Would not have worked in Detroit in the last Municipal election.
City Council was 9 members, elected at-large. After the primary there're 18 choices on the ballot. In the primary it was about 100.
In 2013 it may be possible (7 are going to be elected in districts; which you only have four candidates in the general; but the primary is probably more), but this illustrates the problem with using physical buttons.
I'm sure there were plenty of ways for them to get around this.
He needed to have been touch with us (or a good CPA) before he withdrew the cash. But he didn't, probably because he was in oh-shit-she's-gonna-die mode. I can't really blame him for it, but he would have saved himself a lot of money and stress if he'd done so.
Everyone says "Of course he wouldn't screw that guy," and "Of course the numbers add up," etc. But if the numbers don't add up (which is, IMO, very likely) he can always blame it on the Congresspeople he's insisting actually write the plan.
As for my client, I got the impression they weren't doing much planning at all. They were in survival mode.
I should add, I DO NOT support Romney, I like this one idea I had not previously heard from anyone. I think it sidesteps pretty much every issue with closing deduction related loopholes. I hope to see it incorporated into a future budget, that will obviously require some.level of bipartisanship for the foreseeable future (as a super majority is unlikely).
It's not a bad idea. As an H and R Block guy it is certainly the only idea to limit deductions that does not nuke my livelihood.
The problem is that very few people use $25k in deductions. Many of the ones who do actually need the whole amount (for example, last year I had a guy who withdrew six figures from his IRA to pay for his wife's Chemo, that is technically taxable income to him, and a deductions cap would have screwed him).
Even if you o down to $15k you aren't increasing revenue by a hundred billion.
I heard 17k, and maybe going down for higher income.
And that is the best info we have on his plan. He's mentioned numbers from $15k to $25k, but he doesn't specify what. He also refuses to tell how much this would raise, and what precise tax rate cuts he'd implement with the money.
And (surprise surprise) when independent analysts look into the tax rate cuts he's promising, and the revenue the deductions cap would raise, they find that it doesn't really add up.
Note that even if every race decided with IRV is two hours, my last ballot had 33 of them. 33. That's 66 hours.
Surely you just count them with 33 teams? Or am I missing something.
In the US a 33-race ballot isn't 33 separate pages. It's three pages, back and front.
You could divide that up for three teams, which still gives everyone a 22-hour shift. You could somewhat improve that time by adding a few pages, but that risks people missing entire pages of that ballot. As is I'm almost positive I missed a page of my ballot because I keep seeing internet ads for a state Constitutional Amendment I can't remember voting on.
Hell, I think I've proven in this very conversation that I'm more aware of US Politics then 3/4 of Americans, and I intentionally skipped like 25 of those Judicial races because I had no idea who to vote for. I could not rank those guys if I wanted to.
US Elections are a fucking pain in the ass.
As for how Democratic the US and UK are, you're missing a couple pretty important points. While in theory the UK Constitution could be easily scrapped, that has not happened since 1688.
Not since 1688 has the constitution been as weak as it was 2 years ago. We have one law which can rewrite constitutional laws without debate in Parliamant. We have another which grants unlimited emergency powers in the event of a minor emergency. We had a law which banned unauthorised protest within a mile of Parliament. We had suspicionless stop and search. We had anyone being detainable for 48 days with no evidence presented. We had a law that every passport applicant (which you need to get to Europe et al) had to be fingerprinted, retina scanned and entered on a central database.
Trust me, it's better to have a constitution -- even your old one which thinks guns are a consitutional issue.
My preferred system is actually Canadian.
The stuff that dominates the US Constitution proper (who gets what power, etc.) is all customary in their system, but your actual rights are protected by a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that's virtually impossible to amend. they avoid the "What happens if the Presidential Electors all fart on Wednesday?" BS we got in 2000, and they still have formal freedoms.
