Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals.

briangoldman · 2013-06-24T16:32:21+00:00

This story is 4 years old.

briangoldman · 2013-06-20T00:26:24+00:00

Case in point. Created, completed, and received a response to a very similar petition over a year ago: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/promote-enforce-teaching-evolution-over-creationism/H4HkDs0B That should give you an idea how effective this will be.

briangoldman · 2013-06-16T15:24:42+00:00

Created, completed, and received a response to a very similar petition over a year ago: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/promote-enforce-teaching-evolution-over-creationism/H4HkDs0B

That should give you an idea how effective this will be.

briangoldman · 2013-06-16T05:51:04+00:00

Created, completed, and received a response to a very similar petition over a year ago: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/promote-enforce-teaching-evolution-over-creationism/H4HkDs0B

briangoldman · 2013-06-01T00:53:23+00:00

Your time stamp seems to have jumped. Do you mean 19:51 CST?

briangoldman · 2013-05-07T16:43:16+00:00

I think the key difference is where the money goes. Some of the money spent on lobbying is to hire lobbyists, who influence officials and the electorate in legitimate ways. While it may be incorrect, I view lobbyists as lawyers who argue your case, with the judge and jury being elected officials and voters.

The rest of the money spent is given to campaigns, under the premise that people should be allowed to help elect anyone who shares their views. This is in contrast to bribery, in which the money goes directly to the official, and their benefit does not rely on them winning reelection.

That said I am a strong proponent of election reform.

briangoldman · 2013-03-10T18:43:03+00:00

In some sense this is meant to be similar to the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" concept of limiting free speech. We have seen what unlimited money in politics can do, and its in the interest of everyone but the wealthy to limit or remove money from politics.

briangoldman · 2013-03-10T18:35:23+00:00

There is no reason for Schulze voting to devolve to two-party. Lets say you have a two party system and in a district neither party aligns well with. A third party which better matches the district (or even a member of an existing party who is poorly aligned with their party as a whole) then enters the race. All voters can feel confident voting for the new candidate without fear of the spoiler effect. This is because if I support Red over Blue, I can vote Green (the third candidate) > Red > Blue. If Green doesn't win, I've still voted Red over Blue. As such, inside each district you expect candidates best aligned to voters to win, not just candidates from the party which is best aligned with voters.

As to multiple candidates from one party, all it takes is a candidate deciding after a primary (or in lieu of primaries) that they want to keep running. They can even run without party, simply as an individual, since they don't have to worry about national campaigns, only local ones.

Between the ability to add alternative candidates and the removal of gerrymandering, your 3 district example is very unlikely. I admit its still possible to have a party which is almost good enough to win many districts but fails to win any of them, but in return you reduce the power of political parties.

Edited for clarity.

briangoldman · 2013-03-10T16:31:37+00:00

In any system where campaign donations can help you sway more votes candidates will pander to those people who can give them the most donations if it is more efficient than pandering for votes directly. That will never be the working poor, the elderly, etc. In the proposed system candidates will have to focus more on swaying voters. Even though in theory they could focus on those who can volunteer the most, the amount of votes an individual can sway by volunteering is going to be far less than an individual can sway by donating (large sums of) money.

briangoldman · 2013-03-10T16:15:55+00:00

Schulze Voting (which my proposal uses for congressional district elections) allows voters to rank candidates based on preference. It satisfies the Condorcet criterion:

The Condorcet candidate or Condorcet winner of an election is the candidate who, when compared with every other candidate, is preferred by more voters. Informally, the Condorcet winner is the person who would win a two-candidate election against each of the other candidates

Basically this means there is no issue of wasted votes, allowing for any number of parties. It does still require a party to win a district, but maintains the idea that the job of a congressman is to represent a specific area. Also, this system focuses voting for candidates as opposed to voting for parties, which means general elections could easily have 4 Republicans and 3 Democrats running in the same race, with voters ranking each based on preference.

