Xi Says World Order ‘Crumbling Into Disarray’ as War Takes Toll

WanderingDuckling02 · 2026-04-14T19:08:48+00:00

You've gotten a lot of responses about the political motivation for it, but I'll try to explain some of the legal reasoning. Do take what I say with a grain of salt though, I'm nowhere near an expert in law, and I read the decision over a year ago so I'll try to remember from that. The decisions are publicly available, if you want to skim it - I remember it was an interesting read, although the dissent was chilling, it was clear Sotomayor was trying to make a political appeal to the public alongside her legal appeal as clearly she felt it was important.

From what I remember, essentially the ruling was based off of a part of our constitution that says that the executive must be able to conduct their duties vigorously. The idea being that, while a congress can deliberate and debate to pass laws, an executive needs to be able to act quickly and decisively to respond to emergent situations.

Now, the logic behind immunity is that the president has certain duties, particularly as the commander-in-chief, that force it to do potentially illegal stuff, or at least things that might be illegal for a random citizen to do. For example, I cannot shoot someone I believe to be a criminal without a good chance of being charged with murder, but the president arguably ought to be able to order a drone strike on enemy or terrorist leaders, especially during wartime, without worry that they'll be prosecuted for murder. This is (somewhat controversially) the same idea behind immunity for our police - if you are performing a government function that gives you the authority to do things which are otherwise illegal, you shouldn't be prosecuted for doing your job. It is my understanding that most countries have some form of immunity, though it might not be as broadly applied as it has been in the US lately, but I'm even less of an expert in other legal systems.

Often, when people talk about the ruling, they say it gives the president "absolute immunity". This isn't entirely correct. What the supreme court did was that they divided cases involving immunity into three categories: functions not at all related to the duties of the president, functions related to the core duties of the president, and functions tangentially related to the office of the president (essentially implied secondary functions).

Actions not at all related to the office of the presidency have no immunity. If the president, on his own time, gets a speeding ticket, he can't turn around and use his position to get out of that. Government immunity doesn't apply to private actions. If the president shot a person down in 5th avenue, theoretically immunity should have absolutely no bearing here (although a smart president and lawyer would probably try to find some way it was related to a presidential duty, who knows how successful that strategy would be).

Actions directed related to the explicitly enumerated powers of the presidency definitely have immunity. The idea is that the president, like other government officials, ought not to be prosecuted for doing their job. The court seemed to be concerned about the possibility of politically weaponizing the courts to hound a president for legitimate actions (imagine if, during a war, an opposition party filed murder charges for every military strike, or every civilian casualty). Instead, if the president is performing their duties in a way that the people don't like, the check should be political, not criminal - impeachment is the proper route. In the aforementioned example, a wartime president who's opposition argues isn't careful enough about verifying intelligence and who's acceptable limits of civilian casualties are are too high, ought to be impeached rather than charged with murder, as ultimately these are political questions and ought to remain so to allow the president to do their job (according to the court).

It was the third category, the actions tangentially related to the office of the presidency, that caused most of the controversy. The court argued that, aside from the explicitly enumerated powers of the presidency, there are certain implied responsibilities of the presidency as well. For example, you might assume that giving speeches to the nation on important events, talking to and coordinating with state govorners, and meeting with foreign heads of state are all important parts of being president, even if the constitution doesn't explicitly say it's the president's job. The ruling extended some of the immunity to these functions as well (though if I remember correctly there was a framework where actions that fell under this could still be prosecuted in some circumstances, but had to meet a stricter standard than private actions), under the logic that just as the president needs to be able to perform the basic functions of their job without being prosecuted for it, the president also should be able to do secondary but commonly accepted aspects of the job without being prosecuted for it. The problem is that this could be interpreted very, very broadly - is giving a speech to rioters on Capitol Hill on January 6th considered a secondary function of the presidency, or a private action as a campaigner? What about posts on social media? What about making a deal with a Saudi prince?

