It seems to me that Conservatism also costs money.....
And before you go and whine that Bush and the GOP aren't real "Conservatives" that's what they are passing themselves off as and they are getting the lions share of the support from people who fashion themselves as Conservatives. Where were the Conservatives when Ron Paul needed the support during the primaries?
It doesn't even cope well with the paved world. If you buy a box of matches in Ontario County, NY, use half of the matches, drive to your home in Monroe County, NY, and then use the other half, you have to pay the difference between Monroe County tax and Ontario County tax on half the purchase price of the box of matches
Do you have a citation for that? That seems pretty far-fetched, even for The Empire State..... if true it would also seem to imply that we'd have to do that for all purchases and I've never heard of anybody having to do that for personal or business reasons.
That depends on which use tax you are referring to. If you buy a car outside of NYS you won't be able to register it and get license plates until you either pay the NYS sales/use tax or provide proof that you had to pay sales/use tax to the state in which you bought it.
The use tax that's hard to enforce is the tax that NYS attempts to assess on out of state/online consumer purchases, like books, DVDs, etc, etc. You are supposed to pay this tax on your NYS income tax return.... but most people (myself included, I admit) just put down $0.
When you stop doing it, large men with guns come and take you away
Bit a difference between individuals doing it and a state government taking exception to the fact that it's citizens are effectively subsidizing other parts of the country.
In the case of New York it's particularly outrageous. We get back around 80 cents on the dollar in Federal services/money. It's espically infuriating when you talk about Homeland Security funding. We have a lot of juicy targets in this state and suffered the most on 9/11 yet Wyoming gets more funding per capita than we do. WTF is wrong with that picture? Is Osama sitting in his cave plotting the next big attack on Wyoming?
I've often thought that we needed someone like Ted Stevens or Robert Byrd working for us in DC. There are basically two kinds of politican -- one kind that gets into politics for big issues, causes and party politics (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Charles Schumer, Mitt Romney, etc) and the kind that gets into politics to bring stuff home (Ted Stevens, Robert Byrd, etc). New York has always seemed to get more of the issues type politicians. Better for the nation as a whole but not so well for us.... Hillary in particular has completely failed to live up to the promises she made back when she first ran for Senate.
The only real problem with the system is that most of the states electors are chosen in a winner-take-all manner
Why is that a 'real problem'? One could argue that in the case of a battleground state (PA and OH come to mind) that it's in the best interests of the state to have winner-take-all. If they allocated them proportionally the candidates would have less incentive to invest as many resources into that state.
In the case of a non-battleground state it might be the exact opposite -- allocate them proportionally and the candidates might spend some time in the state, if for no other reason than to ensure their opponents can't campaign uncontested (look at the results of the caucus states that HRC ignored on Super Tuesday to see what happens in uncontested elections).
Either way it should be up to the individual states to decide what is in their best interests.
But if the states began to pass a collective agreement to go proportional that would work ok. It would basically be each state passing a law agreeing to proportional electors once all the other states had also passed a similar law
That won't work because I doubt you'll ever get all 50 states to agree to this for the reasons I mentioned above. It would be interesting to see what happened if some of the non-battleground states switched to proportional allotment -- but that probably won't happen either for political reasons.... why would Republicans allow Texas to be split or Democrats allow California?
You got it in reverse. California has a bunch more clout because they have a bunch more electors.
Vermont has ~621,000 people and 3 electoral votes, i.e: an electoral vote per 207k residents. California has ~35,500,000 people and 55 electoral votes, i.e: an electoral vote per 645k residents. A citizen of Vermont would seem to have more clout than a citizen of California, at least by this metric. California as a whole obviously has more clout -- as was intended by the Founding Fathers.
Over the last few years I've wondering that myself. They're supposed keep watch over the president
Hmm, I don't think the main responsibility of the Senate is to keep watch over the President. That's certainly one role they have (as does the House and the Judiciary) but their main role would seem to be to represent the States in Washington. That's why each state has the same number of Senators. It's also why I think the 17th amendment should be repealed -- but that's probably another discussion.
This system is not producing the needed results
Says who? You and I? A Republican would probably argue that the system is working just fine. I would disagree with him but the underlying point is that you shouldn't change the rules just because you don't agree with the results. Back in 2000 some of the conventional wisdom was that GWB would win the popular vote but lose the electoral college. I wonder if so many Democrats would be advocating for direct popular-votes if that had happened?
What would you replace the electoral college with? Direct popular votes? That spells the end of Federalism and transfers even more power to the Federal Government at the expense of the States. Proportional allotment of electors? That's an argument to have with your state legislators, not your Congressman/US Senator.
