My problem with that is, there are people who do not pay taxes because the tax laws decree they do not make enough money to do so.
The vote is not just about what to use tax money on. It is also creating an environment where people can get a job and make enough to even pay taxes.
I get your point, but I think the self-appointed elite would love your idea. They could be the only voters and create a country with nothing but impoverished people to control.
I'd support the idea of taking government assistance negating your ability to vote on the basis of that being conflicting interest, but not some arbitrary percentage of your income being taxed. If you pay a dime in taxes, you get a vote.
Not that I think anything being stated on that website is false, but these kinds of websites only appeal to those who already agree with what they are saying.
Nothing we can do about that, but the website itself could at least attempt to be more professional in its delivery. It just looks like a tin foil hat site.
We really need an entire revolution in media at this point. It's nearly impossible to find a trusted source on anything now.
That is true, but in fairness, geographical majority shouldn't be given special weight. Any more than population density should be. There needs to be a balance that is fair. And what I mean by "fair" is that all citizens are given equal representation for their concerns.
The way it is now, we could utterly destroy the farming industry with laws that make people in cities happy, simply because there is such an imbalance between people in rural areas and urban areas. Obviously, this would ultimately destroy the cities because there would be no food, but it's an extreme example to make my point.
Well, not that extreme really since California seems to be trying to do exactly that. Make environmentalists happy at the expense of everyone else in the state.
I've thought a long time about this, and it's not just a problem on national politics, but also state. Most of Illinois is rural farmland and small suburbs. Yet the city of Chicago basically controls the entire state. If they ever get a bug up their ass about some make believe environmental issue, they could destroy the state and all of its farms.
Part of me would like to see cities, once past a certain population threshold, be declared city-states. They would lose their influence over the state they are in at that point, be granted up to 5 congressional districts, and no senators. I think that would bring the balance we need. It would allow states to tend to the majority of their landmass in a way that is appealing to those living in it. The cities could be more autonomous as a result, which is good for them and their residents. And the national elections would not be so weighted towards major cities.
The vast majority of pollsters are young, college aged kids or people "between jobs" who need money. Most of them could care less what you say, they are just there to collect a paycheck.
There are two problems though. The first is that there has been a 4 year public-shaming of anyone who admits to supporting Trump. So a lot of people like to say "undecided" when they actually are pro-Trump all the way. The other is that pollsters generally get through far more on landline phones than cell phones, and that skews polls towards much older people who tend to vote however they always have, regardless of current events.
On top of this, most polls are anywhere from D+5 to D+12, so respondents are already going to pick the Democrat.
Basically, polling is garbage. It probably always was to a certain extent, but it is really meaningless now. 2016 absolutely highlighted this fact. Even Rasmussen, who tries to be as fair as possible, got it wrong with +2 for Hillary on its final poll.
The only poll I remember getting it right was the LA Times/USC poll. They have since "corrected" their methods to show Biden ahead. Not a single poll this year will be correct. Which is unfortunate. The LA Times poll was doing something right in 2016.
I believe in the Electoral College, but I've become convinced that there needs to be something to counteract the major weight of dense cities. That is exactly what the Founders were trying to prevent with the Electoral College, to make sure minorities had a voice (minority meaning someone in the minority, not race).
Points per district really wouldn't work because cities have most of the districts as it is. I think the solution is that districts themselves should be capped. When a city hits such a high population density, they are being over-represented with so many districts. It should still be tied to population, but put a cap of 5 for a city. Anything more than that is simply giving too much weight to people who all have the same problems to deal with. It basically negates entire swathes of a state. I mean NYC has 27 congressional districts. That is idiotic.
As I pointed out last week, the previous week I had driven through Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Xichigan, and Pennsylvania, different routes coming and going. I saw little but pro-Trump everywhere. I did see a few Biden signs here and there, but even in Detroit I saw a bunch of Trump stuff. I was back in Ohio last week (and drove through WV, VA, KY, MD, and PA on the way back to the DC area), and saw more and more Trump signs, lots of flags, even some people openly wearing MAGA hats.
