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grovester
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by grovester »

aknowledgeableperson wrote:Gerrymandering is illegal in the grand old USA. If the other party doesn't like how the districts are drawn the party can always take the issue to court. Maybe the Dems don't because they can be guilty of the same thing and/or benefit by the protection some of their seats.
I really don't give a crap if Democrats like it, it is the single greatest cause of gridlock in this country. Independent commissions/judges should set boundaries in all 50 states, much like KS had this year. Proven effective in the states that utilize it now.
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

I really don't give a crap if Democrats like it, it is the single greatest cause of gridlock in this country.
now that's funny.
I think this is the first national election after the 2010 Census redistricting. You might see some lawsuits in the next few months.
The state gerrymandering is just another manifistation of the hyper partisanship.
By Nate Silver, New York Times, Friday, Dec 28, 2012.
In 1992, there were 103 members of the House of Representatives elected from what might be called swing districts: those in which the margin in the presidential race was within five percentage points of the national result. But based on an analysis of this year’s presidential returns, I estimate that there are only 35 such Congressional districts remaining, barely a third of the total 20 years ago.

Instead, the number of landslide districts — those in which the presidential vote margin deviated by at least 20 percentage points from the national result — has roughly doubled. In 1992, there were 123 such districts (65 of them strongly Democratic and 58 strongly Republican). Today, there are 242 of them (of these, 117 favor Democrats and 125 Republicans).
So why is compromise so hard in the House? Some commentators, especially liberals, attribute it to what they say is the irrationality of Republican members of Congress.

But the answer could be this instead: individual members of Congress are responding fairly rationally to their incentives. Most members of the House now come from hyperpartisan districts where they face essentially no threat of losing their seat to the other party. Instead, primary challenges, especially for Republicans, may be the more serious risk.
Now, is it gerrymandering or something else? To continue:
Meanwhile, the differences between the parties have become so strong, and so sharply split across geographic lines, that voters may see their choice of where to live as partly reflecting a political decision. This type of voter self-sorting may contribute more to the increased polarization of Congressional districts than redistricting itself. Liberal voters may be attracted to major urban centers because of their liberal politics (more than because of the economic opportunities that they offer), while conservative ones may be repelled from them for the same reasons.

In this environment, members of Congress have little need to build coalitions across voters with different sets of political preferences or values. Few members of Congress today are truly liberal on social issues but conservative on fiscal issues or vice versa.

Instead, partisanship has become more uniform.
...
And they remain in control of the House of Representatives, in part because the median Congressional district is now about five points Republican-leaning relative to the country as a whole. Why this asymmetry? It’s partly because Republicans created boundaries efficiently in redistricting and partly because the most Democratic districts in the country, like those in urban portions of New York or Chicago, are even more Democratic than the reddest districts of the country are Republican, meaning there are fewer Democratic voters remaining to distribute to swing districts.
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by KCMax »

beautyfromashes wrote:
lock+load wrote: $250k a year is weathly at any age. It may not seem like it to you, but $250k so dwarfs what most americans will ever earn in a year. I completely understand how it doesn't "feel" wealthy, but try living on $49k for a year and I think your perspective will change fast.
Say a person starts a business and the first two years they lose their shirt, take money out of their retirement fund to get it started paying the huge penalty all in the name of 'the American Way'. Then, in year 3, they finally start to take off and make over $250K for the year because they busted their butt, worked long hours and put everything they had into turning the business around. You want to tax them high on that 3rd year? Entrepenuer business owners very rarely have a linear income. Some years you make very little and then the next you do well. It's the incentive of doing something for yourself and making it big that causes people to start businesses. And now we want to disencentivize that by sticking small business owners with increased taxes?
The tax increase is from 36% to 39.6% on every dollar over $250k. I seriously doubt that would disincetivize many entrepreneurs from making large profits. If you make $300,000 in profit, you'd see your taxes go up $1,800. We're talking about tinkering with rates.

Sounds like a deal is very close. Tax rates go up for those making $400k or more ($450k for families). Still some House Republicans and Senate Democrats balking, so the votes may not be there. Sounds like spending cuts may be kicked down the road and/or sequestration cuts may go into effect.
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by KCMax »

More on a possible deal:
-Unemployment benefits extended
-Estate tax to go up from 35 to 40 percent
-No spending cuts - sequestration would go into effect with automatic cuts.

Moderate GOP Senators are on board, so no filibuster, so long as liberal Dems get on board. They still oppose chained COLA adjustments for Social Security, although it appears chained CPI is off the table. Unclear if the House is on board with any of this though. My guess is the House allows us to go over the "cliff" so they can technically say they didn't raise taxes, they voted for a tax cut.

