Category Archives: Politics

Immigration

By tmess2 | Published November 24, 2024

The Republicans have made immigration a big issue in the past several election cycles.  When Democrats were in the White House, Democrats had an incentive to reach a global agreement with Republicans to try to fix a broken system.  Trump, however, has zero interest in fixing the system.  He wants mass deportations.  Democrats have no incentive to cooperate with this concept of a plan.

The important thing to understand is that there is not a single immigration problem.  There are multiple immigration problems.

The one of least concern to Republicans is with the legal immigration system.  Depending on job skills and country of origin, a potential immigrant can be on a waiting list for several years.  People who think they would be better off in the U.S. but are being told to wait six or seven years are likely to try other, not legal, methods to get to the U.S. Continue Reading...

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Direct Democracy in Ohio

By tmess2 | Published August 6, 2023

This Tuesday, voters in Ohio will decide the future of direct democracy in Ohio.  For the most part, the U.S., like many other democracies is a republic.  In other words, the usual way that laws get made is through the legislative process with elected representatives debating, amending, and voting on proposals.  In theory, the will of the majority is expressed through their representatives.  A little over a century ago, reformers during the Progressive Era argued that there were flaws in the representative system that sometimes allowed a minority to block useful and popular legislation.  The remedy was the initiative and referendum process which allowed ordinary voters to get proposals on the ballot were they could be directly determined by the voters.

Now, not every state has authorized the initiative and referendum process.  Even in those that do, the rules differ as to how many signatures are required.  However, for the most part, states that allow for direct democracy (whether through proposals initiated by voters or by proposals referred to the voters by the government) only require a simple majority for the proposal to pass.

Even from the beginning, there has been resistance to the initiative and referendum process.  After all, special interests that are able to get what they want from elected officials do not like the voters having the ability to override those efforts. Continue Reading...

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Mythbuster 101

By tmess2 | Published June 5, 2022

The Republican Party likes its myths.  Tell a nice anecdotal story (which doesn’t even have to be true), pretend that it expresses a universal truth, and watch it take root in the base so that there is no pressure to fix what is really broken.

Myth #1 — Gun control rules in Democratic cities have not prevented those cities from having high homicide rates.  This one is less myth than simple distortion.  First, most larger cities have Democratic mayors.  So it’s hard to find Republican-controlled cities for comparison.  Second, it’s universally true (not just an American fact) that increased population (and increased population density) means more crime.  When you look at crime rates and violent crime rates, the cities with gun control actually fare relatively well.  Third, in the U,S, legal system, it is very easy to evade city restrictions.  You just need to travel to the suburbs  to get your gun.  And the open borders mean that there is no check at the city line to prevent the importation of guns into the  city.  Lastly, the penalties for violating a city ordinance are relatively minor.  In short, local gun control ordinances appear to have some effect, but such ordinances are no substitute for federal legislation.

Of course, passing anything through Congress is hard.  One proposal that I have seen that might bear some fruit is the concept of breaking down the current proposals into separate bills.  When you have a complex bill, it is easy for the Members from the Party of GnOP to say they are voting no based on one provision.  If you make them vote on each proposal separately, they will have to take a stand on each proposal rather than relying on the most controversial provision to justify killing the bill.  While the Democrats probably have the votes in the House to pass the full program, they don’t have the votes in the Senate.  Making forty-one Republicans have to vote against each of twenty or thirty proposals that have the support of 70% of the American voters might just move the needle in some swing states and districts. Continue Reading...

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Redistricting — Texas

By tmess2 | Published May 9, 2021

Texas is up first on the list of first looks at redistricting.  This look at Texas will feature some issues that are going to be recurring throughout this discussion and one issue that will impact Texas the most but might come into play in some other states.

The first issue is that we do not yet have the actual precinct and block level counts from the 2020 census.  That means that this first look is based on the 2019 estimates.  And, of course, estimates are not necessarily exact (as the state level numbers for 2020 showed).  While the far right is upset about the national numbers and want to raise sinister suggestions that something happened behind the scenes to fudge the real numbers, it is equally likely that the previous administration was fudging the numbers in the estimates.  What is most likely is that certain steps by red state governments and anti-government rhetoric led to an undercount of certain groups in red states in 2020 when the Trump Administration was running the Census.  So, we have to expect that there will be some unexpected deviations within states when we get the numbers in November.