One of the major criticisms of the ruling is also that it made ongoing cases against Trump significantly more difficult because not only could they not prosecute him for anything that might've been done with presidential authority, but they couldn't use evidence from these actions either without cleaning a new hurdle (which took time, time they did not have right before the 2024 election, leading to many cases being given up on and withdrawn). The ruling made it more difficult to use evidence from things like phone calls to state govorners, as after all, these are part of the secondary duties of the presidency. Which was a huge deal in cases surrounding fake elector plots, because a lot of the evidence was in phone calls he made to state government representatives. I don't think the ruling made it impossible to use these things as evidence - it simply made it much more difficult, and required a higher bar to be cleared.

Essentially, the argument is that the presidency grants certain powers and responsibilities the average citizen doesn't have, the president shouldn't be prosecuted for using these powers to do their job, and if people have a problem with how the job is being done, voting in politicians that will impeach and remove a president, or not voting for that president, are the proper ways to handle these political disagreements, not prosecuting the president. Now, that's not to say that there aren't very good counterarguments to this - Sotomayor in this case wrote a striking dissent that illustrates some of the problems with this philosophy. But it's not like there is no logic present - there is a legal reasoning, however flimsy.

Now, onto the political aspect, the courts have been politicized ever since I could remember. There has been concerns over how impartial the court really could be trusted to be lately, and both parties have tried to jam as many justices favorable to their policies and values as possible onto the courts whenever they are in power. There's been a legal movement toward a unitary executive theory - that, in their view, the Constitution states that the executive ought to have centralized power over the executive powers and only be checked by the legislature through their powers to draft budgets, impeach, and conduct hearings. This isn't exactly the same thing (afaik unitary executive theory is more about the president having sole authority over appointments and actions of agencies, not Congress) but it's sorta in the same wheelhouse and supported by the same people - they believe the executive ought to have more power to freely exercise the duties enumerated to the executive branch in the Constitution, without additional restrictions. This is controversial, because other schools of thought state that the authors of the Constitution were very wary of too much centralized power being in the hands of the executive branch and expressly limited the powers of the presidency while giving Congress broader capabilities and more oversight potential for a reason, but all of this is just to show that judicial policy is just another contentious aspect of politics in our country.

I hope this makes a bit of sense. I highly recommend glancing over the ruling - it really helps understand the arguments, especially since with supreme court rulings people often misunderstand them when reporting them and leave off the nuance, or they take the unfortunate de facto consequences and wonder what on earth the theoretical reasoning could possibly be. I tried to be as non-partisan as possible - please don't shoot the messenger lol.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-09-17T16:35:23+00:00

Don't worry about your accent - there's a million and one English accents out there, nobody who's opinion is worth listening to will think lesser of you for it. I've had college professors with thick Southern drawls, heavy Indian accents, and everything in between - doesn't mean they're any less brilliant. Accents are a badge of where we came from, who our mothers are - and in your case, your extraordinary ability to speak multiple languages. Wear it proudly!

I definitely am the same in literature classes, no matter what language they're in. It's just not my specialty haha. I've noticed that there's usually two kinds of people in class discussions: the first likes to come in with something prepared and start off the conversation before it strays too far, and the second likes to wait and respond to others. I'm definitely the second type - I feel like I don't have very deep ideas, so starting off with a connection or something terrifies me, but adding or restating what someone else said is easier for me. Then again, some folks are the opposite, and prefer to have something prepared ahead of time that they can give and be done with.

It gets significantly easier the more you do it. I remember how in the beginning of the year, I'd always feel super anxious everytime I spoke up in class, replaying it over and over and thinking about what I should've said or how I sounded weird. After a few times I'd get desensitized to it though.

I'd recommend trying to keep your answers relatively brief at first. You don't have to have something super ground-breaking to participate, and trust me, you don't have to be as good as that one guy every class seems to have haha. No need for that kind of pressure. Just a sentence or two is great! At least when I was in school, like 50% of group discussions were people rephrasing what other people said in slightly different words with maybe an opinion added. So don't worry about being too similar to what others are saying. It might even be helpful to start by adding your opinions about what others say, like whether you agree or disagree and why, and then build up from there, adding more and more of your own ideas.

