(12-27-2024, 10:09 AM)Sneakers Wrote: [ -> ] (12-26-2024, 03:35 PM)mikesez Wrote: [ -> ]Has nothing to do with Trump.
I agree that there are things we need to change, and who changes them is unimportant. Few of those on the left echo this sentiment.
We need to stop making pennies, nickels, and dollar bills. We need to design a dollar coin that is as light as a quarter but feels different in your pocket. So, a three-coin system, dimes, quarters and the new dollar coin? And you thought people were opposed to a metric conversion. Besides, Biden has already given us a dollar that only carries the weight of a quarter! .gif "Laughing")
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
We need to stop changing our clocks twice a year. Why? P.S. Not even in the top 1,000 priorities.
We need to implement ranked choice Copeland method voting for Congress. Congress is a problem, but that's not the solution.
We need to have strict rules on district maps for Congress and state legislature, so strict that a computer can find the optimal set of district lines and no one can argue with it. A computer can only find what it's programmed to find. There will always be argument over anything and everything that potentially affects a party's power and influence. Who's going to write the program establishing the search criteria?
We need to re-write the books on prosecutorial ethics, so that there is a real presumption of innocence, and have judges who will enforce those ethics. Prosecutors are as much of the problem as judges. Politics need to be removed from the equation, but good luck with that. It's a hot mess.
We need to have real tariffs against states that fail to reduce their CO2 output. How exactly are these states expected to reduce their respective outputs?
We need to eliminate barriers to building more homes in the places people want to live. Agreed, but the solution is in State and municipal zoning regulations, not the Federal government.
So, so many things we need. So much calcification that needs to be sloughed off. Don't care who does it.
But owning Greenland or the Panama canal simply isn't on the list. Not on your list maybe, but could that be your bias against the originator of the idea? Greenland is rich in natural resources and could ultimately prove to be highly profitable. Increased control over the Panama Canal would help stabilize shipping costs that are ultimately paid by American consumers. Wouldn't lower costs be a good thing?
Fine, we can keep nickels. And yes, inflation is the reason that we should change the coinage.
Changing clocks has real impacts on people's health and safety. There are spikes in hospitalizations and auto accidents every time they are changed.
What solution do you propose to the problem of Congress? The problem is they don't do enough and leave the executive and the judges too free to do whatever they want. And Congress can't actually get things done without broad cooperation. Even if only one party is voting yes, both of our parties have so many internal divisions now. How do we get more members incentivized to cooperate with each other?
Correct, the computer would be programmed with rules similar to the rules that are already in many states constitutions, including ours. It's just that the people that are supposed to follow the rules pretend not to understand them. (1) Find any contiguous area where the majority is a minority that has been systematically excluded in the past. Do not allow lines to cross this area unless the area already has more than enough population to control a district and the new line doesn't reduce the number of districts that this population could control. (2) Draw the remaining lines, following existing county and city boundaries as much as possible, creating districts with nearly equal populations. (3) Count up the lengths of all new lines drawn. Do not count the lengths of lines following county and city boundaries. (4) Repeat steps 2 and 3, creating as many new maps as possible. The map with the shortest total length of new lines wins.
Who elects who and who appoints who is always a mess. We can make a lot of progress with a simple rule change though. "When they present their case, prosecutors are not allowed to talk about how badly the victim was hurt or how heinous the crime was, until the jury has ruled that the defendant actually committed the crime". Call it the "save it for sentencing" rule. The jury needs to be narrowly focused only on the evidence connecting the defendant to the crime for the first stage of any trial.
I meant to say nations, not states. There should never be tariffs between US states, the constitution forbids it. I'm talking about how the EU has less CO2 generation per capita than China. Therefore we should have a tariff that is higher on China and lower on the EU, and so forth. It ends up punishing a lot of the countries Trump wants to punish anyways.
The federal government has ways to get states to comply. Like how they made the drinking age 21. It would be simple. Don't adopt looser zoning regulations? You don't get access to federally backed mortgages.
Denmark is in the EU. Any natural resources they extract goes to the European common market and the tariffs between the US and the EU are low.
The Panama canal treaty requires them to charge every country the same amount per ton. That amount must be pretty low already, considering how easily Chinese and Japanese and Korean goods end up at East coast ports. Are we trying to help them make stuff even cheaper?
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