Gerrymandering Explained has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Gerrymandering-Explained

There are many reasons it might not even be possible to vote in representatives for these people. Gerrymandering, fixed elections, etc. Negligence and apathy are valid, but I doubt they're the primary reasons. And all people are equal, just as all people are fallible.

Cops are just like anyone else, with the exception that they have an institution that will protect them from their personal decisions, such as shooting unarmed, or racially segregated people out of spite. I have more personal experience than I like with white police officers openly practicing racism and physical abuse, when the only minority around is their victim.

You cite how Brown allegedly tried to take the mans gun. He also allegedly did not. Unfortunately it comes down to the eye-witness account versus the officers. In cases like this, I can find 999 instances out of a thousand that reflect police organizations that promote racism and abuse, in a scenario where the minority suspect did everything expected of them in a confrontation, and was still victimized. Having the gall to support the officers in this case, a case where we as the observers have nothing to go on other than heresay, is ignoring decades of historical experience with exactly these scenarios.

Lastly, you're not a boyscout. I'm not a boyscout. Fuck boyscouts; they don't even exist in realistic contexts. I don't give a good god damn fucking shit what he did prior to being murdered. It is so irrelevant it's laughable. In this particular instance where we're judging a man for deserving life or death, it doesn't matter if he skullfucked a litter of puppies and raped the kindly mother of everyone on earth collectively. If the man who shot him had no idea of the crime, as has already been shown he did not, he had absolutely no right to fire on an unarmed man. Even if he *did* know of these crimes: he still has no right to take the mans life.

If Brown tried to grab the mans gun, he failed, and therefore he was still unarmed. We have multiple witness accounts that he was shot while surrendering. At that point, crimes, robberies, past events, whatever: none of that matters, because one man killed another while the latter was no threat. No other argument you can make has any validity.

That's a nice, simple explanation of the problem with one key point omitted. In America, the politicians are also the one's in charge of writing or re-writing the law...you know, the same one's that are doing the gerrymandering. That makes it not only improbable, but near impossible to get more than 1/2 of them to vote against their own interest (even if it is in the best interest of their constituents). So far as I know, there's no way to introduce a federal ballot initiative (like we have here in California, you just need enough signatures and boom, you're on the ballot). It sure would be nice though.

Oh man, after the recent "Fair Elections Act" in Canada, this all changed. Gerrymandering at it's worst. =(

**Note: It's not a fair elections act.

How about a serious third party so gerrymandering becomes far less effective.

Nearly every other democracy in the world works better than the American system because they have multiple parties. You can't win simply by being marginally 'better' than the other guy. Multiple parties force the governing bodies to deal with issues they'd rather ignore and in minority situations they force the big parties to make concessions to other voices.

part 3 (gerrymandering and filibustering):
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Extra-Credits-Incentive-Systems-and-Politics-Part-3

part 2 (campaign finance):
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Extra-Credits-Incentive-Systems-and-Politics-Part-2

part 3 (gerrymandering and filibustering):
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Extra-Credits-Incentive-Systems-and-Politics-Part-3

That's basically how it's been done with gerrymandering for a while so it's not exactly new. Needs to be abolished, but the question then becomes, how do you draw district lines fairly. Of course this would be an easier question if there was no parties


The implication here though is that the Republicans PLANNED to shut the government down from the start.

I despise the two party system, but one side, (or to be more specific, one subfaction of one side) is demonstrably more harmful than the other.

I'm all in favor of abolishing parties in this nation, this "but they're equally bad" argument is bull.

Government was actually designed that way though, sure we don't like shutdowns (but then again, here's the problem, some people DO want the gov't to be shut down so that corporations can run everything) but government WAS designed to be slow and not easy to change laws. It has the side benefit of being very resistant to tyranny since it requires so many people and multiple branches to agree

It's one thing to not like how government works, but its quite another to be willing to shutdown gov't over ONE piece of legislation that has the support of the people and the branches of gov't. It's quite another to have a faction completely and utterly oppose the president purely on the basis of the color of his skin.

The big tent GOP is being left behind and that tent is getting smaller and smaller. Gerrymandered districts are pretty much the only reason they are still retaining control. And typically when a company isn't doing so hot, they tend to not actually change tactics, but they do change their name so people with short memories get fooled, so then they called themselves the Tea Party, well that's not working out so well since again, they haven't really changed at all, so now they're rebranding themselves again and calling themselves Libertarians, but it's the same bullshit, just a different name.

No one ever said the ACA is perfect...no one. It was a compromise, What the public WANTED was single payer, but this was the compromise. You want to tweak it? change it? improve it? I'd agree with getting rid of all the exceptions people of talked about,

but you don't threaten to shutdown the gov't over it. especially when you've already failed to repeal it 40+ times in the past. Shutting down the gov't and waging message warfare trying to blame it on the president when it's 100% a congress issue is deranged behavior and basically counts on people being stupid enough to not know how the gov't works (like @lantern53) to believe the message.

People are dumb, but they're not quite THAT stupid, most people do know that it's the Tea Party holding the gov't hostage and not the President. This little stunt is really not helping their chances in the next election so in a weird way, I'm glad they're doing this because it just hastens them getting kicked out in 2014

Anecdotally speaking, a lot of my coworkers are conservatives and every single one of them is saying "fuck the Tea Party"

http://www.chicagonow.com/opinion-youth-america/2012/02/direct-popular-vote-v-the-electoral-college/

I've already mentioned a few of the things the article talks about, but the main thing IMO is that we're not just a nation of people, we're a nation of states. The president needs to win not just the people, but the states as well and the EC represents that.

If we decided elections by direct popular vote, rural areas would be completely fucked and the east and west coasts' interests would dominate every election.

