Sequestration 2013

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I think youre on to something chunky.
You do need to know how this works, district by district setup, one side wins, but doesnt get 100% of the vote etc etc.
Its a math solution, with some fudging, and nothing shown here is outside that problem/solution.
Since the math works, the weakness is in understanding its construct
 
A simple way to eliminate the Dems from the house would be to mandate/jerrymander districts by size and not population.
In this scenario, the cities would lose drastically.
Im just pointing this out for people to come to some kind of understanding how things currently work, and how they appear gray, and not black and white.
 


 
Go to 2.2, things to notice, percentiles PER district, 1 district, 1 house rep.
Notice how in many districts, the lead by the Dems are sometimes very high very often.
Its no ones fault they live so close together, and they do meet the population requirements of districting.
If say, there are 100 seats available, each seat has 100,000 people in it, since no district gets 100% of the vote, but is counted as such as theres only 1 winner, in 40 districts, say the blue team actually does get 100%, thats 40 seats and 4 million votes.
The other seat, the red team wins in every one of them, 51% to 49%, thus the red team gains 60 seats.
Rounded total votes?
7 million blue team, 3 million red.
There, its solved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Partisan_Voting_Index#By_congressional_district
 
WOW! Okay, let me break this down for you. I included links to USelectionatlas.org, Politico, and wikipedia. The links were the text itself, go back to my post, hover your mouse of the words and you will see that I did give you links to House numbers. You might have realized that if you weren't more concerned with crafting a knee jerk reaction counter-post.

Right, well, it seems to me that if you are going to Google, then keying in "2012 House election results" IS FAR MORE OBVIOUS than searching for "Democrats 53,952,240". Seriously, who the eff would Google "Democrats 53,952,240" to begin with if they were looking for the House of Representatives election results from 2012? But, to give you the benefit of the doubt, I Googled "Democrats 53,952,240" and the only sites that came up were liberal websites, twitter strings, and several partisan bloggers; click this text to see for yourself. Not one of the google results from "Democrats 53,952,240" returned a website that a reasonable person would consider remotely objective; as compared to uselectionatlas.org, politico, and wikipedia. Not sure about you, but I was taught that if you are going to cite a source to support an argument, then it should be non-partisan and objective as to avoid having your sources being slammed as bias. But hey maybe teaching methods have changed in the past 20 years...

And, then on top of it, you chide me not citing reliable sources and then turn around and post a link to fairvote.org and motherjones.com....HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh man...more liberal partisan crap...not even remotely objective sources of information.

Answers to the above question in bold.

As I've said, if you understand what is written in the Constitution, understand the limits it places on the federal government, understand the mechanics of our representative republic, and have a working knowledge of early American history, then citing the Constitution and the reason for citing the Constitution does not require further explanation.
 
Im not sure I understand people today.
Every one of us want a better government, raise their hand.
Lets see, Im guessing close to 100%.
OK, whats the problems of government today?
They dont represent us?
Well, someone in NY hates what someone in Cali wants, BUT, since we have local representation, and not some monstrous, archaic, foolhardy national one, each area, be it NY or Cali can be represented per its locale, and maybe all of them are of the same party.
Now, granulating was seen by our forefathers as a better solution, which I hope my little example shows as well, and eliminating things such as states rights, the house etc etc, just runs counter to this and common sense, and what the people want, where they live, as wel as hopefully to be concerned for those elsewheres
 


"Better" means wildly different things to different people. An unemployed liberal arts major in Berkeley, California is going to want vastly different things than a rancher in Wyoming would want. What I want is obviously different from what gamerk316 wants. The federal government is only one governing body and has to try to please enough people to continue to have its members stay in power. Thus you get a rough average of what the very different people in the country want, plus a heaping helping of what the politicians themselves want. The result is a government that nobody really likes because it tried to be too much to too many people. The liberal arts major is going to be PO'd at farm subsidies to the rancher in Wyoming eating into "his" entitlements, and the rancher in Wyoming is going to be PO'd at having to fork over a boatload in taxes to give unemployment to the liberal arts major who chose a field with poor employment prospects. The best way to deal with this issue is to keep government as local as possible as everybody in Berkeley, CA is going to be much more similar to each other than they are to the rancher on a dirt road 100 miles outside of Cheyenne, WY. However the politicians and the special interest groups do not like this as a more local government has much less power than a national government and can't necessarily force its will on the unwilling "for their own good."
 


The role of the federal government is supposed to be to handle the *few* things that the individual states cannot do by themselves (such as handle foreign relations) and to uphold the Constitution. Today, its role is to essentially replace all other governments and does a lot of forcing of the federal legislators' wills onto the rest of the country. The Constitution is a barrier which the feds spend a lot of time and effort in trying to perform mental and legal gymnastics in trying to violate but still appear to be in compliance with.
 

 
I'm in a position to save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year right now at my location. For months, my other management has been holding me back from doing this. Money is tight, I have multiple solutions that I can personally do to save money, yet my other management will not let me act on them. The total for this year is give or take $50k, $500,000 in savings per year, if they simply would let me move forward.

What a joke.
 


Which is all anti-Keynesian. You don't run up debt for no reason.

Again, really simple example: The government helps pay for you to own a house (the mortgage deduction). What else comes with a house? Electricity, plumbing, construction, the car, the food stores, and so on. Basic multiplyer effect at work: You take a slight hit on the revenue side to generate economic growth, which in turn brings in MORE revenue when all is said and done. Spending works on the same basic principle: You increase expenses in order to increase revenue (Spend a little to make a little more).

