or installing lawns, which use half of most homes’ water. Across the state, rivers and streams would dry up, wiping out salmon runs. Cities would race to build new water supply projects, similar to the $50 million wastewater recycling plant that the Santa Clara Valley Water District is now constructing in Alviso.
Cold weather is 20 times as deadly as hot weather, and it's not the extreme low or high temperatures that cause the most deaths, according to a study published Wednesday.
The study found the majority of deaths occurred on moderately hot and moderately cold days instead of during extreme temperatures.
"Although the risk of mortality due to extremely cold or hot days is actually higher, they are less frequent," said lead author Antonio Gasparrini of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.
Stars with below 8–9 Solar masses never reach high enough core temperature to burn carbon, instead ending their lives as carbon-oxygen white dwarfs after shell helium flashes gently expel the outer envelope in a planetary nebula.[3][13]
In stars with masses between 8 and 11 solar masses, the carbon-oxygen core is under degenerate conditions and carbon ignition takes place in a carbon flash, that lasts just milliseconds and disrupts the stellar core.[14] In the late stages of this nuclear burning they develop a massive stellar wind, which quickly ejects the outer envelope in a planetary nebula leaving behind an O-Ne-Na-Mg white dwarf core of about 1.1 solar masses.[3] The core never reaches high enough temperature for further fusion burning of heavier elements than carbon.[13]
Stars with more than 11 solar masses start carbon burning in a non-degenerate core,[14] and after carbon exhaustion proceed with the neon-burning process once contraction of the inert (O, Ne, Na, Mg) core raises the temperature sufficiently.[13]
Example, California drought claimed by alarmists to represent the doom of AGW coming to Cali. But research is indicating that California has been far wetter over the last century than it is normally and that the current drought is actually par for the long-term normal.
California’s current drought is being billed as the driest period in the state’s recorded rainfall history. But scientists who study the West’s long-term climate patterns say the state has been parched for much longer stretches before that 163-year historical period began.
Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years — compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.
“We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years,” said Scott Stine, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay. “We’re living in a dream world.”
California in 2013 received less rain than in any year since it became a state in 1850. And at least one Bay Area scientist says that based on tree ring data, the current rainfall season is on pace to be the driest since 1580 — more than 150 years before George Washington was born. The question is: How much longer will it last?
Stine, who has spent decades studying tree stumps in Mono Lake, Tenaya Lake, the Walker River and other parts of the Sierra Nevada, said that the past century has been among the wettest of the last 7,000 years.
Looking back, the long-term record also shows some staggeringly wet periods. The decades between the two medieval megadroughts, for example, delivered years of above-normal rainfall — the kind that would cause devastating floods today.
The longest droughts of the 20th century, what Californians think of as severe, occurred from 1987 to 1992 and from 1928 to 1934. Both, Stine said, are minor compared to the ancient droughts of 850 to 1090 and 1140 to 1320.
Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, says that the West is in a 20-year drought that began in 2000. He cites the fact that a phenomenon known as a “negative Pacific decadal oscillation” is underway — and that historically has been linked to extreme high-pressure ridges that block storms.
Such events, which cause pools of warm water in the North Pacific Ocean and cool water along the California coast, are not the result of global warming, Patzert said. But climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels has been linked to longer heat waves. That wild card wasn’t around years ago.
“Long before the Industrial Revolution, we were vulnerable to long extended periods of drought. And now we have another experiment with all this CO2 in the atmosphere where there are potentially even more wild swings in there,” said Graham Kent, a University of Nevada geophysicist who has studied submerged ancient trees in Fallen Leaf Lake near Lake Tahoe.
Even if warming is part of a natural cycle, it does seem quite likely that man is exacerbating the situation. If nothing else, if we could run our societies without belching pollution into the atmosphere, it'd be the better alternative. I look forward to clean fusion plants (now supposedly only 20 years in the future!).
So please don't call me a "denier". My issue is that few of the proposed "solutions" seem to be based on science. I see the occasional discussion of carbon sequestration and that sort of thing, but far more often the "solution" is just a cloak hiding the proposer's socialist SJW motives.