The Founding Fathers worried about the powers of the mob. We ignored them and now we are stuck with a political system that encourages a race to the bottom in order to get elected. The lowest common dominator wins elections now. If it were up to me I would repeal the 17th amendment and leave the electoral college alone and leave it up to the states to decide how to allocate their votes.
And why do you think the design is detective? The design was to give the states the power to select the President. The states themselves can appoint their electors in whatever manner they see fit.
The United States is a Republic made up of 50 sovereign states. You might see it as unfair that a vote in Vermont counts more than one in California but that's the system working as designed.
I find it interesting that people rail against the electoral college but never mention the US Senate. Wyoming (population ~520,000) has the same representation in the Senate as California (population ~36,500,000), which has seventy times the population. Do you also have a problem with this arrangement?
Let's at least be honest here. By favoring a direct popular vote for any Federal office you are essentially advocating against Republican principles and in favor of an even more centralized system of Government. In that scenario, why keep the Senate around? Why keep the 50 State Governments around?
That could very easily mean that the 270 votes do not reflect the results of the election
"The election"? Add an 's' onto the end of that. There is no 'election' for President. There's 50 elections on a state level (well, 51 if you count DC) to select electors who will vote in the electoral college.
I only want my vote to be properly noted and counted
Your vote is properly noted and counted. You seem to think that it's not because the total isn't considered on a national basis. It's considered on a state basis. As it should be. This is the United States of America isn't it?
Do you know what your electoral college candidate's name is?
I will after the filing deadline to run for office in my state. The lists of electors for each candidate are easily attainable from the state Board of Elections.
So some people's opinions and votes are worth more than others? Why should a person's vote in California be worth any less than a person's vote in Wyoming? Funny way to run a democracy.
You might have a point if the United States was actually a Democracy.
And if "some people's opinions and votes are worth more than others" bothers you that much then I suggest you start boycotting US Senate elections. The last time I checked Vermont has the same number of Senators as California.
How is it an arbitrary dictate when the winner presumably got 270 electoral votes that were awarded as the result of elections?
It merely provides a way to disregard the will of the people
The 'will of the people' is not what selects Presidents in the United States of America. It's the will of the 50 states. Count your blessings that you even get to vote for your electors because there's nothing in the Constitution that says the states have to select their electors based on a popular vote. They could draw straws to decide whom gets the votes and it would be perfectly legal under the Constitution.
And if that doesn't work you can always go to the house of representatives(1824)
That's what's proscribed in the Constitution.
or the supreme court(2000)
The Supreme Court might not have gotten involved if Florida's Supreme Court had bothered to pay lip service to the concept of equal protection. "We'll re-count these here ballots from these three counties using different judging standards in each one and to hell with the rest of the state"
An electoral college that doesn't represent the popular vote is little better than establishing a monarchy by divine providence.
Repeat after me: The United States is a Republic. 50 Sovereign States get votes for POTUS. How you can compare this to a monarchy established by "divine providence" is beyond me. Your state gets X number of votes in the electoral college. Your vote helps to determine who those votes go to.
You can complain about the system or point out flaws but the comparison to monarchy is just absurd.
Then sometimes the system runs [ucsb.edu] amok [ucsb.edu]:-)
Why, because the outcome didn't reflect the popular vote total? So what? The system isn't set up to give any special consideration to the popular vote.
They're not responsibile for the crappy campain that Gore ran
No, they are just guilty of being incredibility short-sighted. Not a crime mind you and I would never dare to presume to tell someone how to vote but there's no way in hell I would voted for him if I lived in a battleground state.
Oh, come on. His whole point was that if Georgia had been quickly allowed into NATO when it SHOULD have been allowed in, Russia wouldn't have sent tanks into it in the first place. Are you unable to grasp the utility of a deterrent? There's a reason we never "declared war" on the Soviets.
Isn't this all a moot point given the fact that Germany and France were opposed to bringing Georgia into NATO? And is it really wise to invite yet another country that can barely defend itself (let alone contribute to the defense of others) into NATO?
I've researched the history in that region and came away with the conclusion that there really aren't any good guys there. The South Ossetians and Abkhazians have done their best to make life for ethic Georgians in those regions unlivable. Historically the Georgians did the same to them -- under the USSR and after the breakup of the USSR. Meanwhile the Russians are using the situation to try and destabilize a country that they've always considered to be within their sphere of influence.