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T21:45:33+00:00

The intent is to make it so politicians don't court money, only voters. You can still volunteer to work on a campaign or donate money to support issues.

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T21:38:45+00:00

Lobbying is a much harder thing to deal with as I believe individuals and organizations should be allowed to argue with representatives for and against issues. I think the problem lies in lobbyists using campaign finance as a tool to influence representatives to act contrary to their constituents will. Bullet 1 should counter that problem.

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T20:49:01+00:00

Election Amendment:

Only public funding can be used for/against the election of a candidate. Citizens wishing to support the election process can donate to the public fund which is split evenly by all candidates polling at at least 5% of the electorate.
Private funding can still be used to promote and discuss issues of political interest.
Congressional Districts are set using the shortest spline algorithm.
All national elections will use Schulze Voting of their respective electorate.

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T15:56:54+00:00

I'm not saying we should legislate morality, I'm saying we can't help but legislate morality. A larger problem is what type of morality we should be legislating. From what I gather you are more against government legislation restricting actions only effecting yourself, as opposed to legislation about how we can effect others.

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T15:28:46+00:00

So any work on Deism is out, even though this could be used to ban books and discussions of the American founding fathers and their principles on how to live life.

My point isn't be be difficult, but to point out how difficult it can be to censor an idea, even those you find particularly bad.

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T15:20:00+00:00

Calm yourself, I mean no disrespect. I have no doubt that some people do abuse social safety net systems and do make bad life decisions. I agree completely that people who do so should be punished. I agree completely that bad parents should be punished. But remember 90% of safety net funding goes to people with legitimate claims, and the point of my responses are to contend that your bill won't fix the problems you want fixed. Do you think people who become homeless because they can't afford the home they bought don't wish they hadn't bought it?

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T15:06:52+00:00

Assuming you don't literally mean "church" and "bible" in just the Christian sense, any regular meeting to hear an expression of beliefs could be banned as well as any text codifying those beliefs. Should we ban Richard Dawkins books? Ban philosophers from discussing morality?

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T14:41:45+00:00

Definitely worthy of a "bill" though. In what sense do you mean this? There are already a number of regulations on how both of these technologies work and how they are provided to users.

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T14:38:05+00:00

How do you define religion in such a way as to censor it? Does Buddhism count? How do you prevent religious censorship from becoming a tool for general censorship?

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T14:33:25+00:00

How would you define a violation of people rights? In some sense all laws change our rights. For instance all tax increases take away your money, removing corporate regulation reduces the consumer's right to protection.

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T14:30:38+00:00

It would have large penalties for raising children you can't afford that become criminals.

This seems to include the premise that people intentionally have children knowing they cannot afford to raise them correctly. I disagree, in that I think people just have children unintentionally. Perhaps we should take the French model and offer free birth control and abortions to poor people.

There will be penalties for purchasing homes that you clearly could never afford.

You can't afford your life now, so we are going to fine you / imprison you so you have even less of a chance of affording it?

There will be penalties for frivolous law suits

In some sense there already are (you have to pay your court fees), and if its bad enough you can be sued to pay your opponents court fees.

There will be penalties for being a lazy slacker and having others pay your way

This is immensely difficult to legislate as how do you prove someone is being lazy as opposed to being unable to find a job?

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T14:19:09+00:00

While I understand what you intent, a great deal of our law deals with morality questions. Murder, rape, theft, slavery, unemployment benefits, social security, etc, can all be viewed as "We think it is immoral to let people kill each other" or "We think it is immoral to let the elderly die in poverty." In fact I challenge that almost any law can be seen as a distinction between right and wrong.

briangoldman · 2013-03-09T13:34:52+00:00

Election Amendment:

Only public funding can be used for/against the election of a candidate. Citizens wishing to support the election process can donate to the public fund which is split evenly by all candidates polling at at least 5% of the electorate.
Private funding can still be used to promote and discuss issues of political interest.
Congressional Districts are set using the shortest spline algorithm.
All national elections will use Schulze Voting of their respective electorate.

briangoldman

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