If there is any sort of Biden support in the Rust Belt states, I'm just not seeing it. I lived in Ohio in 2016, and I got the impression living there that Trump was going to win it, but I still didn't see the open support then that I see now. Trump losing supporters is an extremely rare thing. So the Left has to explain where all of the extra voters are coming from if they think he is somehow threatened in the PA or OH or MI.
Why do you think coverage is important? It isn't. Most of the media are involved in it. They've built this imaginary idea that somehow a crime is a crime only when they say it is and report on it.
It doesn't work that way. This current election is extremely important to them, because if the Trump administration wins again, many in the media will be implicated in the indictments to come.
It's not about the amount of evidence in a case like this. It's about the right evidence. Specific evidence with names, dates, recordings, etc. They need the right evidence to pressure the right people to talk.
As I pointed out above, this is very much like going after an organized crime syndicate (which for all intents, that is exactly what the Deep State is). It's an inherently secretive bunch who cover each other's butts, because it all depends on that. You have to find the weakest links in the chain and have enough information to break them to unravel the whole thing.
The way our legal system works, you really do have to have cooperation (whether consensual or coerced) from some of the criminals themselves to take down such a corrupt group of people. Targeting them one at a time won't work because everything is so layered and connected. And when you decide to strike, it's best to go after all of them at once and already have your "rats" lined up.
A lot will come of all of this. President Trump has been hinting at that for quite a while.
But there is a very good reason why action has not been taken yet. It will shift after the election. President Trump needs an entire term to take on the corrupt "Deep State", and even then it might not be enough time.
Consider how long it took to take down the Mafia. Congress even had to pass the RICO Act to make it possible. The Deep State is basically a criminal organization that makes the Five Families look like Alfalfa and Our Gang in comparison.
People underestimate the level of corruption and layers of it and how far reaching the tendrils of the Deep State truly are. It's not as easy as just making arrests and levying charges. Because if you do that, you'll make some news for a while but then ultimately everyone except a few nobodies will walk free. And then they'll strike back.
If you want actual permanent justice, you'll have to be patient. It takes many years to build up such a case. I think the hints President Trump has been dropping the past several months (ie. "we caught them") point to indictments of major players coming soon. They may even be ready to do so now, but will not until the election is over.
Trump and his people know they need to be reelected in order to have the time necessary to fight what is ultimately a major war against corruption, and it would be unwise to start it just when an election is about to take place. Secure the reelection, then start the war.
I have learned over the past 5 years to never underestimate Trump. I suggest we all have a bit of faith in the guy. It's simply not typical for him to lay down on something. Be patient.
Over 100,000 people and is ranked 292nd in the US. Just an average sized city. Which seem to be the only nice cities anymore. When they get near half a million population, it's like insanity moves in and it's all down hill from there.
That's a very important point. In pretty much every case when there has been a communist or even fascist revolution, it occurred under weak and feckless leadership and among a population with no faith in its government. That situation does not exist under Trump.
These marxists in our country are astroturfed. There is no underlying anger or fear within the American population to account for such a revolution, so it is doomed to fail from the start. In fact, the most common "fear" among Americans is the attempts to destroy what we already have. If these fools actually do try to "fight", they'll be taken down hard, and the public will support that fully.
So the question remains; why are there forces at work pushing this? I think the answer is simply to create chaos with the hopes of shifting more power from the people to the state as a result. There can never be a full on revolution in our country. Only a very slow and methodical one. That is what the KGB figured out during the Cold War, and what has been going on ever since. The only difference is that now it is not the Soviets or even really the CCP guiding it all. It is the globalist "elite". Because it is a path to more power for them.
Considering making PR a state is a big thing on the Democrats' agenda, I'm going to say no, it will not add Republicans. It's pretty much a given that granting statehood to PR and DC would give the Dems 4 senators forever.
The current governor of PR is in the "New Progressive" party (NPP), and while she identifies with the Republican party right now, for most of her career she identified with the Democrats. There are three main parties in PR, the NPP which supports statehood, the PPD (Popular Democratic Party) which supports the status quo, and the PIP (PR Independence Party) which supports full independence of PR.
The NPP is the largest by far, but the politics of all three parties seem to be fluid when it comes to anything but the statehood or independence question. However statehood appears to be associated with the Democrat party and it is pretty much a given that if PR becomes a state, most of its population will be Democrat voters once they are able to register for national voting.
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