BF2S Forums wot is teh tea-party movement?

lowing wrote:

They are calling themselves the teabaggers NOT the teabaggees. A teabagger is far more in control than the one getting teabagged.

LMFAO oh man that's a good one. You should know I guess nice!

lowing wrote:

ruisleipa wrote:

lowing wrote:

They are calling themselves the teabaggers NOT the teabaggees. A teabagger is far more in control than the one getting teabagged.

LMFAO oh man that's a good one. You should know I guess nice!

Well you are the one who made the connection between the group and the act, if that is something you insisted on doing I felt obligated to put them in the correct perspective.

jeez it was a joke!

Tea baggers are extremist about as much as obama is. 

We want freedom, he and those of his ilk want a broken and bankrupt nation.

Worth fighting over tbh.

ATG wrote:

Tea baggers are extremist about as much as obama is. 

We want freedom, he and those of his ilk want a broken and bankrupt nation.

Worth fighting over tbh.

Freedom is relative.  As long as you live in a society, you're never truly free in an absolute sense.

Why is freedom worth fighting for, when, once it's attained, it only dwindles yet again as the few will always control the many?

You can replace governments, laws, and culture, but ultimately, the problem remains...  human nature.

FEOS wrote:

Define freedom or "truly free". By your apparent definition, "true freedom" equates to anarchy. With no predictable rules governing behavior and thus limiting man's "true freedom", he is then free to inhibit his fellow man's freedom as he sees fit--thus limiting his fellow man's freedom unpredictably. Either way, you never attain "true freedom"--it is either inhibited by predictable rules or inhibited by man's unpredictable behavior.

What I'm saying is that people's obsession with being free is not warranted.  It's all relative.  For example, when taxes rise, they claim that their economic freedom is being taken away, but they only had a certain amount of that to begin with.  So, instead of phrasing things in terms of freedom, we should instead look at things from the perspective of what is practical and what isn't.

Having higher taxes might be more practical under certain circumstances or relative to certain goals.  The Tea Party movement is flawed in that it is trying to analogize current taxation with that of the colonists.  In the case of the colonists, they had no representation.  In today's government, they do.

Today's economic policy is not about discussing freedom -- that's relative and we do have a representative government.  It should be about discussing what is practical and what isn't.  Taxes and programs attached to them must be addressed from a cost-benefits analysis rather than through rhetoric that is irrelevant to modern government.

FEOS wrote:

Thus, if the few are put in place by the many and actually respond to the will of the many, then they aren't really controlling the many, are they? The problem we face is that the few get put in place by the many then ignore the will of the many who put them there...then the many forget they have the power to remove the few from where they put them. By peaceful means, of course.

The Electoral College is the few electing the few to rule the many.  I realize that this was a supposed balance to keep larger states from dominating elections, but it's still inconsistent.

Since electors are enumerated in the same way as Congress is, that means each state has the same number of electors as their 2 Senators + their number of House members.  While the House is intended to represent population levels, it is mathematically flawed.  For example, Montana only has 1 House member.  So does Wyoming.  Yet, that one House member in Montana represents 967,000 people.  The one House member in Wyoming represents 544,000.  So even where Congress and the Electoral College is intended to represent the people equally, it fails.  The only way both institutions could accurately represent citizens equally is for the ratio of Representatives per group of people to be equal across the board throughout the country.  Because it isn't, some states are "more equal" than others.  Wyoming gets a larger voice for fewer people.  When compounding this effect with the Senate, the results are even more discrepancies in representation.

So, when the highest office of the country is elected by an institution that doesn't mathematically consistently represent the people, then it becomes less of a matter of equality and more a matter of apportionment.   Basically, as an individual in Wyoming, your voice means more than as a citizen of Montana -- nearly twice as important in fact.

Also, because winner takes all in nearly every state for electoral votes, this discourages minority party citizens from even voting for president in the first place.  Republicans in New York know that their votes will essentially go to the Democrat, while Democrats in Texas know their votes will go to the Republican.

So there are multiple problems with the Electoral College and the House as well.  Equality in representation is seriously lacking.

FEOS wrote:

I won't argue that there aren't problems with the EC system, but there are far more problems with a straight popular vote. If there were just a straight popular vote, the only campaigning you would ever see would be along the East Coast and in CA. That's it. It would be the EC, but magnified.

Perhaps, but when all people are supposedly equal and it only takes a simple majority to win, then isn't that really what is supposed to happen?  The most relevant factor when looking at straight numbers is simply reaching the largest concentration of voters at once.  Therefore, urban areas should be favored by campaigning.

