StrangeSox

QUOTE (Reddy @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 04:49 PM) Come on. Des Moines, Iowa or Pittsburgh, PA or Columbus, OH don't even COMPARE to Chicago or NYC or LA in terms of demographics. Plenty of farmers live in the city limits of Des Moines. How many live in Chicago? A candidate who focused solely on Chicago, NYC or LA would be crushed in the election. Hell, even in those states, you can't win just by focusing on those cities. Republicans win the governorship in California without carrying LA and they do the same in Illinois/Chicago. They wouldn't, but at least now every voter in that state would be on equal footing with everyone else. Why should they continue to have such disproportionate voting power?

QUOTE (Reddy @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 04:38 PM) Agreed on your first point. Public funding for the win. Of course there's fluidity and change, but essentially whichever party "controls" the urban populations is going to be the party that has a much, much easier time of winning, and doesn't that completely disenfranchise the rest of the country? Let me rephrase your statement: "whichever party 'controls' the largest populations is going to be the party that has a much, much easier time of winning." Acreage and low-density population shouldn't be given disproportionate voting power. Cities will still vote strongly Democratic, but there are many Republicans in places like Chicago, NYC or LA that essentially get no say in the Presidency. Rural and suburban Republicans in those states face the same fate. A pure popular vote would fix that, making their vote equal to everyone else's. State-by-state EV's favor big cities just as much, anyway. If you want to win Pennsylvania, you're going to need at least some help from Pitt/Philly and the surrounding burbs.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 04:32 PM) But in a purely popular vote, the candidates would literally just hit big cities, which skew heavily Dem anyway, so it makes things 30x harder for the GOP candidate who has to visit far more places in order to galvanize votes than does the Dem candidate, since that person can hit major cities, just GOTV and win. Candidates already focus on more populated areas within the "battleground" states, though. If you're campaigning nationally or just campaigning in Pennsylvania, you still need to capture the majority of the votes and those votes are going to be concentrated in and around cities. The Electoral College also amplifies the urban disadvantage that's deliberately baked into the Senate and also in the House since the number of Representatives was capped. Ohio and its 18EV's gets a lot of focus in recent elections, and it will again this year. It takes the 12 smallest states to add up to the population of Ohio, yet those states collectively have 40 EV's. How does that sort of system make any sense?

QUOTE (Reddy @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 04:27 PM) Wouldn't you say those states are a pretty good cross-section of America, demographically speaking? I'd say America is a better cross section of America though. edit: the bulk of the spending is in the Midwest/rust belt, so ideologically and regionally it's not really that great of a cross-section. Misses a lot of the regional politics like water in the west and border issues in the SW/W.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 04:22 PM) By the way, I'll get to the other stuff, but quick point that Texas is in danger of flipping. If not this cycle, then definitely the next. And Iowa is always considered a toss-up state which the candidates visit quite often, even in the general If the rest of the map holds and Texas has a legit shot of turning Democrat, the GOP is doomed anyway so the race is pretty pointless. Regarding Iowa, that's just because it happens to be pretty ideologically split these days and has a decent number of EV's. It's because it's "in play," not because it's small or rural, that it gets any attention. This map of campaign spending from 2012 shows what states got any attention: What sense does it make for a Presidential election to focus on states who happen to have a close ideological split in a given election? I don't think Democratic votes in Texas or Republican votes in California should be essentially meaningless.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 04:12 PM) Iowa says hi. What does Iowa say "hi" about? Why should a voter in Iowa have more influence than a voter in any other state? How much time do campaigns spend in small-population rural states like Wyoming? I think we're the only country with this bizarre EC system. It's a relic from the 1700's and it doesn't even function as they originally intended (no popular vote at all!). There's a lot of room between "antidemocratic Presidential election system" and a pure democracy. Parties can do what they want regarding their nominees. I'd prefer something along the lines of what NSS suggested. But the general election is a different matter. EV's don't act as some sort of "checks and balances" against populism.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 03:22 PM) Eh, I don't necessarily agree. Pure popular vote is the reason Trump is doing so well. There need to be checks and balances on the idiocy of the American public There are a lot of reasons Trump is leading the GOP race. Blocking people from voting is a terrible way to "solve" that problem.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 03:53 PM) Why should every vote count equally? Basic principles of democracy? Why shouldn't votes count equally? People vote, not acres. No. It would make their voting power equal to everyone else's instead of stronger. As it is, nobody pays any attention to small, rural states anyway because they're pretty "safe" for one party or the other. Races focus on moderate-large states that are in play in any given year. Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio have seen lots of attention over the last few Presidential elections and they're not small or especially rural. Large states like Illinois, California and Texas already have lots of rural area and lots of farmers. As it is, Presidential candidates don't bother too much with trying to court their votes because those states are pretty ideologically solid (if any of those three were in danger of flipping, the election would already be in landslide territory).

