Politics

[shinatoo]

Come on guys, the Republican party is a mess and they need this distraction while they work out their platform. Plus all of the candidate can talk about how awful Trump is and look like they support Mexicans and disabled veterans just by hating on Trump. Don't be fooled into thinking this isn't orchestrated. The old Kansas City Shuffle.

[bobbyhawks]

Come on guys, the Republican party is a mess and they need this distraction while they work out their platform. Plus all of the candidate can talk about how awful Trump is and look like they support Mexicans and disabled veterans just by hating on Trump. Don't be fooled into thinking this isn't orchestrated. The old Kansas City Shuffle.

Maybe they are that smart, but nobody could have anticipated Trump would still hold such a position in the polls. It's like the Republicans are signaling/bating him to pull the ultimate oopsy to sabotage his run and quickly fade away, and all of his moves are making him stronger.

I'm still thinking Trump's entire life is secretly the world's greatest ever performance art piece.

[chingon]

I'm still thinking Trump's entire life is secretly the world's greatest ever performance art piece.

He is our generation's Andy Kauffman, only his critique of American culture and society is important and cynical, not just absurdist.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Is this a glimpse into the near future and become a major part of the political discussion. "Challenger, Gray & Christmas has released its monthly job cuts for July, and it is ugly. The 105.696 job cuts was the highest number since 2011. To put this in perspective, the July job cuts total is a whopping 136% higher than the 44,842 job cuts reported in June, as well as 125% higher than the in same report a year ago. The July report showed that the last time more than 100,000 job cuts were announced was back in September 2011, when there were some 115,730 layoffs."

[grovester]

Doubtful. I assume those numbers are reflected in the net job numbers release monthly, so we're still net growing. Also 50% is due to military shrinkage.

[beautyfromashes]

My vote for President will go to the first person that talks about full employment. I don't care about 'The Economy' as this looks at the financial numbers for all people including an upper class that vastly eschews the numbers from the how the average American is doing. While this would mean pushes to an incredibly low minimum wage, it would also mean welfare reform to push people back into the workforce, education to increase wages, the closing of loopholes for corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, and the elimination of policies that make it extremely difficult to start and build a small business without being hacked into pieces by megaconglomerates. I highly doubt that any candidate will meet the requirement to receive my vote as they will pick the good pieces that get them votes on one side and remove the responsibility that will also have to be implemented. Politicians on both sides want to talk about 'cutting taxes' or 'increasing benefits' but never move towards the difficult tasks required to pay for them.

[aknowledgeableperson]

"Full employment"? Would you count someone working 28 hours a week as being fully employed? What about someone working 2 jobs for 50 hour weeks total because they cannot get a 40/week job?

[flyingember]

I think 32 hours is full time

[aknowledgeableperson]

maybe in the so-called new economy but for many 40 hours a week is considered full time. Required overtime pay doesn't kick in until 40 of work by one employer and the "talk" has always been 40 hours. Now qualifying for benefits is another topic and those are set by individual employers.

[flyingember]

I went looking and there's no definition. It depends on the employer.

40 just tends to be the norm in this country.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Trump is still hanging in there and setting the agenda for the GOP to discuss, good or bad. At least now he says there are some good Mexicans, the ones he would let in after they are deported. Before they were all rapists, murderers, etc. Previously he said they were taking jobs away from Americans but now he will let the good ones back in to take jobs away from the Americans.
Now, what are the Dems to do? Hillary is stalled for now over her e-mails and Joe Biden is looking to finally enter the race.
There was a age comparison of the various candidates running for President for both parties. For the Dems all the candidates either qualify for Medicare or are close except for O'Malley (51) who can't get any traction. The GOP have quite a few in their 40's and 50's.
Gonna be an interesting next few months. Wonder when the first GOP dropouts will occur?

[flyingember]

the Iowa Caucus is in February

I expect candidates to coast on until January and we'll see who has staying power in both parties.

I'm not giving anyone an advantage at this point.

[earthling]

Imagine him in charge of the red button...
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/dona ... on-n416011

[FangKC]

Brownback is the most unpopular governor in the USA says poll.

...

A new poll released Friday holds both good news and bad news for Gov. Sam Brownback.

The good news is that the poll shows more Kansans approve of his performance than expressed satisfaction with the governor in a poll released last month — 26 percent approval on Friday compared with just 18 percent satisfaction in the October poll.