I don't condone the methods of Putin or ethic cleansing on the part of the break-away regions but I can certainly understand why those regions don't wish to be a part of Georgia. Stalin redrew the map to lump them into Georgia back in the day -- and the Georgians did their very best to try and assimilate/bury their culture.
Somebody said that this is a situation that doesn't lend itself to black and white images of "good" and "bad". That's the understatement of the year, IMHO..... What a friggen mess.
That's the reason they offered to let him go ahead of the other PoWs
-1, factually incorrect. The reason they offered to let him go early was because his father was a high ranking Admiral in the US Navy. He refused unless everybody captured before him was also released.
So instead we have had eight years of corrupt, incompetent rule, New Orleans is submerged underwater, the economy has turned from the largest ever surplus to the largest ever deficit and 3000 Americans and at least half a million Iraqis are dead in Iraq.
Don't tell that to a Ralph Nader voter in Florida or New Hampshire.....
I, for one, am voting for Stephen Colbert. The system really screwed that guy.
Oh please. He did it as a joke -- even he will admit that when interviewed out of character. How you can say the "system" "screwed" him when he only tried to run in one state and close to the last minute is beyond me.
Personally I wouldn't have voted to keep him off the ballot but I don't think you can say he got "screwed" when his campaign was never serious to begin with.
our votes don't really count under the farce that is the electoral college.
Your vote counts just fine for selecting the electors from your own state. Lest you forget, the United States is a Republic made up of 50 states that retain their sovereignty. One of the points behind the Electoral College and US Senate is to prevent the domination of small/sparsely populated states by large/heavily populated ones.
You can have a debate about the wisdom of such a system but calling it a 'farce' seems to convey a pretty poor understanding of our system of Government. It's part of the Constitution. If the Electoral College is a 'farce' then I guess the Bill of Rights is as well.
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Liberals, meet liberalism. It costs money
It seems to me that Conservatism also costs money.....
And before you go and whine that Bush and the GOP aren't real "Conservatives" that's what they are passing themselves off as and they are getting the lions share of the support from people who fashion themselves as Conservatives. Where were the Conservatives when Ron Paul needed the support during the primaries?
i bought a sweatshirt in MI when i went home for the holidays; do i have to pay a tax to wear it in NY? that is hard to get my head around
No, because clothing isn't taxed in NYS any longer.
It doesn't even cope well with the paved world. If you buy a box of matches in Ontario County, NY, use half of the matches, drive to your home in Monroe County, NY, and then use the other half, you have to pay the difference between Monroe County tax and Ontario County tax on half the purchase price of the box of matches
Do you have a citation for that? That seems pretty far-fetched, even for The Empire State..... if true it would also seem to imply that we'd have to do that for all purchases and I've never heard of anybody having to do that for personal or business reasons.
Use tax is notoriously hard to enforce
That depends on which use tax you are referring to. If you buy a car outside of NYS you won't be able to register it and get license plates until you either pay the NYS sales/use tax or provide proof that you had to pay sales/use tax to the state in which you bought it.
The use tax that's hard to enforce is the tax that NYS attempts to assess on out of state/online consumer purchases, like books, DVDs, etc, etc. You are supposed to pay this tax on your NYS income tax return.... but most people (myself included, I admit) just put down $0.
When you stop doing it, large men with guns come and take you away
Bit a difference between individuals doing it and a state government taking exception to the fact that it's citizens are effectively subsidizing other parts of the country.
In the case of New York it's particularly outrageous. We get back around 80 cents on the dollar in Federal services/money. It's espically infuriating when you talk about Homeland Security funding. We have a lot of juicy targets in this state and suffered the most on 9/11 yet Wyoming gets more funding per capita than we do. WTF is wrong with that picture? Is Osama sitting in his cave plotting the next big attack on Wyoming?
I've often thought that we needed someone like Ted Stevens or Robert Byrd working for us in DC. There are basically two kinds of politican -- one kind that gets into politics for big issues, causes and party politics (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Charles Schumer, Mitt Romney, etc) and the kind that gets into politics to bring stuff home (Ted Stevens, Robert Byrd, etc). New York has always seemed to get more of the issues type politicians. Better for the nation as a whole but not so well for us.... Hillary in particular has completely failed to live up to the promises she made back when she first ran for Senate.
I would assume it's possible to extend IE to do something similar
Find me a similar extension for IE that's halfway as functional and lightweight as noscript and I'd agree with you.
Does Firefox do something fundamentally better with respect to this issue?
It's extensions do. Think Microsoft will ever release anything as lightweight and useful as noscript? I'm not holding my breath.....