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 02:25 PM) You almost have to wonder why tax payers have to foot the bill for these primaries and caucuses when they apparently mean absolutely nothing. How much do they spend on all of this and then not use? Party nominees used to be chosen just by caucuses, but in the early 1900's their was a push to go to secret-ballot primaries and have the states run them so as to remove a lot of the shenanigans we're seeing now. State parties are still free to choose exactly what the rules will be for that state's delegates which is how we end up with our "charming" and "easily understood" nomination process. Long story short, primaries and caucuses matter but each state does things a little differently and the parties will do things differently even within a single state.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 02:08 PM) There was no public vote in Colorado. That was cancelled once Trump became a viable and probable candidate for Colorado. To be a delegate there, you had to be approved by a GOP selection committee which was taking off Trump supporters off their list. There was no process for which Trump could navigate. It was corrupt, as Colorado made the rules as they went along, particularly with the declaration process, in order to have their guy win. FWIW Colorado made this change back in August. It looks like Colorado was only ever polled once and that was in November. Carson and Rubio were ahead of Trump at the time. Either way, it seems like the intent was to be able to screw over a non-establishment candidate even if they didn't really expect Trump to hang around this long.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 12:33 PM) I guess... but isn't this a really great weeding-out process? If you can't be bothered to figure out when you need to register by, do you really have any business having a say in who the leader of the free world is going to be? Every citizen of voting age should be able to have their say in our democracy with as few byzantine rules as possible. There is no need to have the registration deadline be weeks ahead of the election, especially when you're in a state with a closed primary. What other arbitrary "weeding-out" barriers to voting should we throw up?

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 12:22 PM) In theory, yes, but when most areas still use paper printouts of registrations, how do you prevent somebody from registering and voting at multiple locations on Election Day? The technology needs to catch up to allow this to be feasible. 15 states already have same-day registration. I knew Illinois was one, but I wasn't sure how many others did. You generally need some form of ID that has both your current name and address. You wouldn't be able to register in the wrong precinct. Oregon and California instituted automatic/opt-out voter registration laws last year. Anyone who gets a drivers license or state ID is automatically registered unless they decline. Illinois "motor voter" is somewhat similar except the default is not registered and they just ask you if you want to register at the DMV.

Same-day voter registration or even automatic registration should be the national norm.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 11:50 AM) There is a pretty straight forward answer to this. The CEO doesn't work for the employees, he works for the shareholders. Secondly, this issue really exploded after SOX when CEO disclosure was going to solve this problem, except all that did was publicly give other CEO's an easy list of landmarks and demands to give to their next company. More specifically, the board, right?

Missing from Trump’s list of charitable giving: His own personal cash

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 11:02 AM) Wal-Mart's CEO makes $26M or so. The company has 1.2 million US employees. If the CEO cuts his pay to $2M, that gives every employee in the company an extra $20 per year. It might seem like a nice gesture and might make the news, but the extra $20 per year isn't going to make a difference for employees. Now, that's just one example and there very well could be companies where the CEO salary could be cut enough to make a significant difference in the lives of employees, but you need to remember the context of the number of employees. On the other hand, the Walton family is collectively worth something like $150B.

