Pragmatic politics focused on the public interest for those uncomfortable with America's two-party system and its way of doing politics. Considering the interface of politics with psychology, cognitive science, social behavior, morality and history.
Etiquette
DP Etiquette
First rule: Don't be a jackass.
Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.
MY vote is no. BUT there are many out there that think it's about time.
Compulsory voting might seem strange to Americans, where voting is a right but not a legal duty or obligation. But there are arguments in favor of making voting compulsory, as well as arguments against it.
Compulsory voting, as the name suggests, is a state or nation requiring all eligible voters to cast a ballot on election day. In countries that use compulsory voting, voters who don't cast a ballot may face legal sanctions.
Belgium was the first country to institute compulsory voting in 1892. Soon after, Argentina and Australia instituted mandatory voting laws. Brazil currently practices compulsory voting, although they exempt the following non-voters from legal consequences:
Illiterate people
Anyone over 16 and under 18 years old
Anyone over 70 years old
Some countries that use compulsory voting also include exceptions. Some countries exempt people with disabilities, citizens living abroad, and various voting ages. Visit the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance for a list of countries with mandatory voting laws.
The Brookings Institution, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and Harvard Kennedy School (Brookings-Harvard working group) published a report on universal civic duty voting in 2020. The report advocates for instituting mandatory participation in elections in the United States. It imagines "an American democracy remade by its citizens in the very image of its promise...". Its underlying principle is that "high levels of participation are good for democracy."
The Brookings-Harvard working group sees voting as a civic duty. They compare its importance to jury duty and defending the country during wars. They suggest a fine of $20 for non-voters. Their goal is not to impose sanctions to penalize. Instead, they suggest a minor penalty to send a "strong message that voting is a legitimate expectation of citizenship."
The pros and cons can be found within the above link, but I am sure everyone here has their own opinions and why they would be for it or against it. State YOUR reasons.
Way back in December of 2022, Trump said he wanted to terminate the US Constitution. After there was some criticism for that moment of honest candor, he backtracked and lied, saying he did not say what he said. Last August, The Hill reported:
In a back-and-forth during the first 2024 GOP presidential debate between candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie, the latter brought up previous comments from former President Trump stating he wanted to terminate portions of the Constitution to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in December 2022.
Trump later responded to backlash against the comments, which were related to X’s, the platform formerly known as Twitter, role in suppressing a story about Hunter Biden. The former president alleged his words were twisted by others.
“The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and all of their other HOAXES & SCAMS,” Trump wrote in another Truth Social post, saying he meant that “steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG.”
Several of Trump’s fellow Republicans were critical of the post, but few condemned Trump himself or said it would be disqualifying for him to earn their vote — a lack of repudiation that has drawn criticism from Democrats.
NPR reports poll data about reasons people leaving their religions for another religion or for no religion:
People say they’re leaving religion due to
anti-LGBTQ teachings and sexual abuse
People in the U.S. are leaving and switching faith traditions in large numbers. The idea of “religious churning” is very common in America, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).
The Catholic Church is losing more members than it’s gaining, though the numbers are slightly better for retention among Hispanic Catholics.
There is much lower religious churn among Black Protestants and among Jews who seem overall happy in their faith traditions and tend to stay there.
As for why people leave their religions, PRRI found that about two-thirds (67%) of people who leave a faith tradition say they did so because they simply stopped believing in that religion's teachings.
And nearly half (47%) of respondents who left cited negative teaching about the treatment of LGBTQ people. “Religion's negative teaching about LGBTQ people are driving younger Americans to leave church,” Deckman says. “We found that about 60% of Americans who are under the age of 30 who have left religion say they left because of their religious traditions teaching, which is a much higher rate than for older Americans.”
About one-third of religiously unaffiliated Americans say they no longer identify with their childhood religion because the religion was bad for their mental health. That response was strongest among LGBTQ respondents.
A California state bar judge has found that DJT's traitor lawyer John Eastman committed 10 offenses during his work to overturn the 2020 election in favor of DJT. The judge ordered Eastman into a status called involuntary retirement and ordered him to pay all California State Bar costs plus $10,000 in sanctions for being extra naughty. The California State Supreme Court will have to disbar him because the state bar court does not have that power. The 128 page decision includes these statements:
Introduction
In this contested disciplinary proceeding, the Office of Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar of California (OCTC) charged John Charles Eastman (Eastman) with 11 counts of misconduct arising from certain activities surrounding his representation of former president Donald J. Trump and the 2020 presidential election. Eastman is charged with one count of failing to support the Constitution and laws of the United States (Bus. & Prof. Code § 6068, subd. (a));1 two counts of seeking to mislead a court (§ 6068, subd. (d)); six counts of moral turpitude (🤪) by making various misrepresentations (§ 6106); and two additional counts of moral turpitude (§ 6106). After full consideration of the record, the court finds that OCTC has satisfied its burden of proving all charges except for count eleven, which the court dismisses with prejudice.
In view of the circumstances surrounding Eastman’s misconduct and balancing the aggravation and mitigation, the court recommends that Eastman be disbarred.