I don't even trust my own machine
Must be running Windows, huh? ;)
The only real problem with the system is that most of the states electors are chosen in a winner-take-all manner
Why is that a 'real problem'? One could argue that in the case of a battleground state (PA and OH come to mind) that it's in the best interests of the state to have winner-take-all. If they allocated them proportionally the candidates would have less incentive to invest as many resources into that state.
In the case of a non-battleground state it might be the exact opposite -- allocate them proportionally and the candidates might spend some time in the state, if for no other reason than to ensure their opponents can't campaign uncontested (look at the results of the caucus states that HRC ignored on Super Tuesday to see what happens in uncontested elections).
Either way it should be up to the individual states to decide what is in their best interests.
But if the states began to pass a collective agreement to go proportional that would work ok. It would basically be each state passing a law agreeing to proportional electors once all the other states had also passed a similar law
That won't work because I doubt you'll ever get all 50 states to agree to this for the reasons I mentioned above. It would be interesting to see what happened if some of the non-battleground states switched to proportional allotment -- but that probably won't happen either for political reasons.... why would Republicans allow Texas to be split or Democrats allow California?
You got it in reverse. California has a bunch more clout because they have a bunch more electors.
Vermont has ~621,000 people and 3 electoral votes, i.e: an electoral vote per 207k residents. California has ~35,500,000 people and 55 electoral votes, i.e: an electoral vote per 645k residents. A citizen of Vermont would seem to have more clout than a citizen of California, at least by this metric. California as a whole obviously has more clout -- as was intended by the Founding Fathers.
Over the last few years I've wondering that myself. They're supposed keep watch over the president
Hmm, I don't think the main responsibility of the Senate is to keep watch over the President. That's certainly one role they have (as does the House and the Judiciary) but their main role would seem to be to represent the States in Washington. That's why each state has the same number of Senators. It's also why I think the 17th amendment should be repealed -- but that's probably another discussion.
This system is not producing the needed results
Says who? You and I? A Republican would probably argue that the system is working just fine. I would disagree with him but the underlying point is that you shouldn't change the rules just because you don't agree with the results. Back in 2000 some of the conventional wisdom was that GWB would win the popular vote but lose the electoral college. I wonder if so many Democrats would be advocating for direct popular-votes if that had happened?
What would you replace the electoral college with? Direct popular votes? That spells the end of Federalism and transfers even more power to the Federal Government at the expense of the States. Proportional allotment of electors? That's an argument to have with your state legislators, not your Congressman/US Senator.
The Founding Fathers worried about the powers of the mob. We ignored them and now we are stuck with a political system that encourages a race to the bottom in order to get elected. The lowest common dominator wins elections now. If it were up to me I would repeal the 17th amendment and leave the electoral college alone and leave it up to the states to decide how to allocate their votes.
wouldn't knowâ"I stopped watching The Daily Show after they crossed the Writers' Guild picket lines
I hope you are likewise not watching ANY Viacom production because I don't think crossing the picket lines was Jon Stewart's decision.....
And why do you think the design is detective? The design was to give the states the power to select the President. The states themselves can appoint their electors in whatever manner they see fit.
The United States is a Republic made up of 50 sovereign states. You might see it as unfair that a vote in Vermont counts more than one in California but that's the system working as designed.
I find it interesting that people rail against the electoral college but never mention the US Senate. Wyoming (population ~520,000) has the same representation in the Senate as California (population ~36,500,000), which has seventy times the population. Do you also have a problem with this arrangement?
Let's at least be honest here. By favoring a direct popular vote for any Federal office you are essentially advocating against Republican principles and in favor of an even more centralized system of Government. In that scenario, why keep the Senate around? Why keep the 50 State Governments around?
When there is a malfunction
What you see as a malfunction I see as the system working as designed.
That could very easily mean that the 270 votes do not reflect the results of the election
"The election"? Add an 's' onto the end of that. There is no 'election' for President. There's 50 elections on a state level (well, 51 if you count DC) to select electors who will vote in the electoral college.
I only want my vote to be properly noted and counted
Your vote is properly noted and counted. You seem to think that it's not because the total isn't considered on a national basis. It's considered on a state basis. As it should be. This is the United States of America isn't it?
Do you know what your electoral college candidate's name is?
I will after the filing deadline to run for office in my state. The lists of electors for each candidate are easily attainable from the state Board of Elections.
So some people's opinions and votes are worth more than others? Why should a person's vote in California be worth any less than a person's vote in Wyoming? Funny way to run a democracy.
