thanks. it’s hard to keep the faith, sometimes, but external validation does actually help.
Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only ... that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by nr2x on Monday July 04, 2022 @06:43PM
(#31982464)
Given a disproportionate number of HN users are in California, no we don't actually "choose" congress in any reasonable sense. We get to pick 2 people to represent ~40M people in the Senate, whereas the ~500k people of Wyoming get to pick 2 representative as well. Given how our institutions work, the people of Wyoming have vastly more influence on a per capita basis than those in California, which is evidenced in our recent Supreme Court turn to the batshit insane side of reality.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by Akronymus on Monday July 04, 2022 @06:51PM
(#31982520)
> We get to pick 2 people to represent ~40M people in the Senate, whereas the ~500k people of Wyoming get to pick 2 representative as well.
That sounds like it is working as the founding fathers intended. As that gives rural states a voice as well. If that is a good or bad thing is debatable.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by Maursault on Monday July 04, 2022 @10:16PM
(#31983612)
> That sounds like it is working as the founding fathers intended. As that gives rural states a voice as well.
This is why residents of DC and Puerto Rico should be allowed to choose representation in Congress, because as it is, about 4M US citizens are paying taxes without any voting influence in Congress.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by Akronymus on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:34AM
(#31985049)
Isn't DC a district? And Puerto Rico an unincorporated territory? As in, both would need to be converted to states first, and in the process lose some benefits a lack of statehood provides. (At least in the case of PR) For DC there is a legal argument that can be made that it shouldn't be one due to being the seat of the government and under direct rule of congress. at least from my reading up on it.
But yeah, the citizens deserve representation as well.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by nr2x on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:18PM
(#31991789)
Lots of "territories" that are just colonial afterthoughts from after we "conquered" the CONUS but before we figured out economic imperialism is more efficient that waving a flag.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by gedy on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @10:56AM
(#31988973)
> This is why residents of DC ... should be allowed to choose representation in Congress
I agree, but noticed that when suggestions of combining DC with surrounding Maryland come up, many folks go silent. This gives the appearance of just using DC to get extra Democrat votes.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by Maursault on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @06:58PM
(#31994772)
> just using DC to get extra Democrat votes
DC isn't just a group of people, it is the city and its unique architecture, culture, subcultures, etc., it's definitely not a suburb of Baltimore unless your goal is to sustain their lack of legislative influence.
The problem is they are burdened with taxes without representation in Congress, and your bias against actually solving what many might say the Founders would consider evil is ultimately a matter of their political leanings — because the residents happen to be tolerant and progressive, their votes and rights must be stifled. If DC was red, it'd be a different story.
Tribalism is only one of many problems with Republicans and the Republican Party, that blind loyalty is above honesty and fairness. I always saw the bigger problem as 99% of voting Republicans are literally voting against their current personal economic interests in anticipation of the day when they will be rich (say, earning $400K+/yr or having $2M in investments, business, real estate or bonds) and served by economically and socially destructive goals and absurd ideals such as the fewest having the most.
If everyone suddenly always voted in their personal economic interests, Republicans wouldn't be able to win any more elections, because it would just be the 5 richest guys voting Republican. It is stark to realize, nevertheless true that the Republican Party, at its heart, if its heart is those whose interests are always best served by Republican agenda, it'd just be those half dozen or so rich guys. I'm sure they appreciate your vote, but not enough to help you improve or even sustain your economic situation.
Sucks for everyone that this is really whats happening, by and large the poorer are propping up the richer completely divorced from their economic situation and the awareness of the influence they have to change it with their vote.
The Republican Party uses a couple of distraction, guns and abortion, and taps into that unfortunate obsession in rural and suburban and urban areas of my team, which sometimes turns comically and other times tragically violent. Yelling and screaming, throwing things, fighting.
It is embarrassing what Republicans have done lately... the 2000 election, McConnell stonewalling Garland's appointment, electing Trump and all of that absurd shit, and now the Supreme Court stacked by a corrupt administration is proving that it has lost all credibility, and ensured that the State will cause young women to suffer and die, unnecessarily. Eventually and ultimately, the majority will correct the court, but it will be decades.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by Fatnino on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:58AM
(#31985193)
The senate works as intended (if you call that working).
The house is utterly broken. The half a million people in Wyoming get one representative in the house. By that logic, California's 40m people should have 80 representatives. Instead we only have 53.
The problem is that at some point they simply capped the size of the house. It should really be ~2 times as big as it is now.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by filoeleven on Wednesday July 06, 2022 @09:42AM
(#32000764)
No, the senate was intended to represent the concerns of each state government to the federal government, so its members were elected by state legislatures. It was changed in 1913 so that senators became directly elected by popular vote. It is certainly not what the founders intended.