Even the IPCC report seems to be about poverty and income inequality and funding needed to address it. The report said climate change had the largest impact on people who are socially and economically marginalized. "Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low and lower-middle income countries, including high mountain states, countries at risk from sea-level rise, and countries with indigenous peoples, and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries in which inequality is increasing," [the report] said. But funding needed to offset the impact of climate change is lacking, the report warned, saying developing countries would need between $70 billion to $100 billion a year to implement needed measures. And efforts to reduce the effects of climate change would only have a marginal effect on reducing poverty unless "structural inequalities are addressed and needs for equity among poor and nonpoor people are met."
It's not about climate change or environmentalism, it really hasn't been for a long time...it's about socialist economic policy--redistribution of wealth. The leaders of the movement readily admit as much.
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War... First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
Christiana Figueres, leader of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”
Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Daphne Muller, green-progressive-liberal writer for Salon: "This moment requires we the people to rethink democracy as a global mechanism for enacting policy for and by the planet."
Peter Berle, President of the National Audubon Society: "We reject the idea of private property."
David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope."
Mikhail Gorbachev, communist and former leader of U.S.S.R.: "The emerging 'environmentalizatio
Even if warming is part of a natural cycle, it does seem quite likely that man is exacerbating the situation. If nothing else, if we could run our societies without belching pollution into the atmosphere, it'd be the better alternative. I look forward to clean fusion plants (now supposedly only 20 years in the future!).
So please don't call me a "denier". My issue is that few of the proposed "solutions" seem to be based on science. I see the occasional discussion of carbon sequestration and that sort of thing, but far more often the "solution" is just a cloak hiding the proposer's socialist SJW motives.
It's not about climate change or environmentalism, it really hasn't been for a long time...it's about socialist economic policy--redistribution of wealth. The leaders of the movement readily admit as much.
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War... First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
Christiana Figueres, leader of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”
Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Peter Berle, President of the National Audubon Society: "We reject the idea of private property."
David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope."
Mikhail Gorbachev, communist and former leader of U.S.S.R.: "The emerging 'environmentalization' of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government."
Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth: “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.”
Monika Kopacz, atmospheric scientist: "It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty."
Researcher Robert Phalen's 2010 testimony to the California Air Resources Board: "It benefits us personally to have the public be afraid, even if these risks are trivial."
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
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.
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
A related topic is kerning, which means that characters are *not* rendered the same in all cases. "kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letter forms, while tracking (letter-spacing) adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters.[1] In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of characters all have a visually similar area."
"The CSS property text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; enables kerning in Firefox, Chrome, Safari,[11] Opera, and the Android Browser.[12] There is also a proposed CSS3 property font-kerning,[13] but it is only supported in Firefox (prefixed with -moz-), Chrome and Opera (prefixed with -webkit- in both) and in Internet Explorer starting at version 10.[14] The CSS3 draft suggests that kerning should always be enabled for OpenType fonts."
The point it, we really don't have to guess or infer or interpret what the Founders meant in the 2nd. Their meaning was plainly stated many times: The 2nd is meant to protect the people's right to be able to stand up and overthrow an oppressive government, to go toe-to-toe with any standing army that might be raised. They had just fought a war under those very terms, and recognized that they might be creating a government which could go bad at some point too
The original language of the 2nd tells a more complete tale.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country." - James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789
Note the inclusion of "free" when describing the defense--not just the "defense of a country" but defending freedom in that country. They edited it for brevity, but did not mean to divert the meaning. There are so many examples of this line of thought in evidence from various Founders...
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." - Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." - Tench Coxe, Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789
"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." - Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, I Annals of Congress 750, August 17, 1789
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops." - Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of." - James Madison, Federalist No. 46, January 29, 1788
"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." - Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776
"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined..." - George Washington, First Annual Address, to both House of Congress, January 8, 1790
"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute tha
Yep. I just unscrew the spout and use a funnel. Can be a bit hard to see into the tank to avoid overflow but you get used to it quickly. Way better than trying get those stupid spouts to actually cut on and off correctly without leaking all over the place through the sides of the anti-spill mechanisms.
Oh, but one kid got burned from spilling gas...
