Category: Politics and Government

The Third Term

I keep hearing “jokes” (and now more serious statements) about Trump’s third term & how they’ve got ways to achieve it … I think there are:

  1. Run as VP – I’m sure they’d call it something else to avoid “insulting” dude, but this has the advantage of all the campaigning and fund raising fun. Pres steps down, VP assumes presidency. Wasn’t elected as president, and I’m sure there would be a lot of legal challenges to clarify the generally accepted belief that a former president cannot be VP. But it’s going to end up as a court decision.
  2. Get voted in as speaker of the house – risks not winning the house, but you were absolutely not elected to the office of president. And I don’t see anything in the constitution or law that explicitly states a two term president cannot be in the line of succession.
  3. Have a cohort run on the “I do what he tells me to” platform. I’ve long thought we could start to move away from representative democracy to technology-facilitated direct democracy by having candidates run on the platform of a platform that allows constituents to vote on every bill. I, your so-called representative, will vote in whatever way the voters say to vote. There’s no law about how elected officials make decisions – both taking input from direct voting of the masses or just doing whatever the cannot-run-for-office-again former president says are your decision.

Now, if I were trying to be a three-term president, I might combine #3 with being elected as speaker of the house. Now I control two branches of the government — legislation isn’t coming to the floor unless I OK it, and I tell the acting president to sign it.

Disingenuous outrage

Those partaking in the disingenuous outrage about the Biden pardon (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/02/hunter-biden-presidential-pardon-comparisons/) want to ignore the very loud call to partake in witch hunts against the current administration, their families, their friends, their supporters. And the fact that some making these calls now have the means to bring them about. Real witch hunts.

From the article: “The Nixon pardon is the only precedent in modern times for such a broad pardon, which purports to insulate Hunter Biden from prosecution for crimes that have not even been charged,” said Margaret Love, who served as U.S. pardon attorney under Bush and Bill Clinton.

Insulation is the entire point — he won’t spend the next four (or more) years paying lawyers to defend him against whatever nonsense partisan DoJ officials dream up.

Bullet Ballots

We’ve seen posts from a few people questioning the integrity of the election results. Some are vague — the fact that Republican operatives were able to copy data from voting machines and then spend a few years possibly looking at how to exploit them is certainly a valid concern, but there’s not data available to prove or dispute this. One, however, has analysis of votes cast. https://substack.com/inbox/post/151721941 from Stephen Spoonamore.

So I started pulling numbers — drop-off votes, I presume, are where the presidential candidate far outperformed down-ballot same-party candidates. That seems … plausible. A high number of “bullet ballots”, however, could be worrisome. And that, it seems, could be constructed from public data. How many people voted for president? How many voted for a Senator? Now, this doesn’t work if the state didn’t have a Senate election. (NC had a governor race, so I’m including that as well). I’m sure some people show up to vote for the top and are done. Spoonamore even says this happens – they’ve got stats for previous elections.

Do the number of people who voted for someone as the president v/s the number of people who voted for someone for senate fall outside a reasonable range?