INVOLUNTARY INACTIVE ENROLLMENT
John Charles Eastman is ordered transferred to involuntary inactive status pursuant to Business and Professions Code section 6007, subdivision (c)(4). His inactive enrollment will be effective three calendar days after this order is served and will terminate upon the effective date of the Supreme Court’s order imposing discipline herein, or as provided for by rule 5.111(D)(2) of the State Bar Rules of Procedure or as otherwise ordered by the Supreme Court pursuant to its plenary jurisdiction.
The WaPo reports (whole artilce not paywalled off) about the fickleness of greedy wealthy elites and their shallow to non-existent commitment to democracy and the public interest:
Many GOP billionaires balked at Jan. 6.
They’re coming back to Trump.
Elite donors are rediscovering their affinity for the former president over taxes
The day after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, billionaire and GOP megadonor Nelson Peltz called the attempted insurrection a “disgrace” and expressed remorse for voting for Donald Trump. “I’m sorry I did that,” Peltz said of supporting Trump in 2020.
But earlier this month, Peltz had breakfast with Trump and other billionaires — including hotelier Steve Wynn, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk and former Marvel chairman Isaac Perlmutter — at Trump’s luxurious Palm Beach oceanfront mansion, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private gathering.
The shift reflects many conservative billionaires’ fears of President Biden’s tax agenda, which if approved would drastically reduce their fortunes. In some cases, it also points to their discomfort with the Biden administration’s foreign and domestic policy decisions. Some of these billionaires have been assiduously courted by Trump and his advisers in recent months.
“If it starts to look like Trump may win, despite his legal troubles, it is inevitable that Republican business people who have not been fans will open their wallets in self-defense,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, the top lobbying group for major corporations in New York.
Things that seem to make most people mostly authoritarian include lots of power, lots of money and rigid ideology. Combined with an authoritarian personality, the allure of authoritarianism is quite strong. All the authoritarians need to do is promise to serve and protect the elites, and they get support.
Now, combine all of that with the legalization of political corruption by the 2010 Citizens United USSC decision and the power brass knuckles capitalist power of lightly regulated corporations acting as mere innocent human beings with constitutional human rights. What does one get? One gets seductive a form of kleptocratic authoritarianism that is far too sexy and fun for the most (~85% ?) of the wealthy to resist. Same goes for authoritarian Christian nationalist elites.
Now he’s strengthening protections in
the endangered species act! Who the hell
does he think he is, trying to get things done? He’s such a disrupter to our beloved gridlock. And how are
the Trump boys 'sposed to bag their big game now? That Biden is such an @sshole! 😡
Busload of ‘Illegal Invaders’ Was Actually the Gonzaga Basketball Team
On March 27, Matthew Maddock, a Republican member of the Michigan House of Representatives, tweeted two images purporting to show buses of illegal immigrants being loaded at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport.
“We know this is happening. 100,000’s of illegals are pouring into our country. We know it’s happening in Michigan,” Maddock continued in a follow-up post. “Our own governor is offering money to take them in! Since we can’t trust the #FakeNews to investigate, citizens will. The process of investigating these issues takes time.”
The investigatory process for this incident actually took little time, however: X users quickly pointed out that the images actually depict the aircraft and buses carrying the Gonzaga University men’s basketball team. The Bulldogs touched down in Motor City on Wednesday evening in preparation for their Friday matchup against Purdue in the Sweet 16 of the 2024 NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Maddock, however, refused to back down from his assertion, responding “sure they are kommie [communist],” and “Sure kommie. Good talking point,” to two users who suggested that the aircraft had transported the Gonzaga team.
State department official’s resignation highlights rifts over US Gaza policy
Annelle
Sheline says ‘I no longer wanted to be affiliated with this
administration,’ claiming Biden is flouting US law over Israel
The Guardian
by Julian Borger
Wed 27 Mar 2024 18.03 EDTLast modified on Wed 27 Mar 2024 18.48 EDT
A human rights official has resigned from the US state department over Gaza
saying the Biden administration is flouting US law by continuing to arm
Israel, and is hushing up evidence that the US had seen on Israeli
human rights abuses.
Annelle Sheline, said she
had hoped to have an influence on policy by staying at her post in the
Near Eastern section of the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor,
taking part in discussions, signing dissent cables and raising her
concerns with her supervisor. But she had lost confidence she could do
anything that would affect the flow of US arms to Israel.
“The
fundamental reason was – I no longer wanted to be affiliated with this
administration,” Sheline told the Guardian. “I have a young daughter.
She’s not yet two, but if some day in the future, she is learning about
this and knows that I was at the state department and she asked me
[about it] – I want to be able to tell her that I did what I could.”
Sheline
is only the second state department official to resign over US policy
on the Gaza war (another official left the education department over the
issue), but she said that many of her colleagues had told her they
would resign if they could afford to lose their job, and had urged her
to speak out about her reasons for quitting, rather than to leave
quietly.
Annelle Sheline. Photograph: Annelle Sheline
The
38-year-old, who studied the foreign policy of Arab governments for her
doctorate, said the state department was aware of plenty of evidence
that Israel was violating international law in its conduct of the Gaza
war, and that the Biden administration was violating US law by continuing to supply weapons.