A real bad guy once wrote “The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”
Slashdot Mirror
"There are certain phrases in the constitution that most definitely apply to literally anyone within the US, most notably those which reflect on "any person". In fact a large portion of the constitution falls into these categories."
True, very true.
Immaterial, however, as the ban is on people who are *not* in the US, and are *not* US citizens.
OP lost something in translation. The 3% number is misquoted:
From the source:
"Age. Minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although
workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of
hourly paid workers, they made up nearly half of those
paid the federal minimum wage or less. Among employed
teenagers (ages 16 to 19) paid by the hour, about 15 percent
earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3
percent of workers age 25 and older. (See tables 1 and 7.)
Some more
In 2014, 77.2 million workers age 16 and older in the
United States were paid at hourly rates, representing 58.7
percent of all wage and salary workers. Among those
paid by the hour, 1.3 million earned exactly the prevailing
federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 1.7 million
had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these
3.0 million workers with wages at or below the federal
minimum made up 3.9 percent of all hourly paid workers.
The percentage of hourly paid workers earning the
prevailing federal minimum wage or less declined from 4.3
percent in 2013 to 3.9 percent in 2014. This remains well
below the figure of 13.4 percent in 1979, when data were
first collected on a regular basis.
Among those making at or less than minimum wage, 23.1% had less than a high-school diploma. Another 31.4% had only a diploma and no further education. Of course this is consistent with under-25 comprising about half of those making minimum wage.
Here is an account from the economics writer Stephen Moore that was printed in the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Moore stated that he used to visit Milton Friedman and his wife, and together they would dine at a favorite Chinese restaurant: 2
At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
In 1996 an instance of the anecdote appeared in an article by Jerry L. Jordan in the Cato Journal of the Cato Institute, a prominent libertarian think-tank. The cogent remark was delivered by a businessman visiting China:
I am reminded of a story that a businessman told me a few years ago. While touring China, he came upon a team of nearly 100 workers building an earthen dam with shovels. The businessman commented to a local official that, with an earth-moving machine, a single worker could create the dam in an afternoon. The official’s curious response was, “Yes, but think of all the unemployment that would create.” “Oh,” said the businessman, “I thought you were building a dam. If it’s jobs you want to create, then take away their shovels and give them spoons!”
On September 13, 1935 William Aberhart gave a speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto. He recounted an anecdote in which he delivered a version of the saying: 4
One of the school graduates came to me to pay his respects to the school; he told me he was in charge of helping on one of the Dominion air ports. I said to him, “I suppose you use modern machinery in your air ports?”
“No, sir.”
“Why?”
“Well,” he said, “if we used modern machinery in the establishment of air ports there would be very little need of men to help us to do it, for they would do it so rapidly and easily that there would be no need of man labour. We give them picks and shovels and put them out to do it in the old-fashioned way.”
I smiled and said to him: “It would probably be just as well to give them spoons and forks; it would take them still longer to do it.” It seemed to me so ridiculous; we let modern machinery rust at the road side or air port and make those men bend their backs in order to give them the purchasing power to buy the necessities of life, and hardly that.
In 1966 a variant of the story was told in the Irish Parliament. The orator referred to an earlier incident that he said took place in the Parliament of the United Kingdom: 5
Mr. N. Lemass: Earl Attlee at one time suggested in the British House of Commons that instead of giving farmers tractors, they should be given shovels, thereby employing ten men instead of one, but the then Minister of Agriculture said: “Why not go further and give them spoons, thereby employing 100 men?” That is not the solution. The farming community cannot sustain as many people, if there is to be a more equitable distribution of our national wealth, and if the people living on the land are to have the high standard of living we would desire for them.
[All the above at http://quoteinvestigator.com/2...
How many ditchdiggers were put out of work by a steam shovel? How many teamsters (mule team drivers) lost jobs when trucks became available? How many chandlers disappeared with the advent of the electric light bulb? Can you even find a cooper or cobbler anymore? Gas station attendants displaced by self-serve? Newsstand/kiosk operators killed off by vending machines? Elevator operators? Doormen? Footmen (the guys who ran out to put the steps under the carriage when it pulled up)? Typing pool replaced by Xerox machines, then computers?