As a general rule, you can expect over more or less any period of time, GDP growth will average about 3% or so. If you can the growth of the debt UNDER that number, then you effectively shrink the debt (as its a smaller portion of your net worth).

So taking your wonderful example, given how the family did NOTHING to increase their net worth with the money they spent, they deserve to go bankrupt.

[Insert follow up argument that argues that all spending is thus bad, and spending must be cut]
[Insert counter-argument that spending drives the economy, and only the spending that does not grow the economy should be cut]
[Repeat follow up argument in a different form]
[Repeat counter-argument]
 
The Constitutional role of the federal government is;

1) Defense, war prosecution, peace, foreign relations, foreign commerce, and interstate commerce;
2) The protection of citizens’ constitutional rights (e.g the right to vote) and ensuring that slavery remains illegal;
3) Establishing federal courts inferior to the SCOTUS;
4) Copyright protection;
5) Coining money;
6) Establishing post offices and post roads;
7) Establishing a national set of universal weights and measures;
8 ) Taxation needed to raise revenue to perform these essential functions.

The above listed are the only things that are within the powers of the federal government. Anything not listed above or that falls under the purview of the above is un-Constitutional and the federal government does not have the power and/or authority to administer.

Furthermore, the 10th Amendment states that all powers not given to the federal government (limited to the above list only), or not prohibited of the States (i.e.; States can not coin money or sign treaties with foreign entities), are reserved to the States or to the People (i.e.; the individual citizen). So, the federal government has no power or authority to pass laws, regulations, or statutes that are not explicitly stated in the Constitution; that the powers and authority of the federal government is limited to the what is explicitly stated in the Constitution.

To quote James Madison as he wrote in the Federalist Papers #45, paragraph 9; “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Considering the above, I'm sure you can think of numerous things that the federal government has done since 1910 that are considered un-Constitutional.
 
I was kind of hoping for an honest answer about what YOU would do in the hypothetical family situation, but with a response like that, it is obvious that you are an ideologue unable to see past your own reasoning and further discussion with is pointless.

Have a nice day...


 
 
Your Gerrymandering is a basic result of the winning party every 10 years to redraw the district lines. It happens that the House has been heavily Republican for a long time and they continue winning, therefore they continue drawing the lines.
 
I posted links to three website that contain the number, that's enough.

Again, I posted link to three sites with the popular vote numbers, cutting and pasting them here is redundant. Knowing how to search for the same thing in different ways is a nice skill to have, however searching for the information is one thing and citing credible sources is something else. Citing motherjones and fairvote are less than credible and far from objective sources and their bias is well known that even the mainstream media knows well enough to avoid them.

The Constitution is pretty easy to understand and was written that way intentionally. So, cutting and pasting Articles of the Constitution is redundant when everyone can just read it. Now, if there is a specific point you want me to quote the Constitution on in order to weigh in on whether a certain issue is within the power or authority of the federal government, throw it to me...



 


Because the districts are DESIGNED that way. You put the opponents strongest supporters into as few seats as possible; that's why you see cities that sometimes account for 80% of the population of a state accounting for under 50% of the states representation. Hence the districts that vote 80% Democratic. There's you gerrymandering.

Assuming PERFECT districts (again, not likely, so assume a 1% variance just for the purposes of this discussion), you would expect to see the House governed by ~52% Democrats (they're vote share in house races). Instead, you get ~54% Republicans. Thats a 6% variance, well above historical norms.
 


Your posts are very difficult to follow.

So, you don't want a winner take all type system as with what happened to Gore in 2000? Each State is different. Some States apportion the number of electoral votes based on the popular vote and some State are winner take all. The federal government can not force a State to apportion or winner take all with their electoral votes.

You say you are not talking about the number of representatives a State gets but how the districts are created. So, are you effectively taking issue with how each State sets forth their own rules as defined within the Constitution and the individual State Constitutions to redistrict their State? From what I can tell, what you claim to be gerrymandering in some States is more an issue with the laws and rules that a State follows for redistricting. For example, I live in New Jersey, some Democrats have claimed gerrymandering in favor of Republicans. But those same Democrats forget that there is a redistricting law that favors the incumbent party. So, the reality is, the people keep voting for Republicans, they are the incumbent party, and since the redistricting law favors the incumbent party, the Republicans maintain the majority; as a result, there is no gerrymandering going on. The issue that the Democrats have is with the actual the laws, case rulings, and redistricting principles within New Jersey that favor the incumbent party. But explaining and getting the sheople to understand the State Constitution, case law, and redistricting principle is far more difficult that simply yelling, "GERRYMANDERING!" Also, please do not argue redistricting in New Jersey with me, the above example is true, it is the State I live in, and I am very familiar with the how my State works.

Given each State determines how their Congressional Districts are outlined, and the example of New jersey above, I'm having a hard time understanding how you are making the jump from the number of national popular votes for Democrats/Republicans and how that equals which party gains the majority within the House.
 

Its not as tho I cant understand nor accept what youre saying, its that you are totally ignoring my reasoning.
Many if not most of those city districts abut each other, what to do then, when both or all contain a heavily favored dem vote count?
Should we then draw lines 50 or more miles long, that are sliver thin?
Would this then also be called Gerrymandering?
Look at my links, they also show the districts, and their relative locations towards one another, and then let mother jones, a hippy worn out name if Ive ever heard one, decide to convince you otherwise, by looking into reality, not just words, but the actual makeup of those districts
 


Its BS that both parties are able to do it. I would be pist if I was a republican voter in maryland where democrats gerrymandered to the extreme.
 
Theres been great dems Ive voted for and admired in the past, just not so much lately, and like anyone else, knowing yourself is usually found out by others first.
But the current repubs dont impress me much either
 
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