I have a low budget for my computer addiction, so I scrounge up old cast-off stuff. Thus by necessity I've been experimenting with WMs with an eye for low resource use. This table was useful for making some initial decisions. Since there are more WMs than you can shake a stick at, I've decided to stick mainly to those listed here. I've never tried EvilWM (or ratpoison, or any of the other hyper-minimal WMs), as I want a bit more of my WMs than that.
I like Blackbox. It gives me everything I really need in a WM without the bloat to slow it down. I've been using it on my PCP 210 almost exclusively. IceWM is also a good candidate, being almost as fast as Blackbox, and having an interface closer to Win9*. (Not that Windows is a particularly good interface, but it's a common reference point for Windows users looking to try Linux.) I've run IceWM on a P133 (where loading KDE made me think the computer had hung) and an SE/30 (default theme looks good in 1-bit), albeit under a low CPU load, and been quite pleased. I'd still give Blackbox the nod, though, simply because widget size is also kept to a minimum, which is helpful on older machines that typically have smaller monitors.
The trick is to interpose yourself between the criminal and his goal, and make it quite clear that he's only going to get to his goal through your dead body. [...]
The interesting thing is that in theory, the police are normal civilians who have no more legal powers than an ordinary citizen with regards to shooting people. [...] In practice the courts will be more lenient with a cop who shot someone in the line of duty when he didn't need to than they would with an ordinary citizen who did so.
The problem with this, and one the police recognize, is that there are people that have absolutely no qualms with hurting, or even killing, you in order to reach their goal. Some people have no respect for human life other than their own. If I believe the criminal assailing me is one of those, if his intentions are clear, I'm not going to place myself in additional danger by interposing myself. That's foolish. Police are justified in shooting another if they believe they are in imminent danger. I have the same right they do - you just said so. If I believe my rights (life, liberty, property) are in imminent danger, I will act appropriately, including using force if necessary, to protect those rights. I believe I am completely justified in doing so, and also believe that the Anglo-American common law heritage backs me up.
What the criminal is doing is illegal and wrong. Defending myself is my right, and it is right.
I don't think the foreign student was walking away from the residence carrying the redneck's TV, though. Obviously, in your example, the force used was excessive and unwarranted, regardless of what the law said. (Texas law gives open season on anyone on your property for any reason? I find it a bit hard to believe that some additional justification isn't needed.) In the example discussed here, the homeowner has every right to protect what's his, including life and property.
I certainly understand that reasoning, and agree that you have to be willing to accept that you may destroy/kill your target whenever you aim your gun at it. To think you can precisely control the damage done to non-lethal levels is foolish.
OTOH, that reasoning basically gives "big" criminals carte blanche to prey on "little" victims as long as they are not armed. The little guy has no chance to win unarmed, and no chance to equal the odds with a weapon, so unless his life is actually threatened he's just supposed to suck it up and accept that his lot in life is that of a victim??
I find that to be unacceptable. A display of superior force is sometimes necessary, and not out of line. I have the right to be secure in my person and property, and to defend those rights from those who would try to infringe on them. If I catch you stealing from me, I will give you a chance to stop, or I will attempt to stop you if I have the means. I think it's unreasonable to expect less.
I tend to agree. The gun is the great equalizer. Without it, the big and strong tyrannize the small and weak.
So yeah, I'd probably try to shoot him in the leg if I wasn't positive he wasn't armed. He's breaking one law by burglarizing my house, who's to say he won't break another by trying to shoot me to get away? And even if he's not armed but much bigger than I, trying to stop him bare-handed is still a losing proposition for me.
Exactly. Americans are too comfortable. As long as "the trains run on time" we'll probably sit here fat and happy while our freedoms go the way of the dodo. We'd have to be much more oppressed, or have deeper religious convictions about right and wrong, before anything will happen. Unfortunately.
OK, I don't own any DVDs or a DVD player (except the one in my 5-yo Mac that I've still never used) so I'm a little out of the loop. What the heck is the difference between all these formats? Is there a place with a good summary or feature comparison?
That's what we're using here at work. It's OK, but seems a bit flaky at times, to me. I'm currently wrestling with a corrupted XML file. No idea how that happened.
I haven't tried Eclipse yet (no time), but I've heard enough good things about it that it's probably what I'll use for personal development.