The second issue is the Donald Trump had a big impact on voters.  There are various ways to measure partisan lean in a state.  Most involve taking a composite of recent state-wide elections.  The software that I am using is currently based on the 2012 through 2016 elections.  In Texas, in 2012, both Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Mitt Romney carried the state by around 16%.  In 2014, Senator Cornyn carried the state by about 27% and other Republicans were winning by around a 22% margin.  In 2016, Donald Trump won by around  9%.   In 2018, however, Senator Cruz only won by 2%.  While Governor Greg Abbott won by around 13% with the other state-wide Republicans ranging between 3% and 11%.  Finally, in 2020, President Trump only won by 6% and Senator Cornyn won by around 10%.   In other words, what my software is showing as a 60-40 state based on the 2012-16 results is actually something more like a 54-46 state.  And a good chunk of that swing was in suburban districts which probably went from something like 60-40 to very close to 50-50.  Overall, there were three congressional districts (Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth) in which the Republican House candidate beat the 2012-16 Republican composite numbers in their district, and in some districts the Republican underperformed by around 10%. Continue Reading...

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Section 230 — What’s next?

By tmess2 | Published January 7, 2021

One of the unresolved issues from the Trump Administration, which in part reflects the lack of nuance in Trump World, is what to do about Section 230.  Section 230 refers to a statute enacted back in 1996 as part of the Communications Decency Act which is currently codified at Title 47, Section 230 of the United States Code.

As currently written, Section 230 is a response to some basic principles of defamation law.  Generally speaking, a publisher (whether of books or newspapers) or broadcaster is responsible for the content that they publish or broadcast.  Thus, if I am Harper Collins Publisher and I publish a tell-all book written by a former White House aide, I am potentially liable if that book contains false information.  Similarly, if I am your local newspaper and I publish a letter to the editor or an ad in my paper, I am potentially liable if the letter to the editor or ad contains false information.  And if I am a television station and I broadcast an ad or a program which contains false information, I am potentially liable.  All of these entities are, usually, very selective in what they print or publish.  They either decline something that is potentially defamatory or they do what they feel is necessary to verify the allegations before publishing.

Now back in the 1990s, the internet was still in its infancy.  And many websites were letting users post content.  What is currently Section 230 arose from competing desires.  On the one hand, Congress wanted to create a mechanism that would permit those entities which were establishing the website to remove obscene content or content that violated somebody’s intellectual property rights.  On the other hand, website providers were concerned that playing any role in editing content would make them “publishers.”  The solution was contained in Section 230 (c).  That subsection contains three basic provisions.  First, the website owner would not be considered the publisher of any information posted by another on its website.  Second, the website owner would be immune from liability for any good faith efforts to restrict access to obscene or objectionable material (even if the material might be constitutionally protected).  Third, the website owner could also opt to provide users the ability to block access to certain materials. Continue Reading...

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An Open Letter to Joe Biden

By DocJess | Published March 1, 2020

Dear Uncle Joe –

First, congratulations on winning South Carolina.

Sadly, HOW you won exposes the inherent weakness of your candidacy and how you can lose in November. Then again, knowledge is power and if you pay attention, you may yet be able to win in November, which is all any of us non-cult people care about. Continue Reading...

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People I Hate Today

By DocJess | Published January 3, 2020

Yeah, I know, “hate” is bad….but it’s that kind of morning.

I’m starting with supposedly Democratic Congressmen Dan Lipinski and Collin Peterson who yesterday joined with the Republicans in sending an Amicus brief to the Supremes asking for Roe v Wade to be rescinded. Our tent is not that big. Legalized abortions don’t cause abortion, just make the abortions that would occur otherwise less likely to kill the woman.

And then there’s Kevin McCarthy, who has been in Congress long enough to know that when the person in the Oval Office is going to start a war, PRIOR to launching a murderous drone attack, the Gang of Eight needs to be notified. And I’m thinking about the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, paragraph 11, which gives Congress (and only Congress) the right to declare war. Now, to be honest, it doesn’t directly call out “CAUSING” a war, but I think the implication is inherent. Continue Reading...

