The true evil of the Electoral College is that makes the vast majority of people's vote not matter, and by extension it makes their lives not matter to politicians.
Trump has no reason to care that California is on fire. Literally none. Because he can't get votes from it.
The crazy thing is, most of the towns burning in California are Republican parts of the state! It's Trump-supporting farmers and loggers losing their livelihoods. And he has no political incentive to give a fuck because California's a blue state and their votes don't matter.
Every state has Democrats and Republicans. Every state has regions of voters with different needs and interests.
If we had a national popular vote, politicians would be forced to listen to all of these disparate groups. Under the Electoral College, most of it doesn't matter.
The entire reason we have the idea of red and blue states — the only reason our politicians and our media stereotype each state as latte-sipping urban elitists or backwards cow-tippers from Bumblefuck County, Nowhere — is that the Electoral College artificially makes them so.
This is why I want to slam my head on a desk whenever someone says the Electoral College is necessary to ensure small/rural/middle/whatever states are properly heard.
It does the opposite. It makes politicians see each state as a bastardized, one-dimensional parody of itself.
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So. This weekend, I went to see the Lilo & Stitch remake with my wife, niece, and nephew.
I thought it was bad. But the more I sit on it and think about what I saw, I didn't just not like it, I'm actually angry how badly Disney mutilated the original message of this movie.
And yes, I'm about to drop a big spoiler, but who cares. You should not see this movie. If you liked the original, the ending of this movie completely destroys it. I am doing a public service by spoiling it for you.
I could go on and on about the problems with this movie.
The fact that it was both somehow too fast-paced AND too bloated. The fact Lilo and Stitch had their personalities sanded off. The fact Nani's relationship with Lilo feels much colder and has almost no chemistry.
If scientists aren't allowed to use the term "women" or "female" when applying for NSF grants, that basically rules out any human clinical trials of anything.
"Disability" is blacklisted too? There goes a lot of medical research.
If you can't use the word "bias," that would make it pretty hard to apply for a grant for any study that involves statistics.
Also, sorry immunologists, but you can't say "systemic." And tough luck if you're studying emergency medicine, you can't say "trauma."
Want to apply for a grant to study crime? That'll be tough since you can't say "victim," although to be fair statistics are vital to criminology so the ban on saying "bias" already made your job pretty hard.
This situation is now even more insane. WV Republicans are now moving to assert *they* in fact have the right to appoint De Soto's replacement, even though he formally defected to the Democratic Party before being vacated and under the law that would give Dems the replacement.
Honestly, this probably doesn't matter much, as even if Dems win this fight the GOP still has a supermajority and the heavily red seat will autoflip in the next election.
But it's still a crazy situation. And a legal case over this would be interesting.
I know those who just lost their homes are in no mood to talk about the politics of it right now, but this is yet another reason California's ridiculous zoning practices need to be reformed wholesale.
Climate change has made many outlying suburbs of L.A. simply too dangerous. Some can be rebuilt with better fireproofing, but some others will simply never be insurable and can't be built back.
Which puts greater urgency on allowing more density in the inner and coastal suburbs.
At the end of the day, some NIMBYs will have to be forced, kicking and screaming, to make more room in their neighborhoods, because as long as their obstinacy forces sprawl into the dry brush hills, we will have more people lose their homes to fire.
The CA Bureau of Prisons did once try to argue in court that too many inmates were being *paroled* to staff prison firefighting positions.
Harris' AG office represented the BOP during this period, but she only later learned this argument was being used and didn't agree with it.
It is true there is a prohibition on ex-convicts in CA from being certified as emergency responders, even if they worked as firefighters in prison work programs. Gov. Newsom signed legislation intended to create exceptions, but those can be hard to get. davispoliticalreview.com/article/the-us…
The main problem isn't actually the cold — a lot of that area is no colder in winter than parts of New England or the Midwest, and even gets fairly warm in summer.
The problem is the land. It's boggy, rocky, useless for agriculture, and not very good for buildings either.
Most of that area is covered by a formation known as the Canadian Shield, which was formed by the glaciers of the Pleistocene. It's just scattered patches of marshy, nutrient-poor dirt on solid bedrock. You really can't do much with that land.
Even if you shipped food in from elsewhere, you can't really even build cities in the first place because there's very little dirt to anchor a foundation in. It's mostly just rock.
The only reason for anyone to go out there is fishing, mining, or oil drilling.