As for the presence of third parties = democracy, that is debatable. If a group is large enough to get into the legislature under any rules it will generally be pandered to by at least one of the major parties. Which means it does not need it's own party label to have it's views listened to by the system. Third parties tend to be people who really do not understand how to get what they want and/or are vanity candidates. The Greens, for example, could easily get somebody onto the ballot in a Top Two system if they were willing to not spend any money on no-hope Gubernatorial and presidential bids, which would give them a decent shot at winning actual political power. But having that no-hope presidential candidacy seems very important to them, so they don't do it.
And what is the highest a Green has polled in either a congressional or senate seat?
I think you grossly underestimate the bias against third parties.
Pretty much nothing, because they suck at politics.
They do not have a nationwide infrastructure, so they can't get candidates for US House and lower in most areas. They insist on having somebody on the ballot at the higher levels, so just about everyone on their ticket is two levels two high. When your Presidential candidate was driven from the lowest level of Federal office due to being a crazy bitch (as Cynthia Mckinney was), and your most prominent Congressional candidate is an ex-con whose wearing a ratty t-shirt in his only wikipedia picture, you should not be surprised nobody votes for you.
But that's not their sole problem: They are considered spoilers. Greens are le
Note that even if every race decided with IRV is two hours, my last ballot had 33 of them. 33. That's 66 hours. We wouldn't know who won most elections for damn near two work-weeks. That is not acceptable. Period. As a Brit you simply have no frame of reference for how BIG a US election ballot is. This is not vote for one guy and go home.
As for how Democratic the US and UK are, you're missing a couple pretty important points. While in theory the UK Constitution could be easily scrapped, that has not happened since 1688. OTOH France has has two periods of rule by the Bourbons, two by the Bonapartes, five Republics, and a Vichy period they don't talk about much anymore; and have rarely follow the official Constitutional rules for changing from one to the other.
As for primaries, you're showing your Britishness again. There's no single rule re: primaries in the US. Every state sets it's own rules. In some there's no partisan registration, so Parties can't stop non-members from voting, but they can (and do) insist that you only vote in one primary at a time. In others there's a top-two primary, where all candidates choose a party description, and and run in one primary. The top two get to advance. In those states it's actually unusual to have two different parties running in the general election because in most districts the Top Two are both one party. Still others have a Closed Primary system, whereby everyone registers as a member of a specific political party, and can only vote in that party's primary.
Note the first system, which you praise, has many advantages. Notably the government doesn't have a list of people who voted against them. But it also has a huge disadvantage: when there's no interesting race on the Democratic side Democrats can sabotage the Republicans by voting for the crazy guy. Google michigan mischief primary for examples.
OTOH you can buy as many party memberships in Canada as you want. Which means you could vote in every Riding Association nomination meeting. You can still be over-ruled by the party leadership in Ottawa, which is arguably not democratic, but it is definitely an improvement of California's vote for the less crazy major party candidate system. I assume the Brits do it the same way.
As for the presence of third parties = democracy, that is debatable. If a group is large enough to get into the legislature under any rules it will generally be pandered to by at least one of the major parties. Which means it does not need it's own party label to have it's views listened to by the system. Third parties tend to be people who really do not understand how to get what they want and/or are vanity candidates. The Greens, for example, could easily get somebody onto the ballot in a Top Two system if they were willing to not spend any money on no-hope Gubernatorial and presidential bids, which would give them a decent shot at winning actual political power. But having that no-hope presidential candidacy seems very important to them, so they don't do it.
In practice it's very difficult for a third party to come in second in any district because most districts a) are 2/3 Dem b) 2/3 GOP or c) 2/3 Dem + GOP. In districts of the first type you get two Dems running, in districts of the second type you get two Repubs, in districts of the third you get one of each.
If any third party was at all savvy politically they'd put all their resources in Cali into a single State Assembly district with a vulnerable incumbent, and totally ignore the Gubernatorial race. But they aren't, so all they see is "Oh shit, we don't get to have one vanity candidate in every State Senate district anymore, the world has ended."
I didn't realize there was a national move toward top two primaries, closing the election process even more... well, at least these four folks can agree to oppose that.
