Habemus plus vis computatoris quam Deus

We are a week from election day.

Remember, when you prepare to go to the polls, that each election cycle in which you convince yourself — or let others convince you — that you have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils because third parties and independent candidates have no chance of being elected, is one more election cycle in which third parties and independent candidates have no chance of being elected.  Because you, and everyone else who held their nose and voted for the lesser evil, wouldn't vote for them, even though you wished you could.

You want it to EVER change?

START NOW.

If not you, then who?

If not now, then when?

Pork barrel politics is, simply, the art of buying your constituents' votes using their own money, and hoping that they never catch on.

The depressing part about this is how often it works.

Yeah, mark this in your calendars if you think I'm only ever on one side of the fence:  I'm giving props to a Democrat Congressman.  Specifically, Sen. Ron Widen (D-OR).

Why?

Because he believes that police should have to get an order signed by a judge before they can use your cell phone or a GPS bug to track your whereabouts.  He believes it 'violates the Fourth Amendment right to be free from "unreasonable" searches'.

Now, I'm not entirely sure the Fourth Amendment is the proper authority to invoke here.  But I'm entirely in agreement that the police should not have the power to just randomly start tracking anyone they feel like, without any oversight.  We do not need to live in a surveillance society.

It's not about left vs. right.  It's about freedom vs. an overarching government that controls, and pries into, everything.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  Cliché, sure, but it's more true than at any time since the Gilded Age.

So says Business Insider, and they show 15 graphs to support it. Granted, this is not entirely a balanced view; the two distribution-of-wealth pie charts show that almost the entirety of wealth in the US is held by the upper 50% of the population, and a third of it by the top 1%, with a similar (and unsurprising) imbalance in stocks-and-bonds ownership, but neglects to mention that the same 50% of the population also shoulders essentially the entire Federal tax burden, with the top 1% paying 25% of it.

Also follow the links to this article about how the American middle class is being systematically wiped out, a process which is only being accelerated by US Government policies that are making it an act of foolhardy stupidity for US corporations not to relocate as much as possible of their operations offshore, and this article which asserts that it really makes very little difference whether the Bush-II tax cuts are extended or not because it's already m according to the author — mathematically impossible for even the existing Federal debt to ever be paid off.

If you took every dollar out of every single wallet, out of every single mattress and out of every single U.S. bank and sent it to the government you wouldn't even make that big of a dent in the national debt.

So can't the U.S. government just go out and create more money and solve the problem?

No.

You see, under our system the creation of more money is also the creation of more debt.

You should probably follow on from there to this article about how the US monetary system really works, too.

I see only one way out of this for the United States, and that is for the people of the United States to first fire the entire present government of the United States, and then repudiate the debts of that government.  Of course, this would almost certainly precipitate a global financial crisis (yes, another one).  But, honestly, so would the other option, which is to continue on this path until the US goes bankrupt.  That course would put the crash off for a while, at the cost of it being even worse when it eventually comes.

Frankly, the entire world needs to open its eyes and see that the investment banking industry has spent at least the last thirty years building a house of cards out of imaginary cards, having agreed among themselves to pretend that the cards are real, and laughing all the way to their offshore banks with the profits.  They have turned the banking industry into a way to siphon wealth out of the global economy without putting any corresponding value back.

Walter Russell Mead, writing for The American Interest, has a column about Obama's fall from grace, and the embarrassing failure of such realities as the economic crash to obediently succumb to his rhetoric and demagoguery.  It's not a bad column, if you ignore the bit where, after he lambasts the Left up at the start of his article for "mistaking hopes and fantasies for reality" and going all starry-eyed over promises of hope and change, he then falls into the exact same trap himself in the last few paragraphs of the column.  (As pointed out several times in the comments.  Don't miss the comments.)

To be fair, no, I don't want the President of the United States to fail, either.  But that's because I want the President to be competent and effective, a statesman and a representative of this nation.  But Barack Obama is an arrogant, narcissistic, incompetent bumbler with no executive skills (and apparently few if any diplomatic ones, either), and if he fails while in the office of the Presidency, well, that's very sad for the Presidency, but if he fails, he fails; and honestly, the blame for failure lies squarely at his own feet and the feet of those who elected a man to the Presidency essentially on the basis of idol-worship and empty campaign promises.

Mead says Obama has "had some painful and public lessons", and is "beyond a doubt [...] smarter, tougher, and more experienced now than he was two years ago."  No, I don't believe he is.  On the contrary, I think he's still firmly convinced of his own infallibility, and baffled at reality's failure to meekly conform to his master plan.