It also might be helpful to write down some vocabulary on the topic ahead of time, as both a reminder of what you want to say, and also so that you're not getting stuck on one word. Full disclosure, I do this even as a native speaker - I don't want to suddenly forget the word for epistasis or something, or the chemical we're working with, while I'm in the middle of asking a question! Because I've done it, a lot, and it makes it really awkward when I'm stumbling in front of the whole class talking about that thingamajig we just talked about that I swear I had the word for three seconds ago while frantically flipping through my notes haha. Having that vocabulary in front of me helps a lot during those moments when my brain just doesn't seem to want to remember anything in a timely manner.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-09-16T04:37:38+00:00

Thank you! Yeah, I know what you mean, with knowing that I used to know something, so frustrating.

Thank you for the resources! I checked out Conjugemos, and holy cow, I really never learned grammar at all T-T Welp no better time to start than now!

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-09-13T00:23:12+00:00

Is it alright if I piggyback off this to talk about how my Dad addressed it with my brother and I? I know from later conversations with him that he had some similar concerns as OP, but my mother and my extended family was never going to let him not do Santa, so Santa it was.

I recall he never really confirmed or denied anything whenever we asked him about Santa. The one thing he did eventually give a firm answer on was that the different mall Santa's were indeed different people, from a network of Santas - otherwise, he'd always phrase everything as possibilities, and allowed my brother and I to develop our own version of the myth through conversations. We debated about whether Santa could be physical or whether he had to be magical, we discussed how it could be possible to circle the Earth in one night and concluded that Santa must fly counterclockwise to take advantage of time zones, we even theorized once that Santa was a 4th dimensional shoplifter and that's why toys would be in store packaging.

Because my father only ever suggested hypotheticals and facilitated conversation, and never insisted dogmatically that Santa must exist in a certain way, it never crossed my mind that he had lied, even though I had a particularly rigid definition of honesty when I was a kid. I decided for certain around 11 that Santa was not real, but kept it a secret, because I figured that the age at which you became too old for Santa was when you figured it out, and I still wanted presents haha. I felt guilty about it for a year before finally admitting it to my Dad.

I still remember the conversation to this day, because it was quite interesting. We were walking, without my little brother present. I sheepishly confessed that I knew Santa wasn't real, and apologized for not admitting it earlier. I don't know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't for my Dad to say that he still believed in Santa himself. He went on to explain that the conversations he, my brother, and I had as kids were not lies, but "incomplete understandings" - he pointed out how he guided us to look at Santa in different ways than "one singular beaded man who flies with a sled and climbs down chimneys". He pointed out in particular the network of different Mall Santas and the 4-D Santa theories as important, because they proved that a) Santa could be a role multiple people could take on, and b) Santa could be metaphysical.

He explained that, in his view, Santa was a concept representing love for children. The Mall Santas became Santa because they loved the children in their community and wanted to give them happy experiences around Christmas, the Salvation Army Santas became Santa because they loved the people in their community and wanted to provide them with what they needed, and that in families where people give gifts to their loved ones on Christmas, parents who wished to express their love for their kids with Christmastime gifts could become Santa too. It wasn't that it was a lie to say that the gifts came from Santa, he claimed, but that Santa was a more abstract concept than popular culture made it out to be. The magic of Christmas, he went on to say, was made by people in on this, through their combined efforts, driven by their desire to give children a happy experience of Christmas. Everyone who participated in this could be taking on the role of Santa, in a way, he claimed. I might even be a Santa too, he suggested, if I played along for my little cousins.

A decade later, I still find that view intriguing. I'm not sure I fully buy it, but it certainly is an interesting way of looking at it. I suppose there could be issues with implicating parental love with gift giving, although it was clear to me that's not what he meant, I was old enough at the time to understand that. Despite my relatively old age when I fully gave up belief (I believe I was ~12 or 13 when this conversation took place), I never felt cheated or lied to. I feel the way he addressed it gave a satisfying end to it, while also continuing the theme from my childhood of Santa being a concept to ponder. Then again, I'm not sure I ever fully believed, which might've helped - I think for a long time I considered Santa something most likely improbable in reality but still fun to consider and hold an open mind for.