Also, they are behaving a lot better so far than Obama/Romney did. Maybe it's because of Zombie Larry King.
The 3rd party's opposition to top two primaries is actually a major reason I can't take them seriously.
With one very simple tweak this would be the best thing ever to happen to those parties. If there was only one guy from every party on the ballot then in most GOP Districts the Libertarians would come in second, which means that if there was an October Surprise for any Republican they actually win an election. Same with the Greens and the Dems. And every year somebody screws up.
But these chuckle-heads don't understand a politicians job is to find compromises. They think his job is to be totally righteous. Therefore instead of offering their support in exchange for the relatively minor concession of having every party caucus and nominate somebody prior to the first election, they go into full-opposition-to-the-death.
Actually a savvy group in the US with 10% can totally dominate everyone. The more extreme pro-life position -- no abortion or abortion like birth control anywhere, for anyone, even rape victims -- for example, is only held by 15-20% of the country. But they always vote, and they only vote on that issue, therefore instead of the left position being "let's give free abortions to rape victims," it's "let's not make it illegal for rape victims to get abortions." Gun control works the same way. By the polls a majority of the country likes assault weapons bans, limits on high-capacity magazines, etc. But 10% of the population prefers hitler to a guy whop'd do that shit, so the left position on that issue is "Let's not repeal any of our current gun-control laws."
The folks who are screwed are the ones who care about the entire range of issues the US faces. It's hard for them to know which candidate to support, and it's hard for the candidates they support to know "I got 5,000 votes in Cochise County for agreeing with those guys," so they can't win.
They basically have to join a Party, get their folks winning primaries, and wait 5-10 years so the low-level State House and Senate guys they bring up can be well-positioned for a run at the US House.
The problem with IRV is we elect too god-damned-many politicians to actually count all the IRV races we need to count.
Count the races you're supposed to vote on next time you vote. I guarantee you it will be in the dozens.
I would love it if it if somebody with power proposed that we go over to a less-American, more Westminster syetem that would allow luxuries like IRV/Concordet but nobody does. Nobody says "hey let's make all these Judges Gubenatorial appointees," or "It's fucking stupid that we let these guys run the library system, but we insist on referendums anytime they want to pay for a new library," or "Why the fuck do we have both a State Senate AND a State House?"
They just bitch that nobody pays attention to their vanity campaign for Governor.
People who are for IRV in the US have no idea how different US elections are from foreign elections.
In most countries you only vote for one or two offices at a time. If it's two offices then they're either two houses of the same Parliament (Australia is an example) or two sets of seats for the lower House (the Bundestag in Germany, for example, is divided between Party List seats and individual seats). Everyone who goes to your polling place gets the same ballot, and each race is on a separate sheet of paper. Which means implementing IRV is trivial, because you can just send all the ballot papers for South Brisbane, the Queensland Senate ballots sent to another, and spend a few hours implementing an algorithm of any level of complexity on each set of ballots. there's no need for one precinct to tally it's ballots, send the info to central, wait for them to add everything up, be told "OK re-count with Bob Jones deleted," repeat until 50%+1.
OTOH my Ohio ballot had 33 races on it. They were all on the same sheet of paper, because 33 sheets of paper would have been insane. Almost all (85%+) were Judges, including Judges to the local municipal court. But there was also the President, US Senate, US House, State House, a referendum on whether to have a Constitutional Convention, and probably some other crap I ignored. You cannot centrally count these ballots because the races on the ballot vary even within polling places; and applying an algorithm of any complexity 33 times within a month is literally impossible.
And it should be noted Ohio is a massive improvement over my last abode in Detroit. 40 races every time, usually close to 50. The extra was mostly because a lot of Michigan's Public Universities have boards that are elected, as do all the Community Colleges.
Sorry for the double-post, but I forgot was not signed in under Firefox
In an Aussie context "Republican" does not refer to a party, it refers to the political position that the Queen should be fired. Most Aussie pols in both parties are Republicans in this sense of the word. According to Aussie Republic activists, so are the people, but there actually a referendum on the issue fairly recently (late 90s), which they lost.