The bad news is that despite the improvement, Brownback is the least popular governor in the country, according to Friday’s poll.

Morning Consult, a politics and policy news organization that also conducts opinion polling, surveyed more than 75,000 voters across all 50 states over the past several months to determine approval ratings for every governor in the country.

According to the poll results, Brownback has the smallest approval rating of any governor at 26 percent. The next lowest approval rating belongs to Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s Republican governor and a presidential candidate who dropped out earlier this week. His approval rating stands at 35 percent.

Brownback also generated the highest disapproval rating of any governor at 65 percent.

....

Nearly three-fourths of those surveyed said they believed they paid more in sales, property and state income taxes now than two years ago.

http://cjonline.com/news/2015-11-20/pol ... or-america

[FangKC]

Falling tax revenues jeopardize Kansas highways, jobs

http://tinyurl.com/pft6g5p

[aknowledgeableperson]

Maybe the tide is turning.
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/5/9851152/fl ... ng?ref=yfp
"This week, the Florida Supreme Court struck another blow against gerrymandering  in the Sunshine State, and approved a congressional map it hopes will finally end years of legal battles over district lines.

In a decision Wednesday — a follow-up to an earlier ruling from July that threw out much of the state's congressional map because it was drawn with partisan intent — the justices gave another victory to the groups that had sued to strike down the old map.

Five of the state Supreme Court's seven justices essentially told the legislature: If you can't agree on a proper map, we'll pick one for you. They approved a trial judge's ruling accepting the Florida House of Representatives' plan for 19 of Florida's 27 districts — but rejected its proposal for the other eight, which cover South Florida.

For the remaining eight districts, the courts instead approved a map proposed by those groups that had sued — including the League of Women Voters and Common Cause.

Two justices dissented from the decision — and one argued that the map the majority approved was drawn by "Democratic operatives," so it should have been discredited. Yet the majority justices responded that they reviewed the plans presented and approved those with districts that were more compact and that better utilized existing political and geographic boundaries."

[flyingember]

I personally want congressional districts based around some form of travel density. That as many reps as possible should be able to visit as many parts of their district in the least time possible.

Look at Missouri. It puts an area that's hard to get to for most of the 6th to put rural areas with urban KC. the 5th should be compact and trade the eastern end of it for some of the southwestern end of the 6th to make both easier to travel around.

And Missouri is nowhere near as bad as Florida at that level. The districts mostly make sense.

[FangKC]

I would think with technology that exists today that congressional districts could be drawn to capture the appropriate population and representative demographics mostly using a computer algorithm. A computer calculation of the district lines would most likely draw a better non-partisan product than the members of the legislature.

I hate the idea of parties and politicians drawing lines to protect their re-election. Districts should always attempt to be as competitive as possible. A sitting politician should always have to defend the seat in each election cycle--based on their voting record and ideas, and not through gerrymandering their likely supporters into their district. I think there should also be a second approval step that provides a balance to the politicians. Perhaps an election board of voters in the affected districts that are randomly-selected--like a jury pool.

[swid]

I hate the idea of parties and politicians drawing lines to protect their re-election. Districts should always attempt to be as competitive as possible. A sitting politician should always have to defend the seat in each election cycle--based on their voting record and ideas, and not through gerrymandering their likely supporters into their district. I think there should also be a second approval step that provides a balance to the politicians. Perhaps an election board of voters in the affected districts that are randomly-selected--like a jury pool.

Iowa's redistricting system is often held up as the gold standard in these discussions, FWIW.

The larger problem is that the plurality winner-takes-all system used in virtually all U.S. elections is the worst possible way to determine an election's winner; at a minimum, we really should be using instant-runoff voting instead.

[flyingember]

The reason I went with distance is that can be programmed without any personal interest. Once you talk about being competitive you're into an argument with someone.

Pick a non-political reason to base the shapes to get real change.

You feed in census data at tightest level it has, the zip code would be a good biggest size, and create an algorithm to generate maps. The program generates every possible shape for each state based on the inserted population data and a need to minimize boundary length. You don't tell it to be straight but rather it doesn't make long arms over adding If you start in a corner there's only so many shapes you can create. Once it has it's GIS shapes it starts running travel paths and generating the longest road distance from A to B. It then spits out the top 10 maps that minimize travel distance for all parties to pick from.

Places that want to get more representation will promote answering the census.