"We must all hope he succeeds", says Mead.

No.  We must all hope that this time, the vast, complacent American public wakes up and stops blindly believing campaign promises of milk and honey in the Promised Land.

Yesterday, after the midterm election results, some Republican spokesman or another whose name escapes me at the moment made an observation very like unto the paraphrased-from-memory following:

"We must remember that this is a condemnation of the policies of Obama and the Democrat Party.  It is not a mandate for us."

Somewhat later,

And I thought, "Great, finally the Reublicans are starting to get it."

Somewhat later yesterday, I saw this quote, from a comedian whose name also presently escapes me:

"President Obama listed his accomplishments in office on Urban Radio Tuesday.  No one gives him enough credit.  Barack Obama took something that was in terrible shape and brought it back from the brink of disaster ... and that something was the Republican Party."

This morning, I read this STRATFOR report on how the world looks at Barack Obama after the US midterm election, and reflected that the rest of the world has about as poor a view of Obama as many of us here in the US do.  And then came the link to the Obama inflatable love doll on sale in China, and I figured it for a pretty clear sign of the failure of the Obama presidency.  (Did you know the Chinese call him Maobama?)

And then, just a few minutes ago, I saw this Rasmussen poll, which found that when "likely GOP Primary voters" were asked who they would vote for if the Republican primary were held today, the three leading contenders were Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin.

Yeah, you read that right.  Romney, Huckabee, and Palin.

This is when I realized that there is one power left on Earth that has both the apparent will and the clear ability to save Barack Obama's failed Presidency and give him a second term in the White House.  And that power is the Republican Party.

Or, in which a blogger you've never heard of calls the educational establishment to task for sixty years of abject failure.

The instrument by which [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE.  If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!

Alexander Hamilton, Tully letters, No. 3, 1794; emphasis apparently his.

Allow me to expand a little upon what Hamilton is saying here:  The government of the United States was envisaged to be one of law, binding both upon the citizenry and upon the government.  In order for this to work, the law must be respected, by all parties involved, which in turn means that the law must be respectable.  When the government makes law which it then turns around and openly flouts, it shows that it has no respect for the law; or when it makes law which is either clearly abusive, ridiculous, or impracticable to follow, then the law is no longer worthy of respect.  Either destroys the respectability of the body of the law, and when the law loses its respectability, it loses its authority.

When the law loses its respectability, then the citizenry will cease to respect both it, and the government.  When the law loses its authority, then the citizenry will cease to obey it, and the government.  And when that happens, the only way the government can continue to govern is by force.

Of coyrse, when the government has so debased the body of law that it cannot govern by it, and does not respect the law itself in any case, the right and proper thing for the citizenry to do at that point is to remove their government and install a new one.

(And in case you were wondering, no, this does not mean going down to the voting booth full of righteous anger at all those other crooks, and then voting your incumbent back in because he's a good guy who brings home the pork.  That's another phrase for "is part of the problem".)

Susan Estrich, writing on rasmussenreports.com, compares Dove World Outreach Center pastor Terry Jones' declared plan to burn copies of the Koran "to send a message to Islam", to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

And you know what?  She's right.  There is First Amendment freedom of speech, and there is incitement to riot.  You want to burn your own holy book, flag, or other revered symbols as an expression of protest?  Sure, knock yourself out.  On your own head be it.  But if you want to burn some other faith's holy book, don't be surprised if you're woken up by a howling mob of that faith's followers tearing your house down around your ears.

"We will not be responsible," Jones has said in reaction to the concern that his acts could cause Americans to die.  "We are only reacting to the violence that is already there in that religion."

Or, to perhaps put words into Jones' mouth, "Hey, it's not our problem; we're safe here in the US."

I don't know if it was Jones' intention to bracket his "Dove World Outreach Center" in with Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church, but whether or not that was his goal, I think this stunt is likely to accomplish that.  I wish Jones and Phelps much happiness together, because no-one else is going to have a good word for Jones if his grandstanding causes Muslims worldwide to lash out at American citizens and interests.  And if that does happen, I'd love to be a fly on the wall to see the look on Jones' face when those harmed by the repercussions of this deliberately inflammatory stunt show up with lawyers and hand him the bill, along with process papers for a civil suit to recover it.

perspicuity mentioned the Australian multi-party system and suggested some kind of vote-for-and-against system for the US, in which candidates had to receive more yes than no votes in order to be able to win.  This got me thinking, and I ended up wondering whether something like the following would work:

