Actually, it's already been outlawed. The Constitution, nominally the highest law in the land, does not authorize the vast majority of what the NSA does, and in places flat-out prohibits its behavior.
As this is now post-constitutional America, what's not explicitly authorized, or is explicitly prohibited, hardly matters.
That's pretty much true, though there is an exception.
In my state (Missouri) a write-in candidate has to file a declaration of candidacy by 5 PM on the second Friday preceding the election, or the votes won't count. In an election with filed candidates on the ballot, that is.
If no one files for the position, all votes for write-in candidates are reported, and a winner could be chosen.
It's a major pain for the election board, apparently, as they have to verify that the winning candidate exists and is qualified to hold the office. (I don't know what they plan to do if someone named Michael Mouse is eligible to hold an office, and a write-in candidate named Mickey Mouse gets the most votes.)
Did I say "a winner could be chosen" and "the winning candidate"? In some races where no one files and there are write-ins, there's a tie. Then the fun begins.
For political party county committee positions, apparently it's up to the party's county committee to decide, at their first meeting after the election. That's how we did it. Not a problem for us, as the "photo finish" candidates didn't show up for the meeting. Maybe they did not know they got any votes.
Probably not a problem for the Democrats and Republicans, but for a different reason. Those county committee elections are a big deal for them, and those elections are hotly contested, at least in St. Louis County. Anyone who wants the position would file. No write-ins counted, in that case.
And every reason to think the presidential elector will do the bidding of his or her party, the party that selected the elector to represent that party's candidate.
Though there have been elections where things were muddled going in, and the meeting wasn't a mere formality. There were multiple rounds of voting in the Electoral College before a president and vice-president was chosen. If one was chosen.
And in 1972, a renegade elector (or is it "rogue elector"?) cast a vote for the Libertarian slate. The late Toni Nathan became the first woman to get a vote in the Electoral College, when Roger McBride voted for her to be vice-president.
There are two parties, experts claim and I concur, because of the nature of US voting. The candidate with the most votes is elected. A bloc of voters will have more success trying to get their favorite sort of candidate elected as the nominee of one of the two dominant parties, than by starting a new political party. Typically. If a new party starts to get too successful to suit the two dominant parties of the era, one or both will adopt that issue, and the new party's voters will abandon it for candidates that have a better shot at getting elected.
There are occasional exceptions. The last major exception to this occurred in the 1850s, when anti-slavery voters could not get either the Democrats or the Whigs to take on slavery. That opened up an opportunity for a new party to form around that issue. The Republicans went from nothing to winning seats in the Congress and eventually the presidency in about a decade. The Whigs disappeared.
That's why there are two. But why those two?
Because laws, that's why.
In the late 19th century, there was a push in the states for government-printed ballots (among other bad ideas). Once that happened, government decides who is and who is not a "real" candidate, and which political parties are the "real" ones. Unsurprisingly, the laws passed by Democrats and Republicans made it very hard to start new political parties. (Well, it's unsurprising now.)
This had the effect of reducing participation in the political process -- you would simply not believe what Americans did for fun and civic involvement in the 19th century -- and election competitiveness. Voting is the limit for most people, and only about half even do that in the "big" elections. Few elections are close, which further makes voting unappealing.
This is documented in "Why America Stopped Voting" by Mark Lawrence Kornbluh. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/inde... The statistical analysis parts are rather dry, but the descriptions of the political clubs of the 19th century more than make up for it. They were positively European in their zest for political constructions and group activities. (No giant puppet caricatures of political figures, though. I think.)
You may want to read other messages in this thread to learn of some practical difficulties involved that others have not been able to easily figure out how to overcome.
Even if they don't want it, that seems to be the bureaucratic mindset.
Not only is is true that "If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" but "employees of the Ministry of Hammers will always choose a hammer over any other tool".
Possessive pronouns have multiple meanings, depending on the context. People have to be bright enough to figure it out, so they don't make stupid mistakes. When it's even possible to figure out. "English is hard."
Frederick Douglass did not own his former master.
I was going to follow that statement with an example that illustrates the point, but I had already done it without realizing it.
Reminds me of what Sam Walton (or one of the Wal-Mart heirs) said, when told he didn't need to drive that old beat-up red pickup truck because he could drive anything he wanted.
What's needed in April is votes for opposition candidates, not "awareness". Ferguson residents are certainly aware that their city government is out of control, and the welfare of the residents is not a top priority of the people in city government. It may not even be on the list.
