I disagree. I'd suspect even a majority of the supporters of the two big parties are dissatisfied with the party they support and would prefer to support a party more aligned to their specific interests, especially if said party would actually have some relevance on a national level.

In a way, it's a bit of transference (on this specific subject). Instead of voting for a Republican or a Democrat and hoping they share, and promote, some of your personal agenda/ideals, you vote for a party that's closely aligned with your agenda/ideals and let them wheel and deal for those ideals with other diverse parties in this national legislative body.

In my view, the creation of coalition governments actually restrains this. To use the example of the Republicans forming a coalition with the Libertarians, the latter may want to abolish the FDA, but the former isn't going to do that, though they may agree to a restructuring of how the FDA conducts oversight and require faster tracks for drug approval.

Forgive me if this has been suggested, but it just occurred to me, and I wondered what everyone thought.

What if votes could be given out by percentage? Meaning an individual vote counts for 100% of that person's vote, but if he/she likes, he can assign a percentage of it to different parties.

Take me for instance. I am a fiscal Republican with some Libertarian leanings and a handful of social Democratic leanings. If I had the option, I might assign 60% of my vote to Republican, 30% to Libertarian and 10% to Democratic.

Obviously, we couldn't actually use percentages, because voting has to be the lowest common denominator (the stupider, the better). But you could tell people they get 10 vote "points" (each point equals 10% of their vote), and can assign those points however they wish. Even stupid people play enouh video games to understand points.

This, IMO, would go hand in hand with the national Congressional election put up above, although it would be impractical on a local level (so that would presumeably stay the same as currently).

Nice theory, except that you can't vote for 5 Representatives from 5 different parties that are closely aligned with your 10 major interests. You only get one Rep. Getting someone to work on 7 or 8 of your top 10 is why most of us eventually end up voting R or D (excluding family history & its influence on voting patterns).

What you're talking about only has a shot of working better (in terms of attempting to get your p.o.v. represented at the table) if you're a 1 or 2 issue person. I don't believe there's actually that many of those. You can fail to get someone's support by getting a key issue wrong much more readily than you can gain their support by getting only one key issue right IMO.

How many issues are actually strong enough to generate that kind of isolated issue party? I can see a Right-to-Life Party getting seats, I can see a Green Party getting seats, but don't see (pulling some random example of a hot button that isn't a dominant driving force) a Stem-Cell-Research Party gaining enough traction to pull even one seat.

Which is the basic construction of what happens within the two parties we already have now.

But if I'm given the choice of five parties for whom to cast my vote versus two, surely the likelihood of being able to choose a party more closely aligned to my principles is higher?

Imagine, for example, the UK without the Lib Dems (and England doesn't even use a PR system). Most of the current Lib Dem membership would be holding their nose considerably more to vote for Labour or the Tories.

Here's my contention: if you surveyed U.S. voters after an election where they had a choice of Democrat, Republican, Libertarian and Green (and all parties would actually get seats if they got enough votes) versus an election where they had a choice of Democrat and Republican, I think you get considerably more satisfied voters in the first scenario than in the second.

Here's my other contention: the wheeling-and-dealing that would happen between parties in a PR system to agree on legislation would be (actually, is) considerably more transparent than the wheeling-and-dealing that happens currently intra-party in the U.S. system. If, say, the Greens vote with the Democrats to pass a bill on oil drilling, for example, they're going to have to explain to their constituents why (perhaps they got major concessions on safety and oversight requirements). In our current system, this bill probably passes because the "greener" Democrats were bought off with earmarks.

NOTE: I'm not expecting people in a PR system to act like Utopian hippies. I'm just saying there are a number of benefits, and one of those benefits is a more transparent legislative process and another is a better marketplace of ideas. And a third is a lot less earmarks for specific legislative districts.

I disagree. Intra-party compromise, especially in the U.S. Congress, is not driven by ideological compromise inasmuch as it's driven by vote-trading (which includes voting for other peoples' earmarks).

You seem to be suggesting that there's a substantial difference between "ideological compromise" and "vote-trading", whereas I would strongly argue that they're almost exactly the same thing in DC, regardless of what scenario you're electing the reps under.

Eventually it boils down to "I'll give you this if you give me that" ... which is what we've got already as much so (even moreso) intra-party as inter-party.

Not at all, unless you're talking about parties with full agendas as opposed to these single/few issue minority parties that seem to be the most likely scenario.


Maybe this is a key distinction that we're dealing with here. I might not argue strongly against your suggestion of "more satisfied voter" after such an election. But I'd argue strongly against the suggestion that they'd be more satisfied with the outcome of the next Congress.

OK, I see what you're saying. We may have to agree to disagree (shocker, I know :D ).

What I would contend is that pretty much all of the "vote-trading" that goes on currently boils down to sending money to specific districts, no matter how the people involved might try to explain it. Such as Mary Landrieu voting for HCR for $300 million.

In my proposed system, the "vote-trading" is more along the lines of the Greens agreeing to vote for an oil driling bill after extracting, say, safety regulations and a promise to buy more land for federal parks out of the Democrats.