You might have a point if the United States was actually a Democracy.
And if "some people's opinions and votes are worth more than others" bothers you that much then I suggest you start boycotting US Senate elections. The last time I checked Vermont has the same number of Senators as California.
You have an arbitrary dictate from "above"
How is it an arbitrary dictate when the winner presumably got 270 electoral votes that were awarded as the result of elections?
It merely provides a way to disregard the will of the people
The 'will of the people' is not what selects Presidents in the United States of America. It's the will of the 50 states. Count your blessings that you even get to vote for your electors because there's nothing in the Constitution that says the states have to select their electors based on a popular vote. They could draw straws to decide whom gets the votes and it would be perfectly legal under the Constitution.
And if that doesn't work you can always go to the house of representatives(1824)
That's what's proscribed in the Constitution.
or the supreme court(2000)
The Supreme Court might not have gotten involved if Florida's Supreme Court had bothered to pay lip service to the concept of equal protection. "We'll re-count these here ballots from these three counties using different judging standards in each one and to hell with the rest of the state"
An electoral college that doesn't represent the popular vote is little better than establishing a monarchy by divine providence.
Repeat after me: The United States is a Republic. 50 Sovereign States get votes for POTUS. How you can compare this to a monarchy established by "divine providence" is beyond me. Your state gets X number of votes in the electoral college. Your vote helps to determine who those votes go to.
You can complain about the system or point out flaws but the comparison to monarchy is just absurd.
Then sometimes the system runs [ucsb.edu] amok [ucsb.edu] :-)
Why, because the outcome didn't reflect the popular vote total? So what? The system isn't set up to give any special consideration to the popular vote.
They're not responsibile for the crappy campain that Gore ran
No, they are just guilty of being incredibility short-sighted. Not a crime mind you and I would never dare to presume to tell someone how to vote but there's no way in hell I would voted for him if I lived in a battleground state.
Oh, come on. His whole point was that if Georgia had been quickly allowed into NATO when it SHOULD have been allowed in, Russia wouldn't have sent tanks into it in the first place. Are you unable to grasp the utility of a deterrent? There's a reason we never "declared war" on the Soviets.
Isn't this all a moot point given the fact that Germany and France were opposed to bringing Georgia into NATO? And is it really wise to invite yet another country that can barely defend itself (let alone contribute to the defense of others) into NATO?
I've researched the history in that region and came away with the conclusion that there really aren't any good guys there. The South Ossetians and Abkhazians have done their best to make life for ethic Georgians in those regions unlivable. Historically the Georgians did the same to them -- under the USSR and after the breakup of the USSR. Meanwhile the Russians are using the situation to try and destabilize a country that they've always considered to be within their sphere of influence.
I don't condone the methods of Putin or ethic cleansing on the part of the break-away regions but I can certainly understand why those regions don't wish to be a part of Georgia. Stalin redrew the map to lump them into Georgia back in the day -- and the Georgians did their very best to try and assimilate/bury their culture.
Somebody said that this is a situation that doesn't lend itself to black and white images of "good" and "bad". That's the understatement of the year, IMHO..... What a friggen mess.
That's the reason they offered to let him go ahead of the other PoWs
-1, factually incorrect. The reason they offered to let him go early was because his father was a high ranking Admiral in the US Navy. He refused unless everybody captured before him was also released.
So instead we have had eight years of corrupt, incompetent rule, New Orleans is submerged underwater, the economy has turned from the largest ever surplus to the largest ever deficit and 3000 Americans and at least half a million Iraqis are dead in Iraq.
Don't tell that to a Ralph Nader voter in Florida or New Hampshire.....
I, for one, am voting for Stephen Colbert. The system really screwed that guy.
Oh please. He did it as a joke -- even he will admit that when interviewed out of character. How you can say the "system" "screwed" him when he only tried to run in one state and close to the last minute is beyond me.
Personally I wouldn't have voted to keep him off the ballot but I don't think you can say he got "screwed" when his campaign was never serious to begin with.
our votes don't really count under the farce that is the electoral college.
Your vote counts just fine for selecting the electors from your own state. Lest you forget, the United States is a Republic made up of 50 states that retain their sovereignty. One of the points behind the Electoral College and US Senate is to prevent the domination of small/sparsely populated states by large/heavily populated ones.
You can have a debate about the wisdom of such a system but calling it a 'farce' seems to convey a pretty poor understanding of our system of Government. It's part of the Constitution. If the Electoral College is a 'farce' then I guess the Bill of Rights is as well.