I may lean left, but that is NOT how I want to win elections. The nation is already moving leftwards anyway without a direct popular vote so there is just no reason to manipulate the vote like that.

If the population of this nation was spread evenly throughout the country, a direct popular vote might work better, but that's just not the situation is it.

It's another one of those things, like flat tax, where it SOUNDS like a great idea, but when you put it to the test, it just doesn't really work out. Simple ideas don't solve complex situations, and we need to step past that way of thinking if we're going to progress.

It's the same reason rational people laugh when the gun nuts talk about how we need guns to defend against tyranny. Sure tyranny is a very real possibility when you have a monarch, but our government was designed with that in mind. Our gov't is specifically designed to make it hard for tyranny to thrive. You have to have a lot of people on board in order for gov't to make a significant change. Sure it may be slow and inefficient sometimes, but that's a small price to pay for liberty.

Like I said initially though, I do think the EC needs to be tweaked a bit and go to split vote, but the problem of gerrymandering needs to be solved first, before that will work.

*promote

Here's the thing though. I am in favor of the split vote. It allows people in stronghold states who are in the other party to still have SOME voice and not be completely overruled by winner-take-all. There is a reason we're a republic and not a direct democracy. Direct democracy is not a good idea, there has to be at least somewhat of a buffer against mob rule and high population centers dominating every election.

The problem is, of course, gerrymandering. If the winners are allowed to redistrict as they see fit, then the whole thing is corrupt. District lines HAVE to be drawn by a strictly independent, non partisan group and/or adhere to strict guidelines so that it's fair.

The other problem is that while I favor the split vote, the GOP doesn't care what a fair system is, they just want to swing more votes their way. If winner take all gives them more votes, they'll go with that. If split vote does, they'll go with that. They don't care.

The same shit happened in Nebraska last election when Obama won a single electoral vote. The GOP there went batshit and pushed to return to a winner take all system. It was only when someone pointed out to them that in a decade or two, because the urban area's population will eventually outstrip the rural areas, NE would eventually become complete blue state that they dropped the idea.

Split vote is more fair in my opinion, but the district lines HAVE to be drawn independently for it to work.

It's worth remembering that Democrats won 53% of the total votes cast for the house of representatives. The republicans held on thanks to aggressive Gerrymandering after the 2010 census. Whether they want to see it or not, the election was a rebuke.

You'll never convince the smaller states to get rid of the EC. But it can be somewhat fixed:

* Replace the first past the post with an alternative vote (see one of his other videos)
* Replace the winner take all in every state. The winner of each congressional district gets that district's vote, then the last two votes go to the winner of the state overall. This is perhaps one of the most important changes as it makes it as close to the popular vote as you can get without getting rid of the EC, which as I said, I don't think you'll get enough states to agree to.
* District lines should be drawn by open source software to help eliminate gerrymandering.
* Strict term limits (on both houses and the Supreme Court) and no life-time benefits for any of them that isn't given to every citizen, and every law that applies to citizens applies to them (so no more insider trading being legal for them).

Those few changes alone make it easier to be represented and increases the chance of 3rd parties getting some votes.

I would extend it further with one more important change. We have had 435 Representatives since 1911. It hasn't kept pace with the population growth. With modern technology there is no need for everyone to be in DC. Rather than adjusting those 435 people based on the population of the states, we should go back to the original system of having a Rep for X many people. Perhaps one Rep for every 50,000 or 100,000 people (no less than one for every 250,000). With everyone in their home districts and so many of them it makes it hard to buy them all. With so many Reps it probably means a pay cut, which they should have anyhow, especially getting rid of the life time privileges it comes with now... I would also kill the ability to add amendments to bills that aren't super tightly integrated to the bill, if you can't get your legislation passed without it being hidden as part of another bill, then it shouldn't be passed. Perhaps a lime-item veto of amendments and riders for all members of congress and the President. I say make pay based on the poverty rate and adjust for cost of living in each district... perhaps 2x the poverty rate, that would encourage them to fix poverty (and while we are at it rather than set some random number like $250,000 as a high tax bracket, tax brackets are broken by multiples of the poverty rate as well, so 10x the poverty rate puts you in the same bracket as $250k does today).

This is happening in Utah as well. It's merely Tea Party members hiding under the guise of The Republican Party and getting in. Since the Republican Party doesn't seem to even care about this, NOW OLD-SCHOOL Republicans are getting forced out of the GOP by these new guys at their OWN CONVENTIONS. Like Cenk said these are ALREADY hard-line Republicans getting booted from even being in their own party's actions, conventions, which ultimately means they cannot get on the ballot unless they turn Independent.

People should be very concerned over this as the Tea Party and their related idiots (which include lots of Ron Paul's buddies and further on buddies of Ross Perot) are getting in wonderfully this way. People just don't like their old politician since there have been hard times, so without looking or really caring our idiotic brothers and sisters across the nation are voting them all in...

Utah, during this last year's session had some wonderful bill's put up by these idiots, like getting rid of the 12th grade (who needs that?, plus we save money!!!)... I'd have to look up the other one, but it was just as stupid--BOTH these bills created a LARGE uproar in Salt Lake City and surrounding areas (it's a far more Democratic area than anywhere else in the state--our lawmakers even "reorganized" our districts due to this fact so that all the Democrats would be stuck in one area and they could setup everywhere else to have a higher Republican base--basically gerrymandering 4 districts that were ALL Democratic before, now one is and the rest aren't...I have no idea how they got away with something so absolutely blatant) and were on national news and T.V., with interviews of the two "R.eally Tea Party" buffoons trying to explain why 12th grade was useless on CNN to Anderson Cooper...