To me, there's a difference between those two mechanics, but I can see how you would disagree. In my defense, I think the real-world experience of PR systems supports my contention.

100% YES. The experience of PR, when implemented, has been that single/few-issue parties tend to get single-digit percentages of votes. This is why, for instance, the Green Parties in Europe have full agendas (in comparison to their narrowly-focused US counterparts): they realized they needed to do this to get relevant representation in various parliaments.

Plus, I'd expect if you made the change today in the U.S., the first few elections would be 90% Dem/Rep with a bunch of fringe parties splitting the other 10%, but over time parties with broader appeal would arise from those fringe parties (not perhaps 50% broad appeal, but certainly 20% broad appeal).


Absolutely. Goes without saying.

Edit: The advantage here is that while people tend to not be 100% happy with coalition governments in a PR system, they tend not to hate them outright and change tends to be more gradual. This as opposed to a two-party system where if one party gets on a roll they just ram a ton of stuff through and a significant minority (or sometimes even a majority) of the populace hates it with a passion. The late periods of the previous two governments in Britain (Brown's Labour and Major's Conservative) are excellent examples, as is Delay's Congress (or O'Neill's back in the 80s).

Rand Paul is Bubba Wheels!

The biggest experience I have with coalition government was my time spent in Turkey. Everybody there loved the concept of multiple parties, but hated the coalitions that formed. They wished they only had two parties with the winner take all format so they could get shit accomplished. The grass is always greener, I suppose.

What if my business wants to only accept Ameros?

When is he going to address the thermite that was used to take down the towers and how the Bilderberg Group was behind the recession? AMERICA DEMANDS ANSWERS!

AHHHHHHHHHH, but that's not American. Its too much like those 'other countries' across the pond and we know that anything they do is socialist, failed, and BAD.

I love when people try to use 9-11 conspiracy theories, that I have never seen any serious politician endorse, as the reason why any criticism of the US government outside of what we are taught in public schools is basically nonsense from the same group of "nutjobs". We know America is the greatest and would never take part in any disinformation or lies about the corruption that those nutcases claim exists in many parts of the federal government.

Didn't you know that all of those conspiracy theories are false? Why? The government says so! It has always been clear to me that Oswald acted alone, the government and my teachers said so. Let them clear up other theories at this site... (I tried to find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Gulf of Tonkin, and the Tuskegee experiments on here. I thought those were all just misinformation from anti-government "nuts" as well)

Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation - America.gov

I also found the readings on the Economy especially helpful...


Did you know the idea that rich and powerful people will try to make money at the expense of their fellow Americans is nothing more than Marxist ideology? Thanks US government! LOL. When someone showed me the above excerpt I thought it was from the Onion.

The Amero is basically another bullshit debunked conspiracy. Just like 9/11 being an inside job, fake moon landing, Billderberg Group, NWO, and on and on. Run a search on Ameros and tell me what sites come up. The same ones that are talking about the stuff I mentioned.

This isn't about the government lying, it's about crazy conspiracy theories with no substance.

He may not be a 9/11 truther, but he does subscribe to some wild conspiracy theories. From an Alex Jones radio show:

where do these people get these stupid ideas? i mean seriously - are they just gullible idiots?? I don't get it.

Interesting read. Dr. Doom is leaning towards a double dip recession barring a major change in gov't debt worldwide.

Nouriel Roubini said said the bubble would burst and it did. So what next? - Telegraph

Couldn't remember if we had a specific Arizona thread, but this just in:

Arizona has asked the Federal Govt. for UAV's (Unmanned Ariel Vehicles - Predator drones, etc) to patrol the border, along with additional helicoptors.

Arizona to White House: Send us helicopters, recon drones - May. 24, 2010

Wouldn't surprise me - this is what our smartest client (money manager) has been saying for months, and they were also right about the first bubble (in fact they called it and positioned for it in mid-2006, and held that position until it did burst). It's almost common-sense.

I want to know if they'll be armed with Hellfire missiles. That'll spice it up in a hurry.

What the hell is a UAV gonna do? I say we just put up an actual security fence with IDS capability and see if the #'s of illegals drop.

Wait, isn't that the main reason Arizona passed that law was because the federal government WASN'T helping? And now they are asking for help from the same people they are accusing of not helping to begin with. WTF??

I think it would be a great opportunity to make use of our stockpile of cluster munitions/sub-munitions. Cheaper than Hellfire & longer lasting :)

Good lord! Mermaid Predator Drones? Singing and blowing up everything?!!!1!

bah...you got me. spelling fail due to brain broken.

Since this story was previously mentioned in this thread.........

James O’Keefe: No Felony « Liveshots

I don't get this at all. Did we elect a president or a low-rate comedian?

Obama Heckles His Heckler At Boxer Fundraiser

Stop thinking that you need a good comeback if someone heckles you at an appearance. Act presidential and just ignore it. Let the crowd deal with the loudmouth.

