US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3831

On December 11 2022 08:58 gobbledydook wrote:
I'd like to argue that FTPT is not the problem.
Gerrymandering is. The incumbent writing rules to favor themselves is clearly anti democratic.

On December 11 2022 09:01 Simberto wrote:


But FPTP leads to and enables all of the problems. In a proportional system, gerrymandering is simply not a problem.

On December 11 2022 20:22 gobbledydook wrote:

That's like saying that car accidents can't happen without cars so the best way to reduce car accidents is to ban cars.
Yeah, that solves the problem, but you didn't really solve it, you just made it irrelevant.

On December 11 2022 20:45 Simberto wrote:


Sure. But if you can make the problem irrelevant without any ill effects, you don't need to solve it.

I am sure that with todays population numbers, dealing with the shit of all of the horses on the horse carts people need to move around would be a massive problem and hard to solve. But we don't need to solve that problem, because people don't use horse carts anymore.

On December 11 2022 21:42 Slydie wrote:


Right on.

But I was talking to an US conservative, and he wasn't the slightest worried that the system is undemocratic. He didn't even consider the US a democracy, but rather a "republic", whatever that means.

If someone consider it problematic that a majority gets its will, how do you even argue? Many conservatives feel entitled to a dispropotionate share of power. Minority rule is preferred, as long as THEY are that minority. That the Democrats still some times wins within this system is more than enough to keep the status quo, and if they can implement a better system for the conservatives, that is good.

On December 14 2022 10:21 gobbledydook wrote:


On the other side we have our resident communist GreenHorizon who believes in revolution and overthrow of the US government.
There are extremists on both sides.

HOUSTON — Employees at the Texas Department of Public Safety in June received a sweeping request from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office: to compile a list of individuals who had changed their gender on their Texas driver’s license and other department records during the past two years.

“Need total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months, broken down by month,” the chief of the DPS’s driver license division emailed colleagues in the department on June 30, according to a copy of a message obtained by The Washington Post through a public records request. “We won’t need DL/ID numbers at first but may need to have them later if we are required to manually look up documents.”

After more than 16,000 such instances were identified, DPS officials determined that a manual search would be needed to determine the reason for the changes, DPS spokesman Travis Considine told The Post in response to questions.

“A verbal request was received,” he wrote in an email. “Ultimately, our team advised the AG’s office the data requested neither exists nor could be accurately produced. Thus, no data of any kind was provided.”

Asked who in Paxton’s office had requested the records, he replied: “I cannot say.”

The behind-the-scenes effort by Paxton’s office to obtain data on how many Texans had changed their gender on their license came as the attorney general, Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican leaders in the state have been publicly marshaling resources against transgender Texans.

Earlier this year, Abbott signed a bill banning transgender youths from participating in sports that align with their gender identity at K-12 public schools and ordered the state to investigate the provision of gender-affirming care as potential child abuse. State lawmakers have already proposed more than a dozen anti-LGBTQ measures ahead of the next session in January, including criminalizing gender-affirming care and banning minors at drag shows.

Public records obtained by The Post do not indicate why the attorney general’s office sought the driver’s license information. But advocates for transgender Texans say Paxton could use the data to further restrict their right to transition, calling it a chilling effort to secretly harness personal information to persecute already vulnerable people.

“This is another brick building toward targeting these individuals,” said Ian Pittman, an Austin attorney who represents Texas parents of transgender children investigated by the state. “They’ve already targeted children and parents. The next step would be targeting adults. And what better way than seeing what adults had had their sex changed on their driver’s licenses?”