Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.
Ernest Bramah, The Wallet of Kai Lung, “The Transmutation of Ling” (1900)
The U.S. Congress overrode President Richard M. Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution on November 7, 1973. This resolution ostensibly limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval, hence Nixon’s veto. Nowadays, however, it is often referred to as the expansive terms for the “Imperial President’s” license to engage in military conduct, and a dereliction of congressional duty to direct the United States’ foreign policy, especially regarding war.
Election Day is not just about the presidential race. Or your voice in the House of Representatives. Or even your local dogcatcher.
There are issues at stake!
Click on over to Townhall for FIVE of them. Then come back here for some additions, subtractions, and a few divisions:
Four states and the District of Columbia (the nation’s capital) have already legalized marijuana for recreational use — in every case by ballot initiative. Another 24 states have legalized medical marijuana, which began as a ballot initiative phenomena, but has now been enacted through several state legislatures.
In fact, sold as a way to reduce special interest influence, Measure 71 actually increases the cost and difficulty of qualifying a ballot measure. Dramatically. That burdensome impact will be far, far more problematic for grassroots efforts than for powerful interests.
Additionally, the measure allows a well-financed opposition — special interests, big business, big labor, oil and gas interests, or all of the above — to defeat reforms by running nasty, negative advertising campaigns designed to win even when they lose 54.9 percent of the voters.
One opponent dubbed it “the Rich Guy Protection Act.”
Here’s how it works: When a last-place candidate is eliminated, the second-choice votes from those who had picked that eliminated candidate as their first choice are reallocated to the remaining candidates. This process continues until one candidate has gained a majority of the votes.
The big advantage is that ranked-choice voting wipes out the wasted vote argument, that by voting for a candidate one believes in, but who is unlikely to win, one’s vote makes no difference and might even help elect the person one most dislikes. Under the ranked-choice system, that vote is tallied and counted for the candidate one most supports, but it can also, if no candidate garners a majority and your favorite candidate is eliminated, go on to count for another candidate you prefer over others.
In such a system, voters could vote their conscience, without fearing the worst evil would prevail. That alone is worth a YES vote on Question 5.
But ranked choice voting also affects the behavior of candidates, by making it more important to not offend the supporters of other candidates. Without abridging the First Amendment to outlaw mean, nasty speech, ranked choice voting, by giving all voters greater input, encourages our better angels.
On the pro-charter side is billionaire Michael Bloomberg, so the measure isn’t lacking for funding. Still, Question 2 was polling above 70 percent in favor back in April, now it is below 50 percent.
Election Day is not just about the presidential race. Or your voice in the House of Representatives. Or even your local dogcatcher.
There are issues at stake!
Click on over to Townhall for FIVE of them. Then come back here for some additions, subtractions, and a few divisions:
Four states and the District of Columbia (the nation’s capital) have already legalized marijuana for recreational use — in every case by ballot initiative. Another 24 states have legalized medical marijuana, which began as a ballot initiative phenomena, but has now been enacted through several state legislatures.
In fact, sold as a way to reduce special interest influence, Measure 71 actually increases the cost and difficulty of qualifying a ballot measure. Dramatically. That burdensome impact will be far, far more problematic for grassroots efforts than for powerful interests.
Additionally, the measure allows a well-financed opposition — special interests, big business, big labor, oil and gas interests, or all of the above — to defeat reforms by running nasty, negative advertising campaigns designed to win even when they lose 54.9 percent of the voters.
One opponent dubbed it “the Rich Guy Protection Act.”
Here’s how it works: When a last-place candidate is eliminated, the second-choice votes from those who had picked that eliminated candidate as their first choice are reallocated to the remaining candidates. This process continues until one candidate has gained a majority of the votes.
The big advantage is that ranked-choice voting wipes out the wasted vote argument, that by voting for a candidate one believes in, but who is unlikely to win, one’s vote makes no difference and might even help elect the person one most dislikes. Under the ranked-choice system, that vote is tallied and counted for the candidate one most supports, but it can also, if no candidate garners a majority and your favorite candidate is eliminated, go on to count for another candidate you prefer over others.
In such a system, voters could vote their conscience, without fearing the worst evil would prevail. That alone is worth a YES vote on Question 5.
But ranked choice voting also affects the behavior of candidates, by making it more important to not offend the supporters of other candidates. Without abridging the First Amendment to outlaw mean, nasty speech, ranked choice voting, by giving all voters greater input, encourages our better angels.
On the pro-charter side is billionaire Michael Bloomberg, so the measure isn’t lacking for funding. Still, Question 2 was polling above 70 percent in favor back in April, now it is below 50 percent.
On November 6, 1913, Mohandes K. Gandhi was arrested for participating in a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
Utility is often summarily stigmatized as an immoral doctrine by giving it the name of Expediency, and taking advantage of the popular use of that term to contrast it with Principle. But the Expedient, in the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means that which is expedient for the particular interest of the agent himself: as when a minister sacrifices the interest of his country to keep himself in place. When it means anything better than this, it means that which is expedient for some immediate object, some temporary purpose, but which violates a rule whose observance is expedient in a much higher degree. The Expedient, in this sense, instead of being the same thing with the useful, is a branch of the hurtful.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1879), Chapter II, “What Utilitarianism Is.”
“We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination. Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate inspection. At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder.”
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 1845
On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony defied the law to vote, and was later fined $100.
Forty-one years earlier, to the day, Nat Turner, American slave and revolt leader, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia. His revolt has been celebrated in William Styron’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), and in a recent movie, The Birth of a Nation (2016).
On November 5, 1781, the second session of the United States in Congress Assembled began, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This “Second Confederation Congress,” as it is popularly known, ended on November 2, 1782.
And on that Fifth of November, 1781, John Hanson of Maryland was elected to serve as president of the United States in Congress Assembled. He would become the first president of Congress to serve a full one-year term as specified under the Articles of Confederation, for the second session of the Confederation Congress.
On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony defied the law to vote, and was later fined $100.
Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark’s fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider.
Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, “The Story of the Poet Lao Ping, Chun Shin’s Daughter Fa, and the Fighting Crickets” (1940)