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California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

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Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#191

Post by nostromo »

kevingadd wrote: post #165
nostromo wrote: post #111

> We need to see a decline in the rate of spread of the virus before large-scale reopening, and we will be working in coordination to identify the best metrics to guide this. What's the end game here? If you slow the spread, and then reopen, it'll spread again. Nothing will have changed, you'll just have delayed it a bit.

If you read the announcement: > Ensuring an ability to care for those who may become sick with COVID-19 and other conditions. This will require adequate hospital surge capacity and supplies of personal protective equipment. Delaying it is the point, it ensures we have enough hospital capacity and PPE to handle the inevitable burst of cases when reopening. This is what people mean when they say "flatten the curve". If…

At the current rate of infection that plan will require many years of quarantine. We need more people exposed, not fewer.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#192

Post by trhway »

TheNewAndy wrote: post #100
zachkatz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ELI5 interpretation: “Since good leadership is probably not going to come from the President, we’re going to create our own “mini-country” and provide good leadership within it.”

Instead of "mini-country", I would call just call it a group of united states.

>a group of united states.

Pardon, English being my 2nd language, would it be a confederation or a union?

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#193

Post by sandworm101 »

In my area (Vancouver Island, just north of this "pact") we are seeing something very odd. People are going out. Families are having BBQs in local parks. Restaurants aren't letting people dine in, but the grocery stores are operating essentially normally. I'm near the water and am seeing kayaks and boats out like any normal weekend. Vacation properties are in use. RV parks have customers. I see groups of old people chatting on the street like normal.

I think we are on a tipping point. Government directive or no, people are coming out of isolation. I don't think the local authorities have much choice at this point. Either they make some clear changes and/or issue timetables, or they risk loosing any control. These are Canadians, a people with national healthcare and a general respect for government authority. When this attitude hits America, a country that prides itself on individualism, things may move from lockdown to "what lockdown?" in a matter of days.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#194

Post by spankalee »

fleekonpoint wrote: post #123
spankalee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I fear that tomorrow Why fear? This is my dream! The Senate is irreparably broken. There is no conceivable way that it can become more fairly representative of the people without a breakup of the United States. The smaller less populous states aren't going to just give up their outsized power voluntarily. California is suffering the most due to the Senate's structural unfairness, and it has the most to gain from su…

The last time that happened, it started a civil war.

The last time states tried to secede it was to preserve their "right" to enslave people.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#195

Post by btilly »

vondur wrote: post #120
mrb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this Western States Pact is a result of lack of leadership at the White House and federal level. They feel the US government is not doing enough, so they took the matter into their own hands.

So what are the issues with the Federal Government response? I often hear people criticize it, without any concrete examples

Concrete examples.

Early in office, Trump got rid of the department created by Obama to respond to pandemics.

Early in this epidemic, we bungled getting testing out. Got it out in broken form. Had to get it out again. All the while we turned down an effective test advocated by the WHO. And when testing existed, had rules that tested so little that they missed the existence of community spread until it was well established.

Blocked private labs from developing and conducting tests. (Community spread was demonstrated by one who broke the federal rules. The reaction of the Trump administration was to come down on them for having conducted unauthorized tests.)

Well after it was clear that this was a pandemic that was not under control, Trump was spinning a narrative of this being no big deal.

Failed to declare a federal emergency and social distancing restrictions at a national level. Which caused a patchwork of inconsistent responses at the state level. California was in lockdown while COVID-19 was happily spreading among tourists on crowded Florida beaches.

I could go on. But right now the USA has 1/4 of all deaths worldwide from COVID-19. We are stilly dying faster, and didn't get there by accident.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#196

Post by tathougies »

winter_blue wrote: post #188
tathougies wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly unlikely. Republicans are for state's rights, and the current president and administration seems especially in favor of it. He basically told the states to get their acts together and put the feds into a mainly supportive role, which is as it should be.

Republicans might claim to support state's rights, but they certainly aren't principled consistent supporters of it. Just take a drug legalization. Many Republicans have been vehemently opposed to it. Take a look at the Supreme Court decision Gonzalez v. Raich , where Steve Scalia no less, wrote that the feds could interfere with your growing some plants inside your own home for your own personal use. Remember that t…

My claim on this issue was mainly due to the current administration's relatively pro-state stance in this regard (COVID). I am not insisting that the GOP is universally pro-state. You are right that they are not when it comes to marijuana legalization and some other things (and shame on them for it).

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#197

Post by spankalee »

tom-thistime wrote: post #183
jMyles wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dude...if we're talking about secession, we're talking about civil war. You begin your comment with this thesis, but without explanation. I think secession, in my lifetime, is likely. I think civil war is vanishingly unlikely.

The last time we had secession, we had civil war.

If any states try to secede in order to keep people as slaves, I would support another civil way to prevent it.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#198

Post by [deleted] »

kevingadd wrote: post #170
celdon25 wrote: post #105

From article 1, section 10 of the U.S. Constitution: "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay." This scares me a bit. This agreement seems innocuous at first, bu…

"State" in that context clearly refers to foreign nations (states) not states as in The United States Of America. Foreign power is distinct because it would refer to things like governments-in-exile or perhaps resistance groups.

[deleted]

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#199

Post by yingw787 »

nostrademons wrote: post #135
yingw787 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude...if we're talking about secession, we're talking about civil war. In a country with the second most nuclear weapons in the world. With a federal government already looking to adversaries for cooperation. You're talking nuclear missiles or chemical weapons fired against San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Seattle from land-based silos in the Dakotas, or mutinies aboard our SSBNs, or Russian troops landing en masse in…

> You're talking nuclear missiles or chemical weapons fired against San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Seattle from land-based silos in the Dakotas. This is pretty unlikely, if only because the fallout from nuclear weapons launched at the West Coast will blow back over the rest of the country, including over the regions that launch the missiles themselves. There's a reason short-range and battlefield nukes were never use…

I'm not quite sure. We only have nukes in hundreds of kilotons, which might not be enough to crack steel and concrete and burn all combustibles at once. If there's no firestorm, the nuclear fallout might not make it to the stratosphere and the jet stream because it gets dammed in by the mountains and precipitates out.

Not to mention, hatred is irrational anyways. At this stage, we're talking about an organization that will reduce its own negotiating lever on the world stage in order to subjugate innocent civilians, which we've already seen take place at various points in Syria and the Soviet Union. I would expect political commissars taking over the nuclear command authority to turn the keys, not USAF or USN personnel.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#200

Post by whichquestion »

kevingadd wrote: post #170
celdon25 wrote: post #105

From article 1, section 10 of the U.S. Constitution: "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay." This scares me a bit. This agreement seems innocuous at first, bu…

"State" in that context clearly refers to foreign nations (states) not states as in The United States Of America. Foreign power is distinct because it would refer to things like governments-in-exile or perhaps resistance groups.

> No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

It seems to me that it states “with another State”, as in a capital S State or a member State of the United States. Then explicitly calls out as another option, “or with a foreign power”.

Furthermore, the title of Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution is “Powers Prohibited of States”.

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