John Dingell has a few ideas about how to fix American politics

i see the point about the four most populous states taking care of themselves to the detriment of the rest of the country, and i'm sure that could be dealt with, with transparency and open accounting practices. as far as them having more votes to elect politicians with....so what? more people live there...so more people vote...seems like there are better simpler ways to insure equality. make the infrastructure of the Nation...National. no state roads, no private utilities, put the whole nation on the same system, with the same equipment. no more taking the lowest bid for government work. that's always seemed like a stupid idea....let the cheap ass fuckers who cut corners build the infrastructure the whole country rests on.....train people to do this stuff, and they all are government employees.

i think that the people who vote for nuts are a big part of the problem....but imagine if trump couldn't have spent millions on his campaign...if he had to stand up in front of cameras and debate both Hillary and Bernie, not once, or twice, but 20 times...if he had to answer unprepared questions from the crowd....if he hadn't been able to run a huge smear campaign......not to even mention the Russians who were actually running his campaign.....
many of those nuts would have still voted for him....they are fucking nuts, after all...but it would have cost him some of them.....

i personally would scrap the entire government we have in place and start over. would you re-roof, re-side, re-paint, re-wire, re-carpet, re-plumb a decrepit, decayed, rotten old house? or just burn the fucker to the ground and build a new house?

Unclebaldrick said:

The polarization we are finding is due to a couple of things. One is the income disparity between very rich and the rest of us. But besides that, there is a real gap between the economies of yesterday and today. People in urban areas are doing far more productive jobs and country people are working harder but getting less. The urban economies are tied into the globe far more than before and it scares the rural areas who are also tied into the global economy but rarely understand it. Educational standards have fallen and religious fervor has risen.

So do we turn in or out? Not the first time we have faced this decision. The conflict will take decades to abate.

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that's a problem...why are the rural people working harder for less? that makes no sense. people are eating their cell phones? tech people should be making less than rural people....i lived for 50 years without a cellphone....try living for 50 years without food.....the people who literally keep us alive so that we can play with our technological toys are slowly starving and going out of business....while the people who make toys are getting rich.....and that's just fucking stupid

Roger A. Shrubber said:

that's a problem...why are the rural people working harder for less? that makes no sense. people are eating their cell phones? tech people should be making less than rural people....i lived for 50 years without a cellphone....try living for 50 years without food.....the people who literally keep us alive so that we can play with our technological toys are slowly starving and going out of business....while the people who make toys are getting rich.....and that's just fucking stupid

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You are missing the reality of economies. Farming is a global market. Look at Singapore, lots of rich people, no farms. But people in Singapore are eating very well.

Your feelings about this are shared by many rural voters but the fact is, you could all stop farming and it wouldn't be the tech workers that would starve. They would get their food elsewhere; not as much of it, but they would get by.

The same thing is true about manufactured items and raw materials. You can't build shit without iron, wood, rubber, etc., but countries who specialize in the production of such things are poor as shit worldwide.

well, that's the problem. farmers shouldn't quit farming, they should just start supporting themselves for a couple of years....stop growing fields of shit they export, and start growing food they can eat themselves. if the farmers in this country ever got together and stood up for themselves, the rest of us wouldn't have any choice. the rest of the world would rape us with jacked up prices, and would ship us all the second rate shit that's about to go bad, if it hasn't already started. i think the farmers could hold out a lot longer than you think, and when the techies can't go to starbucks and mcdonalds....they'll start to see things differently.
of course, the real problem is distribution of wealth...but i think that means different things to different people.
some people want to rip the wealth out of the hands of the wealthy and share it out to "poor people"....which would work.....once....and then things would really get shitty quick. the wealthy would either just say fuck it and not make any more money to be taken away from them, or, they would invest in private security, and have armies to protect themselves with, so no more ripping anything out of their hands.....
i have a few ideas, but most of them are probably unworkable. this is a worldwide problem...you can't solve a problem like this in one country....as long as this kind of inequality is practiced is one part of the world, the rest of the world will suffer for it.
the people who own businesses, who have the ability to make money, shouldn't be punished for having that ability, but they should be forced to pay their employees a fair wage. everywhere. if you work 40 hours a week, you should make enough money to pay your bills, eat, save a little, and go out once every week or two....why would anyone work 50 or 60 hours a week, and still just barely make enough money to get by, with none to spare, no entertainment at all, have to eat a poor diet because they can't afford healthy food?...because they have to, they have no choice....and that's just wrong.
so what do we do about it? all i can suggest is we start passing laws in this country that protect workers and small business people, link the minimum wage to inflation, and a real estimate of what it takes to live slightly above the poverty line.
and start taxing people at a reasonable rate, a non negotiable, no loophole rate. ban tax lawyers....simplify the tax system, and you have no need for tax lawyers....you pay this percentage of your profits for the year. period.no matter how much you made for the year. period. everyone does, everywhere....no returns. if you have kids, that's up to you, why are the rest of us paying for you not using birth control?
this is devolving....things are indeed fucked up, and you have a point....just not sure how to fix things without armed insurrection...