You do realize that what is so called "lost to bereaucracy" is actually spent on salaries [...]
It's still a loss, because government isn't producing this "wealth". It is simply taking it from one segment that actually produces it, and shifts it to other people. Sure, some people get paid with that "overhead" but government has no incentive to be efficient in its operations, because it's guaranteed its income - it's the law. That's a loss right there - inefficiency. In the private sector it's, "you snooze you lose". If we stopped the redistribution of wealth, 1) the people being taken from would have more money to invest in whatever it is that's making them profitable to begin with, 2) the subsidized would fail, creating an area for a more effective replacement to come in, and 3) the gov't workers would be back in the private sector pool creating wealth rather than being a drain on it.
For example, a road expansion [...]
Road expansion is a valid service of government, though. It is a true public service in that it serves the public as a whole, not a specific subset of the public.
Tax Cuts are great if you are taking in too much money, and want to allow the economy to step it up even more, but they aren't as good as targeted spending in the short term.
Bollocks. Even if you are right in what "stimulates the economy" more, you're answering the wrong question. The question isn't simply about stimulating the economy. The question is should government be meddling in the economy to begin with? What right does gov't have to take from one and give to another? Why must I pay for "targetted spending" somewhere else? Even if "the economy" of the country benefits, what right do you (as an individual) have to take my money for your own gain? Answer: none. And you can't give gov't a right you don't have, meaning it has no right to take my money for someone else's benefit, either.
You may legitimately tax me for things that truly benefit us all, like defense, roads, etc. But it's not right to tax me so that Acme Inc has a healthier bottom line which raises the GDP. That connection to me is too remote to be considered "public good". You're really taxing me to help Acme's owners (or whatever other small group is the recipient of your targetted spending), and that's not right.
To make it more concrete, as "money" is a rather abstract concept, think about actual property ownership. Was it right that Donald Trump tried to have Atlantic City evict an old woman and condemn her house so that he could expand a casino? Sure, gov't can use eminent domain in cases where there is a genuine interest for the public good - but this was not one of those cases. It was pure transfer of property from one to another, using gov't as an intermediary in the theft. The normal person would look at that and say, "Why that's blatant abuse of the system!" Even if the argument was that a casino would yield more tax revenue to the city than a home, and that in turn would benefit the entire city - it's not right. It only directly benefits Donald Trump. And why should we treat money (which can be taken by force through taxes) any different than physical property (taken by force through eminent domain)? Government was instituted to protect our life, liberty, and property, not to aid and abet those who would like to steal it.
FDR tinkered for almost 10 years and got us nowhere. The only thing that got us out of the Depression was WWII. Not to mention that the Fed likely caused the Depression in the first place by causing the decapitalization. Give me a gold standard any day.
Bah, details.:) Either way, it's not really stimulating a darn thing. If it's borrowing, that money eventually gets paid back by our taxes. My point is government has no money of its own, and its attempts to stimulate the economy actually depress it.
Gov't spending never helps. The only money the gov't has to spend must be sucked out of the economy from somewhere else (taxes). So to "boost" over here, you must "depress" at least as much (because of the overhead of bureaucracy) elsewhere. This is the same reason school vouchers are a dumb idea - you pay government $100 just to get $80 of your own money back, because you had to pay someone to figure out and perform the redistribution. Just cut taxes and let people keep their own money and we're all better off. Wealth redistribution doesn't work - it's just a way for politicians to buy the votes of the poor so they can stay in power.
Recent interpretation of the commerce clause has been absurdly broad. Just because someone applied it poorly before isn't justification to apply it here.
It does make a certain amount of sense. However, the composition of the two branches of the federal legislature is clearly a federal issue. If the Senate represents the states as political entities by design, then the original Constitutional requirement than the states' political structure choose the senators makes more sense. The further restriction that the states' legislatures make the choice, rather than gubernatorial appointment, acts to put that choice in the hands of voters more directly accountable to the people at large, again acting to protect the rights of the people.
I don't know if I could say that civil liberties have increased across the board since the 14th amendment. Perhaps they did immediately, but I believe the groundwork had already been laid in the DoI (all men are created equal) and Constitution (importation of slaves to cease in 20 years). But in more recent years, since the 17th, the loss of states' rights has removed a check on the federal government that has led to civil rights abuses. See DMCA, USAPatriot Act, etc.
