It is my opinion that if there were a non-partisan way of determining Congressional districts, that a lot of the extremism in the election process would go away. I think the recent Virginia primary shows what can happen when you have a district drawn so solidly for a particular party. The opposing party will either not bother to put up a challenge, or choose to try and disrupt the majority party's process. And even though the majority party might have drawn themselves a safe district, all it takes is voter apathy coupled with a small, energized group to derail your plans.

There are enough skilled GIS people out there that an algorithm to divide up districts based solely on geographic area and population density shouldn't be an impossible task to tackle. Remove any info on salaries, party identity, race, age, etc from the formulas. There is going to be some kind of bias inherent in any way of choosing, but trying to cut it down to the bare number of inputs mitigates that. Another safeguard might be allowing X number of redistricting proposals to be submitted, with one of them chosen at random.

Absolutely. But this lays bare one of the problems: politicians as a group probably aren't going to sign on to such a redistricting process when it's likely to rob them of an important tool to keep power.

No such thing exists.

EVERYONE has a bias of some sort, even if it's just a bias toward lukewarm, there's still a bias.

Some states, most notably California, have implemented redistricting reforms. CA now uses a citizen's panel to draw the districts.

If the only inputs were population density and area, that removes a lot of chances to inject bias.

I guess what I was getting at that, of itself, that IS a bias.

It reduces the opportunity for like-minded citizens to be adequately represented, watering down the likelihood of that to happen in favor of neutered lightweight representation attempting to be all things to all people.

I'm pretty sure we've watered enough things down to the LCD enough times in this country to know that nothing worthwhile comes from such an approach, or at least that such that the negatives of such far far outweigh any benefits.

This is the most ringing endorsement of my plan that I could have hoped for. :D

I'd argue that it would cause the like-minded people to become more engaged in the process, as they would have to put some effort into spreading their viewpoint, instead of just coasting. Actual debate might occur, instead of safe districts fighting over who is the most conservative or most progressive.

I can tell you as one of those GIS people who have drawn districts, doing it the way you want really won't change anything. People who think alike tend to live in groups. In order to get districts with a that are pretty evenly split politically, you have to do a hell of a lot of gerrymandering. Drawing districts that are half inner city, half outer suburb, that type of thing.

I'm not looking for districts that are evenly split politically. As you mentioned, people do tend to live in like-minded groups. What I'd be looking for would be ways to avoid the intentionally designed districts with tortuous borders that try to either put as many like-minded people as possible into one district, or divide up groups of like-minded people in order to intentionally diminish their impact.

Take for example, Austin. It is probably the most extreme example of a large population being gerrymandered. There are 6 districts that cover the city limits of Austin, yet none of them contain a population of more than 27% Austin residents. The districts stretch from parts of Austin up to Fort Worth, over to Houston, down all the way to the Mexican border.

I think maybe there's a difference too in a macro/micro way of looking at it.

Let's take one state attorney general Republican primary that I've touched upon, I think maybe it will look different to you when its one, practical, meaningful election, instead of just this broad view of the national trends of the parties.

Candidate A: The tea-party choice who has raised more money than the incumbent because he's locked down the PACs and the business support. He says he has 3 main goals in office: (1) repeal Obamacare, (2), transfer federal-owned lands in the state to state ownership, and (3) have state attorneys serve as "watchdogs" in state agencies to ensure that those agencies are "working for the people" (i.e., pursuing conservative policy values).

Candidate B: The incumbent, who believes none of those 3 goals of candidate A have anything to do with an Attorney General is actually supposed to do. He's lost the big money and some republican endorsements for a couple of reasons - like the fact that he sued Republican members of the state land board who suppressed the lease costs of state-owned lakefront property so that connected rich people get it as a discount, when the proceeds of those lots are constitutionally mandated to go towards education; and he's also made a lot of Republican enemies in the legislature by giving them correct legal advice they don't want to hear (i.e., that a lot of their wacky proposed laws, including heavy-handed restrictions on abortion, are unconstitutional). He has a lot of policy opinions you would disagree with, but he sees his job not as a vehicle to influence conservative legislation, but simply to represent and advise the state agencies and the legislature, as an attorney. He's endorsed by all of the newspapers and media outlets between the left and moderate right. And the Democratic opponent effectively dropped out as soon as Candidate B won the primary, because he said his differences with Candidate B were "nominal." (Candidate A refuses to endorse Candidate B in the general election, because this Democrat basically said he liked Candidate B, and to be liked by a Democrat is like treason or something, in his view. I'm not even joking.)

