Matt Easton strikes (himself) with a rolling pin again!

hey @AndyD273

Where the heck is @James ? He promised great discussions about new political parties and thus far has failed to deliver. First of his name? Pfft. Dude can't even show up for a simple discussion.

Hey @Green. Yeah, was thinking that last night. I guess he wanted us to do all the heavy lifting

@Green No, because the electoral college is supposed to, and often has to under the law, vote for who the people tell them to vote for. What it does is help give the small states more power than they normally would. The city of New York (not the state, just the city) has more people than Wyoming, Vermont, District of Columbia, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, and Maine.

If you throw in LA and Chicago you also outnumber New Hampshire, Hawaii, Idaho, West Virginia, and Nebraska. So, if you were a politician, and only had to worry about popular vote, would you travel to those 15 states and campaign for the vote, or would you just hit those 3 cities really hard and forget about the bottom 15?

The electoral college give every state a certain number of votes to start with, and then adds more with population, so that the small states have a little more power than they would naturally.

It was the founding fathers way to try to keep all the power from pooling in a few big cities, because they wanted to make sure that the small (population) states got a say too

I read that the electoral college was a compromise between pure popular vote and vote by Congress to pick the new president.

Urbanism wasn't really a thing in the late 1700's. Sure, there were cities but I don't think the Founding Fathers ever dreamed of megapolis' such as DC-NYC-Boston.

@AndyD273 I remember reading that they were more worried about big states, like Virginia from dominating, not big cities like NYC. (I suppose the effect is the same though.)

They did have Boston... The founding fathers had a tea party there once. But yes, the big states change over time.

@AndyD273 I'm not sure they were worried. Looking at a map of MA from 1810, almost everyone was a farmer (79%). Sure, Boston was large but the rest of the population was spread across the state.

Found this, right leaning, but he shows his non partisan sources as he goes along. And even people who criticize the EC admit that it is intended to give voters in small pop states more power. The fewer the people in your state, the more power your vote has.

Hi, guys!

Hi @Hosch250

@Hosch250 Hi!

@Green Yes, this is correct.

Some states (especially Rhode Island) were worried about big states (New York, Virginia) from simply overriding their vote.

The effect is very much the same, Although it's not just states, but whole cities that can override states now.

@Hosch250 I listed them up above. NYC, LA, and Chicago out number the bottom 15 states.

@AndyD273 Yep, just confirming that.

cool

Also, I've been thinking, this discussion is getting pretty big, so we may want to consider moving it from the main chatroom.

Want to make sure it doesn't feel like we are hijacking the room, or if anyone doesn't want to participate, it's not in their face.

@Hosch250 I wonder when the strain will be so great that states start redrawing state lines to isolate the cities.

@Green California already wants to.

@Hosch250 I don't think so. We seem to be able to switch topics if someone shows up. And everyone in the room now is a regular.

@Hosch250 I wonder how much large cities subsidize the operation of smaller rural towns. If states were split up to isolate large cities, how much would that impact the surrounding rural areas that depend on funding from the state budget?

That's actually one of the major issues they are discussing in California.

Most of the splits proposed so far have separated suburbs from the cities they are tied to. Not just for financing, but for municipal systems too.

Like, parts of one state would be tied to the sewer/water in another state.

@Hosch250 What a fun problem to work on. How do you redraw state lines to make smaller and less-worse states?

And how do you do so without benefiting a specific political party too much?

Oh man! LA doesn't get any of its own water. It all comes in from somewhere far away. What happens when that water has to cross state lines? It's bad enough when it's all inside California.

Because if the split gives one party significantly more power, it's basically gerrymandering.

Dear LA, spin up your nukes to run the necessary desalinization plants you'll need.

I think in Cali most of the state, where the farmers live, are tired of shouldering the burden of LA and SF while having their vote drowned out by those cities. It's the electoral college problem, except in a single state.

@AndyD273 There's the three state proposal. Seems to divide along party lines pretty well.

sfchronicle.com/politics/article/…

@Green I also heard a 6 state proposal, though I don't know if that one got any traction

@Green Yes, that was the most recent, and most fair, one. But it had the issue of separating the suburbs I mentioned, IIRC.

@AndyD273 I've heard of the 6 state one too.

TBH, I don't know if the state needs to be split. The government system could change some, but the state doesn't need to split to do that.

Splitting the state would just force that issue.

Also, I think we should just take Puerto Rico in and get this cool flag:

I like that circle :)

@Hosch250 Nice flag!