Your voting reform treatise sounds interesting. I'd definitely be interested in seeing it.
I'd form coalitions with just about anyone who agreed with me on voting reform, even if we disagreed on everything else. To me, the CP platform can be summed up by two statements. One, the Founders were Christians and based the Constitution on biblical principles. Two, government should be strictly held to its Constitutional limits (as originally intended) to protect the liberties and rights of the people. I find that people that disagree with the former may or may not disagree with the latter, but if they disagree with the latter they almost assuredly disagree witht the former as well.
That would be a great move toward states' rights, but I still think that the best protection of states' rights is to have state-selected senators in DC. I prefer the original plan of having a representative body, such as the state legislatures, choose as opposed to appointments by the governor or something. (Yes, I know governors can appoint senators to fill vacancies.) What other methods do you think a state might choose, besides popular election?
Voting methodology is a state matter. Florida 2000 is one (bad) example that comes to mind. (I resist that suggestion that federalizing voting will improve the situation, though many would like to try it. Show me something that actually got better after being federalized.) I've contacted state legislators in IA and MN when I lived there and both were aware of bills to modify voting methodology. (I think the particular issue I raised there was "winner-takes-all" EC allocation.) Neither passed, but there are a few people aware of the issues and trying to make a change.
I toy with the idea of running for office, and voting reform would be a major plank. How could you not vote for me if I promise to make it easier to vote me out again if I'm doing a bad job?
You want to go back to the days when the State Legislatures rubber stamped the majority party's choice for Senator,
That's why we need voting method reform, so that there is no such thing as a "majority party" and this problem simply goes away. The 17th Amendment was passed as a way to combat a procedural issue (difficulties in filling vacant seats), but instead it drastically changed one of the fundamental power balance triangles of government.
It also increased the amount of money in politics, as senate candidates had to campaign across a whole state rather than just amongst the state legislature. The primary rationale for the supposed "campaign finance reform" was that there is "too much money" in politics. Well, limit senators to campaigning a smaller group then, don't limit every citizen's ability to participate financially!
It also makes senators less responsive to their home states - do you really think California's senators feel more accountable to 50 million individuals than they would to a couple hundred (or whatever the number is) in it's legislature? The citizenry is better served by indirect senatorial elections than direct. A senator doesn't care about you, other than that it is easy to sway the emotions of a herd (which includes you) to keep himself in power. If he had to campaign to a smaller group someone might *gasp* force him into an intelligent reasoned debate, he might have to take a position on issues, he might have to actually take a stand for principles.
Most people are uninformed on state level issues, but the 17th gave them power to elect a federal representative for six years! One of the reasons the House has short terms is so that if the general public's (relatively uninformed) choice for office doesn't work out, he's quickly removed. One of the reasons the Senate has long terms is because it was assumed that the states' legislatures would be composed of thoughtful cool-headed people that could make a more responsible choice. The system was supposed to protect us against ourselves.
and the people had little direct say in the process? I don't think you'll find a lot of people agreeing with you there.
People should not have that much (direct) say in selection of US senators. (See above.) The Senate represents the States, therefore the States - as the political entities they are - should select those senators. The power of the states was supposed to serve as a check against the power of the central government. Without any representation in the federal government, how are the states supposed to do that? Like you said, "It's really unfortunate, since many things are really best handled on a state-by-state basis," and I fully agree with that.
That also seriously hurts third party power.
Third parties currently have no power, so I don't see how this could hurt it. We need to implement Condorcetvoting in as many elections as we can, so minority (ideology, not race!) viewpoints can be heard.
While having the most victories is a possible gauge, one major problem (among others) is that it doesn't weigh victories by importance. For example, if Bush is preferred to 12 minor candidates, and Gore is preferred only to Bush and Buchanan, Bush wins, because he has 12 victories versus 2, which is clearly not good.
But you're then making the assumption that Gore is somehow inherently "better" than the 12 minor party guys for some reason. Why is the Gore victory "more important"? Why are the terms "Democrat" and "Republican" better than the other party labels? Why not just let the parties compete fairly on the basis of their views? Isn't that the whole point? If the Democrats (in your example) can't beat any other candidates on the strength of their own merits, maybe there's a good reason for that!