Also, it was noted on several sites yesterday that the press secretary privately told White House pool reporters to stop asking so many questions about BP. What exactly is the purpose of that?

Some REALLY frustrating figures coming out of Recovery.gov. The amount spent per job created is just mind-boggling in New Hampshire.

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/05/2...new-hampshire/

I will give credit to the administration for being open with their records, even if it shows how miserably the stimulus has been mismanaged.

Well the source is right-biased obviously, but those numbers match up reasonably with other stats I've seen. Realize this is only the money spent directly on supposed job creation projects, it doesn't include spending on benefits, tax cuts, or other random ass stuff that was included in the stimulus.

This is where my 'million dollars per job' estimate came from in another post I made before. If you subtract out the non-jobs stimulus spending, the statistics across the nation are in the multiple hundred thousands per job, which is even more sickening when you see the salaries for these jobs. Like I also previously mentioned in a post, most software companies (which are high margin to begin with) would be happy to have 200-300K revenue per employee. They'd consider that high growth rate money.

We've spent more than that on average for jobs that pay less then such companies would generally pay... someone is taking a massive cut for themselves in the picture.

This is why I favor an employment based credit, put a multiplier on the cost of each job to make labor on average cheaper while individual salaries remain constant or growing, and you get your subsidy effect in a way that is game theory unexploitable (to get the 'cut' you need to perform an action that creates the intended result).

I'm also sure that I could create a lot more jobs at a lower price than 300-500K per job. Find the biggest messes that need to be cleaned up in America, buy a good quality shovel and some Windex, and I'm sure you can employ a lot of well paid mess cleaners and get some things fixed around here (power grid, roads, etc... apparently road contracts require several times each workers salary to be feasible.... I thinks I can underbid that easily enough).

Didn't you get the memo? American citizens won't take jobs like that, it's why we simply have to let all the illegals stay.

The opinion in the post I put up is right-biased, but the source of the numbers are Recovery.gov and the state of New Hampshire, which should not have any bias.

Shush, MBBF doesn't read and post the daily talking points at Michelle Malkin's site.

Let me guess. The great Michelle Malkin (who you obviously read more than me) posted this information, so therefore I must read her site.

While I fully understand that I posted a link from a right-leaning website, the data comes straight from the White House. Would it kill you to realize the guy is a flaming conservative and just view the information as it is? Go to Recovery.gov (which I also mentioned) and view it without the commentary if that's what you need to do to realize that your tax dollars were not used well in this situation.

I'm not arguing the data, I said from the start the stimulus was nothing more than all the Democratic pet projects that had built up over a decade.

Just that you trumpeted the fact you had never heard of Michelle Malkin despite posting her talking points on a daily basis and then posting one off her actual site.

The problem is that the site you linked to is so biased, that I don't trust any information I see on it (I'd feel the same for a site biased to the extreme left). When evaluating statistics you can't ignore the context and the author who is presenting them. All the available data can never be presented in a limited space, so the author choices of what data to include and what data to exclude are critical. With this author, I have no confidence he made these choices in a reasonable manner. Consequently, I stopped reading after 15 seconds.

It's a hate site. Stormfront for politics.

I'd want to know if all the stimulus money has been handed out so far. How accurate the jobs creation statistics are and a slew of other things.

Michelle Malkin, Michelle Bachman and Ann Coulter...notice you never see all 3 of them in the same place at the same time?

The problem with "cleanup" type jobs is that they're not sustainable, and they don't improve the GDP. You want to try to create jobs that result in long-term GDP growth and will be around indefinitely.

But as a shorter-term thing I don't disagree that it can often be useful.

I've always said trying to track jobs is a fool's errand. However, I don't think you should get too bent out of shape over Recovery.org, as it certainly doesn't look very accurate. Click on a few of the projects and it's pretty clear that the reported jobs number is nearly useless. The NH DOT got about 750,000 to pave a section of road and said that created .15 jobs. A private company got 65,000 and said it created .06 jobs. How do you create six one hundredths of a job?

According to most economists and the CBO the stimulus has so far done exactly what was expected, lift GDP. That's got it's own problems, but it's much easier to measure than job numbers.

For somebody that rails on the worthlessness of most people.....

Just in case anyone was wondering what the POTUS was doing this morning, he just sent me an e-mail...........

Yeah, I'll bet he spent a lot of time on that.

When you put together the time it took to research it, to write it, to edit it, to enter all those email addresses and then hit send, I bet Obama has spent the past two or three days doing nothing but this resolution.

Outrageous.

Worse yet, I don't think all of the LGBT U.S. citizens received that e-mail. How they hell are they going to know it's their month???????

So is AMC going to show Victor/Victoria all month long?

The 2 posts with odd (mocking?) punctuation about an issue you claim to be in favor of (gay rights and gay marriage) are duly noted, MBBF.

I'm sure it was just a typo or all in playful fun. And I'm sure you weren't picking up on the meme about how Obama is doing something other than watching the oil geyser 24/7 that even made the Daily Show last night. I'm probably just mistaken there.

SI