@Hosch250 The problem is that california is ranked last in quality of life rating. By splitting up different parts with different needs would get a say in how their area is run. Otherwise LA and SF get to decide what the farmers up north have to do

@AndyD273 Correct. While splitting the state is a means to a government change, it isn't the only means, is what I'm trying to say.

@Hosch250 What other ideas do you have?

None.

Just saying, that other options should be considered to try to find the best one before jumping on "let's split the state".

Hmm, apparently there have been 5 failed attempts to split Cali up.

@AndyD273 Sounds like Quebec trying to be their own country.

For example, California could potentially implement the electoral college at the county level.

Each county could get one vote, plus a tweak for population levels in the county.

Or something like that.

@Hosch250 I kinda doubt the mainly democrat government will go for that... it would negate their power

Yes. That's why the best governments are the ones who are willing to give up power.

Constitutional congress for the win!

@Green Some times I do actually have to work you know...

@James LAME!

@James Sure, you could do internal company politics when you could be forming a new political party from first principles! I ask you, which is more fun?

LOL.

I've been working today too. I kind of slacked yesterday, even though I did handle several tickets.

Anyone got any good Sax groups? I love The Moanin' Frogs, but the only have one album on Spotify.

@Hosch250 I have a stack of tickets that no one intends me to ever work on. I am the black hole of worthless change tickets.

@Hosch250 The Red Sox are pretty good this year.

Oh, wait. Sax groups, not Sox groups. My bad.

LOL.

@Hosch250 Sadly, I do not.

@Green Option 2. Clearly.

@James So what are you looking for in this new party?

@Green Is "for it not to suck the life out of engaged citizens" to vague?

An important thing to decide up front: Which is more important, comfort, or freedom?

@James I'm not sure that's possible. Any group of any size requires emotional investment.

@AndyD273 Are those orthogonal?

@AndyD273 I'd say balance.

@Green Seem to be. You can make things more comfortable (EU system), but you have to lose freedoms to do it.

@James That is of course a goal, but it's like saying "common sense". It doesn't mean anything by itself.

@AndyD273 Could you enumerate what freedoms are lost for comfort in the EU? Just looking for what you perceive and I don't assume something that's wrong.

So the reason I brought that up specifically is that I was watching a report this morning while getting ready, and the TLDR is that the EU wants to remove the right of self defense, pointing out cases where a country is telling citizens to remove swimming pools from their yards because burglars might drown.

Or the case where a man caught some thieves in his home, used a toy gun (pretending it was real) to get them to hold still while he called the cops, and the police arrested him for "giving the burlars emotional distress" or something like that.

@AndyD273 If true both stories are insanity.

@AndyD273 Oof. That's, wow.

Freedom to me means options for behavior.

There are other booby traps besides swimming pools.

@AndyD273 These are both examples of rampant over-regulation.

When I lived in texas someone broke through the window in my garage and stole a bunch of my tools. I punched a bunch of nails through a board and attached it to the window sill covered with a piece of flower bed fabric.

LOL.

Fortunately/Unfortunately they never tried it again...

Let's see. I think there are poisonous snakes in Texas, right?

@James YOu'd have had DNA samples if they did try again.

Just install a poisonous snake in a cage attached to the window.

They break the window and free the snake.

@Hosch250 There was a town nearby that had an annual event named: "Rattlesnake Roundup."

If done correctly, the cops won't be able to see the snake.

Families told to remove community paddling pool so ‘burglars don’t drown`

Lots of sources for that one. Just search for UK kiddie pool ban

@AndyD273 Fix the f***ing gate! Damn!

How stupid are these people?

IKR?

If the gate was working, there wouldn't be any problems.

And certainly cheaper than the pool. It's probably as simple as replacing a latch or a hinge...

@Green They are burglars. They jump over gates. and break windows.

Standard pool liability in the US is that if you have a pool, you have to fence and gate it. If some idiot jumps the fence, they deserve what they get.

TBH, if the gate was broken, I'd be worried about breaking an arm or a leg since it won't operate correctly.

@AndyD273 any other examples of freedoms lost? Europeans seem to have freedom of religion, expression, movement, property ownership. To what are you referring? Freedom from idiot government isn't a right that can be granted or enforced, sadly.

No, but that's exactly what we are trying to do, because idiot government is what takes the aforementioned freedoms away.

@Green They don't have guaranteed freedom of speech for one.

@AndyD273 Neither do we.

@Green yeah, we do

I'm curious why you think we don't?

Probably the Patriot act.