Getting votes is a process which is tedious and, if you buy into the whole "democracy is awesome!" fantasy, incredibly depressing.
People decide to vote or not vote for bizarre or appalling reasons. People decide how they're going to vote for bizarre or appalling reasons. If you want to be successful at getting good results on Election Day, you have to ignore your distaste for this.
And you cannot blame the voters, either. Choosing politicians is a lot different from choosing pizza. You decide on the pizza, you order the pizza, you get the pizza, you pay for the pizza you ordered. You decide on a politician, you vote for the politician. You either get the politician or you get a different politician. You either pay for the politician you want or you pay for a politician you didn't want.
It makes sense to spend some time and effort deciding on a pizza to get the pizza you want. It doesn't make sense to pick a politician and vote for the one you want, because your vote is almost certainly irrelevant. I'm surprised voter turnout isn't even lower, frankly.
Obviously, people usually aren't doing it in hopes of affecting the outcome, they've got something else in mind. Showing support for their favorite team. (Or how much they dislike the only other team that's allowed to compete.) They do it because they think it's their duty, or due to peer pressure.
Those are the motivations you have to go for, to be successful at elections.
As a friend of mine put it, if all you do is vote, you are not involved in the process. Your action is irrelevant.
Does this mean you want to contribute to the campaigns of the opposition candidates? Because if it does, I can put you in touch with a Ferguson resident who is heavily involved in the effort.
Well, if it's true that Edward Snowden is coming to the US for trial, it'll be interesting to watch his trial in parallel with hers.
In the unlikely event that she gets a trial.
And he lives long enough to be tried.
The likelihood of those two events -- as estimated in casino odds -- is why gambling on political events is forbidden in the United States. (Though in the latter case, there is the possibility of someone with a lot of money on the line acting in a very murderly way, even if they don't care about him or what he did, one way or another.)
People would tend to be more honest if they put their partisan feelings to the side when they placed their bets. And poorer if they did not.
Somebody said that "the police are the historians of crime". There may have been a "mostly" or a "usually" or a "frequently" in there. But yeah, I can see that.
As someone who drives through northwest St. Louis County on a regular basis and is two city limit lines away from Ferguson, MO, it'd be an improvement if all the police were was an expensive tax-supported irrelevance. Instead, they're revenue-generating speed traps and stop-sign watchers.
Technically, those fines and court costs are not taxes. But they sure get treated like it when it's time to draw up an annual budget for Ferguson, and St. Ann, and Berkeley, and Edmundson, and...
We'll see how that works in Ferguson, MO, next month. I'm faintly hopeful, but apparently not as hopeful as you.
Would you like me to keep you posted? It's only two city limits away from me, and I know a person or three there. I've been following it, some.
And I'll be helping the campaigns of the opposition slate by hanging campaign literature on doorknobs and (if I'm unlucky) talking to people I don't even know. (I'm a "recovering introvert"; I can impersonate an extrovert, given time to prepare, emotionally.)
Don't know of any campaign treasurer who is receiving donations. And chances are, anyone reading this would be providing the evil "outside money" if they were to donate.
That would make you as evil as George Soros and the Koch brothers. I wouldn't want that happen to you.
Pretty much. I'm one of those apparently rare souls whose agenda is to let everyone go to hell in their own chosen way, and not interfere as long as they're not (literally) harming other people, or messing with the stuff that belongs to other people.
There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the short version.
Absolutely. More than once I've heard one of our developers say that, as part of a fix, the code will have to be refactored first.
Otherwise, we'd be going from a chunk of unmaintainable code to a larger chunk of more unmaintainable code. If it gets 10% and 10% more unmaintainable (using my handy-dandy unmaintainability-meter), it is now 21% worse, overall.
Sort of the opposite of the old joke about the restaurant: "The food is terrible. And the portions are too small."
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's already been outlawed. The Constitution, nominally the highest law in the land, does not authorize the vast majority of what the NSA does, and in places flat-out prohibits its behavior.
As this is now post-constitutional America, what's not explicitly authorized, or is explicitly prohibited, hardly matters.
That's pretty much true, though there is an exception.
In my state (Missouri) a write-in candidate has to file a declaration of candidacy by 5 PM on the second Friday preceding the election, or the votes won't count. In an election with filed candidates on the ballot, that is.
If no one files for the position, all votes for write-in candidates are reported, and a winner could be chosen.
It's a major pain for the election board, apparently, as they have to verify that the winning candidate exists and is qualified to hold the office. (I don't know what they plan to do if someone named Michael Mouse is eligible to hold an office, and a write-in candidate named Mickey Mouse gets the most votes.)