State  Senate – Repub   Senate – Dem   Senate – Total   Pres – Repub   Pres – Dem   Pres – Total   %R   %D   %Tot   Pres Party   Notes 
NJ                 1,767,773             2,151,322              4,015,343           1,966,571          2,218,074            4,268,422 10.109% 3.009% 5.93% D 86% reporting senate, 91% reporting pres
RI                    195,919                 293,288                 489,207               214,406              285,156                510,749 8.622% -2.852% 4.22% D
IN                 1,659,416             1,097,061              2,829,710           1,720,347          1,163,587            2,933,684 3.542% 5.717% 3.54% R
CA                 6,303,942             9,026,904           15,330,846           6,072,371          9,266,468          15,842,804 -3.814% 2.585% 3.23% D
CT                    679,799             1,002,049              1,711,215               739,638              994,549            1,763,712 8.090% -0.754% 2.98% D
OH                 2,812,778             2,599,761              5,602,804           3,180,116          2,533,699            5,765,017 11.551% -2.607% 2.81% R
NY                 3,155,521             4,491,802              7,686,522           3,484,126          4,413,632            7,897,758 9.431% -1.771% 2.67% D
ME                    277,873                   84,819                 799,861               372,323              431,915                821,382 25.368% 80.362% 2.62% D Independent won Senate race
WA                 1,549,187             2,252,578              3,801,765           1,530,924          2,245,849            3,898,837 -1.193% -0.300% 2.49% D
NM                    405,995                 497,346                 903,341               423,405              478,813                923,458 4.112% -3.871% 2.18% D
DE                    197,742                 283,273                 500,750               214,351              289,758                511,697 7.749% 2.238% 2.14% D
WY                    198,371                   63,706                 262,077               192,633                70,527                267,353 -2.979% 9.671% 1.97% R
TN                 1,916,591             1,027,428              3,005,522           1,964,499          1,055,069            3,062,922 2.439% 2.620% 1.87% R
MN                 1,291,725             1,792,474              3,186,151           1,519,032          1,656,979            3,240,913 14.964% -8.177% 1.69% D
UT                    914,667                 464,504              1,463,139               883,768              562,549            1,487,882 -3.496% 17.429% 1.66% R
NC                 2,241,308             3,069,506              5,591,558           2,898,428          2,715,380            5,679,658 22.672% -13.041% 1.55% R Governor – Mark Robinson race
MI                 2,693,680             2,712,686              5,577,183           2,816,636          2,736,533            5,662,504 4.365% 0.871% 1.51% R
NH*                    434,857                 360,144                 811,120               395,346              417,544                822,528 -9.994% 13.747% 1.39% D Governor
NV                    677,046                 701,105              1,464,728               751,205              705,197            1,484,840 9.872% 0.580% 1.35% R
NE                    498,228                 435,743                 933,971               563,866              369,819                946,041 11.641% -17.826% 1.28% R
FL                 5,977,706             4,603,077           10,757,415           6,110,125          4,683,038          10,893,547 2.167% 1.707% 1.25% R
AZ                 1,595,761             1,676,335              3,347,964           1,770,242          1,582,860            3,389,319 9.856% -5.905% 1.22% R
MO                 1,646,686             1,236,505              2,959,514           1,750,625          1,199,751            2,991,373 5.937% -3.063% 1.07% R
MS                    761,833                 450,718              1,212,551               746,305              465,357            1,225,239 -2.081% 3.146% 1.04% R
VA                 2,019,822             2,416,698              4,436,520           2,075,009          2,335,076            4,482,177 2.660% -3.495% 1.02% D
PA                 3,399,571             3,384,431              6,963,694           3,543,609          3,423,287            7,034,768 4.065% 1.135% 1.01% R
MA                 1,365,445             2,041,693              3,419,392           1,251,308          2,126,545            3,453,459 -9.121% 3.990% 0.99% D
VT                    116,512                 229,542                 363,234               119,392              235,792                366,399 2.412% 2.651% 0.86% D
WI                 1,643,692             1,672,647              3,387,420           1,697,784          1,668,077            3,415,154 3.186% -0.274% 0.81% R
TX                 5,990,744             5,031,479           11,289,280           6,393,598          4,835,297          11,380,171 6.301% -4.057% 0.80% R
WV                    514,079                 207,548                 756,925               533,556              214,309                762,390 3.650% 3.155% 0.72% R
ND                    241,569                 121,602                 363,171               246,505              112,327                365,059 2.002% -8.257% 0.52% R
MD                 1,292,858             1,645,428              3,007,545           1,034,331          1,896,833            3,008,460 -24.995% 13.254% 0.03% D
MT                    319,640                 276,255                 607,174               352,014              231,858                602,949 9.197% -19.148% -0.70% R

Doesn’t look like it — NJ is the highest, but the reporting is not as complete for the Senate race. RI just shows >95% reporting for both, so it could be a similar “wait a few weeks for the real numbers” situation.

These stats were updated 03 Dec, 2024.

Ohio Voter Turnout

The current data from https://liveresults.ohiosos.gov/ shows the five biggest counties in Ohio are all in the top ten “bad” voter turnout counties. Ohio’s unofficial turnout is 69.69%. At least so far.