Exactly correct. It's nice to see someone else saying this, so I know I'm not the only one.
Most people (in the US) don't grasp that the number of EC votes is the sum of the number of Representatives and Senators (with allowance for DC as well). The bicameral legislature was designed to make sure that states' interests as well as people's interests were represented. Therefore the EC is too, and like you said, there's no perfect way to do that for a singular office like the president. I suppose we could have every state's legislature decide two of the EC votes, reminiscent of how senators were selected prior to the 17th, leaving only 436 for "the people" to decide. That would bring the voter:vote ratio much closer to reality.
Also agreed on the "winner takes all" allotment. Maine and Nebraska are far ahead of the other states in this respect. This has the effect of really hurting 3rd party presidential candidates. Of course, the terrible ballot access laws and the horrible plurality voting system hurt all 3rd party candidates and are therefore much more important issues, but still it should be fixed.
I disagree when you say "The political pressure for having each state represented the same is far far less than it was during the first century of this country's existence" though. That is true only because the federal government has usurped much of the states' authority. The 17th Amendment should be repealed immediately, the federal gov't shrunk to about 1/5 its size, and those responsibilities returned to the states.
This seems just like political elections to me. Many candidates can't afford to drop $1,000,000 to buy the mayor's office, or a senate seat, or whatever. So the government gives a small ammount to help them out doesn't it? There are laws demanding equal air time so that the candidates without that large bankroll have a chance right?
Political parties/campaigns should not be financed by government. You can promote your viewpoint all you want, but as soon as you commandeer my money to help you, it's theft. Instead, government should pass laws the level the real playing field (ballot access laws, voting method laws) rather than adding "positive handicaps" in an unfair contest. Just let the people make a fair and honest vote when they get in the booth, and I'll be happy. Tilting the whole thing in favor of a "two-party system" and then giving the little guys money to keep quiet about it is not my idea of fair.
If you were charged with writing a policy statement that expressed your interest in protecting consumer rights, what would it say? Ideally it should be concise and unambiguous, and speak to the "fundamentals" such that specific cases could be derived from it. Does anyone have such a beastie already?
Very much agreed. I encourage people to take a stand on what they believe and to vote that way, because the two major parties don't take a stand on very much at all, despite the rhetoric.
"The government" can take on a life of its own, if oversight from the people it supposedly works on behalf of is removed by the people within the government. "Government" can become a vehicle for those insiders' own schemes. History demonstrates this time and time again.
Start here, and there are other sites as well. This is the guy who did the research on the 16th and 17th, and sells his findings in a pair of books. There are also people who claim that there was a different amendment originally passed as number 13, but it's been covered up. I don't know much about that, and it sounds too much like paranoia even for me.:)
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I have a low budget for my computer addiction, so I scrounge up old cast-off stuff. Thus by necessity I've been experimenting with WMs with an eye for low resource use. This table was useful for making some initial decisions. Since there are more WMs than you can shake a stick at, I've decided to stick mainly to those listed here. I've never tried EvilWM (or ratpoison, or any of the other hyper-minimal WMs), as I want a bit more of my WMs than that.
I like Blackbox. It gives me everything I really need in a WM without the bloat to slow it down. I've been using it on my PCP 210 almost exclusively. IceWM is also a good candidate, being almost as fast as Blackbox, and having an interface closer to Win9*. (Not that Windows is a particularly good interface, but it's a common reference point for Windows users looking to try Linux.) I've run IceWM on a P133 (where loading KDE made me think the computer had hung) and an SE/30 (default theme looks good in 1-bit), albeit under a low CPU load, and been quite pleased. I'd still give Blackbox the nod, though, simply because widget size is also kept to a minimum, which is helpful on older machines that typically have smaller monitors.
The problem with this, and one the police recognize, is that there are people that have absolutely no qualms with hurting, or even killing, you in order to reach their goal. Some people have no respect for human life other than their own. If I believe the criminal assailing me is one of those, if his intentions are clear, I'm not going to place myself in additional danger by interposing myself. That's foolish. Police are justified in shooting another if they believe they are in imminent danger. I have the same right they do - you just said so. If I believe my rights (life, liberty, property) are in imminent danger, I will act appropriately, including using force if necessary, to protect those rights. I believe I am completely justified in doing so, and also believe that the Anglo-American common law heritage backs me up.