Did anyone promise the equality of influence of people in different states on the Senate? The country is called United States, not a Union of California and the Northeast.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by nr2x on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:19PM
(#31991802)
That's my point, a system designed hundreds of years ago by slave owners - which is an outlier in global governance - needs an overhaul. It's not fit for purpose, and even when the US help countries "build" democracy we set up parliamentary systems (eg Japan).
Re:Happy 4th of July
by nr2x on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:16PM
(#31991777)
Yes, and I can't believe the supreme world court of the UN just removed all countries ability to set gun laws and the world has gone full Alabama overnight. rad.
> Supreme Court turn to the batshit insane side of reality.
Following the Constitution as written instead of legislating from the bench is batshit insane?
Federal protection of abortion rights should come from Congress, not an overreaching activist Judiciary. Also, if you’re in California nothing has changed about access to abortion and nothing will change for the foreseeable future.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by nr2x on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:15PM
(#31991758)
For logical consistency either states have control over both guns and abortion, or neither. The picking and choosing exposes this as a religious crusade.
I do. It’s a big country so maybe your corner of it is as you describe. I have personally lived in 5 different states and visited most of the rest and never encountered anything like what you describe.
Much like all over the world there are lots of bigoted idiots, but they are very much the tiny minority of Americans and they do not represent this country or its values.
If this country is so terrible why do we struggle to keep people from coming here to live illegally, or “undocumented” if you prefer that term?
Re:Happy 4th of July
by ilrwbwrkhv on Monday July 04, 2022 @06:53PM
(#31982533)
Years of poor education and dark money being invested in the system. People like Peter Thiel who love America already have their plans to escape to New Zealand. We are one of the only developed countries where we still argue about teaching evolution AND biblical myths like Afghanistan. We could have been one of the best countries in the world. If we had stayed honest and hardworking.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by jollybean on Monday July 04, 2022 @06:55PM
(#31982540)
The 'unsafe feeling' you have is a function of bigotry and misinformation.
Small town America is very safe.
If you take away the 50 most violent 'urban hot zones' in the US, national crime rates actually start to look like something a bit more normal.
Suburbs, exurbs, small towns and rural areas are about the same level of gun violence, which is less than urban areas, that said, the more 'remote' people are, the more likely they are to use guns to commit suicide.
This place is a hell hole, I don’t (nor do many of my friends) leave my apartment anymore because the right wingers keep shooting up public venues in the name of 2nd amendment rights.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by timeon on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @05:37AM
(#31986195)
Is this true? I imagine that if there is easier access to guns in general then there are more sources for criminals as well. Gangs usually do not us guns were I am from.
It’s pretty easy for gangs to acquire cocaine and that’s illegal pretty much everywhere.
Even if you could wave a magic wand and disarm the American populace gangs would still be able to get guns from dirty cops, military arms dealers, or just get them from war zones. There’s virtually no accountability of the military aid that we send overseas to support our side in proxy wars.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by jollybean on Monday July 04, 2022 @06:59PM
(#31982572)
That kind of violence is extremely rare, moreover, it happens by extremists on 'all sides' and pales in comparison to the likelihood you will be robbed/killed for all the normal reasons, and, if you live anywhere 'normal' in the US, the likelihood of any of that is actually quite low, almost (but not quite) on par with most other countries.
Despite what the headlines might have us believe.
That this is the second weirdly cynical comment espousing hugely aggrandized mistruths, this is more evidence of something odd going on than otherwise. I think we should be just as much concerned about misinformation as anything else. Unless you are in a really bad neighbourhood, or into some very bad things, odds are you are quite safe.
Re:Happy 4th of July
by jollybean on Monday July 04, 2022 @09:50PM
(#31983466)
Here's 2016 murder data for Illinois cities.
Really bad crime is fairly concentrated.
Outside of those ugly spots, it's something resembling normalcy.
America has a wicked gang/urban violence problem in 'hot spots'. And then a more 'common problem' everywhere else, of a different nature.
And of course political/active shooter type killings are actually quite rare. Though they are way more frequent in the USA then elsewhere, and are a serious kind of 'civic problem' - they don't actually represent an risk to individuals. There's about 1 'mass shooter' per day in the US, the average deaths per mass shooter is quite small (or 0), and so it doesn't really move the needle. It's something we want to be 'concerned about' not 'afraid of'.
In tribute, I hope that 4 of you upvote this comment so that my karma reaches 1776 :-)
Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only ... that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.
The author's identity remains disputed, the idea remains true.
That said, I fired up my grill one day too early lol
Keep thinking independently, Americans.