County Registered Voters Ballots Counted Unofficial Voter Turnout Outstanding Absentees Outstanding Provisionals Total Precincts Election Day Precincts Reporting Election Day % Precincts Reporting Metro NonVoter Count
Greene 122,193 49,991 40.91 1,267 2,044 146 146 100 72,204
Lucas 304,907 187,235 61.41 2,856 4,426 303 303 100 Toledo 117,664
Lawrence 43,020 26,586 61.8 239 423 84 84 100 16,434
Cuyahoga 893,801 571,397 63.93 15,697 14,183 967 967 100 Cleveland 322,394
Athens 38,592 24,956 64.67 265 1,537 56 56 100 13,635
Franklin 903,493 592,418 65.57 9,235 19,563 888 888 100 Columbus 311,073
Pike 18,010 12,072 67.03 113 314 22 22 100 5,938
Hamilton 604,178 405,825 67.17 6,360 12,659 562 562 100 Cincinnati 198,352
Montgomery 373,582 251,763 67.39 4,909 6,200 381 381 100 Dayton 121,825
Scioto 45,434 30,666 67.5 247 1,041 77 77 100 14,766

No Taxes on Tips / Over-Time / etc?

I’m curious if “no taxes” means no taxes or just no income tax (well, probably state tax … but that’s not something the federal government can easily control). When I was trying to support myself on minimum wage, it wasn’t federal income tax that was eating up my paycheck. It was some FICA thing — which I quickly learned was what funded social security and medicare.

Either reducing “taxes” isn’t going to have as big an impact for lower income people as they might expect or they’re talking about impacting people’s future retirement benefits. Because — reducing the earnings could very well reduce your future social security income too.

https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10024.pdf

It may be nice, today, not to pay taxes on that income … but if your $2/hr income is what is used to determine your retirement payments, that’s going to suck!

Springfield

Governor DeWine had an editorial in the NY Times this morning — https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/20/opinion/springfield-haitian-migrants-ohio.html — he starts out OK. Essentially I’ve got a history in that area, I know the area, and I know this nonsense to be untrue. But then he says he still supports Trump because of the horrible problems with immigration elsewhere.

Without mentioning that a bipartisan attempt to do something got scuttled by the very guy I am telling you will fix it.

Worse – without thinking maybe some of those reports are made up or embellished like this situation has been? If I know first-hand what is going on in Springfield, and I know that Trump’s portrayal of it is wildly inaccurate? Why wouldn’t I question how accurate his depiction of Colorado or even the Mexican border is?!?

They just let you steal!

This is another case of simplifying a complex situation to make someone look bad: Cali lets you walk right out if you are stealing $950 or less. And ignoring the real problem (if you want to have all of these crimes investigated and prosecuted, your local/state taxes need to go up so departments can staff accordingly and enough jails can be built to house all of these criminals).

Every state has a law that differentiates between misdemeanor theft and felony theft. e.g. https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-5/subtitle-4/chapter-36/subchapter-1/section-5-36-103/ for Arkansas at $1000. I think most people would agree that someone who steals ten dollars worth of merchandise and someone who steals three grand worth of merchandise should get different punishments. Punishments are generally defined along with the classification of the crime. And each state’s law reflects this. Different states have different dollar amounts — and $950 sounds like a lot of money. But compared to the other states? California’s demarcation is pretty middle of the pack.

Unfortunately the entire criminal justice system is overloaded. Police may be too busy to deal with your theft complaint. The prosecutor may not get around to filing charges. And what happens if they do get a conviction? Now we need to find somewhere to detain the thief. And, again, if there’s a person stealing cars, a person kidnapping minors, and a person stealing the latest video game … ideally, we’d have resources to punish all of them. But we don’t. And I’d be way more upset if the kidnapper skated because they had a task force down at the GameStop gathering video from all the surrounding stores to track down this thief.

Prop 47 absolutely has some flaws. There’s a Prop 36 this year that seems like an attempt to fix some of the unintended consequences — two or more theft charges under $950 would be a felony. Stealing from multiple places that add up to over $950 would be a felony. Won’t know if that passes until November, but it’s not like all the liberals are dancing around saying this was 100% perfect and everyone else should do it too.