They claim it's because the Australian people want a US-Style, directly-elected, politically powerful President, whereas the pols just want to rename the un-elected, virtually powerless Governor-General President. I suspect they're deluding themselves.
Regardless, since then the monarchy's gained popularity in pretty much the entire Commonwealth, so I doubt that they will get another shot at firing the Queen. King Charles III will probably win the inevitable referendum after he inherits.
Lots more fish and whale food means lots more fish and whales, as long as the experiment lasts that's not a problem. But when it ends the new fish and whales don't magically disappear, they hang around eating plankton until the plankton's gone, then they starve. If you're lucky everything gets back to where it should be after a few years of screwy population numbers, if you're not lucky the new fish/whales eat all the plankton and then starve, which means everything that eats them starves, and jellyfish rule the earth.
As for the scale, your math is right, but if someone with a PhD in this shit uses the phrase "this scares me," I tend to take that fairly seriously. And Dr. Maria Maldonado used exactly that phrase.
If the Haida are sovereign then they are the ones who decide what their law is. They are apparently pretty pissed at Mr. George for telling them this was a great idea that everyone would love, when (in fact) it was a very risky idea that many people hated. If nothing else it's not hard to send a lawyer to the Federal Courthouse with a piece of paper that says "While we retain the right to assert our sovereignty in future cases of this nature, in this case we ask the Court to proceed on the basis that the federal government has sovereignty."
But, yes, there are jurisdictional issues here I was not aware of.
US Courts won't charge you with violating the London Convention, but they will nail you for the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, which we passed as part of implementing the London Convention.
I assume the Canadians have passed similar laws, but I can't tell you the exact names.
Mostly by stripping the Carbon from CO2 atoms. That's actually the entire point of doing it. Problem is it can screw up the local ecosystem in very unpredictable ways.
The UN’s convention on biological diversity (CBD), and the UN’s convention on biological diversity (CBD) and London convention on the dumping of wastes at sea.
Canada is party to both agreements. The US is party to the London Convention. Russ George is an American, his company is American, and they were working for the Haida (a Canadian Aboriginal group) so they are in legal trouble if the Canadian Courts find either applies, or US Courts find the London Convention applies. The specific US Law he would have violated is the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, which provides penalties of up to $250,000 and five years in jail.
If the venture is successful it will be repeated. Just not by this guy.
As for the possible consequences of his actions, that really depends on the exact laws Canada adopted when it signed these UN Conventions. Fines are a definite possibility. Getting carbon credits is not, because you don't get carbon credits for breaking the law. Otherwise you'd be able to get money for firebombing your neighbor's SUV.
It's entirely possible this guy could go to prison for fraud, because he told the local Haida that a) this was totally legal, and b) there was no chance of environmental harm. Neither are true, and given that this guy has been banned from Peru and Spain for doing this exact thing before he can;t very well claim he didn't know.
>> (whatever) has been detected off the west coast of Canada that violates UN regulations
Is it Canada waters? Then WTF does anyone care what the UN papershufflers think?
>> The entrepreneur, Russ George, hopes to cash in on the carbon credits
Why not? Start treating silly little "carbon credits" like valuable pieces of paper, and they will become money.
Canada signed both treaties in question, which makes them part of Canadian law.
As for the "carbon credits" this guy wants, those are generally only available for people who get legal authorization to do what they want.
What this guy did is analogous to the Army announcing it wants tanks, and some guy bolts a canon to his Humvee, drops it off at the local National Guard base, and waits for the check to arrive.
Slashdot Mirror
Would not have worked in Detroit in the last Municipal election.
City Council was 9 members, elected at-large. After the primary there're 18 choices on the ballot. In the primary it was about 100.
In 2013 it may be possible (7 are going to be elected in districts; which you only have four candidates in the general; but the primary is probably more), but this illustrates the problem with using physical buttons.