Time has some more details on Trump's delegate troubles http://time.com/4287932/donald-trump-ted-cruz-delegates/

QUOTE (bmags @ Apr 11, 2016 -> 10:46 AM) Tom Selleck? That was the top of mind joke? I'm not sure, maybe she was aware of the recent history pollsters have been reporting. When they call and start their survey, a decent amount of Trump supports will just say "TRUMP!" and hang up immediately. Maybe playing off of that? Either way, Trump's lack of a well-organized national campaign means that while he may be winning a lot of the primaries and caucuses, he's not following all the way through. Since we're potentially looking at razor-thin margins going into the convention, this could come back to haunt him.

Something to keep in mind regarding delegate counting, you've actually gotta be organized and get loyal delegates on the ballots and to the convention. Trump's campaign seems to be struggling in some areas: Trump’s getting trounced in Indiana Jennifer Jacobs ✔ ‎@JenniferJJacobs I'm told no Trump delegate eligible to be a nat'l delegate from Colorado's 6th CD. Didn't understand process, hadn't run from their precinct

Avi!

Puzzled why that wasn't challenged

If you are wishing for sports players to get injured because they play for the wrong team, you may want to reevaluate your life choices.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Apr 8, 2016 -> 03:20 PM) I agree it started to decline a bit leading up to it, but there was still modest correlation. I don't know that I buy into the lead is why so many people committed violent crimes. But maybe I'm underselling that. I guess the struggle I have is without anything changing from a policy perspective, how exactly / why exactly would violent crime drastically be reduced. It isn't like the entire control turned wealthy or you went from some great depression to rolling times (two things which could explain at least some shift in crime rates) so I have a hard time driving what exactly resulted in rates dropping by that staggering of a percentage when everything stays the status quo. Essentially, I don't have enough evidence which would tell me to "ignore" the fact that the largest decrease in this shift occurred subsequent to a significant policy change related to crime. I mean, do we honestly think that if you were beheaded for drinking impaired, people wouldn't think a little more before doing it or your hands would be chopped off for stealing, you wouldn't see a reduction in related crimes? Whether that is the right policy or not, is separate, but I just can't fathom that being the case. There are lots of factors such as the aforementioned widespread lead poisoning correlation (stronger than any other theory offered), the ending of the 80's crack epidemic, "broken windows" policing, community policing (that was part of the crime bill too), economic changes, etc. What their isn't good evidence for is that mass incarceration has a strong or even positive effect on crime rates. Incarceration rates climbed at the same time crime rates climbed throughout the 70's and 80's. This Atlantic article has a bit more in-depth study of the effects of the incarceration rate on the crime rate.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Apr 8, 2016 -> 03:11 PM) I believe Bill has said there were components of the bill that were mistakes, I don't know that he has flat out said the whole bill was a mistake. The world isn't a vaccuum and you can't always get everything perfect and 100% in line with what you want. Part of politics is negotiating to get to the best plausible outcome. Specifically, the Clintons have been campaigning against incarceration rates and the "Three Strikes" rules were a major component of the 1994 bill and a major factor in the increasing incarceration rates. It also expanded the death penalty and defunded prisoner education programs! The Democrats in the 80's and 90's were trying to show the country that they could be "tough on crime," so a lot of bad laws like this got passed by Democrats.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Apr 8, 2016 -> 03:07 PM) Nowhere did you show the actual statistics, just one article that mentions a study which indicated a modest correlation (which is still a correlation) between incarceration and crime rates. Let me actually show you the statistics since my post specifically highlighted that the stats back the fact that violent crime was reduced significantly over that time. I also admitted there were flaws to the legislation and I have previously posted about how staggering some of the incarceration statistics are. How much correlation exists between the reduction in crime rates and this major piece of legislation, I don't know, but the actual statistics are pretty staggering (I don't have perfect statistics that line up to precisely when the bill was put in place, but close enough). Is it just coincidence that crime rates took huge drops? If so, what would have driven such significant reductions? I'm kind of curious (not an expert but I don't have a plausible theory). Crime rates started falling prior to the passage and implementation of the 1994 crime bill. It peaked in 1991 if you go by the FBI's UCR stats. What could have driven it? Lead. Seriously. We know the effects that lead poisoning can have on younger people--loss of intelligence, less control, more aggression--and the correlation between crime rates and lead exposure is really strong. That link is from a few years ago, and there's only been more research on it since then. It's obviously not the only factor, but it does seem like it could be a major one.