What the criminal is doing is illegal and wrong. Defending myself is my right, and it is right.
I don't think the foreign student was walking away from the residence carrying the redneck's TV, though. Obviously, in your example, the force used was excessive and unwarranted, regardless of what the law said. (Texas law gives open season on anyone on your property for any reason? I find it a bit hard to believe that some additional justification isn't needed.) In the example discussed here, the homeowner has every right to protect what's his, including life and property.
I certainly understand that reasoning, and agree that you have to be willing to accept that you may destroy/kill your target whenever you aim your gun at it. To think you can precisely control the damage done to non-lethal levels is foolish.
OTOH, that reasoning basically gives "big" criminals carte blanche to prey on "little" victims as long as they are not armed. The little guy has no chance to win unarmed, and no chance to equal the odds with a weapon, so unless his life is actually threatened he's just supposed to suck it up and accept that his lot in life is that of a victim??
I find that to be unacceptable. A display of superior force is sometimes necessary, and not out of line. I have the right to be secure in my person and property, and to defend those rights from those who would try to infringe on them. If I catch you stealing from me, I will give you a chance to stop, or I will attempt to stop you if I have the means. I think it's unreasonable to expect less.
I tend to agree. The gun is the great equalizer. Without it, the big and strong tyrannize the small and weak.
So yeah, I'd probably try to shoot him in the leg if I wasn't positive he wasn't armed. He's breaking one law by burglarizing my house, who's to say he won't break another by trying to shoot me to get away? And even if he's not armed but much bigger than I, trying to stop him bare-handed is still a losing proposition for me.
Exactly. Americans are too comfortable. As long as "the trains run on time" we'll probably sit here fat and happy while our freedoms go the way of the dodo. We'd have to be much more oppressed, or have deeper religious convictions about right and wrong, before anything will happen. Unfortunately.
OK, I don't own any DVDs or a DVD player (except the one in my 5-yo Mac that I've still never used) so I'm a little out of the loop. What the heck is the difference between all these formats? Is there a place with a good summary or feature comparison?
That's what we're using here at work. It's OK, but seems a bit flaky at times, to me. I'm currently wrestling with a corrupted XML file. No idea how that happened.
I haven't tried Eclipse yet (no time), but I've heard enough good things about it that it's probably what I'll use for personal development.
It's still a loss, because government isn't producing this "wealth". It is simply taking it from one segment that actually produces it, and shifts it to other people. Sure, some people get paid with that "overhead" but government has no incentive to be efficient in its operations, because it's guaranteed its income - it's the law. That's a loss right there - inefficiency. In the private sector it's, "you snooze you lose". If we stopped the redistribution of wealth, 1) the people being taken from would have more money to invest in whatever it is that's making them profitable to begin with, 2) the subsidized would fail, creating an area for a more effective replacement to come in, and 3) the gov't workers would be back in the private sector pool creating wealth rather than being a drain on it.
Road expansion is a valid service of government, though. It is a true public service in that it serves the public as a whole, not a specific subset of the public.
Bollocks. Even if you are right in what "stimulates the economy" more, you're answering the wrong question. The question isn't simply about stimulating the economy. The question is should government be meddling in the economy to begin with? What right does gov't have to take from one and give to another? Why must I pay for "targetted spending" somewhere else? Even if "the economy" of the country benefits, what right do you (as an individual) have to take my money for your own gain? Answer: none. And you can't give gov't a right you don't have, meaning it has no right to take my money for someone else's benefit, either.
You may legitimately tax me for things that truly benefit us all, like defense, roads, etc. But it's not right to tax me so that Acme Inc has a healthier bottom line which raises the GDP. That connection to me is too remote to be considered "public good". You're really taxing me to help Acme's owners (or whatever other small group is the recipient of your targetted spending), and that's not right.