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Country vs. Party (not what you think…)

By DocJess | Published September 9, 2019

As “not-Republicans”, many of us are bewildered and angered by the fact rank and file Republicans support what the Republican Party has become – a belief system of hate, devoid of science. Many people who were party Democrats for many years have adopted the attitude that they will vote for any Democrat in 2020 because the 45 regime is different from everything else, and must be vanquished, but, they are not so sure about the rest of the Democrats because there are Democrats who cannot be trusted to put country above party either. Many of these folks in Pennsylvania would give up their Democratic registration in a heartbeat if open primaries were enacted.

The story I’m about to tell you is a microcosm of that, and before I begin, I need to state that I am part-owner of this blog. Other than that, I am a private citizen. Therefore, I have First Amendment rights to write what I want here so long as I adhere to the Code of Journalistic Ethics to which my partners and I are committed,  and I do not libel anyone.

Here in Chester County, we have local elections this November. These elections are both countywide (County Commissioner, District Attorney, “Row Offices”) and hyperlocal Boards. For those of you who don’t live around here “Row Offices” are jobs that in many places are filled by people who are hired because of their expertise: like Treasurer, Comptroller, Coroner, etc. Here, they are political positions, even though the work should be devoid of politics. For example, the office headed by the elected “Coroner” evaluates human passing, irrespective of political registration, or lack thereof. Continue Reading...

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Choosing a Prime Minister — UK Style

By tmess2 | Published June 9, 2019

While we are looking forward to the first Democratic Debates later this month, the “official” start of the 2020 nomination process — which will not end until 13 months later at the Democratic National Convention — the United Kingdom is looking at a rather different process for choosing its next prime minister.  Technically, the United Kingdom does not have elections for prime minister.  Instead, the United Kingdom (and most western democracies) have elections for party leadership.  The prime minister is technically chosen by the Queen (or, in many other commonwealth countries, by the Governor-General — the official representative of the Queen for that country — or in other monarchies by that country’s king or queen or republics, like Germany, Israel, Greece, and Italy, by the president).  However, the tradition is that the leader of the majority party is selected as prime minister or — if no party individually has a majority — the person chosen as prime minister by the coalition that has a majority or — if no party or coalition has a majority — by the leader of the largest grouping in the legislature.

Those elections for party leadership can occur at any time.  Often, an election will occur shortly after a general election with the losing parties looking for new leadership for the next election.  However, in the middle of parliament, even the winning party can look at the tea leaves for the next election and decide that the best strategy for winning the next election is to kick out the person who seems to be leading the party to sure defeat. 

One of the things that makes the United Kingdom (or Canada or Australia) interesting is that in a paraphrase of the old saw, we are two countries united by a shared but diverging history.  At the time of the American Revolution, the United Kingdom was in the middle of a long evolution from a strong monarchy with a parliamentary check in the 1500s to the supremacy of the House of Commons by 1850.  And, in the 1770, there were flaws in the selection and composition of the House of Commons.  Coming from that shared point, the United States and the commonwealth countries have taken entirely different approaches to selecting a party leader. Continue Reading...

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Brexit — Referendums and Legislation

By tmess2 | Published April 1, 2019

Over the past several months, like many outside the United Kingdom, I have observed the chaos that has been the process of negotiating and ratifying the terms of the agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union over the terms of the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union (a.k.a. Brexit).  While it is easy as an outsider to have my own opinions about what is in the best interest of the U.K. and the rest of the world in terms of the ultimate outcome, the subject of this post is mostly about what lessons that we can draw from this chaos for our own politics.

The first lesson of Brexit is the difference between the Brexit referendum and the typical referendum in the U.S.  In the U.S., a referendum is typically a vote on a legislative-type proposal.  In other words, we are being asked to approve (or reject) a specific statute or constitutional provision or tax or bond.  By contrast, the Brexit referendum were about two concepts — staying in the European Union or leaving the European Union with the terms of continued membership or departure to be defined at a later date.  While there are always problems with voting on a specific proposal (no proposal is ever perfect and a referendum is essentially a take-it-or-leave-it vote in which you can’t just approve the good parts), a vote on a concept leaves it to the future to put meat on the idea. 

The U.K. is now dealing with the problem of defining what Brexit really means.  And that requires reading the tea leaves of what the slim majority that supported Brexit really wanted.  And, in such circumstances, the final version may differ significantly from what voters thought they were approving in the original referendum. Continue Reading...

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