Obama to talk at 12:30
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

so long as liberal Dems get on board
Howard Dean on a Sunday talk show said he wouldn't mind if nothing got passed. The new congress could pass legislation for the tax breaks and anything else on a piecemeal basis.
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Re: 2012 Election

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aknowledgeableperson wrote:
so long as liberal Dems get on board
Howard Dean on a Sunday talk show said he wouldn't mind if nothing got passed. The new congress could pass legislation for the tax breaks and anything else on a piecemeal basis.
I think there is that strong incentive, but there is also fear that sequestration will be a drag on the economy which they will want to avoid. But realistically, if you want to tackle deficit reform seriously, you're going to hurt the economy. You can't really have your cake and eat it too. My guess is they'll choose the economy over deficit reform and what we'll get it a deficit reform package that is just for looks.
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Re: 2012 Election

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Re: 2012 Election

Post by bbqboy »

aknowledgeableperson wrote:
I really don't give a crap if Democrats like it, it is the single greatest cause of gridlock in this country.
now that's funny.
I think this is the first national election after the 2010 Census redistricting. You might see some lawsuits in the next few months.
The state gerrymandering is just another manifistation of the hyper partisanship.
By Nate Silver, New York Times, Friday, Dec 28, 2012.
In 1992, there were 103 members of the House of Representatives elected from what might be called swing districts: those in which the margin in the presidential race was within five percentage points of the national result. But based on an analysis of this year’s presidential returns, I estimate that there are only 35 such Congressional districts remaining, barely a third of the total 20 years ago.

Instead, the number of landslide districts — those in which the presidential vote margin deviated by at least 20 percentage points from the national result — has roughly doubled. In 1992, there were 123 such districts (65 of them strongly Democratic and 58 strongly Republican). Today, there are 242 of them (of these, 117 favor Democrats and 125 Republicans).
So why is compromise so hard in the House? Some commentators, especially liberals, attribute it to what they say is the irrationality of Republican members of Congress.

But the answer could be this instead: individual members of Congress are responding fairly rationally to their incentives. Most members of the House now come from hyperpartisan districts where they face essentially no threat of losing their seat to the other party. Instead, primary challenges, especially for Republicans, may be the more serious risk.
Now, is it gerrymandering or something else? To continue:
Meanwhile, the differences between the parties have become so strong, and so sharply split across geographic lines, that voters may see their choice of where to live as partly reflecting a political decision. This type of voter self-sorting may contribute more to the increased polarization of Congressional districts than redistricting itself. Liberal voters may be attracted to major urban centers because of their liberal politics (more than because of the economic opportunities that they offer), while conservative ones may be repelled from them for the same reasons.

In this environment, members of Congress have little need to build coalitions across voters with different sets of political preferences or values. Few members of Congress today are truly liberal on social issues but conservative on fiscal issues or vice versa.

Instead, partisanship has become more uniform.
...
And they remain in control of the House of Representatives, in part because the median Congressional district is now about five points Republican-leaning relative to the country as a whole. Why this asymmetry? It’s partly because Republicans created boundaries efficiently in redistricting and partly because the most Democratic districts in the country, like those in urban portions of New York or Chicago, are even more Democratic than the reddest districts of the country are Republican, meaning there are fewer Democratic voters remaining to distribute to swing districts.
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-r ... paging=off
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

So what? The GOP thought of the idea before the Dems. Look at the numbers. Configure the districts without the so-called gerrymandering and then see what the results would have been. One thing to remember, take out the so-called legal gerrymandering that is done to protect minority districts that seem to favor the Dems.

Did the GOP break any laws? Were the Dems prohibited from doing it? Is it likely the Dems will try to do the same in the future? My answers would be No, No, Yes.

For me I wish all redistricting was performed with non-partisan boards but until then either party is free to use any thing at their disposal as long as it is legal to seek an advantage.

Go see the movie Lincoln. You will see democracy at its sausage making finest - jobs for votes. Idealism and democracy do not go together.
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by phxcat »

aknowledgeableperson wrote:
So what? The GOP thought of the idea before the Dems. Look at the numbers. Configure the districts without the so-called gerrymandering and then see what the results would have been. One thing to remember, take out the so-called legal gerrymandering that is done to protect minority districts that seem to favor the Dems.

Did the GOP break any laws? Were the Dems prohibited from doing it? Is it likely the Dems will try to do the same in the future? My answers would be No, No, Yes.

For me I wish all redistricting was performed with non-partisan boards but until then either party is free to use any thing at their disposal as long as it is legal to seek an advantage.

Go see the movie Lincoln. You will see democracy at its sausage making finest - jobs for votes. Idealism and democracy do not go together.
Arizona is a red state with an independent redistricting commission. Of its nine congresspeople, five are Democrats and four are Republicans, and it provided three of the closest elections in the country. The GOP didn't have any new ideas (except for 2003, when they gerrymandered Texas mid census) but they were able to win the right election, in 2010, when they were able to control the state legislatures that were needed to redraw the lines. Prevention of gerrymandering would probably have led to a Democratic majority as Democratic states such as Michigan (9R, 5D), Pennsylvania (13R, 5D), Ohio (12R, 4D) and Wisconsin (5R, 3D) would have probably provided the margin needed for the Democrats to take control, and while the Democrats may not have taken a majority of swing states such as Florida (17 R, 10D), North Carolina (9R, 4D) or Virginia (8R, 3D), they certainly would have taken a few more.
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

Arizona is a red state with an independent redistricting commission. Of its nine congresspeople, five are Democrats and four are Republicans, and it provided three of the closest elections in the country.
But it elected a GOP Senator, the other 6 US Congress races were won by margins from 21 to 63 percent, 3 GOP candidates received the most votes for seats on the Arizona Corporate Commission Board, the GOP won 17 of the 30 State Senate seats - down 4 prior to the election, and won 36 of the 60 State House seats- down 4 prior. But then the number of registered GOP voters in the state exceed the number of Dem registered voters. So, given the results of those races it seems odd that the Dems would win 5 of the 9 US House seats.