1. Your ballot lists all declared candidates for each position, plus two write-in candidate boxes per position, plus a line for NONE OF THE ABOVE.
2. For each of the above, you award a number of points from 1 to 5, where 5 points is STRONGLY LIKE, 3 is DON'T CARE, and 1 is STRONGLY DISLIKE.  Any line left blank, including NONE OF THE ABOVE, scores an automatic 3 (neutral/don't care).
3. When tabulating votes, 3 is subtracted from the points awarded, to yield an actual adjusted vote score in a range of 2 (STRONGLY LIKE) through -2 (STRONGLY DISLIKE).  All votes cast for that candidate, for and against, are then summed to arrive at a total.
4. Every candidate (except write-in candidates not otherwise appearing on the ballot) who does not receive more net adjusted votes than NONE OF THE ABOVE is eliminated, and is disqualified for life from running again for that office.  If no candidate running for a given office in a given district receives a higher net adjusted vote total than NONE OF THE ABOVE, then all candidates for that district are disqualified, and the district must be resolved separately in a by-election with all new candidates.  A candidate disqualified by a NONE OF THE ABOVE result is not a valid write-in candidate for future elections.
5. If candidates remain who scored a higher net adjusted vote total than NONE OF THE ABOVE, the candidate having the highest adjusted vote total in any given district wins that district.  If two candidates have the same total score within a margin of error of 1%, the tie is resolved by determining which of them received the lowest total of NEGATIVE adjusted votes, i.e. which of the tied candidates is least disliked.  If no candidate has an adjusted vote total greater than zero (neutral), then since NONE OF THE ABOVE receives a default neutral vote, it is likely that NONE OF THE ABOVE will win.

(The 1% margin of error is intended to reduce the number of squabbles and re-re-re-recounts over handfuls of votes.  The exclusion of write-ins from NONE OF THE ABOVE elimination removes the possibility of a well-intentioned write-in vote for a candidate who receives few votes from having the unexpected side-effect of disqualify that candidate from any future election well, is completely moot actually, since as cipherpunk points out in the comments, it won't pass Constitutional muster.)

There is one obvious weakness here.  If any single party has overwhelming (>50%) support in a given district, its voters can permanently eliminate all other candidates in the election by voting a 5 for their candidate, a 4 for NONE OF THE ABOVE, and a 1 for every other candidate.  However, assuming that this gambit is uniformly applied by voters of all parties, in any district in which no party has greater than a plurality the result will be to eliminate all candidates from all parties running in that district; thus it is self-defeating except in districts completely dominated by a single party, in which case that party was going to win the seat anyway.  And that entire paragraph is now moot as well.  In any case, I've since realized that it's not a "safe" tactic anyway unless the majority party has considerably more than 50% of the vote ... I haven't done the math, but can safely say that if you have a sufficient majority of voter support to make it a safe tactic, you're almost certainly in no danger of ever losing the seat anyway.

This still doesn't yet address the issue of proportional representation, i.e, if party X receives a significant statewide vote, but does not have sufficient votes clustered in any single district to actually win a district, its voters go unrepresented.  But here I propose a means to fix that, by taking a different path at step 5:

5. [Alternate]  After candidates and districts eliminated by NONE OF THE ABOVE are removed from consideration, all remaining votes are added up and the net adjusted vote totals for each party are used to determine the number of districts won by each party.
6. Once the number of seats won by each party is determined, winners of individual districts are selected, starting with the party that won the LEAST number of seats, and awarding each party its allotted number of seats in order of those seats in which it received the greatest proportion of the vote, EXCLUDING seats in which all candidates were eliminated by NONE OF THE ABOVE (which must be resolved separately in a subsequent by-election).  After all seats due to the party winning the least number of seats have been awarded, seat selection passes on to the party winning the next greater number of seats.

Step 6 here is designed to ensure that minority parties receive their fair share of seats in the legislature, and at the same time ensure that their representatives in the legislature come from the districts in which they have the strongest support, even if they do not have sufficient support in any single district to win it in a first-past-the-post winner-takes-all election.

This will of course still result in some seats electing representatives who are not the favorites of the majority of voters in their district.  That is almost inevitable in any multi-party system, though.  What this system should ensure is that, even if your vote does not elect a candidate of your party in your district, at the state-wide level no vote for a minority party is wasted unless that party has so little support it cannot earn enough votes to win even a single seat, and also that minority parties earning enough state-wide votes to (proportionately) win at least one seat will represent the electoral districts in which they have the strongest support.  It does this without requiring multiple recounts, as transferable-vote systems almost invariably do.

So.  Thoughts?  Did I miss anything obvious, besides the one obvious weakness discussed above?