Unclebaldrick said:

The polarization we are finding is due to a couple of things. One is the income disparity between very rich and the rest of us. But besides that, there is a real gap between the economies of yesterday and today. People in urban areas are doing far more productive jobs and country people are working harder but getting less. The urban economies are tied into the globe far more than before and it scares the rural areas who are also tied into the global economy but rarely understand it. Educational standards have fallen and religious fervor has risen.

So do we turn in or out? Not the first time we have faced this decision. The conflict will take decades to abate.

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There are some good studies about Trump voters that show their decision was almost completely driven by racism and misogyny and not economic anxiety. People who said they were economically stressed or worried about their economic status were as likely to vote for Clinton as Trump. People who answered to questions that probed for racist leanings to indicate they leaned toward racism were far and away more likely to vote for Trump over Clinton.

Trump is the racist president and his followers perhaps aren't all raving racists but they do lean toward racism.

Perhaps their racism is elevated by the economic decay of the 90% and especially the lower 30% income class and their sensitivity to race might recede if things are better but the main problem is white racism.

That's the conclusion I get when I read studies like this:

http://people.umass.edu/schaffne/schaffner_et_al_IDC_conference.pdf

However, the effect of economic dissatisfaction is dwarfed by the relationship between sexism and racism and voting for Trump. For example, an individual who was average on all other variables in the model but registered the most sexist attitudes on the hostile sexism scale had a .65 probability of voting for Trump. That same individual would have just a .35 predicted probability of voting for Trump if she registered the least sexist attitudes. Thus, moving from one end of the sexism scale to the other produced a 30-point increase in support for Trump among the average likely voter. The effect for the racism scale was nearly identical – moving from the highest levels of acknowledgement and empathy for racism in American to the lowest levels was associated with about a 30-point increase in support for Trump.

I believed what the pundits said after the election that Trump's win was due to economic anxiety but better information came out later that changed my mind.

Fogdog said:

There are some good studies about Trump voters that show their decision was almost completely driven by racism and misogyny and not economic anxiety. People who said they were economically stressed or worried about their economic status were as likely to vote for Clinton as Trump. People who answered to questions that probed for racist leanings to indicate they leaned toward racism were far and away more likely to vote for Trump over Clinton.

Trump is the racist president and his followers perhaps aren't all raving racists but they do lean toward racism.

Perhaps their racism is elevated by the economic decay of the 90% and especially the lower 30% income class and their sensitivity to race might recede if things are better but the main problem is white racism.

That's the conclusion I get when I read studies like this:

http://people.umass.edu/schaffne/schaffner_et_al_IDC_conference.pdf

However, the effect of economic dissatisfaction is dwarfed by the relationship between sexism and racism and voting for Trump. For example, an individual who was average on all other variables in the model but registered the most sexist attitudes on the hostile sexism scale had a .65 probability of voting for Trump. That same individual would have just a .35 predicted probability of voting for Trump if she registered the least sexist attitudes. Thus, moving from one end of the sexism scale to the other produced a 30-point increase in support for Trump among the average likely voter. The effect for the racism scale was nearly identical – moving from the highest levels of acknowledgement and empathy for racism in American to the lowest levels was associated with about a 30-point increase in support for Trump.

I believed what the pundits said after the election that Trump's win was due to economic anxiety but better information came out later that changed my mind.

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scary, huh? i live with these fucking monkeys...i've traveled all over the country, and i see them everywhere. they're in line with you at the store, their kids go to school with your kids.....so how do you change it? 40 years of pbs and good feelings, 150 years since the abolition of slavery...hundreds of thousand of years of evolution....and the monkeys are still throwing shit

Unclebaldrick said:

This sounds like a good idea, Tty. Eliminate the Senate and get back to me.

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It's John's idea.

I did notice how well you analyzed the idea. (NOT)

I agree that it's unlikely in the extreme. I also agree that it no longer reflects the will or needs of the vast majority of Americans.

What (intelligent) comments do you have about that?

Rob Roy said:

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This is absolutely true. Witness convicts risking their lives fighting fires in California- for a dollar an hour.