Impeachment works for the Feds.
Have a committee of Judges that can fire other Judges. Works in France.
It's a lot easier then assuming Judge Dumbass will lose an election that nobody except lawyers are paying attention to.
I'm sure there were plenty of ways for them to get around this.
He needed to have been touch with us (or a good CPA) before he withdrew the cash. But he didn't, probably because he was in oh-shit-she's-gonna-die mode. I can't really blame him for it, but he would have saved himself a lot of money and stress if he'd done so.
It's the perfect plan politically.
Everyone says "Of course he wouldn't screw that guy," and "Of course the numbers add up," etc. But if the numbers don't add up (which is, IMO, very likely) he can always blame it on the Congresspeople he's insisting actually write the plan.
As for my client, I got the impression they weren't doing much planning at all. They were in survival mode.
I should add, I DO NOT support Romney, I like this one idea I had not previously heard from anyone. I think it sidesteps pretty much every issue with closing deduction related loopholes. I hope to see it incorporated into a future budget, that will obviously require some.level of bipartisanship for the foreseeable future (as a super majority is unlikely).
It's not a bad idea. As an H and R Block guy it is certainly the only idea to limit deductions that does not nuke my livelihood.
The problem is that very few people use $25k in deductions. Many of the ones who do actually need the whole amount (for example, last year I had a guy who withdrew six figures from his IRA to pay for his wife's Chemo, that is technically taxable income to him, and a deductions cap would have screwed him).
Even if you o down to $15k you aren't increasing revenue by a hundred billion.
I heard 17k, and maybe going down for higher income.
And that is the best info we have on his plan. He's mentioned numbers from $15k to $25k, but he doesn't specify what. He also refuses to tell how much this would raise, and what precise tax rate cuts he'd implement with the money.
And (surprise surprise) when independent analysts look into the tax rate cuts he's promising, and the revenue the deductions cap would raise, they find that it doesn't really add up.
We basically have PAYE right now. If you owe more then $1,000 on April 15 you have to file a Form 2210, and pay a penalty.
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc306.html
Note that even if every race decided with IRV is two hours, my last ballot had 33 of them. 33. That's 66 hours.
Surely you just count them with 33 teams? Or am I missing something.
In the US a 33-race ballot isn't 33 separate pages. It's three pages, back and front.
You could divide that up for three teams, which still gives everyone a 22-hour shift. You could somewhat improve that time by adding a few pages, but that risks people missing entire pages of that ballot. As is I'm almost positive I missed a page of my ballot because I keep seeing internet ads for a state Constitutional Amendment I can't remember voting on.
Hell, I think I've proven in this very conversation that I'm more aware of US Politics then 3/4 of Americans, and I intentionally skipped like 25 of those Judicial races because I had no idea who to vote for. I could not rank those guys if I wanted to.
US Elections are a fucking pain in the ass.
As for how Democratic the US and UK are, you're missing a couple pretty important points. While in theory the UK Constitution could be easily scrapped, that has not happened since 1688.
Not since 1688 has the constitution been as weak as it was 2 years ago. We have one law which can rewrite constitutional laws without debate in Parliamant. We have another which grants unlimited emergency powers in the event of a minor emergency. We had a law which banned unauthorised protest within a mile of Parliament. We had suspicionless stop and search. We had anyone being detainable for 48 days with no evidence presented. We had a law that every passport applicant (which you need to get to Europe et al) had to be fingerprinted, retina scanned and entered on a central database.
Trust me, it's better to have a constitution -- even your old one which thinks guns are a consitutional issue.
My preferred system is actually Canadian.
The stuff that dominates the US Constitution proper (who gets what power, etc.) is all customary in their system, but your actual rights are protected by a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that's virtually impossible to amend. they avoid the "What happens if the Presidential Electors all fart on Wednesday?" BS we got in 2000, and they still have formal freedoms.