I wonder. :-k

Forgot to mention. The various maps were approved by the independent commission by the vote of 3 to 2 on 12/20/2011. Afterwards a lawsuit was filed stating that the commission packed GOP voters into districts to maximize Dem seats. BTW, those three elections you mentioned were all won by the Dems.
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Re: 2012 Election

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Just 8% Now Say They Are Tea Party Members
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 30% of Likely U.S. Voters now have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. Half (49%) of voters have an unfavorable view of the movement.
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by KCKev »

KCMax wrote:Just 8% Now Say They Are Tea Party Members
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 30% of Likely U.S. Voters now have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. Half (49%) of voters have an unfavorable view of the movement.
Back into the closet to stockpile their hunting AK47s
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

One final thought on redistricting.
From First Read on NBCnews.com
*** “There’s no crying in redistricting”: Lastly, one of us wrote about this yesterday, but it bears repeating: Democrats won the House popular vote -- those who voted in House elections -- but only made modest gains and Republican retained control of the body. Why? Redistricting was a big reason. Republicans controlled key governorships and state legislatures, winning several of those important, but out-of-the-spotlight races over the past few cycles. And a Republican pollster says, “There’s no crying in redistricting.” That’s because this isn’t the first time this disparity has been seen. In fact, the tables were turned in the 1970s and 1980s. Bill McInturff, the Republican pollster who conducts the NBC/WSJ poll with Democrat Peter Hart, notes in an email and three-page memo: “Republicans captured 49.4% of the two-party vote for Congress in 2012, yet won 54% of the seats in the House. This gap between the Republican vote and the seats they won is on the high side, but certainly not without precedent over the past 40 years. If you began your career as a Republican trying to win the House in the 1970s and 1980s, you would adopt, as I do, the borrowed adage ‘there’s no crying in redistricting.’”
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by KCMax »

White House responds to a petition calling for construction of a "Death Star."
The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?
I guess I get the massive costs, but wouldn't this be exactly the kind of jobs program we need right now? And what happens when China builds it own Death Star and becomes armed and fully operational? I get the fundamental flaw concerns, but if a starship were to exploit that, wouldn't it have to be super fast, like fast enough to do the Kessler Run in less than 12 parsecs? What ship could do that? Search your feelings, you know this to be true.
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by bobbyhawks »

KCMax wrote:White House responds to a petition calling for construction of a "Death Star."
The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?
I guess I get the massive costs, but wouldn't this be exactly the kind of jobs program we need right now? And what happens when China builds it own Death Star and becomes armed and fully operational? I get the fundamental flaw concerns, but if a starship were to exploit that, wouldn't it have to be super fast, like fast enough to do the Kessler Run in less than 12 parsecs? What ship could do that? Search your feelings, you know this to be true.
Parsecs per what? We never got that anwser. It's like saying that Ussain Bolt can run the 100 in less than 10 meters. This is Chuck Norris territory.
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Re: 2012 Election

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mean
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Re: 2012 Election

Post by mean »

KCMax wrote:I guess I get the massive costs, but wouldn't this be exactly the kind of jobs program we need right now? And what happens when China builds it own Death Star and becomes armed and fully operational? I get the fundamental flaw concerns, but if a starship were to exploit that, wouldn't it have to be super fast, like fast enough to do the Kessler Run in less than 12 parsecs? What ship could do that? Search your feelings, you know this to be true.
The Millennium Falcon supposedly did the Kessler run in less than 12 parsecs, but the Death Star was destroyed by an X-Wing. Just saying. And apparently an X-Wing is 25 MGLT faster than the Falcon.

I did all this laborious research for the good of mankind.
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Re: 2012 Election

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mean wrote:
KCMax wrote:I guess I get the massive costs, but wouldn't this be exactly the kind of jobs program we need right now? And what happens when China builds it own Death Star and becomes armed and fully operational? I get the fundamental flaw concerns, but if a starship were to exploit that, wouldn't it have to be super fast, like fast enough to do the Kessler Run in less than 12 parsecs? What ship could do that? Search your feelings, you know this to be true.
The Millennium Falcon supposedly did the Kessler run in less than 12 parsecs, but the Death Star was destroyed by an X-Wing. Just saying. And apparently an X-Wing is 25 MGLT faster than the Falcon.

I did all this laborious research for the good of mankind.
The first time it was destroyed by an X Wing. The second time it was destroyed by the Milennium Falcon driven by Lando Calrissian.

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Re: 2012 Election

Post by mean »

I stand appended to.
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