It would take an income of hundreds of thousands of dollars PER MONTH to have child support that high. And regardless of how quickly they accumulated, that debt was generated in 2003. That’s TWO DECADES of not paying a pretty significant childcare debt. There’s no way to brush that aside as no big deal.
While it’s true the lion’s share is unpaid taxes, he owes $50k in child support. I’d still call that a deadbeat dad.
Anyone who votes for a third party candidate gets no value from their vote in FPTP. They have effectively no impact on the outcome at all. This is no worse than that and not in any way a reason not to implement RCV.
And again, this is the slimmest of edge cases for a sliver of voters. Most voters will easily adapt to the system (particularly if any effort at all is made to educate them) and even those that don’t will very rarely lose their vote due to not ranking lower candidates. And those voters that would are already throwing away their vote without impacting the result in FPTP. That this is a real issue that should block RCV implementation because it’s in the interest of voting fairness is A LIE.
It’s not really any more disenfranchising than FPTP. While RCV has tactical voting issues, so does FPTP, and in most cases someone who doesn’t understand the system is just going to vote for someone they perceive to have a chance of winning, which is very likely to be in the final two candidates. And if they’re instead the type to vote for a minor candidate, their vote would have just been meaningless in FPTP anyway.
All the trivia about the very rare cases where tactical voting matters in RCV is just that, trivia. No one really needs to try to game theory their vote out, because in most cases it just doesn’t matter and RCV just gives some people the ability to first declare who they actually want before sending their vote to the preferred major candidate. And in the end, people who can’t figure out basic voting instructions simply aren’t thinking about their vote that deeply. We’re lucky if they’ve even familiarized themselves with all the candidates.
It’s really hard for any system to be worse than FPTP. The people spreading FUD about RCV are mostly doing it because the flaws in FPTP benefit them.
So just don’t make it that way.
But undervoting isn’t really a problem. No one is being disenfranchised by not casting a second vote (or ranking all options), they just aren’t availing themselves of the full range of options. Even just voting for one person could be an intentional choice if you don’t really care about the other options or want your first choice to have a better chance of winning an expected head-to-head.
This is at worst an indicator the government should run some informational campaigns, not a reason not to use multi-voting systems.
It’s always going to be two parties, because any other arrangement just hurts the parties with more in common. What does happen is one dies and a new party rises to replace it. For more simultaneous parties we need to (and should) change our voting system.
There are plenty of rightwing pipelines out there for young people, regardless of their parents. With people like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, along with a much more online life so they can find and reinforce each other, I’d say it’s a much friendlier environment for right wing radicalization among young people than 20-30 years ago. The backbone of the Republican party may be old bigots, but at least some people in the movement are working very hard to generate young bigots to replace them and racism, sexism, and transphobia aren’t things only old people are prone to.
Federation only duplicates stuff an instance’s users subscribe to, so if you’re a single user instance it wouldn’t copy anything you don’t see (if you actually vet your subscriptions and regularly view their content).
Militias aren’t government controlled. That’s the whole damn point. You regulate them if they’re doing dangerous stuff like practicing next to a school, but you can’t do things that are effectively preventing them from existing.
For your questions on hunters and ownership and whatever, there’s a difference between constitutionally protected and legal. States can say hunting with guns of various types (you’ll note there are restrictions). You don’t need the constitution to make something legal and it not being constitutionally protected doesn’t make it illegal. States can legalize or restrict firearms for anything that does not prevent the citizenry from forming a well-regulated militia. Having your guns locked up and disassembled when not in use in training doesn’t prevent you from forming an effective(-ish) militia so DC vs. Heller was badly decided (5-4! it was a contentious decision split along political lines).
All the other weapons are arms too and if owned for the purpose of militia service, should be legal. If not, states can decide which weapons are appropriate for which purposes. Texas can decide cowboys were super cool and everyone should have a mandatory six shooter while peaceful Hawaii can decide guns are good for hunting pigs and bad for going to the beach. And if we decide we want to change one or the other, that’s our business, because the government can regulate things that don’t involve preventing the citizenry from rising up against it.
You’re arguing that the EC’s unfairness is unimportant, not that it’s fair. And ignoring the senate imbalance where just a couple extra votes is a massive change.
So since it’s unimportant, let’s change it to be fair. Except I don’t think you really feel it’s unimportant and actually care very much about those two extra votes.
Ignoring the inexplicable diversion into the Constitution’s applicability to states.
You keep arguing against a straw man (no ownership) rather than the actual point (no absolute right to free carry/use). You can have an individual right to own weapons for the purpose of being a part of a militia without having an inherent right to use those weapons for other purposes.
As to the “bear arms” it’s still in the context of a militia. You can’t be arrested for being in a militia. You and your buddies can march around, showing that you’re ready to rebel against an oppressive government, but that doesn’t mean YOU can individually walk down Main Street firing into the air. There’s a prosocial and political benefit from the citizenship being able to rebel, there isn’t one for having random people be constantly armed for resolving personal disputes.
it’s still arguable that Republicans have unfair representation in the Senate and EC
LOL, wut? There’s nothing arguable about that. Republicans very definitely have an unfair senate and electoral advantage entirely related to being more popular in less populated states (which, with the notable exceptions you’ve highlighted, tend to also be more rural).
You’re cherry picking top ten and bottom ten like the whole swath of states in between don’t also have unfair allocation and thus don’t matter, while being pretty inconsistent with your battleground state definitions to suit your sorting needs (NH is blue because it only voted R once in 30 years, while every battleground you listed has the same history, and red Florida and Ohio have been 50/50).
While your point about population vs. density is correct, everything else seems to be trying to muddy the waters about the EC rather than just point out an interesting factoid or offer a pedantic correction. There’s no serious argument that the EC isn’t unfair from an individual voter perspective and biased toward one side from a national perspective.
If the Second Amendment was clear in its individual right to bear arms for personal protection (a much different thing from just owning guns), then it wouldn’t have taken until 2008 for it to be recognized, and anyone pretending the Second Amendment is a clearly worded amendment with broadly agreed on meaning is just delusional.
Easy:
Support from the legislature is all that’s important. If the justices say “you can’t do it”, then ignore them because clearly they can. The constitution says very little about the supreme court and its size has been changed multiple times before. This is just doing history again.
Hawaii isn’t in the ten least populous states and Maine isn’t a blue state. It’s not a straight sort, but Republicans far and away benefit from the unequal representation of the Senate and Electoral College.
Or instead of giving up we could make court expansion and reform a litmus test in future Democratic primaries. And/or normalize the idea that judicial rulings need to be enforced by someone else and they too have agency.
Because allowing this to continue for much of our remaining lives is also decorum. We live in an unjust system, but it’s not just how life has to be for the next 30 years.
And nothing in the Bill of Rights says you have an individual right to constantly be armed for personal safety.
I can’t think of any at-risk group that has meaningful influence on gun legislation, but many of the groups propping up the Republican party have been convinced they are in mortal danger.
Though, frankly, I do find someone who thinks restrictions to carrying a gun at a beach in peaceful and multicultural Hawaii aren’t reasonable to be a bit of a nut regardless of whatever risks you have in your personal life.
What? No we didn’t.