Or Size 10 for that matter.
I suppose it could something about mitigating the effects of AGW for a large portion of humanity.
Now, if only I believed that the people in charge actually cared a rat's ass about that portion of humanity likely to be most impacted. I.e., if the goal was to solve the economic problems that are associated with AGW.
Instead, I'm constantly being slapped by the obvious--and clearly stated by the "leaders"--notion that redistribution of wealth is the goal, and AGW is the crisis under which redistribution of wealth can be obtained. They don't care about people who will be impacted anymore than Stalin cared about the proletariat, and I think given half a chance would just as soon murder 20M people too (they clearly think about 5 or 6 billion need to go).
Redistributing wealth does fuck-all to solve AGW.
It might make some people happier about getting warmed-over, but is not a solution. By all means, let's talk about fusion, or solar power via panels or molten salt reactors, or wind power, or carbon sequestration, or carbon scrubbers, or even carbon taxes as a market-based forcing function to reduce carbon output. Let's even talk about orbital solar shades and/or mirrors and/or power generating panels (or combinations thereof).
The AGW movement is shot through with people who are not interested in *any* of the above, who's raison d'être is the socialization of (which is to say, bringing socialism) the world. The AGW "crisis" is the best most recent thing they can hide behind.
I'm pretty sure they'll only be happy when everyone is naked living in caves and eating dirt, so long as they can still get their wi-fi for their smartphone while they sip their latte feeling superior about themselves for their egalitarianism in making everyone equal at last. Some animals are more equal than others and all that.
Sol is one solar mass.
Poe's law?
Have reached lows. Have a look at the map at
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
Just 5 percent of the United States is experiencing drought conditions, the lowest level of drought here since government scientific agencies began updating the U.S. Drought Monitor on a weekly basis in 2000.
Anywhere in south Georgia and South Carolina pretty much in its entirety runs 90 degrees and 90% humidity right on through summer.
Many of them never came to pass. That perhaps the most generic "there will be extreme weather events" is one of the few that appears to have had merit is telling in itself. Even Miss Cleo could be right once in awhile "There will be a death in your family in the next few years..."
One of the things that fuels "deniers" is the failure of the climate models to make specific, verifiable predictions that actually occur when predicted. E.g. http://thefederalist.com/2014/...
http://www.mercurynews.com/201...
Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses — 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources.
“Cities would be inconvenienced greatly and suffer some. Smaller cities would get it worse, but farmers would take the biggest hit,” said Maurice Roos, the department’s chief hydrologist. “Cities can always afford to spend a lot of money to buy what water is left.”
Roos, who has worked at the department since 1957, said the prospect of megadroughts is another reason to build more storage — both underground and in reservoirs — to catch rain in wet years.
In a megadrought, there would be much less water in the Delta to pump. Farmers’ allotments would shrink to nothing. Large reservoirs like Shasta, Oroville and San Luis would eventually go dry after five or more years of little or no rain.
Farmers would fallow millions of acres, letting row crops die first. They’d pump massive amounts of groundwater to keep orchards alive, but eventually those wells would go dry. And although deeper wells could be dug, the costs could exceed the value of their crops. Banks would refuse to loan the farmers money.
The federal government would almost certainly provide billions of dollars in emergency aid to farm communities.
“Some small towns in the Central Valley would really suffer. They would basically go away,” said Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis.
“But agriculture is only 3 percent of California’s economy today,” Lund said. “In the main urban economy, most people would learn to live with less water. It would be expensive and inconvenient, but we’d do it.”
Farmers with senior water rights would make a huge profit, he noted, selling water at sky-high prices to cities. Food costs would rise, but there wouldn’t be shortages, Lund said, because Californians already buy lots of food from other states and countries and would buy even more from them.
In urban areas, most cities would eventually see water rationing at 50 percent of current levels. Golf courses would shut down. Cities would pass laws banning watering or installing lawns, which use half of most homes’ water. Across the state, rivers and streams would dry up, wiping out salmon runs. Cities would race to build new water supply projects, similar to the $50 million wastewater recycling plant that the Santa Clara Valley Water District is now constructing in Alviso.