As for the presence of third parties = democracy, that is debatable. If a group is large enough to get into the legislature under any rules it will generally be pandered to by at least one of the major parties. Which means it does not need it's own party label to have it's views listened to by the system. Third parties tend to be people who really do not understand how to get what they want and/or are vanity candidates. The Greens, for example, could easily get somebody onto the ballot in a Top Two system if they were willing to not spend any money on no-hope Gubernatorial and presidential bids, which would give them a decent shot at winning actual political power. But having that no-hope presidential candidacy seems very important to them, so they don't do it.
And what is the highest a Green has polled in either a congressional or senate seat?
I think you grossly underestimate the bias against third parties.
Pretty much nothing, because they suck at politics.
They do not have a nationwide infrastructure, so they can't get candidates for US House and lower in most areas. They insist on having somebody on the ballot at the higher levels, so just about everyone on their ticket is two levels two high. When your Presidential candidate was driven from the lowest level of Federal office due to being a crazy bitch (as Cynthia Mckinney was), and your most prominent Congressional candidate is an ex-con whose wearing a ratty t-shirt in his only wikipedia picture, you should not be surprised nobody votes for you.
But that's not their sole problem: They are considered spoilers. Greens are le
Note that even if every race decided with IRV is two hours, my last ballot had 33 of them. 33. That's 66 hours. We wouldn't know who won most elections for damn near two work-weeks. That is not acceptable. Period. As a Brit you simply have no frame of reference for how BIG a US election ballot is. This is not vote for one guy and go home.
As for how Democratic the US and UK are, you're missing a couple pretty important points. While in theory the UK Constitution could be easily scrapped, that has not happened since 1688. OTOH France has has two periods of rule by the Bourbons, two by the Bonapartes, five Republics, and a Vichy period they don't talk about much anymore; and have rarely follow the official Constitutional rules for changing from one to the other.
As for primaries, you're showing your Britishness again. There's no single rule re: primaries in the US. Every state sets it's own rules. In some there's no partisan registration, so Parties can't stop non-members from voting, but they can (and do) insist that you only vote in one primary at a time. In others there's a top-two primary, where all candidates choose a party description, and and run in one primary. The top two get to advance. In those states it's actually unusual to have two different parties running in the general election because in most districts the Top Two are both one party. Still others have a Closed Primary system, whereby everyone registers as a member of a specific political party, and can only vote in that party's primary.
Note the first system, which you praise, has many advantages. Notably the government doesn't have a list of people who voted against them. But it also has a huge disadvantage: when there's no interesting race on the Democratic side Democrats can sabotage the Republicans by voting for the crazy guy. Google michigan mischief primary for examples.
OTOH you can buy as many party memberships in Canada as you want. Which means you could vote in every Riding Association nomination meeting. You can still be over-ruled by the party leadership in Ottawa, which is arguably not democratic, but it is definitely an improvement of California's vote for the less crazy major party candidate system. I assume the Brits do it the same way.
As for the presence of third parties = democracy, that is debatable. If a group is large enough to get into the legislature under any rules it will generally be pandered to by at least one of the major parties. Which means it does not need it's own party label to have it's views listened to by the system. Third parties tend to be people who really do not understand how to get what they want and/or are vanity candidates. The Greens, for example, could easily get somebody onto the ballot in a Top Two system if they were willing to not spend any money on no-hope Gubernatorial and presidential bids, which would give them a decent shot at winning actual political power. But having that no-hope presidential candidacy seems very important to them, so they don't do it.
In theory you're right.
In practice it's very difficult for a third party to come in second in any district because most districts a) are 2/3 Dem b) 2/3 GOP or c) 2/3 Dem + GOP. In districts of the first type you get two Dems running, in districts of the second type you get two Repubs, in districts of the third you get one of each.
If any third party was at all savvy politically they'd put all their resources in Cali into a single State Assembly district with a vulnerable incumbent, and totally ignore the Gubernatorial race. But they aren't, so all they see is "Oh shit, we don't get to have one vanity candidate in every State Senate district anymore, the world has ended."
Californians are so self-centered.