To make it more concrete, as "money" is a rather abstract concept, think about actual property ownership. Was it right that Donald Trump tried to have Atlantic City evict an old woman and condemn her house so that he could expand a casino? Sure, gov't can use eminent domain in cases where there is a genuine interest for the public good - but this was not one of those cases. It was pure transfer of property from one to another, using gov't as an intermediary in the theft. The normal person would look at that and say, "Why that's blatant abuse of the system!" Even if the argument was that a casino would yield more tax revenue to the city than a home, and that in turn would benefit the entire city - it's not right. It only directly benefits Donald Trump. And why should we treat money (which can be taken by force through taxes) any different than physical property (taken by force through eminent domain)? Government was instituted to protect our life, liberty, and property, not to aid and abet those who would like to steal it.
FDR tinkered for almost 10 years and got us nowhere. The only thing that got us out of the Depression was WWII. Not to mention that the Fed likely caused the Depression in the first place by causing the decapitalization. Give me a gold standard any day.
Bah, details. :) Either way, it's not really stimulating a darn thing. If it's borrowing, that money eventually gets paid back by our taxes. My point is government has no money of its own, and its attempts to stimulate the economy actually depress it.
Gov't spending never helps. The only money the gov't has to spend must be sucked out of the economy from somewhere else (taxes). So to "boost" over here, you must "depress" at least as much (because of the overhead of bureaucracy) elsewhere. This is the same reason school vouchers are a dumb idea - you pay government $100 just to get $80 of your own money back, because you had to pay someone to figure out and perform the redistribution. Just cut taxes and let people keep their own money and we're all better off. Wealth redistribution doesn't work - it's just a way for politicians to buy the votes of the poor so they can stay in power.
Recent interpretation of the commerce clause has been absurdly broad. Just because someone applied it poorly before isn't justification to apply it here.
Sorry, dude.
It does make a certain amount of sense. However, the composition of the two branches of the federal legislature is clearly a federal issue. If the Senate represents the states as political entities by design, then the original Constitutional requirement than the states' political structure choose the senators makes more sense. The further restriction that the states' legislatures make the choice, rather than gubernatorial appointment, acts to put that choice in the hands of voters more directly accountable to the people at large, again acting to protect the rights of the people.
I don't know if I could say that civil liberties have increased across the board since the 14th amendment. Perhaps they did immediately, but I believe the groundwork had already been laid in the DoI (all men are created equal) and Constitution (importation of slaves to cease in 20 years). But in more recent years, since the 17th, the loss of states' rights has removed a check on the federal government that has led to civil rights abuses. See DMCA, USAPatriot Act, etc.
Your voting reform treatise sounds interesting. I'd definitely be interested in seeing it.
I'd form coalitions with just about anyone who agreed with me on voting reform, even if we disagreed on everything else. To me, the CP platform can be summed up by two statements. One, the Founders were Christians and based the Constitution on biblical principles. Two, government should be strictly held to its Constitutional limits (as originally intended) to protect the liberties and rights of the people. I find that people that disagree with the former may or may not disagree with the latter, but if they disagree with the latter they almost assuredly disagree witht the former as well.
So how long will it take for this to filter into NetBSD? Oh, wait, I can't put 4GB of RAM in my SE/30 anyway...
That would be a great move toward states' rights, but I still think that the best protection of states' rights is to have state-selected senators in DC. I prefer the original plan of having a representative body, such as the state legislatures, choose as opposed to appointments by the governor or something. (Yes, I know governors can appoint senators to fill vacancies.) What other methods do you think a state might choose, besides popular election?
Voting methodology is a state matter. Florida 2000 is one (bad) example that comes to mind. (I resist that suggestion that federalizing voting will improve the situation, though many would like to try it. Show me something that actually got better after being federalized.) I've contacted state legislators in IA and MN when I lived there and both were aware of bills to modify voting methodology. (I think the particular issue I raised there was "winner-takes-all" EC allocation.) Neither passed, but there are a few people aware of the issues and trying to make a change.
I toy with the idea of running for office, and voting reform would be a major plank. How could you not vote for me if I promise to make it easier to vote me out again if I'm doing a bad job?
That's why we need voting method reform, so that there is no such thing as a "majority party" and this problem simply goes away. The 17th Amendment was passed as a way to combat a procedural issue (difficulties in filling vacant seats), but instead it drastically changed one of the fundamental power balance triangles of government.
It also increased the amount of money in politics, as senate candidates had to campaign across a whole state rather than just amongst the state legislature. The primary rationale for the supposed "campaign finance reform" was that there is "too much money" in politics. Well, limit senators to campaigning a smaller group then, don't limit every citizen's ability to participate financially!