Did I say "a winner could be chosen" and "the winning candidate"? In some races where no one files and there are write-ins, there's a tie. Then the fun begins.
For political party county committee positions, apparently it's up to the party's county committee to decide, at their first meeting after the election. That's how we did it. Not a problem for us, as the "photo finish" candidates didn't show up for the meeting. Maybe they did not know they got any votes.
Probably not a problem for the Democrats and Republicans, but for a different reason. Those county committee elections are a big deal for them, and those elections are hotly contested, at least in St. Louis County. Anyone who wants the position would file. No write-ins counted, in that case.
And every reason to think the presidential elector will do the bidding of his or her party, the party that selected the elector to represent that party's candidate.
Though there have been elections where things were muddled going in, and the meeting wasn't a mere formality. There were multiple rounds of voting in the Electoral College before a president and vice-president was chosen. If one was chosen.
And in 1972, a renegade elector (or is it "rogue elector"?) cast a vote for the Libertarian slate. The late Toni Nathan became the first woman to get a vote in the Electoral College, when Roger McBride voted for her to be vice-president.
There are two parties, experts claim and I concur, because of the nature of US voting. The candidate with the most votes is elected. A bloc of voters will have more success trying to get their favorite sort of candidate elected as the nominee of one of the two dominant parties, than by starting a new political party. Typically. If a new party starts to get too successful to suit the two dominant parties of the era, one or both will adopt that issue, and the new party's voters will abandon it for candidates that have a better shot at getting elected.
There are occasional exceptions. The last major exception to this occurred in the 1850s, when anti-slavery voters could not get either the Democrats or the Whigs to take on slavery. That opened up an opportunity for a new party to form around that issue. The Republicans went from nothing to winning seats in the Congress and eventually the presidency in about a decade. The Whigs disappeared.
That's why there are two. But why those two?
Because laws, that's why.
In the late 19th century, there was a push in the states for government-printed ballots (among other bad ideas). Once that happened, government decides who is and who is not a "real" candidate, and which political parties are the "real" ones. Unsurprisingly, the laws passed by Democrats and Republicans made it very hard to start new political parties. (Well, it's unsurprising now.)
This had the effect of reducing participation in the political process -- you would simply not believe what Americans did for fun and civic involvement in the 19th century -- and election competitiveness. Voting is the limit for most people, and only about half even do that in the "big" elections. Few elections are close, which further makes voting unappealing.
This is documented in "Why America Stopped Voting" by Mark Lawrence Kornbluh. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/inde... The statistical analysis parts are rather dry, but the descriptions of the political clubs of the 19th century more than make up for it. They were positively European in their zest for political constructions and group activities. (No giant puppet caricatures of political figures, though. I think.)
This would be devastating to the budgets of Ferguson, MO, and most nearby municipalities in North St. Louis County.
That alone is reason enough for me.
Might as well extend it to "failure to appear" fines and such, while we're at it, and really defund those scoundrels.
Every improvement in grammar was initially "ungrammatical". (And don't get me started about "made up words".)
Because of the FAA's power to regulate aircraft, under one of the "invisible ink" provisions in the Constitution, apparently.
"Congress shall make no law ... or abridging the freedom of speech"
There's no qualification on the type of speech: political, commercial, academic, dramatic fiction, religious, gibberish. Just speech.
Hope this helps.
Golly! Why didn't I think of that?
Probably because I don't know of a way to do it.
So tell us, AC, "How is this accomplished?"
You may want to read other messages in this thread to learn of some practical difficulties involved that others have not been able to easily figure out how to overcome.
Even if they don't want it, that seems to be the bureaucratic mindset.
Not only is is true that "If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" but "employees of the Ministry of Hammers will always choose a hammer over any other tool".
Going to Walmart will skew the results, because it's a non-representative sample.
I hope.
"Grammar Lesson" by Larry Niven. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/t...
Possessive pronouns have multiple meanings, depending on the context. People have to be bright enough to figure it out, so they don't make stupid mistakes. When it's even possible to figure out. "English is hard."
Frederick Douglass did not own his former master.
I was going to follow that statement with an example that illustrates the point, but I had already done it without realizing it.
"English is hard."
It's working for me. Now to move over those unfinished .torrent files.
Quite a few to choose from, according to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A "false flag" a-hole? What's this world coming to? Aren't there enough genuine a-holes?