She pointed in particular to the Leahy laws, which forbid assistance to foreign military units implicated in atrocities, and section 620 (I) of the Foreign Assistance Act,
which states that no assistance should be given to any government which
“prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the
transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance”.
On Monday, the state department said it had received assurances
from Israel officials and “not found them to be in violation of
international humanitarian law”. But Sheline said: “The law is clear
here and we do have evidence. But the specifics are just not being
followed.”
The state department has said it is
reviewing evidence of civilian harm under a mechanism established by the
Biden administration last year, weeks before the Gaza war broke out,
but Sheline said the results of those investigations would only be made
public when the White House wanted them to be.
“There are a lot of people working on this at State but at the end of
the day, the public policy does have to be something that the White
House signs off on,” Sheline said. “Until the White House is ready to
take a different line, some of the other things happening in State are
just not going to come out.” She said she believed
administration policy was being driven by domestic political
considerations, but argued that domestic politics were shifting on the
issue, pointing to the significant “uncommitted” protest vote in the Democratic presidential primary election, and suggested that the Biden administration had misjudged the mood.
“I
do think the president’s view of Israel is deeply influenced by a
generational divide,” she said. “I think it’s taken this administration a
long time to realise that the previous political calculus on this, in
terms of big donors, in terms of the Israel lobby, … is seeing a shift.”
On Wednesday, Gallup published a new poll
showing a significant drop in American public support for Israel’s
conduct of the war, from 50% in November to 36% now, with 55%
disapproving of Israel’s actions.
Sheline
credited this shift for helping lead to the US abstention on a UN
security council resolution on Monday, allowing it to pass after the US
vetoed three earlier draft texts over the nearly six months since the
war started.
“I am glad to see that slight
shift, but it hasn’t really made any difference to the people in Gaza
yet,” Sheline said. “So it’s really too little, too late.
“Not
only are these policies devastating the people of Gaza, but I think
they’re also devastating the US image in the world,” she argued. “This
administration came in promising to rebuild American diplomacy and
America’s moral leadership after the Trump administration, but so many
of these issues that the administration said were so important –
including human rights – seem to be less important to this
administration than the US-Israel relationship.”
The Biden administration’s policy on Gaza has been
widely criticised as being in disarray as the defense secretary
described the situation as a “humanitarian catastrophe” the day after
the state department declared Israel to be in compliance with international humanitarian law.
Israel announced on Monday it would stop working
with the UN relief agency Unrwa, the main aid agency serving Gaza.
Unrwa said its aid convoys had been blocked since 21 March.
On
the same day, the state department spokesman, Matthew Miller, insisted
that the US currently had no reason to dispute Israeli assurances that
it was complying with humanitarian law in Gaza.
The following warning was published as an op-ed in late Feb. in US Today. It was written by 7 experts and directors of global food charities in February, so things are only worse now.
The crisis in Gaza will soon reach a tipping
point, where emergency food aid won't be enough. Averting mass death
becomes harder as starvation gains momentum.
Sean Callahan, Jan Egeland, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Jeremy Konyndyk, Abby Maxman, Michelle Nunn, Janti Soeripto and Charles Owubah
In fact, letting people in Gaza suffer and die from hunger and preventable disease is a political choice.
It
is not too late to change this story if urgent actions are taken to
achieve a cease-fire and the release of the hostages, and to allow a
sufficient flow of aid into Gaza.
Only an
immediate stop to the fighting, a massive increase in humanitarian
assistance and the return of basic services can keep the number of
deaths caused by hunger and disease from eclipsing the already shocking
number of those killed to date.
“If the situation continues,” one colleague writes, “we will see one of
the biggest disasters we have faced as humanitarians. It will be due to
hunger, disease, and the very polluted and dangerous environment in
Gaza, resulting from the residuals of the thousands of bombs, the white
phosphorus, the raw sewage floating all over the place, and the unsafe
water being consumed as people don’t have other choices.”
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the global authority that monitors food insecurity and acute malnutrition, reports that the entire population of Gaza
– more than 2 million people – is experiencing hunger at crisis levels
or worse: “There is a risk of Famine and it is increasing each day that
the current situation of intense hostilities and restricted humanitarian
access persists or worsens. … This is the highest share of people
facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has
ever classified for any given area or country.”[Note: this piece was written over a month ago, and things have only gotten worse since then with UNRWA not allowed to work within Gaza anymore, and the US having defunded it for a minimum of one year in a bi-partisan vote extending Biden's ban]
The speed of the deterioration in Gaza is unprecedented in recent history. Nearly 3 in 4 Palestinians in Gaza are drinking from contaminated sources. Communicable diseases are on the rise. ....
______________________
Please consider signing a petition for Biden to enforce the UN Ceasefire and expedite as much humanitarian aid as possible before it is too late. If things continue as they are going, not only will untold numbers of civilians slowly waste away and die, but the US will not be the same again in the eyes of the world and its own eyes.