How does one implement PR in a state that only has two or three Congressional seats?
I didn't realize there was a national move toward top two primaries, closing the election process even more... well, at least these four folks can agree to oppose that.
Also, they are behaving a lot better so far than Obama/Romney did. Maybe it's because of Zombie Larry King.
The 3rd party's opposition to top two primaries is actually a major reason I can't take them seriously.
With one very simple tweak this would be the best thing ever to happen to those parties. If there was only one guy from every party on the ballot then in most GOP Districts the Libertarians would come in second, which means that if there was an October Surprise for any Republican they actually win an election. Same with the Greens and the Dems. And every year somebody screws up.
But these chuckle-heads don't understand a politicians job is to find compromises. They think his job is to be totally righteous. Therefore instead of offering their support in exchange for the relatively minor concession of having every party caucus and nominate somebody prior to the first election, they go into full-opposition-to-the-death.
Actually a savvy group in the US with 10% can totally dominate everyone. The more extreme pro-life position -- no abortion or abortion like birth control anywhere, for anyone, even rape victims -- for example, is only held by 15-20% of the country. But they always vote, and they only vote on that issue, therefore instead of the left position being "let's give free abortions to rape victims," it's "let's not make it illegal for rape victims to get abortions." Gun control works the same way. By the polls a majority of the country likes assault weapons bans, limits on high-capacity magazines, etc. But 10% of the population prefers hitler to a guy whop'd do that shit, so the left position on that issue is "Let's not repeal any of our current gun-control laws."
The folks who are screwed are the ones who care about the entire range of issues the US faces. It's hard for them to know which candidate to support, and it's hard for the candidates they support to know "I got 5,000 votes in Cochise County for agreeing with those guys," so they can't win.
They basically have to join a Party, get their folks winning primaries, and wait 5-10 years so the low-level State House and Senate guys they bring up can be well-positioned for a run at the US House.
The problem with IRV is we elect too god-damned-many politicians to actually count all the IRV races we need to count.
Count the races you're supposed to vote on next time you vote. I guarantee you it will be in the dozens.
I would love it if it if somebody with power proposed that we go over to a less-American, more Westminster syetem that would allow luxuries like IRV/Concordet but nobody does. Nobody says "hey let's make all these Judges Gubenatorial appointees," or "It's fucking stupid that we let these guys run the library system, but we insist on referendums anytime they want to pay for a new library," or "Why the fuck do we have both a State Senate AND a State House?"
They just bitch that nobody pays attention to their vanity campaign for Governor.
People who are for IRV in the US have no idea how different US elections are from foreign elections.
In most countries you only vote for one or two offices at a time. If it's two offices then they're either two houses of the same Parliament (Australia is an example) or two sets of seats for the lower House (the Bundestag in Germany, for example, is divided between Party List seats and individual seats). Everyone who goes to your polling place gets the same ballot, and each race is on a separate sheet of paper. Which means implementing IRV is trivial, because you can just send all the ballot papers for South Brisbane, the Queensland Senate ballots sent to another, and spend a few hours implementing an algorithm of any level of complexity on each set of ballots. there's no need for one precinct to tally it's ballots, send the info to central, wait for them to add everything up, be told "OK re-count with Bob Jones deleted," repeat until 50%+1.
OTOH my Ohio ballot had 33 races on it. They were all on the same sheet of paper, because 33 sheets of paper would have been insane. Almost all (85%+) were Judges, including Judges to the local municipal court. But there was also the President, US Senate, US House, State House, a referendum on whether to have a Constitutional Convention, and probably some other crap I ignored. You cannot centrally count these ballots because the races on the ballot vary even within polling places; and applying an algorithm of any complexity 33 times within a month is literally impossible.
And it should be noted Ohio is a massive improvement over my last abode in Detroit. 40 races every time, usually close to 50. The extra was mostly because a lot of Michigan's Public Universities have boards that are elected, as do all the Community Colleges.
Sorry for the double-post, but I forgot was not signed in under Firefox
I wouldn't bet on a change from Charles. He seems to like the name.