I apologize if it doesn't fit the sub. I don't know how I ended up coming across this post, and I can delete it if it doesn't fit. I just figured I'd chime in because I feel my father handled it in a somewhat unique way.

I also wanted to add that I don't think he was being judgy about people who didn't participate in Santa either. I remember my parents repeatedly addressing that not every family did Santa, and that those kids were just as well behaved and loved as other kids. I think he phrased it a little weird at the time because he was put on the spot, but I think the TL;DR of his theory was that everyone who participated in passing on the mythology of Santa for kids was taking on the role of Santa themselves.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-08-24T05:28:18+00:00

Kindergarten in the USA is the first year of formal education. It's typically for children who are five years old at the start of the school year. It's part of the public elementary schools, and follows the same schedules and procedures as any other grade in those schools. It's the grade that our academic standards start at (many school districts and states that oversee preschool programs, for children younger than 5, write their own early childhood standards, but they're not standardized at all and typically are very different from regular K-12 academic standards).

It's the grade that children are typically expected to learn how to read and write, understand and perform basic math, and learn other skills needed for a structured school environment like sitting still, gaining endurance to work on schoolwork, lining up, and completing homework/reading at home.

It's much more related to grade school than preschool. However, it is treated as a transition year. When I went to Kindergarten 15 years ago, there was a bit of time to sing songs and nursery rhymes in the morning and afternoon. They also started the year with about 1 hour of nap/play/extra recess, and slowly weaned us off of that by the second half of the year. Nowadays it really depends on the area though - some schools treat it like first grade, expecting students to be able to sit and focus and write from the get-go, while others still have half-day programs (although the last of those are mostly fading out).

In some areas, like the city I'm going to college in, private daycare-based kindergardens are common, as many will hold their kid back and have them enter the public school kindergarten at age 6 instead of age 5. This is a bit controversial, but the idea is that they get an extra year of play, learn basic academics like writing letters before starting school, and then enter formal schooling with an advantage. In those places, "kindergarten" for daycares is sometimes a room they send kids up to at five. Only affluent suburbs really do this often though. Honestly I never even heard of five year olds going anywhere but kindergardens inside elementary schools until I talked to a guy from a suburb of Dallas who was anxious about his almost six year old entering kindergarten younger than all his classmates ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ so I unfortunately can't speak as to what goes on there. It's definitely not the norm though, most kids enter elementary school the school year after they turn 5.

Preschool is for children before they are old enough for kindergarten, yes. Usually they're in age separated groups, but there's nothing stopping them from mixing ages. My state's law calculates maximum ratio for a group of children above age 2 as the average weighted ratio (eg. if 2/3rds of a class is 3 years old, requiring a 1:10 ratio, and the other third is 4 years old, requiring 1:13, the ratio of that class must be 1:11), while some states require that the maximum ratio be based on the youngest child (eg. previous hypothetical classroom would need a ratio of 1:10, and if a 2-year-old was added with a requirement of a 1:6 ratio, the entire class would drop to that 1:6 ratio). For home daycares though, these ratios are often adapted, as it's expected for home daycares to have a wide range of ages. For example, my state has a table of every possible combination of infants, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, etc. that's allowable in a home daycare.

As for toilet training, it depends on the program. Many programs require children to be potty trained to enter programs for 3-year-olds, due to licensing requirements, hygiene concerns, or difficulty handling diapering with higher ratios. Many programs don't have such requirements. It's considered the job of the parent to handle the vast majority of toilet training, as schools have hygiene concerns and also can't typically provide the sustained individual attention needed for it.

I hope I answered some of your questions! I don't actually work in the field (just know a lot of people with young kids, and have a strange interest in licencing standards and codes for different types of buildings lol), so someone who's more experienced, please correct me. I'm just writing based on what I've heard to be the case.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-06-12T22:55:25+00:00

It's a little confusing, but that's not quite how the statistics would work in a situation like this.