@AndyD273 I think they do. ec.europa.eu/europeaid/freedom-expression_en

At least, that's the one my dad tantrums about the most.

@Green Except for all the cases where people have been arrested for "hate speech". Which isn't defined.

@AndyD273 I can't express ideas that incite revolt or riot. I can't incite hate-crimes even if I really hate that particular group.

@Green That's not freedom of expression, its a call to action, which is completely different

@AndyD273 So, there's something nebulous that I'm not getting.

That's actually under a different law--inciting and/or participating in an illegal activity.

I'm aware of all the corner cases where a person in the US can't say whatever they want but in general, people are free from government suppression of speech. On the surface, the EU has a similar set of freedoms of expression.

@Hosch250 okay, fair point.

What am I missing that the US has but the EU doesn't.

And you can actually get away with it if A) nothing happens, and B) you can make a plausible claim that you were exaggerating and/or didn't expect anything to happen.

If a racist walks into a black bar and yells out "all you n* are inferior to white people." that is speech. He'll probably be killed, but it's still speech. If he walks into a racist bar and says "hey, I saw a black guy stealing a tv, you should go get him." that's a call to action, and not speech.

And how does the EU preference for comfort/social support necessarily lead to a limitation of speech/freedom of expression? I don't see how those two relate.

@AndyD273 Excellent example, thank you.

@Green In Canada comedians have been put before human rights tribunals for making jokes that offended people.

In the EU people have been jailed over twitter posts that have offended people

@AndyD273 Are you talking about physical comforts like medical care or social/emotional comforts like "no one has said anything bad about me"?

@AndyD273 Was the message threatening or just offensive? Cause I have seen alot of tweets that are frankly plain old harassment or calls to violence.

@AndyD273 I found an article stating that most of those tweets/posts were hate speech or overly aggressive.

We have the same kinds of laws in the US and that's fine.

@Green But where tehy calls to action

No, we don't have the same laws

I always come back to this:

No one in the US has been jailed for saying something offensive. Many dumb people consider it a sport

Okay, but I still don't see a causal relationship between social programs to support people with a reduction in freedoms (using the US as a baseline).

Saying that muslems are criminals online will get you jailed in germany. In the US it'll get you ridiculed at worst.

@AndyD273 I think the point Green and I are making is that there is a difference between offensive tweets and tweets that are harassment and calls to violence.

Correlation, maybe. But I don't see causation yet.

@AndyD273 I'd want to see that law, but I would always lean towards the US model...though mob rule/response has its flaws too.

Can you find a story about someone in the US getting jailed that didn't include actual death threats?

As we can see basically every time someone says something someone else disagrees with on twitter...as we discussed last week.

I can only research so fast darn it! Like I said yesterday, I want to actually be able to back up what I say with facts, and not just partisas ones.

Facts are infuriatingly difficult to confirm these days.

I guess thinking about it...if I were to pick a founding principle for a new party it would include/require all platforms/policy positions to account equally for Personal freedom and personal responsibility.

I was just feeling happy that I was being reasonably productive and getting things done.

Then a political ad comes up on Spotify.

I think I need to figure out Spotify's connections and spoof it and filter out the ads.

I tried monitoring my internet connection and seeing if I could figure out which IPs were the ad servers, but I wasn't able to figure it out.

@Hosch250 What if they just stream it through the regular audio channels?

That's what I was thinking.

It would've been a little more work that way, because instead of just putting ads up/pulling them down, they'd have to stream the ad dates with them.

Because Spotify uses a P2P system. You aren't actually connecting to their servers, but to other users (at least, IIRC).

You can turn whether you are visible to other users on/off.

@AndyD273 I think laws on freedom of speech and things like that are done by individual countries rather than the EU.

It's by country, although most of them have signed a treaty on it.

However, said treaty is vague and allows each country to restrict said freedom:

The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

From Wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#Europe

The EU's policy is based on that treaty, but the members can customize it too.

The problem is that what they want to stop, "hate speech", is so nebulous and broad that just about anything can be hate speech. Using the wrong transgender pronoun can be hate speech. Complaining about muslim grooming gangs can be hate speech. Getting into a flamewar and insulting someone can be hate speech. And there are places where hate speech will put you in jail. It's not defined, so hate speech is anything I point to and say "that's it, right there, arrest them officer!"

It would be easier if people were just nice to each other :(

@Hosch250 That's why we need to just replace all the people with robots. By the way, come check out my basement lab. Your friends will be amazed at how improved your outlook on life is afterward.

But... That's a genocide.

@Hosch250 It's for the greater good.