Besides, it's not like North Dakota is a relevant state to campaign in, nor would it ever be unless it suddenly had an explosion in population.

The current system with its "winner takes all" approach actually just overvalues swing states.  That's why Florida and Ohio get so much attention.

FEOS wrote:

The efforts to align EC votes with popular votes seems to be a good compromise (ie, moving away from a "winner takes all" approach).

Agreed.  The few states actually making progress in that will hopefully set a national precedent.

FEOS wrote:

Additionally, altering the Representative allocation to a ratio-based allocation, while it would cause some re-districting asspain, would ensure some commonality of representation...at least from census to census.

Indeed....  Organizing districts would be difficult, but I think it's worth it.

FEOS wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

FEOS wrote:

I won't argue that there aren't problems with the EC system, but there are far more problems with a straight popular vote. If there were just a straight popular vote, the only campaigning you would ever see would be along the East Coast and in CA. That's it. It would be the EC, but magnified.

Perhaps, but when all people are supposedly equal and it only takes a simple majority to win, then isn't that really what is supposed to happen?  The most relevant factor when looking at straight numbers is simply reaching the largest concentration of voters at once.  Therefore, urban areas should be favored by campaigning.

Besides, it's not like North Dakota is a relevant state to campaign in, nor would it ever be unless it suddenly had an explosion in population.

The current system with its "winner takes all" approach actually just overvalues swing states.  That's why Florida and Ohio get so much attention.

But your argument automatically discounts others (urban vs rural), obviating your "everyone is created equal" bit. So it's self-canceling. It's that very conundrum that the EC was implemented to overcome (along with a few others)--tyranny of the majority. Give the "little guy" a voice that has some weight in comparison to the "big boys".

But the weight given to the little guy is arbitrary.  Not every small state is actively campaigned in.  In fact, more often than not, the only small states that receive campaigning are the ones with significant primaries that are early in the campaign season -- like Iowa and New Hampshire.  I realize primaries are another issue altogether, but as we can see, it's not really about giving the little guy more of a voice.  All these primaries in small states do is give the local people more of a voice, but the people living in other small states like North Dakota or Idaho are still insignificant by comparison.

So, you make a good point in that it's not really about equality when it comes to campaigning.  I mentioned the natural inclination to focus on urban areas, but this bias is no worse than the bias supported by the primary structure.   Instead of favoring urban areas, we're just favoring states that have historically early primaries.  There's nothing inherently significant about Iowa from a numbers perspective.

So, if giving the little guy more of a voice is the issue, then we should do primaries in reverse population order.  The smallest states should have the first primaries, leading all the way up to California at the end.  This would balance the importance of numbers with the numerical insignificance of rural states.

FEOS wrote:

But primaries and the EC have nothing to do with each other. Two separate issues.

I thought we were extending this to representation in general.

Well, still, if we're limiting this to the EC, then my main argument is that...  if we're going to keep it, "winner takes all" must be federally removed in favor of proportional winning.

FEOS wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

FEOS wrote:

I won't argue that there aren't problems with the EC system, but there are far more problems with a straight popular vote. If there were just a straight popular vote, the only campaigning you would ever see would be along the East Coast and in CA. That's it. It would be the EC, but magnified.

Perhaps, but when all people are supposedly equal and it only takes a simple majority to win, then isn't that really what is supposed to happen?  The most relevant factor when looking at straight numbers is simply reaching the largest concentration of voters at once.  Therefore, urban areas should be favored by campaigning.

Besides, it's not like North Dakota is a relevant state to campaign in, nor would it ever be unless it suddenly had an explosion in population.

The current system with its "winner takes all" approach actually just overvalues swing states.  That's why Florida and Ohio get so much attention.

But your argument automatically discounts others (urban vs rural), obviating your "everyone is created equal" bit. So it's self-canceling. It's that very conundrum that the EC was implemented to overcome (along with a few others)--tyranny of the majority. Give the "little guy" a voice that has some weight in comparison to the "big boys".

The current system is Tyranny of the Minority. I've never seen a presidential candidate. They don't campaign here because they all assume that this state will vote Democrat. Go to Iowa or New Hampshire and the majority of people living there have met at least one presidential candidate.

In the grand scheme of things does Iowa or New Hampshire really matter to the country? No, not really, but their vote counts far more than my own right now because they live in swing states. I really have no reason to vote in presidential elections because either way I vote, the state will be blue anyway.