 

Alabama: $500
Alaska: $750
Arizona: $1,000
Arkansas: $1,000
California: $950
Colorado: $2,000
Connecticut: $2,000
Delaware: $1,500
Florida: $750
Georgia: $1,500
Hawaii: $750
Idaho: $1,000
Illinois: $500
Indiana: $750
Iowa: $300
Kansas: $1,500
Kentucky: $1,000
Louisiana: $1,000
Maine: $1,000
Maryland: $1,500
Massachusetts: $1,200
Michigan: $1,000
Minnesota: $1,000
Mississippi: $1,000
Missouri: $750
Montana: $1,500
Nebraska: $1,500
Nevada: $1,200
New Hampshire: $1,000
New Jersey: $200
New Mexico: $500
New York: $1,000
North Carolina: $1,000
North Dakota: $1,000
Ohio: $1,000
Oklahoma: $1,000
Oregon: $1,000
Pennsylvania: $2,000
Rhode Island: $1,500
South Carolina: $2,000
South Dakota: $1,000
Tennessee: $1,000
Texas: $2,500
Utah: $1,500
Vermont: $900
Virginia: $1,000
Washington: $750
West Virginia: $1,000
Wisconsin: $2,500
Wyoming: $1,000

Why so militant

Someone asked why some feminists are so anti-anything-feminine. I think a silly analogy makes it easier to understand:

If there were a law that required everyone to eat pizza for dinner every day, and a whole freedom movement evolved to ensure we could all pick our own dinner? I expect some people would be so adverse to pizza as to never eat it again. Electing to eat pizza (because I love pizza, just not every day) could be seen as an insult to the Dinner Liberation movement.

Viewing the movement as action so you never had to eat pizza again rather than action so you could chose from the entire world of options including the one that had formerly been forced upon you.

Trusting Science

Kinda hard question for me, as a scientist, if I trust science or trust experts. Few who ask are honestly curious – they’ve got an agenda. I generally trust Science and Experts. *But* I also know that Science and Experts aren’t always right. They are generally right with the information they had available at the time, the measuring tools they had available at the time, etc. It’s surprisingly easy to do nothing wrong and still manage to arrive at the wrong conclusion. There are some things that have remained consistent over enough time and testing that they’re generally accepted as true (scientific theories). But even that name … scientists aren’t out there claiming it’s the complete, never changing truth. It’s the current theory.

What I don’t trust second-hand accounts of science or experts. There is generally a peer-reviewed publication that makes a cumbersome read. With a lot of details you don’t really need. But! It’s also exactly what was studied, how it was studied, what conclusions the researchers drew, how statistically significant the findings were, and other factors that should be included in future studies. A newspaper article claiming researchers say XYZ? I’ll use my internet search engine of choice to find the actual article if I’m interested in the claim. It’s a newspaper’s summary of a PR guy’s summary of the abstract written by an expert to explain something that requires domain knowledge to understand well.

Outnumbered

Any political system requires “buy in” from a very large percentage of those being governed. If the 600,000 people who live in Wyoming thought they had absolutely no say in how the country ran because there are like 8 million people in NYC, 3.5 million in LA. Or even the just about 600,000 people who live in Harrisburg, PA … they don’t have much incentive to peaceful participation in the federal government.

I hear folks in rural parts of Ohio saying the same thing — cannabis will be legalized because of the three C’s (Cinci, Columbus, Cleveland) and they get no say in it. Which made me curious — just how “outnumbered” are these “rural” folks. So I grabbed a list of cities in Ohio with population numbers. Columbus is huge, almost a million people! But there are almost 12 million people in Ohio. So Columbus is just under 8% of the population. Add in Cleveland, and you are up to almost 11% of the population. Keep going — add Cinci to get 13.5%. So the “three C’s” are only 13.5% of the entire population. Toledo gets us over 15%. But these are hardly “bossing everyone else around” percentages. I was down to the 143rd largest city in Ohio — Fostoria with just over 13,000 people — before “cities” account for 50% of the state’s population.

And that assumes 100% of people in urban areas are voting against whatever 100% of these rural people want to see happen. Which is absurd. If 80% of the people in these cities were voting against “the rural way”, we’re adding cities with just under 4,000 residents before we reach 50%.

If 75% are voting against “the rural way”, we’re down to cities with just under 2,000 residents.

While I think Wyoming is probably right — there are enough liberal voters nationally that conservatives would be “outnumbered” without creative districting, over-representation in the senate, and over-representation in the electoral college … the same doesn’t seem to hold true in Ohio.