Tom Toles for December 17, 2010

FRESHMAN:

It’s up to you to get Term Limits.

If you fail, 2012 will be like 2010: the voters will remove another 60 incumbents including YOU.

I would think twice about that if I was you. A socialist party would split the votes of the left, ensuring Republican minority governments for a long time to come. (That’s what the NDP has done in Canada for the last four years, splitting the left vote with the Liberals, allowing the Conservatives to govern.)

^Could it i,n any way be possible, that the Conservatives governing Canada is the actual will of the majority of Canadians?

A party that wins 25% of the vote in every single district and state will represent 75 million people and have 0 members in congress. A party that wins 51% of the vote in the 26 smallest states will represent only 25 million people and control the Senate.

Our system of government was DESIGNED to under-represent people who don’t own land, designed to under-represent those who live in cities. If New York City were a state, it would be the 12th most populous state, if Los Angeles County were a state it would be the 9th most populous state. Columbus Ohio, Forth Worth Texas and Charlotte North Carolina each have more people than Alaska. But those cities don’t have Senators. Washington, D.C. doesn’t even have representatives in the House.

Our Federal system was designed in the 18th century to serve a nation in which only landowners could vote. The US Constitution was written to prevent urban masses and ignorant working people from having influence.

The GOP has learned that it doesn’t have to win the support of the majority to run things in this country. It just has to win the RIGHT minority. Americans like winners, and they like flattery.

Tell us how wonderful and exceptional we are, talk a lot about freedom and liberty, and point out a usual bunch of scapegoats to blame for our troubles, and you can rob us blind.

Tell us long enough that HAVING and DESERVING are the same thing, that GETTING and EARNING are the same thing, and we begin to believe it. Tell us that free enterprise capitalism is not only the most effective and efficient way of generating wealth (which it is), but that its operations are JUST and EQUAL, and we will begin to believe that. And thus think that working people and the ultra-wealthy are going to be equally served by the same policies.

I fear we are going to go a lot further back down the road of inequality and national decline before we wake up to the successful class war that has been waged against us since Ronald Reagan’s administration.

Oh, please. According to you guys, we should have some form of representation where everybody gets an equal share of seats in Congress. That hasn’t happened since Ancient Athens, and for good reason. To house such a body would require several football stadiums, and nothing would ever get accomplished. If you want a different Government than the one we have, go somewhere else and set it up.

As Congressman Bono put it…. the beat goes on…

Hah hah. This is talking about Senator John Cornyn (R).

^ Colbert often features her. :)

“Then cross-reference whether those receiving the most in Government largesse (welfare, foodstamps, subsidized housing, defense spending, etc.) congregate in those large cities DOUGHFOOT cited in his post.”

Nice analysis, Doughfoot.

It’s also interesting that more money goes to Republican-leaning states than Democrat-leaning, given the Republicans keep telling us how anti-spending they are.

http://www.slate.com/id/2276583/

“The 28 states where George W. Bush won more than 50 percent of the vote in 2004 received an average of $1.32 for every dollar contributed. The 19 states where Bush received less than 50 percent of the vote collected 93 cents on the dollar.”

I’m with Doughfoot and Nayman; This political system is designed to encourage bipartism, with the results we can see on this forum; a nation divided in two parts who passionately hate each other instead of being represented by a continuum of opinions.

doughfoots argument is precisely correct. I studied it in college and observed it all my life.

it is called “minority coalition politics”. the winner puts together a coalition of minorities. and anytime there is a three candidate run, it is a bleeep shoot who wins. (too) often enough it is the least approved of candidate (think nixon/wallace/humphry) - and there are more recent examples.

it is why condo’s and other forms of representative “governments” use approval voting, it is imminently more fair.

mnsmkd: The Conservatives received less than 40 per cent of the popular vote in the last election. Three centre or centre-left parties split most of the rest of the vote. So, I would say that no, the Conservatives do not represent the majority of…well, voters. We would have to know how people who didn’t vote felt to be absolutely certain whether or not they represented the majority of he population. However, assuming that those who did not vote are divided either equally or proportionally among the four major parties, the Conservatives would still not represent a majority of Canadians.

Doughfoot’s analysis largely misses the mark. Originally only landowners were allowed to vote in all states. True democracy was never the intent.

The intentional skewing of influence to the smaller states (through equal numbers of senators from each state in the senate regardless of population, through electoral votes being apportioned by # of reps + # of senators, through determining the # of rep by population of whites + 3/5 the population of slaves) was the compromise that allowed 13 states of vastly differing sizes and resources to come together as one union.

The smaller partners wanted hedges against the “tyranny of the majority.” Otherwise, why would they want to join an inherently unequal relationship?

As time wore on and other traditions developed (such as the filibuster in the senate and the relaxing of the requirements to call a filibuster) we’ve gotten to a point where we have to consider the “tyranny of the minority.” But even there, the shades are pretty grey. Most polls I’ve seen put it at 30% solid Democrat, 35% solid republican and 35% independent nationwide.

The rules allow the republican 35% to have disproportionate influence but it’s not completely out of the realm of reason. The republicans just make better use out of rules, big-lie propaganda, and militant coherence than the democrats.

And Churchill, if you want to look at it geographically instead of demographically, most studies I’ve heard of show that, based on revenues collected vs revenues dispersed, most federal money flows positively to the south and southwest - precisely to the people who say they don’t want government money - and negatively to a lot of the rest.

the media should simply stop playing along with calling the earmarks and go back to calling them pork.

The thing with trendy buzz words is that often they’re used to obfuscate the real meaning behind the word.

It’s just another word for PORK!!

^ Pork that, in total, is about one tenth of one percent of the budget.

Just paying the interest on Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II is almost 20% of the budget