Aren't some of those pretty much quoting the same things Paul Ehrlich said 50 years ago?
Cold weather is 20 times as deadly as hot weather, and it's not the extreme low or high temperatures that cause the most deaths, according to a study published Wednesday.
The study found the majority of deaths occurred on moderately hot and moderately cold days instead of during extreme temperatures.
"Although the risk of mortality due to extremely cold or hot days is actually higher, they are less frequent," said lead author Antonio Gasparrini of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.
Stars with below 8–9 Solar masses never reach high enough core temperature to burn carbon, instead ending their lives as carbon-oxygen white dwarfs after shell helium flashes gently expel the outer envelope in a planetary nebula.[3][13]
In stars with masses between 8 and 11 solar masses, the carbon-oxygen core is under degenerate conditions and carbon ignition takes place in a carbon flash, that lasts just milliseconds and disrupts the stellar core.[14] In the late stages of this nuclear burning they develop a massive stellar wind, which quickly ejects the outer envelope in a planetary nebula leaving behind an O-Ne-Na-Mg white dwarf core of about 1.1 solar masses.[3] The core never reaches high enough temperature for further fusion burning of heavier elements than carbon.[13]
Stars with more than 11 solar masses start carbon burning in a non-degenerate core,[14] and after carbon exhaustion proceed with the neon-burning process once contraction of the inert (O, Ne, Na, Mg) core raises the temperature sufficiently.[13]
Example, California drought claimed by alarmists to represent the doom of AGW coming to Cali. But research is indicating that California has been far wetter over the last century than it is normally and that the current drought is actually par for the long-term normal.
California’s current drought is being billed as the driest period in the state’s recorded rainfall history. But scientists who study the West’s long-term climate patterns say the state has been parched for much longer stretches before that 163-year historical period began.
Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years — compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.
“We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years,” said Scott Stine, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay. “We’re living in a dream world.”
California in 2013 received less rain than in any year since it became a state in 1850. And at least one Bay Area scientist says that based on tree ring data, the current rainfall season is on pace to be the driest since 1580 — more than 150 years before George Washington was born. The question is: How much longer will it last?
Stine, who has spent decades studying tree stumps in Mono Lake, Tenaya Lake, the Walker River and other parts of the Sierra Nevada, said that the past century has been among the wettest of the last 7,000 years.
Looking back, the long-term record also shows some staggeringly wet periods. The decades between the two medieval megadroughts, for example, delivered years of above-normal rainfall — the kind that would cause devastating floods today.
The longest droughts of the 20th century, what Californians think of as severe, occurred from 1987 to 1992 and from 1928 to 1934. Both, Stine said, are minor compared to the ancient droughts of 850 to 1090 and 1140 to 1320.
Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, says that the West is in a 20-year drought that began in 2000. He cites the fact that a phenomenon known as a “negative Pacific decadal oscillation” is underway — and that historically has been linked to extreme high-pressure ridges that block storms.
Such events, which cause pools of warm water in the North Pacific Ocean and cool water along the California coast, are not the result of global warming, Patzert said. But climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels has been linked to longer heat waves. That wild card wasn’t around years ago.
“Long before the Industrial Revolution, we were vulnerable to long extended periods of drought. And now we have another experiment with all this CO2 in the atmosphere where there are potentially even more wild swings in there,” said Graham Kent, a University of Nevada geophysicist who has studied submerged ancient trees in Fallen Leaf Lake near Lake Tahoe.
Even if warming is part of a natural cycle, it does seem quite likely that man is exacerbating the situation. If nothing else, if we could run our societies without belching pollution into the atmosphere, it'd be the better alternative. I look forward to clean fusion plants (now supposedly only 20 years in the future!).
So please don't call me a "denier". My issue is that few of the proposed "solutions" seem to be based on science. I see the occasional discussion of carbon sequestration and that sort of thing, but far more often the "solution" is just a cloak hiding the proposer's socialist SJW motives.
