I believe the Wall Street Tax is a GREAT IDEA and should be passed into Law.
The Electoral College was not meant to last forever. It served it's purpose for a Young Country. It serves no perpose now. There is in fighting and restructing of who and to set boundries. That should be enough of it. The Electoral College has OUTLIVED it's original purpose and needs to be ABOLISHED!!
one more note, there are term limits for the President, why aren't there term limits on ALL Politicians. It just makes sense to me that if you limit one, you should limit them All. Why just single out one, that's called Predgist. Limit terms on Everyone.
Thank you for allowing me to express my opinion. Deanna Bell
How do you want it to be? People who joined @10 think that regular Americans and subject matter experts – not government or the media -- are in the best position to solve problems. They want an easier way to participate, solve problems, and hold leaders accountable between elections. www.at10us.com
Long before "austerity" measures, OUR country and OUR government (not 'THE' government) needs to work on ways to be effective and useful, and to define what that means: Why do we HAVE government, What IS government, Why do we have civilization, what IS civilization, and what are the roles of establishing what and who we are as a nation/world. The rest is just logistics once you have a solid foundation of what needs to be done. The problem is that marketing types and opportunists love to stir up the bees nest so they can capture bees for themselves and let those that aren't captured freeze to death without a hive.
I fear the almost daily mention of skills-based educational initiatives, training of students for skills "needed," by area industry, is just another name for provisions that will siphon more funds from public education for made to order workers for industry. More costs being borne by taxpayers for the sole benefit of industry. Another description of a voucher scheme meant to break more traditional concepts of public education, wrapped up in a different word-framing.
As MSM is parroting every new "concept," being spoon-fed them, sources, even like WPR, repeat these memes without analysis as "news," thereby offering free publicity and misdirection for entities promoting the eventual privatization of everything in the public domain. Sad commentary for sure.
If there are more than 2 candidates, the statewide popular vote winner in Nebraska could get a minority of the electoral votes: Say district 1 votes red, with green second; districts 2 and 3 vote blue, with green second; green gets most votes overall. Then you have 2 green electoral votes, 1 red, and 2 blue.
More to the point, even with just 2 candidates Nebraska can—and has—awarded electoral votes to the minority party. In a close election, the swing of an electoral vote or two could decide the presidency.
“Electoral-votes-by-district” could make the electoral vote more closely match the popular vote *if* congressional districts were drawn to give each party a share of representatives closely matching its popular vote share. According to Griff Palmer and Michael Cooper in the New York Times, that’s true in the 25 states where courts, commissions, or divided governments drew the lines. But the 20 states Republicans gerrymandered, and the 5 states Democrats did, each awarded the dominant party some 70% of the seats, with just over 50% of the popular vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/us/politics/redistricting-helped-republicans-hold-onto-congress.html?pagewanted=print
The most exciting idea, to make the U.S. electoral vote conform to the will of the people, is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact: several states each enact law stating that if states comprising 270 or more electoral votes do the same, the state will award all its electors to the national popular vote winner. This effectively abolishes the electoral college without a constitutional amendment (which could never pass; small states wouldn’t go for it)—and it’s legal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
The idea that small states have more weight in the electoral college doesn’t hold true for the individual voter: Whether you’re in Wyoming or California, your individual vote does not matter: Wyoming *will* go Republican; California *will* go Democrat: you may as well stay home. It’s only the voter in Florida, or Ohio, or Wisconsin, or another knife-edge state, where voters need bother going to the polls to decide the issue. In 2000, the presidency was decided by 537 voters in Florida. The rest of the voters, in the rest of the states, had nugatory input. That’s a perversion of representative government.
One problem with national popular vote is the potential for ballot-box-stuffing in one locale to swing the entire nation. If Chicago submits 50 million votes for its candidate (with 2.7 million population), that candidate will win. Weighting votes by state population might be better. So if Alaska or Deleware or Rhode Island has a weather emergency on election day, and only a few voters turn out, the state still gets its full weight in deciding the president.
More discussion at
http://wcmcoop.com/2012/12/14/republican-gerrymandering-creates-opportunities-for-wisconsin-democrats/
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