WONTFIX: NEEDS REFACTOR
That sounds like it is working as the founding fathers intended. As that gives rural states a voice as well. If that is a good or bad thing is debatable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
This is why residents of DC and Puerto Rico should be allowed to choose representation in Congress, because as it is, about 4M US citizens are paying taxes without any voting influence in Congress.
But yeah, the citizens deserve representation as well.
I agree, but noticed that when suggestions of combining DC with surrounding Maryland come up, many folks go silent. This gives the appearance of just using DC to get extra Democrat votes.
DC isn't just a group of people, it is the city and its unique architecture, culture, subcultures, etc., it's definitely not a suburb of Baltimore unless your goal is to sustain their lack of legislative influence.
The problem is they are burdened with taxes without representation in Congress, and your bias against actually solving what many might say the Founders would consider evil is ultimately a matter of their political leanings — because the residents happen to be tolerant and progressive, their votes and rights must be stifled. If DC was red, it'd be a different story.
Tribalism is only one of many problems with Republicans and the Republican Party, that blind loyalty is above honesty and fairness. I always saw the bigger problem as 99% of voting Republicans are literally voting against their current personal economic interests in anticipation of the day when they will be rich (say, earning $400K+/yr or having $2M in investments, business, real estate or bonds) and served by economically and socially destructive goals and absurd ideals such as the fewest having the most.
If everyone suddenly always voted in their personal economic interests, Republicans wouldn't be able to win any more elections, because it would just be the 5 richest guys voting Republican. It is stark to realize, nevertheless true that the Republican Party, at its heart, if its heart is those whose interests are always best served by Republican agenda, it'd just be those half dozen or so rich guys. I'm sure they appreciate your vote, but not enough to help you improve or even sustain your economic situation.
Sucks for everyone that this is really whats happening, by and large the poorer are propping up the richer completely divorced from their economic situation and the awareness of the influence they have to change it with their vote.
The Republican Party uses a couple of distraction, guns and abortion, and taps into that unfortunate obsession in rural and suburban and urban areas of my team, which sometimes turns comically and other times tragically violent. Yelling and screaming, throwing things, fighting.
It is embarrassing what Republicans have done lately... the 2000 election, McConnell stonewalling Garland's appointment, electing Trump and all of that absurd shit, and now the Supreme Court stacked by a corrupt administration is proving that it has lost all credibility, and ensured that the State will cause young women to suffer and die, unnecessarily. Eventually and ultimately, the majority will correct the court, but it will be decades.
The house is utterly broken. The half a million people in Wyoming get one representative in the house. By that logic, California's 40m people should have 80 representatives. Instead we only have 53.
The problem is that at some point they simply capped the size of the house. It should really be ~2 times as big as it is now.
(I'm not American.)
Following the Constitution as written instead of legislating from the bench is batshit insane?
Federal protection of abortion rights should come from Congress, not an overreaching activist Judiciary. Also, if you’re in California nothing has changed about access to abortion and nothing will change for the foreseeable future.
Much like all over the world there are lots of bigoted idiots, but they are very much the tiny minority of Americans and they do not represent this country or its values.
If this country is so terrible why do we struggle to keep people from coming here to live illegally, or “undocumented” if you prefer that term?
Small town America is very safe.
If you take away the 50 most violent 'urban hot zones' in the US, national crime rates actually start to look like something a bit more normal.
Suburbs, exurbs, small towns and rural areas are about the same level of gun violence, which is less than urban areas, that said, the more 'remote' people are, the more likely they are to use guns to commit suicide.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448529/
Even if you could wave a magic wand and disarm the American populace gangs would still be able to get guns from dirty cops, military arms dealers, or just get them from war zones. There’s virtually no accountability of the military aid that we send overseas to support our side in proxy wars.
Despite what the headlines might have us believe.
That this is the second weirdly cynical comment espousing hugely aggrandized mistruths, this is more evidence of something odd going on than otherwise. I think we should be just as much concerned about misinformation as anything else. Unless you are in a really bad neighbourhood, or into some very bad things, odds are you are quite safe.
That's interesting. Do you have a source for that? Would help others appreciate what you're seeing.
Really bad crime is fairly concentrated.
Outside of those ugly spots, it's something resembling normalcy.
America has a wicked gang/urban violence problem in 'hot spots'. And then a more 'common problem' everywhere else, of a different nature.
And of course political/active shooter type killings are actually quite rare. Though they are way more frequent in the USA then elsewhere, and are a serious kind of 'civic problem' - they don't actually represent an risk to individuals. There's about 1 'mass shooter' per day in the US, the average deaths per mass shooter is quite small (or 0), and so it doesn't really move the needle. It's something we want to be 'concerned about' not 'afraid of'.
[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...