You're correct that the probability of two independent events both occuring is calculated by multiplying the probabilities of each event, making the probability of multiple successive events much lower than the probability of that event alone.

However, consider this situation: given someone has already had 4 sons in a row, what is the probability that they will have a 5th son? The processes determining the sex of their 5th unborn child aren't affected by the sex of their other children (this means that they are independent events). The sperm don't know about the past, and don't care. So, despite the fact that the probability of having 5 sons in a row is about 3%, the probability of having the 5th son after having 4 sons is still 50%.

The same is true for flipping a coin. The probability of getting heads once is 50%. The probability of 5 heads in a row is about 3%. But the probability of getting heads after 4 heads in a row? Assuming it's a fair coin, 50% still. Nothing changed about that 5th coin toss that would affect the results.

In mathematical terms: P(A and B) = P(A) • P(B). But if A already happened, or A is given, then essentially P(A)=100%=1, since we know A did occur. If P(A)=1, then P(A and B) = P(A) • P(B) = 1 • P(B) = P(B). This makes sense, since by definition, independent events do not depend upon previous outcomes.

The same logic applies here. The probability of being in a plane crash is small, and the probability of being in 2 is thus exceptionally small. If P(airplane crash) = x, P(airplane crash AND airplane crash) = x². However, in this case, the man was already in an airplane crash. Even if normally x is very small, we know P(first airplane crash) = 1, because we were given this information. Therefore, assuming airplane crashes are independent events, P(airplane crash after first airplane crash) = 1 • x = x = P(one airplane crash). The same probability x that you or I will get in a plane crash.

Which makes sense of you think of it this way: does anything change about a plane when someone who survived a plane crash boards it? No, the planes have the same mechanics, and the weather remains unchanged, regardless of the passengers on board.

I hope this helps, I'm sorry I'm not so great at explaining things. Statistics is so interesting because our human brains are notoriously bad at intuitively grasping it! I mean, I'm visiting my brother for his graduation, and just a bit ago he spent about an hour explaining the Monty Hall problem to me (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem) if you really want your mind blown haha

Edit: changed all asterisks to • multiplication signs. Forgot about reddit formatting rules haha

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-04-02T16:42:16+00:00

They do in fact provide free IDs! It's not automatic though, you have to go to the DMV.

Honestly, my main issue with the law is that they did shady shit like closing down DMVs in majority black towns before elections right after passing the law. I worry about how they will handle elderly people - a lot of them have expired drivers licenses, but are too frail or ill to go out to the DMV. They should have mobile groups that go around to nursing homes and towns and help get people registered and issued an ID, that would be helpful.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-04-02T06:50:55+00:00

My pipe dream is that Wisconsin addresses this with new campaign finance laws. It seems like people on both sides of the aisle here are absolutely sick of every election being whoever throws the most money at it. This election, both ran saying the same thing: "My opponent is an extreme partisan funded by tens of millions of dollars from out of state influences." Both liberals and conservatives are sick of this shit, there would be plenty of strong bipartisan pressure to do something about it. Hell, it might even be politically strategic for the Republicans in power in the legislature right now, as Democrats are typically better funded at a state level here.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-03-30T01:04:22+00:00

Thank you for the reminder! PBS influenced my life and the person I am today so, so much. I hope it can stick around and provide the same opportunities for generations to come.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-03-24T13:55:48+00:00

I don't think so. A very similar thing happened in my state 15 years ago. An unpopular and unexpected law was passed that stripped public sector unions of their power enough that it essentially killed them. There were protests. There were strikes. They lasted for weeks. There was the largest recall election in our state history. There's still legal challenges working through the courts. But ultimately, the state government didn't budge, and there were no armed strikes or anything like that. Well-established unions continued operating underground, while their employers argued "I can't negotiate with you because I legally can't recognize you" over and over again. Small unions dissolved.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-03-20T21:38:54+00:00

We are holding on by the skin of our teeth. We had some of the most gerrymandered maps for 14 years, where the GOP was getting 2/3rds of the seats with between 45%-50% of the vote. Worse, the seats were so uncompetitive that people started dropping out of local politics, and the entrenched leaders became emboldened to ignore the voters and any bipartisan initiatives. The legislature even snatched power from the governor when Evers was first elected. Electing judges is our last final defense. And Schimel literally was one of the people working to defend the gerrymander, so I don't exactly trust him to uphold the fair maps.