Even the IPCC report seems to be about poverty and income inequality and funding needed to address it. The report said climate change had the largest impact on people who are socially and economically marginalized. "Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low and lower-middle income countries, including high mountain states, countries at risk from sea-level rise, and countries with indigenous peoples, and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries in which inequality is increasing," [the report] said. But funding needed to offset the impact of climate change is lacking, the report warned, saying developing countries would need between $70 billion to $100 billion a year to implement needed measures. And efforts to reduce the effects of climate change would only have a marginal effect on reducing poverty unless "structural inequalities are addressed and needs for equity among poor and nonpoor people are met."
It's not about climate change or environmentalism, it really hasn't been for a long time...it's about socialist economic policy--redistribution of wealth. The leaders of the movement readily admit as much.
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War... First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
Christiana Figueres, leader of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”
Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Daphne Muller, green-progressive-liberal writer for Salon: "This moment requires we the people to rethink democracy as a global mechanism for enacting policy for and by the planet."
Peter Berle, President of the National Audubon Society: "We reject the idea of private property."
David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope."
Mikhail Gorbachev, communist and former leader of U.S.S.R.: "The emerging 'environmentalizatio
Even if warming is part of a natural cycle, it does seem quite likely that man is exacerbating the situation. If nothing else, if we could run our societies without belching pollution into the atmosphere, it'd be the better alternative. I look forward to clean fusion plants (now supposedly only 20 years in the future!).
So please don't call me a "denier". My issue is that few of the proposed "solutions" seem to be based on science. I see the occasional discussion of carbon sequestration and that sort of thing, but far more often the "solution" is just a cloak hiding the proposer's socialist SJW motives.
It's not about climate change or environmentalism, it really hasn't been for a long time...it's about socialist economic policy--redistribution of wealth. The leaders of the movement readily admit as much.
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War... First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.
Christiana Figueres, leader of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.”
Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed: “We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Peter Berle, President of the National Audubon Society: "We reject the idea of private property."
David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope."
Mikhail Gorbachev, communist and former leader of U.S.S.R.: "The emerging 'environmentalization' of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government."
Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth: “A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources.”
Monika Kopacz, atmospheric scientist: "It is no secret that a lot of climate-change research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in today’s world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty."
Researcher Robert Phalen's 2010 testimony to the California Air Resources Board: "It benefits us personally to have the public be afraid, even if these risks are trivial."
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
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.
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
But not both in the same file, surely.
More explanation than one may want...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A related topic is kerning, which means that characters are *not* rendered the same in all cases. "kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letter forms, while tracking (letter-spacing) adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters.[1] In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of characters all have a visually similar area."
"The CSS property text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; enables kerning in Firefox, Chrome, Safari,[11] Opera, and the Android Browser.[12] There is also a proposed CSS3 property font-kerning,[13] but it is only supported in Firefox (prefixed with -moz-), Chrome and Opera (prefixed with -webkit- in both) and in Internet Explorer starting at version 10.[14] The CSS3 draft suggests that kerning should always be enabled for OpenType fonts."
The point it, we really don't have to guess or infer or interpret what the Founders meant in the 2nd. Their meaning was plainly stated many times: The 2nd is meant to protect the people's right to be able to stand up and overthrow an oppressive government, to go toe-to-toe with any standing army that might be raised. They had just fought a war under those very terms, and recognized that they might be creating a government which could go bad at some point too
The original language of the 2nd tells a more complete tale.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
- James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789
Note the inclusion of "free" when describing the defense--not just the "defense of a country" but defending freedom in that country. They edited it for brevity, but did not mean to divert the meaning. There are so many examples of this line of thought in evidence from various Founders...
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
- Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
- Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."
- Tench Coxe, Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789
"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty .... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
- Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, I Annals of Congress 750, August 17, 1789
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops."
- Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of."
- James Madison, Federalist No. 46, January 29, 1788
"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
- Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776
"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined..."
- George Washington, First Annual Address, to both House of Congress, January 8, 1790
"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute tha
Yep. I just unscrew the spout and use a funnel. Can be a bit hard to see into the tank to avoid overflow but you get used to it quickly. Way better than trying get those stupid spouts to actually cut on and off correctly without leaking all over the place through the sides of the anti-spill mechanisms.
Oh, but one kid got burned from spilling gas...
A real bad guy once wrote “The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”