He might go with George instead, but I wouldn't bet on it.
In an Aussie context "Republican" does not refer to a party, it refers to the political position that the Queen should be fired. Most Aussie pols in both parties are Republicans in this sense of the word. According to Aussie Republic activists, so are the people, but there actually a referendum on the issue fairly recently (late 90s), which they lost.
They claim it's because the Australian people want a US-Style, directly-elected, politically powerful President, whereas the pols just want to rename the un-elected, virtually powerless Governor-General President. I suspect they're deluding themselves.
Regardless, since then the monarchy's gained popularity in pretty much the entire Commonwealth, so I doubt that they will get another shot at firing the Queen. King Charles III will probably win the inevitable referendum after he inherits.
You answered your own question.
Lots more fish and whale food means lots more fish and whales, as long as the experiment lasts that's not a problem. But when it ends the new fish and whales don't magically disappear, they hang around eating plankton until the plankton's gone, then they starve. If you're lucky everything gets back to where it should be after a few years of screwy population numbers, if you're not lucky the new fish/whales eat all the plankton and then starve, which means everything that eats them starves, and jellyfish rule the earth.
As for the scale, your math is right, but if someone with a PhD in this shit uses the phrase "this scares me," I tend to take that fairly seriously. And Dr. Maria Maldonado used exactly that phrase.
That might actually hurt Russ George.
If the Haida are sovereign then they are the ones who decide what their law is. They are apparently pretty pissed at Mr. George for telling them this was a great idea that everyone would love, when (in fact) it was a very risky idea that many people hated. If nothing else it's not hard to send a lawyer to the Federal Courthouse with a piece of paper that says "While we retain the right to assert our sovereignty in future cases of this nature, in this case we ask the Court to proceed on the basis that the federal government has sovereignty."
But, yes, there are jurisdictional issues here I was not aware of.
US Courts won't charge you with violating the London Convention, but they will nail you for the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, which we passed as part of implementing the London Convention.
I assume the Canadians have passed similar laws, but I can't tell you the exact names.
Yup.
Mostly by stripping the Carbon from CO2 atoms. That's actually the entire point of doing it. Problem is it can screw up the local ecosystem in very unpredictable ways.
The UN’s convention on biological diversity (CBD), and the UN’s convention on biological diversity (CBD) and London convention on the dumping of wastes at sea.
Canada is party to both agreements. The US is party to the London Convention. Russ George is an American, his company is American, and they were working for the Haida (a Canadian Aboriginal group) so they are in legal trouble if the Canadian Courts find either applies, or US Courts find the London Convention applies. The specific US Law he would have violated is the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, which provides penalties of up to $250,000 and five years in jail.
If the venture is successful it will be repeated. Just not by this guy.
As for the possible consequences of his actions, that really depends on the exact laws Canada adopted when it signed these UN Conventions. Fines are a definite possibility. Getting carbon credits is not, because you don't get carbon credits for breaking the law. Otherwise you'd be able to get money for firebombing your neighbor's SUV.
It's entirely possible this guy could go to prison for fraud, because he told the local Haida that a) this was totally legal, and b) there was no chance of environmental harm. Neither are true, and given that this guy has been banned from Peru and Spain for doing this exact thing before he can;t very well claim he didn't know.
>> (whatever) has been detected off the west coast of Canada that violates UN regulations
Is it Canada waters? Then WTF does anyone care what the UN papershufflers think?
>> The entrepreneur, Russ George, hopes to cash in on the carbon credits
Why not? Start treating silly little "carbon credits" like valuable pieces of paper, and they will become money.
Canada signed both treaties in question, which makes them part of Canadian law.
As for the "carbon credits" this guy wants, those are generally only available for people who get legal authorization to do what they want.
What this guy did is analogous to the Army announcing it wants tanks, and some guy bolts a canon to his Humvee, drops it off at the local National Guard base, and waits for the check to arrive.
There's no zeal like the zeal of a convert.