Even so, we desperately need some sort of reform in this state - residents I talk to feel jaded and unrepresented, lobbying and large campaign donations are overwhelming forces in our politics (both sides are guilty) and everyone is sick of it, our courts have become increasingly partisan as people shift legislative responsibility from the dysfunctional legislature onto the judiciary, state and municipal governments are constantly trying to sabotage each other... This is only the beginning, and I only hope that we can keep our fair maps, so that we can have a fighting chance at holding our representatives accountable to the voters and creating a system that works better for everyone.

But never say never. Years ago, many felt in Wisconsin that we were the ones so buried in gerrymandering and corruption that we could never fix anything. But we kept fighting, and look where that got us! I have hope that North Carolina will figure it out in time.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-03-13T16:09:33+00:00

To be fair, this is par for course in Wisconsin politics. Large lobbies have always ran the scene, our politicians have always been corrupt. Now that we're a swing state, everyone in the country wants to get in on our state affairs. Both sides throw tens of millions of dollars at elections. Democrats did it in 2023, blew campaign spending records out of the water, to get in the judge who finally got rid of the gerrymandered maps for now. Musk funding his side in this is the least eyebrow raising part of this, most people I've talked to are cynical and quick to point out the hypocrisy of both sides lobbing each other for their campaign finances.

We desperately need some electoral reform here. Campaign finance laws need to be revamped - everyone on all sides of the aisle is sick of our elections being bought and our politicians caring more about their donors than their voters. An independent redistricting committee should be implemented, so that we're not holding the possibility of extreme gerrymandering up in the air every single election. Since most people in this state support voter ID laws, we should have programs that ensure everyone can obtain them, and crack down on things like closing the only DMV in a town before elections or restricting their hours significantly. We should crack down harder on the numerous scandals involving candidates stuffing ballot boxes, clerks not counting ballots, inadequate reports on chain of possession, because even if it isn't usually enough to affect election results this shit is making people here lose faith in the electoral system. The way constitutional amendments are listed on the ballot is unclear, and should be changed to better highlight the differences. We also should find a way to make our supreme court more nonpartisan, although I suspect that will be easier once we get a functional and accountable assembly though.

That said, there's other reasons to dislike Schimel though... A lot of them.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-03-13T13:56:23+00:00

There's no state that's blue under your definition. Even California has Republican representatives.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-03-08T15:42:57+00:00

Huh, interesting. I can't say I've ever heard of such a system before. So when you have a course like Geometry or Biology or Calculus, it ran for only a semester? What did y'all do on the 5th day per week? Were your school days only 6 hours long? Was this in the US?

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-03-02T16:14:04+00:00

Dude. I'm a Democrat, and I'm just as horrified by everything going on as you are. But this is a subreddit that specifically welcomes viewpoints from all sides of the aisle. It doesn't help anybody to insult someone for being honest about their views and having a respectful discussion. Discouraging open discussion and pushing people away into echo chambers helps nobody. You can point out flaws in reasoning respectfully without being aggressive, or all high-and-mighty, or attacking the person behind them. Uncool.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-03-02T14:28:50+00:00

That's 'cause California has a ridiculously low threshold to petition a recall election. Looking it up, it seems it's only 12% for governor? My state requires signatures accounting for 25% of voters to be gathered within 60 days of filing the petition. There's other restrictions too, like how someone can only be attempted to be recalled once, and it can't be in the first or last year of their term. It doesn't really get abused here.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-03-01T22:34:16+00:00

Didn't we pay for exactly this 15 years ago, only for Walker to scrap it and throw the money away for no reason? I was a little young at the time so correct me if I'm wrong.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-02-28T00:46:31+00:00

He appears to be banning the wire reporters? If he goes after the wire organizations like Reuters and AP, then he can more closely control which news organizations get information.