And besides, NSA is probing it now. Or its UK counterpart is doing it for them, in exchange for a probing of a UK site.
Reminds me of what Sam Walton (or one of the Wal-Mart heirs) said, when told he didn't need to drive that old beat-up red pickup truck because he could drive anything he wanted.
Yes, I can. And I do.
I wonder if that was what Captain Ramius had in mind, in "The Hunt For Red October"? http://www.imdb.com/character/...
What's needed in April is votes for opposition candidates, not "awareness". Ferguson residents are certainly aware that their city government is out of control, and the welfare of the residents is not a top priority of the people in city government. It may not even be on the list.
Getting votes is a process which is tedious and, if you buy into the whole "democracy is awesome!" fantasy, incredibly depressing.
People decide to vote or not vote for bizarre or appalling reasons. People decide how they're going to vote for bizarre or appalling reasons. If you want to be successful at getting good results on Election Day, you have to ignore your distaste for this.
And you cannot blame the voters, either. Choosing politicians is a lot different from choosing pizza. You decide on the pizza, you order the pizza, you get the pizza, you pay for the pizza you ordered. You decide on a politician, you vote for the politician. You either get the politician or you get a different politician. You either pay for the politician you want or you pay for a politician you didn't want.
It makes sense to spend some time and effort deciding on a pizza to get the pizza you want. It doesn't make sense to pick a politician and vote for the one you want, because your vote is almost certainly irrelevant. I'm surprised voter turnout isn't even lower, frankly.
Obviously, people usually aren't doing it in hopes of affecting the outcome, they've got something else in mind. Showing support for their favorite team. (Or how much they dislike the only other team that's allowed to compete.) They do it because they think it's their duty, or due to peer pressure.
Those are the motivations you have to go for, to be successful at elections.
As a friend of mine put it, if all you do is vote, you are not involved in the process. Your action is irrelevant.
Does this mean you want to contribute to the campaigns of the opposition candidates? Because if it does, I can put you in touch with a Ferguson resident who is heavily involved in the effort.
Not just you. Anybody here on Slashdot.
Well, if it's true that Edward Snowden is coming to the US for trial, it'll be interesting to watch his trial in parallel with hers.
In the unlikely event that she gets a trial.
And he lives long enough to be tried.
The likelihood of those two events -- as estimated in casino odds -- is why gambling on political events is forbidden in the United States. (Though in the latter case, there is the possibility of someone with a lot of money on the line acting in a very murderly way, even if they don't care about him or what he did, one way or another.)
People would tend to be more honest if they put their partisan feelings to the side when they placed their bets. And poorer if they did not.
That simply wouldn't do.
Somebody said that "the police are the historians of crime". There may have been a "mostly" or a "usually" or a "frequently" in there. But yeah, I can see that.
As someone who drives through northwest St. Louis County on a regular basis and is two city limit lines away from Ferguson, MO, it'd be an improvement if all the police were was an expensive tax-supported irrelevance. Instead, they're revenue-generating speed traps and stop-sign watchers.
Technically, those fines and court costs are not taxes. But they sure get treated like it when it's time to draw up an annual budget for Ferguson, and St. Ann, and Berkeley, and Edmundson, and ...
We'll see how that works in Ferguson, MO, next month. I'm faintly hopeful, but apparently not as hopeful as you.
Would you like me to keep you posted? It's only two city limits away from me, and I know a person or three there. I've been following it, some.
And I'll be helping the campaigns of the opposition slate by hanging campaign literature on doorknobs and (if I'm unlucky) talking to people I don't even know. (I'm a "recovering introvert"; I can impersonate an extrovert, given time to prepare, emotionally.)
Don't know of any campaign treasurer who is receiving donations. And chances are, anyone reading this would be providing the evil "outside money" if they were to donate.
That would make you as evil as George Soros and the Koch brothers. I wouldn't want that happen to you.
Pretty much. I'm one of those apparently rare souls whose agenda is to let everyone go to hell in their own chosen way, and not interfere as long as they're not (literally) harming other people, or messing with the stuff that belongs to other people.
There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the short version.
Absolutely. More than once I've heard one of our developers say that, as part of a fix, the code will have to be refactored first.
Otherwise, we'd be going from a chunk of unmaintainable code to a larger chunk of more unmaintainable code. If it gets 10% and 10% more unmaintainable (using my handy-dandy unmaintainability-meter), it is now 21% worse, overall.
Sort of the opposite of the old joke about the restaurant: "The food is terrible. And the portions are too small."