It also makes senators less responsive to their home states - do you really think California's senators feel more accountable to 50 million individuals than they would to a couple hundred (or whatever the number is) in it's legislature? The citizenry is better served by indirect senatorial elections than direct. A senator doesn't care about you, other than that it is easy to sway the emotions of a herd (which includes you) to keep himself in power. If he had to campaign to a smaller group someone might *gasp* force him into an intelligent reasoned debate, he might have to take a position on issues, he might have to actually take a stand for principles.
Most people are uninformed on state level issues, but the 17th gave them power to elect a federal representative for six years! One of the reasons the House has short terms is so that if the general public's (relatively uninformed) choice for office doesn't work out, he's quickly removed. One of the reasons the Senate has long terms is because it was assumed that the states' legislatures would be composed of thoughtful cool-headed people that could make a more responsible choice. The system was supposed to protect us against ourselves.
People should not have that much (direct) say in selection of US senators. (See above.) The Senate represents the States, therefore the States - as the political entities they are - should select those senators. The power of the states was supposed to serve as a check against the power of the central government. Without any representation in the federal government, how are the states supposed to do that? Like you said, "It's really unfortunate, since many things are really best handled on a state-by-state basis," and I fully agree with that.
Third parties currently have no power, so I don't see how this could hurt it. We need to implement Condorcet voting in as many elections as we can, so minority (ideology, not race!) viewpoints can be heard.
But you're then making the assumption that Gore is somehow inherently "better" than the 12 minor party guys for some reason. Why is the Gore victory "more important"? Why are the terms "Democrat" and "Republican" better than the other party labels? Why not just let the parties compete fairly on the basis of their views? Isn't that the whole point? If the Democrats (in your example) can't beat any other candidates on the strength of their own merits, maybe there's a good reason for that!
Exactly correct. It's nice to see someone else saying this, so I know I'm not the only one.
Most people (in the US) don't grasp that the number of EC votes is the sum of the number of Representatives and Senators (with allowance for DC as well). The bicameral legislature was designed to make sure that states' interests as well as people's interests were represented. Therefore the EC is too, and like you said, there's no perfect way to do that for a singular office like the president. I suppose we could have every state's legislature decide two of the EC votes, reminiscent of how senators were selected prior to the 17th, leaving only 436 for "the people" to decide. That would bring the voter:vote ratio much closer to reality.
Also agreed on the "winner takes all" allotment. Maine and Nebraska are far ahead of the other states in this respect. This has the effect of really hurting 3rd party presidential candidates. Of course, the terrible ballot access laws and the horrible plurality voting system hurt all 3rd party candidates and are therefore much more important issues, but still it should be fixed.
I disagree when you say "The political pressure for having each state represented the same is far far less than it was during the first century of this country's existence" though. That is true only because the federal government has usurped much of the states' authority. The 17th Amendment should be repealed immediately, the federal gov't shrunk to about 1/5 its size, and those responsibilities returned to the states.
Political parties/campaigns should not be financed by government. You can promote your viewpoint all you want, but as soon as you commandeer my money to help you, it's theft. Instead, government should pass laws the level the real playing field (ballot access laws, voting method laws) rather than adding "positive handicaps" in an unfair contest. Just let the people make a fair and honest vote when they get in the booth, and I'll be happy. Tilting the whole thing in favor of a "two-party system" and then giving the little guys money to keep quiet about it is not my idea of fair.
If you were charged with writing a policy statement that expressed your interest in protecting consumer rights, what would it say? Ideally it should be concise and unambiguous, and speak to the "fundamentals" such that specific cases could be derived from it. Does anyone have such a beastie already?
Very much agreed. I encourage people to take a stand on what they believe and to vote that way, because the two major parties don't take a stand on very much at all, despite the rhetoric.
"The government" can take on a life of its own, if oversight from the people it supposedly works on behalf of is removed by the people within the government. "Government" can become a vehicle for those insiders' own schemes. History demonstrates this time and time again.
Start here, and there are other sites as well. This is the guy who did the research on the 16th and 17th, and sells his findings in a pair of books. There are also people who claim that there was a different amendment originally passed as number 13, but it's been covered up. I don't know much about that, and it sounds too much like paranoia even for me. :)