JohnG@lt wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

Perhaps, but when all people are supposedly equal and it only takes a simple majority to win, then isn't that really what is supposed to happen?  The most relevant factor when looking at straight numbers is simply reaching the largest concentration of voters at once.  Therefore, urban areas should be favored by campaigning.

Besides, it's not like North Dakota is a relevant state to campaign in, nor would it ever be unless it suddenly had an explosion in population.

The current system with its "winner takes all" approach actually just overvalues swing states.  That's why Florida and Ohio get so much attention.

But your argument automatically discounts others (urban vs rural), obviating your "everyone is created equal" bit. So it's self-canceling. It's that very conundrum that the EC was implemented to overcome (along with a few others)--tyranny of the majority. Give the "little guy" a voice that has some weight in comparison to the "big boys".

The current system is Tyranny of the Minority. I've never seen a presidential candidate. They don't campaign here because they all assume that this state will vote Democrat. Go to Iowa or New Hampshire and the majority of people living there have met at least one presidential candidate.

In the grand scheme of things does Iowa or New Hampshire really matter to the country? No, not really, but their vote counts far more than my own right now because they live in swing states. I really have no reason to vote in presidential elections because either way I vote, the state will be blue anyway.

Yep...  tyrannies of the minority are also represented by lobbyism.

The scary thing is....  James Madison predicted a lot of this.  He mentioned the dangers of having political parties and "factionalism."

The tyrannies of the majority were the biggest threats of the colonial days.  In the modern world...  it's small groups with a lot of power.

JohnG@lt wrote:

FEOS wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

The current system is Tyranny of the Minority. I've never seen a presidential candidate. They don't campaign here because they all assume that this state will vote Democrat. Go to Iowa or New Hampshire and the majority of people living there have met at least one presidential candidate.

In the grand scheme of things does Iowa or New Hampshire really matter to the country? No, not really, but their vote counts far more than my own right now because they live in swing states. I really have no reason to vote in presidential elections because either way I vote, the state will be blue anyway.

Pretty much the same way with TX, except for the state going red.

Which is why proportional allocation of EC votes is a good middle ground.

If you do that the people in tiny states still have more of a voice than I do in elections. Who pays most of the taxes in this country? Those on the coasts and Texas. Should we not have absolute equal representation because of this?

As an added benefit, a direct election would remove the possibility of a wingnut getting elected.

How would people in a small state have any more of a voice than you do?

If you have direct elections, you still won't see a Presidential candidate. Only the most populous cities will. They will be the ones that elect the President, just as the swing states are the ones that do now.

FEOS wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

FEOS wrote:

Pretty much the same way with TX, except for the state going red.

Which is why proportional allocation of EC votes is a good middle ground.

If you do that the people in tiny states still have more of a voice than I do in elections. Who pays most of the taxes in this country? Those on the coasts and Texas. Should we not have absolute equal representation because of this?

As an added benefit, a direct election would remove the possibility of a wingnut getting elected.

How would people in a small state have any more of a voice than you do?

If you have direct elections, you still won't see a Presidential candidate. Only the most populous cities will. They will be the ones that elect the President, just as the swing states are the ones that do now.

True, but I guess that emphasizes the downside to living in a very large country.

No matter what system you devise, the larger the country you live in, the less you individually mean to the system.  This is why living in a smaller country like Canada is more appealing from a representation viewpoint.

JohnG@lt wrote:

FEOS wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

If you do that the people in tiny states still have more of a voice than I do in elections. Who pays most of the taxes in this country? Those on the coasts and Texas. Should we not have absolute equal representation because of this?

As an added benefit, a direct election would remove the possibility of a wingnut getting elected.

How would people in a small state have any more of a voice than you do?

If you have direct elections, you still won't see a Presidential candidate. Only the most populous cities will. They will be the ones that elect the President, just as the swing states are the ones that do now.

Because EC votes are supposed to represent (I believe) 900,000 people each. There aren't 900,000 people living in Wyoming or Montana and yet they have 3 EC votes. Same goes for North and South Dakota etc.

There's no set amount of people that an elector has to represent, although Congress is constitutionally limited to no more than one House member per 30,000 people.

As our population has grown, this ratio has expanded quite a lot.  On average, a House member represents about 700,000 people.  So yeah, even from a national perspective, Wyoming is greatly overrepresented, while Montana is underrepresented.

Currently, an idea is going around where the Wyoming Rule would be implemented.  This would involve increasing the size of the House to evenly represent all states by basing the ratio on the population of Wyoming, since it is the smallest states.