121–130 of 164 posts
It’s saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of abuse from the department of “justice”, FBI, and NSA. I hope any employees of the above that read my post understand that you’re working for the wrong side. Absolutely none of their justifications hold water, and it doesn’t matter that they catch a few bad guys. Their very existence is antithetical to a free and open society. Edit: To expound upon this further…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just wanted to chime in that all ranked voting systems can be gamed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...
This is an oversimplified conclusion. FTA: > The practical consequences of the theorem are debatable: Arrow has said "Most systems are not going to work badly all of the time. All I proved is that all can work badly at times Followed by: > Although Arrow's theorem is a mathematical result, it is often expressed in a non-mathematical way with a statement such as no voting method is fair, every ranked voting method is…
It is almost that simple. Every deviation from the unattainable ideal in Arrow’s theorem corresponds to one or more ways that the system:
(1) can be gamed, or
(2) is insensitive to voter preferences, or
(3) changes outcomes in the opposite direction of changes in expressed voter preferences.
(And usually several from multiple categories.)
There are whole catalogs of these and enumerations of which ones apply to each voting system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, we also need multi-member, proportional legislative districts. https://www.fairvote.org/prcv . Single member districts are a disgusting thing for a society that claims to be a representative democracy. As a very simple example, rural liberals and urban conservatives effectively never get represented in our government, and that's still within the context of the false dichotomy of left/right. But single winner ran…
We don't need anything so complicated, we just need to return to the house and electoral college being periodically resized according to census data rather than fixed at 435. Those reversions would solve most electoral problems without even needing to touch hard issues of engineering fair an trustworthy alternative voting systems.
No, they wouldn't, as the problems (including duopoly) predate the changes you would reverse.
>The lawyer seemed to be an adrenaline junkie, someone who had found a home on the dark side of international intelligence.
one can do it only while working on some US intelligence service.
>the then-attorney general denied the request and was furious that it had been put in writing
beautiful. Looks like somebody in FBI nicely covered their own bottom with the Attorney General himself - " ... as was previously discussed the USB drive containing data dump from the broken in computer of the journalist trying to report on the NSA illegal spying ..." or something like that :)
I doubt the source existed, the lawyer sounds like a fantasist and both the reporter and FBI fell for his stories. It pretty much says right there in the story that the lawyer was usually full of shit-- "I have concluded that the American lawyer loved to play games with everyone ... The lawyer told Ridd that he frequently lied to me and my colleagues at the Times ... 'I lie my ass off every day'". From personal exper…
People seem to do this with a lot of things. Their favorite pop stars, companies, countries, ideologies, etc.
I hope stories like this open the eyes of folks who are die-hard Democrats or die-hard Republicans. They are not on your side. They are on their own side. I don't doubt that most folks at these agencies are hard-working Americans who believe they're doing what's best for our country. Having said that, this kind of unchecked power is dangerous.
Why else do you think career politicians from across the spectrum, from liberal Gavin Newsom to conservative Ron DeSantis, have worked hard to explicitly block ranked choice voting reforms? Not just voice their opinions against it, but proactively halt and override legislative reforms when they happen. The duopoly doesn't benefit from making a more fair and inclusive system that allows for a greater diversity of poli…
I hope stories like this open the eyes of folks who are die-hard Democrats or die-hard Republicans. They are not on your side. They are on their own side. I don't doubt that most folks at these agencies are hard-working Americans who believe they're doing what's best for our country. Having said that, this kind of unchecked power is dangerous.
States, counties, for some - districts. Thirty years and I've met one representative.
America wasn't designed to operate at the current scale and it's causing considerable strife internally and externally. We're effectively the de facto world sovereign, and at the same time we the people and the collective will is so contrived as to be totally incomprehensible, largely, I would posit, as a product of federal overreach and inertia. We'd do well to refederate - California's America is not the same as Texas' nor is Florida's the same as Michigan's. It's kind of an absurdity to indicate we're a nation at this point, there are really no points of unity which bond us in this era, and that's what defines a nation. That is to say there are no more Americans.
I hope stories like this open the eyes of folks who are die-hard Democrats or die-hard Republicans. They are not on your side. They are on their own side. I don't doubt that most folks at these agencies are hard-working Americans who believe they're doing what's best for our country. Having said that, this kind of unchecked power is dangerous.
If we knockout the nationalism, what's left? States, counties, for some - districts. Thirty years and I've met one representative. America wasn't designed to operate at the current scale and it's causing considerable strife internally and externally. We're effectively the de facto world sovereign, and at the same time we the people and the collective will is so contrived as to be totally incomprehensible, largely, I…
I think we’ll come through it intact. Hopefully.
I doubt the source existed, the lawyer sounds like a fantasist and both the reporter and FBI fell for his stories. It pretty much says right there in the story that the lawyer was usually full of shit-- "I have concluded that the American lawyer loved to play games with everyone ... The lawyer told Ridd that he frequently lied to me and my colleagues at the Times ... 'I lie my ass off every day'". From personal exper…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of abuse from the department of “justice”, FBI, and NSA. what do you suggest we do about it? We have no meaningful recourse against the myriad of government abuses.
We have the courts, the threat of which forced the government to make the only illegal program in Snowden's leaks legal. We have the ballot box, which elected Obama, who shut down email metadata surveillance even before it leaked.