jmowreader
jmowreader's JournalWould giving voters the power to vote for multiple representatives solve gerrymandering?
All of us here are in agreement that gerrymandering is a bad thing and has to be fixed. I think giving the voters the power to vote for more than one of them would solve the problem. The Constitution details how representatives are apportioned but is mute on how to vote for them, so from a constitutional standpoint this works.
How this plan works:
I shall first state that no voter should be asked to vote for more than ten of these assholes. If Texas, New York or California were to ask their electorate to vote for every congressman the state has to offer, you'd get to about number 25 and say, "screw it." Ten is a reasonable number.
We retain congressional districts, and retain the idea that someone who represents a district should come from it. But thanks to gerrymandering, there are some weird-ass districts out there - take North Carolina's 8th, which is 180 miles long by about 20 miles wide.
If your state has ten, or fewer, congressional districts the voter will find all of them on the ballot.
If your state has more than ten districts, you vote for the ten congressmen whose districts are closest to you.
How we know PBO is not a dictator or a socialist
Even the most halfass excuse for a dictator or a socialist would have put the Congressional Teabag Caucus before a firing squad LONG before now.
Does anyone remember back to 2006?
Romney signed the Mass healthcare bill in that year, and as I remember the far right was overjoyed: now those deadbeat hippies who would rather spend their money on cable TV and marijuana (or insert two luxury items the far right thinks poor people shouldn't have) won't be able to dump their medical bills on the rest of us.
The BIGGEST problem Obamacare has, in their eyes, is the guy whose signature is at the bottom of it is not a Republican.
Putting together the pieces: Ted Cruz has an Obamacare conflict of interest
As we learned in the last couple of days, Ted Cruz really, really hates Obamacare, so much he stood in the Senate chambers and read "Green Eggs and Ham" into the Congressional Record.
He says he "rose...in an opportunity to speak for 26 million Texans and 350 million Americans." Bullshit. He rose to speak for himself and the families of the other Goldman, Sachs executives, and the Bain Capital executives, and the rest of the 1 Percent who are, starting in 2018, going to be pounded with a 40-percent excise tax on the value of their Cadillac Plans - health insurance benefits worth more than $27,500 for a family or $10,200 for an individual, adjustable for age and occupation (Obamacare exempts really-senior citizens and people working in hazardous occupations from this tax because, after all, if you are a hundred years old with diabetes and stage-four cancer, you fix antennas on the roofs of skyscrapers or you're George Zimmerman's marriage counselor, $40,000 a year is what health insurance costs.)
http://www.uhc.com/united_for_reform_resource_center/health_reform_provisions/excise_tax_on_high_cost_coverage.htm
About this Obamacare delay thing the GOP wants, I'm pretty easy...
I will exchange a one-year delay in the implementation of Obamacare for the immediate and permanent resignation of the entire House and Senate GOP caucuses. That means they go back to the states that elected them right now, they get the contents of their desks mailed to them (after the FBI goes through their stuff to find any prosecutable offenses), they can never run for any office higher than county commissioner or sheriff, and they can never seek employment as lobbyists. If even one Republican refuses to go home, the deal is off and Obamacare gets implemented on its original schedule.
I will exchange a two-year delay in its implementation for not only the immediate and permanent resignation of all GOP members of Congress, but a pledge that no Republicans will run for either house of Congress in 2014, and no Republican will run for either Congress or the presidency until 2024 - which will give the next Democratic president a Congress free of Republicans for her or his two terms.
Obamacare is "not ready for prime time," as Rep. Useless (he's listed on the House roster as "Raul Labrador"
said yesterday while keynoting the North Idaho Legislative Update in Coeur d'Alene instead of being in DC trying to mitigate the damage his party has created, because of his party's shenanigans. People have had Three Fucking Years to get ready for Obamacare. Three years would have been enough for anyone...but the GOP told the business community, "don't worry your pretty little heads about Obamacare, we're going to defeat it in Congress." And when they didn't defeat it in Congress, they told the business community, "don't worry your pretty little heads about Obamacare, the president won't actually sign such a bill." And when he actually signed the bill his presidential campaign revolved around, they told the business community, "don't worry your pretty little heads about Obamacare, the Supreme Court will declare it unconstitutional." When the Supreme Court declared it constitutional, they told the business community, "don't worry your pretty little heads about Obamacare, we'll just repeal it." And after FORTY attempts to repeal it failed, they told the business community, "don't worry your pretty little heads about Obamacare, we'll shut down the government unless the president does what we want." Why shouldn't the business community have believed the GOP? They've got a pretty solid track record of delivering for big business, so the business community went with their hearts and didn't worry their pretty little heads about actually trying to get Obamacare to work for them - in reality, Obamacare is no worse than ERISA, Dodd-Frank or Sarbanes-Oxley, and the business community has managed to comply with those. Were it not for the GOP, lots of small businesses set up to handle all your Obamacare Compliance needs would exist. Business schools would offer one-semester Obamacare Compliance Specialist courses. There would be a board that certified these people, and an accountant or lawyer would be able to put "COE" (Certified Obamacare Expert) in his or her list of titles and certifications...something like "John Doe Esq., CPA, COE." You'd be able to go to Monster.com and hire Obamacare Compliance Specialists just like you can hire Sarbanes-Oxley compliance specialists or Dodd-Frank specialists. Why can't you? Thank the Republican Party. And now they've got to do three years' worth of work in a week.
Three years. Three years is enough for ANYONE - and no, the law isn't "too complicated to understand." I've read it. It's no worse than anything else health insurance-related. (Which isn't saying much for health insurance...) For God's sake, people, it only took FOUR years for Eisenhower to clean the Nazis out of Europe, and this is going to be much easier.
Even the sleaziest used-car salesman is held to higher standards than we hold our Republicans in Congress to. If you were a Sleazy Used Car Salesman and you made unfulfillable promise after promise, you'd be either fired or jailed. When the House Republican Caucus does it, it's perfectly fine. Well...no, it's not perfectly fine.
So those are the options I will accept: either get rid of every Republican, right now, or implement the timetable in the law as it was written.
Sen. Cruz, I'll see your Green Eggs and Ham and raise you...
the Fourteenth Amendment:
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
It's 9:30 at night. Do you know where your congressman is?
Mine is three thousand miles away from his office, preparing to keynote a "legislative update" meeting. These "updates" are about what happened in the last session of the state legislature, not the national one...although in the case of the national one the report wouldn't take that long: "we renamed 42 post offices and tried to repeal Obamacare thirteen times."
If you really want an explanation for Miley's behavior...
...google her daddy's song lyrics. Or listen to some of his songs on YouTube.
You just KNOW this is a guy who raised his daughter with an iron hand, and now that it's gone...
Oh, and Miley? Quit going lipstick shopping with Taylor Swift.
The Republicans were listening when they read off the Constitution, right?
On the first day of the last Congress, they made this huge fuss about reading the Constitution from start to finish. Apparently they skipped over this one:
In the 14th Amendment: 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
All DU vets - READ THIS!
I just got a letter from the VA, "VA Health Care and the Affordable Care Act." The first item on the second page: "If I'm enrolled in a VA health care program, do I meet the requirement for health care coverage?" The answer: "Yes. If you are enrolled in any of VA's programs below, you have coverage under the standards of the health care law: veteran's health care program, Civilian Health and Medical program (CHAMPVA), Spina bifida health care program."
The moral of this post: if you are eligible to enroll in the VA healthcare program and you haven't done it yet, get off your butt, right now, dig out your DD 214, and get signed up.
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