Congressional Democrats on Thursday introduced legislation that would immediately cut interest rates to 0 percent for all 44 million student loan borrowers in the U.S. While the Student Loan …
I’m sure the GOP will be happy to vote for this one in the house. They were perfectly fine with issuing much more for covid PPP loans and forgiving the loans completely. It’s so sad we have such a divided nation. We need to get rid of our first-past-the-post voting system, or it will be like this indefinitely.
With corporations owning politicians, an education crisis, a housing crisis, and the entire country hating eachother it doesn’t matter what voting system you tack on. We need some sort of reboot as a country on many levels.
Unfortunately the last civil war we had only made things exponentially worse, especially for POCs. And it changed nothing in terms of how the government was run.
How about peacefully Balkanizing the continent and letting each geocultural region govern themselves? New England, the South, Appalachia, Pacific Northwest, etc.
FPTP is the buzz word everyone likes to focus on. It very much is barely a blip in the system. Ranked Choice wouldn’t make third parties viable. It would just spread out the funding and support*. This is why the vast majority of countries where voting is a thing tend to down select to 2-4 viable parties.
The reality is that FPTP is “fine” because we already largely do the run offs at the party level. I voted for Yang (look, he wasn’t THAT batshit crazy at the time and he was all for UBI…) and you voted for Bernie. We both ended up voting for Biden in the “real” election.
What we actually need is to get rid of the electoral college. It is an antiquated system that heavily favors gerrymandering and disproportionately favors sparsely populated states. It sort of made sense when results were carried by horseback *2, but not now that the results can be sent at the speed of light. And this largely gets rid of all the broken systems that disenfranchise voters… or at least gets us back to focusing on the more tractable stuff.
*: And, as someone who grew up in a VERY blue state, it mostly just encourages people to do protest votes because they know the person they really want to win will win.
*2: No, it still didn’t make sense back then and was mostly a way to ensure that rich white landowners were the main voters
It’s about systemic incentives, blindly hoping for a change in people’s behaviour is foolish at best. First past the post causes the same issues in every country it still exists today, it clear to see. That’s why most of Europe doesn’t use it, and hasn’t for a long time too. The US has an outdated democracy and we all wish you good luck in convincing others to update it.
Most people still believe that the political process is working when there is zero signs to show that it is does. It is captured and voting for either side is legitimizing their regime.
Even small gains save lives, and pretending the Democrats are identical to Republicans is disingenuous at best. Don’t be immature, vote. Direct action can happen in parallel, but wasting your influence only enables your enemies. You’d be foolish to think otherwise, and waste time arguing against your own interest.
I’m sure the GOP will be happy to vote for this one in the house. They were perfectly fine with issuing much more for covid PPP loans and forgiving the loans completely. It’s so sad we have such a divided nation. We need to get rid of our first-past-the-post voting system, or it will be like this indefinitely.
With corporations owning politicians, an education crisis, a housing crisis, and the entire country hating eachother it doesn’t matter what voting system you tack on. We need some sort of reboot as a country on many levels.
It’s called a civil war.
Unfortunately the last civil war we had only made things exponentially worse, especially for POCs. And it changed nothing in terms of how the government was run.
How about peacefully Balkanizing the continent and letting each geocultural region govern themselves? New England, the South, Appalachia, Pacific Northwest, etc.
Yeah this would just lead to Nazi/Fascist states and then war eventually. Things would get worse not better.
The federal government has too much hardware spread out around the country.
Except only one side is really fighting. It’s more like civil domination, or a civil coup.
Yeah but nuking the filibuster, if that’s what you’re referring to, would actually be a horrible idea.
If Democrats are a majority, then they will pass anything unopposed, which would be great. Means progress and getting shit done.
But if we end up with Republican majority, we’re going to be in a world of shit, very fast because they’d get the same benefits.
Voting matters. Vote trash out.
FPTP is the buzz word everyone likes to focus on. It very much is barely a blip in the system. Ranked Choice wouldn’t make third parties viable. It would just spread out the funding and support*. This is why the vast majority of countries where voting is a thing tend to down select to 2-4 viable parties.
The reality is that FPTP is “fine” because we already largely do the run offs at the party level. I voted for Yang (look, he wasn’t THAT batshit crazy at the time and he was all for UBI…) and you voted for Bernie. We both ended up voting for Biden in the “real” election.
What we actually need is to get rid of the electoral college. It is an antiquated system that heavily favors gerrymandering and disproportionately favors sparsely populated states. It sort of made sense when results were carried by horseback *2, but not now that the results can be sent at the speed of light. And this largely gets rid of all the broken systems that disenfranchise voters… or at least gets us back to focusing on the more tractable stuff.
*: And, as someone who grew up in a VERY blue state, it mostly just encourages people to do protest votes because they know the person they really want to win will win.
*2: No, it still didn’t make sense back then and was mostly a way to ensure that rich white landowners were the main voters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
If you live in a state that hasn’t joined yet, you can take action today!
Don’t suggest such an unworkable solution. People just need to vote. That’s the first step.
It’s about systemic incentives, blindly hoping for a change in people’s behaviour is foolish at best. First past the post causes the same issues in every country it still exists today, it clear to see. That’s why most of Europe doesn’t use it, and hasn’t for a long time too. The US has an outdated democracy and we all wish you good luck in convincing others to update it.
Most people still believe that the political process is working when there is zero signs to show that it is does. It is captured and voting for either side is legitimizing their regime.
Even small gains save lives, and pretending the Democrats are identical to Republicans is disingenuous at best. Don’t be immature, vote. Direct action can happen in parallel, but wasting your influence only enables your enemies. You’d be foolish to think otherwise, and waste time arguing against your own interest.
Voting for democrats or republicans is against my interest while providing legitimacy to the two party regime.
That’s great news for most Americans as they clearly do not share your interest. Democracy seems to be working.
Your personal next step should be convincing others you’re right, if possible, not pursuing minority rule.
I don’t think this matters a whole lot when the two party system is older than you are.