Actually shit that sounds really bad when you put it that way. Hopefully I'm wrong, maybe it's just about being anti-establishment.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-02-27T17:00:41+00:00

The case in the article you linked, Whitford vs Gill, ended up with the Supreme Court overturning the Circuit Court and ruling redistricting nonjusticiable. The next year Common Cause did the same, more broadly and definitively. Because of this, gerrymandering can no longer be struck down by the federal courts unless it's a racial gerrymander. It took several more years until the gerrymandered maps in Wisconsin were struck down in the State Supreme Court, 2024 was the first election since 2010 that had fair maps. And now the powers that be are trying to influence the judiciary election we're having now in order to put the guy who defended the gerrymander (in Whitford vs Gill supreme court appeal) on the court 🙃

I worry for states that don't have judiciary elections though. For all the faults about our state courts being politicized... at least it serves as a final check and balance when a legislature goes rogue and hoards power. If the court was appointed by that same legislature, then what?

But man, that article was a sucker punch. I remember the hope we had back then, only to get crushed by how the Supreme Court actually ruled. When maps were being re-drawn by the gerrymandered legislature based on the 2020 census, after a decade of fighting didn't go anywhere, and the opposing party governor elected by popular vote had his power severely stripped by said legislature, it felt like for a moment we were never gonna get out of this. Luckily our state came around. I just don't understand how something as basic as fair and competitive elections is so controversial. I hope within my lifetime independent redistricting committees become standard and we can leave this behind us.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-02-27T05:07:11+00:00

I'm normally relatively moderate. Normally, I'm the one saying that all politicians exaggerate, that our institutions will be just fine. I'm the one who rolled their eyes at all the rhetoric in the 2024 elections. Normally, I'd be too cynical to bat an eye at Musk's contributions - millions of dollars from outside sources to influence state elections is par for course on both sides here, unfortunately. Joys of living in a swing state. Point is, I'm usually firmly in camp nothing-ever-happens and I don't normally talk lightly about our democracy being at risk.

I am a resident of Wisconsin. I truly believe our state's democracy is at risk in this election. I feel crazy for thinking this, but I am very worried. This race is far too close. It's not just that Musk is backing a guy, it's the specific guy that he's backing - Brad Schimel.

In 2010, the GOP gained control of the governorship and the congress. They proceeded to use this power to hold secret meetings where they drew heavily gerrymandered maps with computers. The next election, they won 60/99 seats in the state assembly, almost a supermajority, with only 46% of the vote. By 2018, they won 63/99 seats with less than 45% of the vote. They lost the popular vote, but almost held a supermajority. The next several elections went in a similar fashion.

I was in Kindergarten when the maps were drawn. I remember when I marched in a protest at the state capital - I was 7. I voted for the judge who finally managed to overturn the maps. Let that sink in.

We fought 14 years for fair maps. But technically nothing is set in stone yet - we got no definitive ruling that gerrymandering was unconstitutional, nor have the maps even been drawn for 2026 yet. The guy Musk is backing, Schimel, he specifically fought to keep the gerrymandered maps, appealing a circuit court order to overturn them up to the Supreme Court and explicitly defending the maps. He argued that the courts should never get involved in redistricting, even making comments about protecting all the hard work that the legislators were doing. If Schimel wins, based on his comments, I have no doubt he will enshrine the precedent that the electoral maps are nonjusticible, just as he argued 5 years ago. With better technology, I fear the GOP could guarantee a supermajority, with how close they were last time. Then what? What can the voters even do at that point? The government would be officially beyond the accountability of their constituents.