There is nothing in any way acceptable about that compensation policy.

rkymtnman said:

After we get rid of the Senate,

We should also get rid of Presidential elections since 2 of the last 5 failed to represent the American people.

After that, how about every odd numbered Amendment ?

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I don't suppose you read the article written by the longest serving Congressman in American history?

You stoop too low, it's unbecoming.

ttystikk said:

It's John's idea.

I did notice how well you analyzed the idea. (NOT)

I agree that it's unlikely in the extreme. I also agree that it no longer reflects the will or needs of the vast majority of Americans.

What (intelligent) comments do you have about that?

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Sorry, I had already read an early version of it before you submitted your "homework"

You didn't like the one about cars that run on dried peas? It is just about as practical.

tangerinegreen555 said:

But the elephant in the room is that 33% of the electorate are as dumb as a fucking rock.

And that 40%-50% of the potential electorate choose not to be involved.

And there's that damn 1st ammendment that promotes fake news to the 33% that are dumb as a rock.

When you have ideas on how to enlighten the masses, let me know.

Maybe a children's news program to explain civics, history and political science and 4 week election cycles.

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Have you noticed where that uneducated population resides and how overrepresented they are in the Senate?

Unclebaldrick said:

but I am too lazy to do it.

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Sig worthy!

Thanks for admitting the obvious.

Unclebaldrick said:

Sorry, I had already read an early version of it before you submitted your "homework"

You didn't like the one about cars that run on dried peas? It is just about as practical.

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You're a Trump plant, aren't you? That explains everything.

tangerinegreen555 said:

It's just annoying that tty never acknowledges why we have red states.

Somebody votes them in. Go convince those people to consider another option while they're calling you names and their radical element is sending mail bombs to Democrats, comedians and actors.

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Of course I know why we have red States. That doesn't mean that I'm dumb enough to think those people aren't being systematically lied to, or that their interests are accurately or adequately represented.

Why don't you try to explain and defend your own opinions instead of taking cheap shots by putting words in the mouths of others? It just makes you look like you aren't smart enough to have an intelligent debate.

rkymtnman said:

I'm a ninth generation pea farmer. Grandpa would be smiling in his mausoleum.

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Get right on that! Haven't you heard? We're running out of oil!

ttystikk said:

Sig worthy!

Thanks for admitting the obvious.

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Use it. You are used to using partial or out of context information. So did Schuylaar help you out with Jenn?

ttystikk said:

Of course I know why we have red States. That doesn't mean that I'm dumb enough to think those people aren't being systematically lied to, or that their interests are accurately or adequately represented.

Why don't you try to explain and defend your own opinions instead of taking cheap shots by putting words in the mouths of others? It just makes you look like you aren't smart enough to have an intelligent debate.

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He didn't put any words in your mouth. And you just took a cheap shot, dodged the issue and declared yourself as intelligent. And you think I'm a Trump plant? Lol, you are part of the symptom.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

tty bashing is pretty popular, sometimes with just cause..but i actually like this idea. there are probably plenty of flaws in it, but it's exactly what i've thought for a long long time....why does Rhode island get as many votes as California or New York? why do we allow campaign contributions? elections aren't supposed to be about who can afford the most ads, they're supposed to be about who has the best ideas.....
getting rid of congress would be great, but would take time...getting rid of the electoral college could be done before the next election, and the actual will of the people would be carried out for the first time in a long time....and there would most definitely be an end to the trump insanity....

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Getting rid of the SENATE, not Congress.

There are the other half dozen proposals in his article that are far less controversial- including abolishing the Electoral College, yet there is not one word of support for them from the local clown contingent.

It's almost like they can't follow a link and read anything, even when it supports what they say they stand for. What that tells me it's that they aren't willing to do any work, just talk shit. No surprise, then, that their opinions and discourse reflect their intellectual laziness.

I realize that not all of my ideas are winners and I have changed my position on various issues. It's because my thinking has evolved over time, based on my continuing study of America's economic and sociopolitical situation.

I welcome intelligent discussion and invite you to rise above the clown contingent here and engage. Our future depends on it now more than ever.

Unclebaldrick said:

Use it. You are used to using partial or out of context information. So did Schuylaar help you out with Jenn?

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Thanks! Will do. And Goodness knows it isn't out of context, lol

ttystikk said:

This is absolutely true. Witness convicts risking their lives fighting fires in California- for a dollar an hour.

There is nothing in any way acceptable about that compensation policy.

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i don't think they should get paid at all. they shouldn't be forced to do it if they don't want to, but if they volunteer...they volunteered, you don't pay volunteers. i definitely think it should be taken into account when they judge their overall behavior for parole and early release, but, you don't pay volunteers.