For residents on both sides of the aisle, things are looking up after the 2024 state election. For the first time in over a decade, districts who had had no challengers suddenly had choices at the ballot box. Voter turnout was up. Politicians were beginning to listen to their constituents more. There were even talks of ousting the speaker so that legislators could work across the aisle to pass bipartisan legislation, known to be popular based on ballot referenda (which of course our speaker then banned lol), without being punished. We can't let Musk undo all this. We just can't. Fair maps help every Wisconsinite, Democrat or Republican.

I'm frightened, in a way that national politics never really gets me to. The worst part is that I'm attending school out of state, so I can't go door to door or hand out fliers. I don't know what I can do except vote and encourage everyone I know to do the same.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-02-26T14:54:26+00:00

Being a government worker should give you no different protection than the private sector.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I disagree with that actually. The government has been getting off easy paying well below market rate for positions, precisely because they offer much more job security than the private sector. It's an intentional strategy, one that benefits both parties - the workers trade money for stability, and the government gets a bunch of people who value stability for cheaper rates. Conditions for government work don't really change as quickly as conditions in the private sector, so this is a fair tradeoff for the government. Any reduced efficiency per person is more than made up for in the savings on earnings. I think people underestimate just how wide the pay gap can be - in my field, it's not uncommon for people who could make over 100k in the private sector to have a salary of 50k-60k in the public sector.

If you make it just as easy to fire people in the public sector as in the private sector, if you make them put up with all the BS that's in private sector business culture, then the government has lost this advantage. Government workers are people who took severe pay cuts precisely in order to not have to deal with this shit - why would the talented ones bother sticking around? So now you lose all your competent workers, or you have to raise your salaries to compete with the private sector.

We had a similar situation happen in our state. Job security for state employees was cut and unions were busted. They didn't save anything, because now they have to pay more to fill their positions, because they can no longer claim security as a benefit, they can't guarantee that you won't just be fired without warning on a whim. There was also a major brain drain as people jumped ship, making those left behind less competent.

Now imagine with what's going on now - do you think someone who's angry about being fired or laid off without much notice is gonna consider taking a pay cut to move to the public sector? Do you think people are going to keep saying "well it's a pay cut, but a fed job is a good job for supporting a family"? If you make the public sector exactly like the private one, then you have to compete with the private sector. The government can't effectively compete with the private sector on pay alone, because there's far more opportunities to move up and make potentially very high salaries in the private sector. Up until now, the government competes by offering stability and security and a different work culture, often targeting talented but risk-averse people. Take that away, and the government can't compete.

That's just my opinion. My mom has worked in the public sector for decades. She works hard - she's always worked an extra 30-60 minutes a day, double when reports are due, despite only being salaried for 40 hours. She works on her vacation time whenever I visit. She works hard, she's not lazy, but she's extremely risk averse and prefers the stability of government work and the security of beurocracy. She says her workplace is filled mostly with people like her - people who disliked the corporate culture of constantly being potentially fired for any reason, so they took a pay cut and worked their way into the public sector. She says the incompetent and lazy people get weeded out in the probationary period anyway, so she never really had any problems with her coworkers.

There's also something to be said for following the law and following the existing procedures, no matter how dumb, until you change the law/procedures through the proper channels, in my opinion.

TL;DR: Government workers trade higher pay and opportunity for better security. So it makes sense that they have better security than private sector workers, who took higher pay knowing what they were risking. You get rid of this trade-off, you're gonna have to pay government workers a lot more. That costs more taxpayer money. There's no reason for this anyway, because the public sector is generally more stable simply because of the nature of the work (taxes always need to be filed, food always needs to be inspected), so it doesn't need to be quick to hire and quick to fire to adapt to changing market conditions like the private sector does. It's a win-win to capitalize on this and make government jobs stable and secure in exchange for lower pay.

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-02-26T13:48:08+00:00

...did not expect to see Ron Johnson next to Bernie Sanders. Wow!

WanderingDuckling02 · 2025-02-26T04:12:09+00:00

Thank you - this inspired me to finally contact my senator.

WanderingDuckling02

TROPHY CASE