There's elections going on like this all over the country. Candidate B described this race as a "battle for the soul of the Republican party" in the state and I agreed with him and was really glad he won. I don't know if maybe this single example is so extreme that it doesn't fit what you've said in this thread, but from what I understand, you'd want Candidate A to win here because the GOP party as a whole is unreasonable, and therefore the "second best" option is to see the party move to the right with guys like Candidate A in important positions, push out Candidate B, and thus make the party as a whole more heavy with tea-party influence, which is of course good for Democrats. You said things about how you want the "regular" republicans to grow a spine or whatever and kick the tea-party to the curb, and here, that happened, against the odds when it comes to money....but you would have gone in the other direction, right?

I think it sucks that any liberal would rather see Candidate A than Candidate B in office. I think that puts party over values. It really illustrates the uphill battle here, and really illustrates how the tea party can gain traction. It was nice to see the liberals and moderates in the state really draw the line in the sand and fight the threat of Candidate A. The liberal weekly artsy city newspaper had tutorials on how to register as a republican for the primary and then renounce that affiliation right afterwards.

In this example, I'd be OK with how that went down, including the Democrat dropping out for those reasons. However, I'd be happier if a qualified Democrat ran, Candidate A won the primary, and then the Democrat won the election. Because, as you note, Candidate B still holds a number of beliefs contrary to me.

But having said that, and to your macro/micro point, I've said a number of times that I'm mostly looking at this as a national-level GOP issue. Local politics are, well, more local, and there's more to it, IMO.

For instance, take Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), a technically "moderate" Republican Senator. I'd be happy to see her Tea Partied if it meant a Democrat could get that seat because a) it causes the GOP to lose a seat in the Senate, which helps the cause of progressive legislation and b) she still votes quite often in ways with which I don't agree.

I'm not sure how I feel about Christie yet but its nice to see him easy going and making fun of himself.

Watch Jimmy Fallon, Chris Christie Get Down In 'Evolution Of Dad Dancing'

LOL. No. Just no.

The UNION is absolutely benefiting. Just not the teachers.

You're going to have to explain that one to me. How does a union benefit? I'm thinking manufacturing not teaching, but there have been a lot of cases where unions will be the ones responsible for large busts of plants employing illegal workers. I guess you could say that strengthens their cause but not really as it's not as if they gain much from it.

SI

Is it more subtle than more kids -> more jobs?

Putting aside the powerhouse unions like Chicago, most teacher unions have zero power over the school districts. They'll negotiate some minor detail when the contract comes up declare victory, and say how awesome they are. They do practically nothing to benefit a rank and file teacher, all while collecting an inordinately large amount of dues. For doing jack shit.

It's also extremely rare for a teacher to ever lodge a complaint. Even if you manage to persuade the union reps to look into anything (harder than you'd think), once you get labeled by the district as a troublemaker (and it WILL get out), good luck working again.

I'm married to a teacher, I'm related to 2 more, I'm friends with several others. None of them work in the same district, they all happen to be in different unions, ALL of them repeat this general theme - the union sits on their ass and collects their cut. They're a political entity who exist to serve themselves far more than those they represent.

So how exactly are they benefiting from illegal immigration? That was the what the original quote was talking about:


Or was this just a chance to take a swing at teachers unions with relation to context?

SI

A point of which I was not aware. I didn't go back far enough to find WTF the comment came from (it had dropped off the current page) and I took it to imply unions in general are a benefit to teachers. Which I take issue with.

But mea culpa regardless. Missed the original context.

Except that's not what happens that I'm aware of. Classroom sizes usually just get bigger and/or they'll overload the present teachers with more sections, as overload costs are cheaper than hiring more instructors.

Of course, Clark County has such a terrible school district and completely incompetent administration that isn't able to deal with a substantial transient student population with a significant first generation American percentage, that there's always teaching openings in the schools.

I've been tough on Obama for his near-constant foreign policy blunders, but this is not one of them.

Bush started a war without any sense of an end-game. This destabilized the Iran/Iraq conflict. At some point, American troops could no longer provide temporary stabilization. This was inevitable the moment Bush took that reckless and stupid action.

Hopefully, though, Obama has learned enough from his Egypt blunders to understand that he can't make friends with the new Iraqi government.

The notion that this would ever be an area capable of self-governing (without being a hostile actor at least) was, indeed, stupid.

Alot of moving parts. Would the US even do air support now that Iranian troops are supporting Iraq?

I would assume the Iranian troops will turn the tide and Iraq will become more embedded with Iran in the future.

Iraq girds to defend Baghdad, with help from Iran - The Wall Street Journal - MarketWatch

Yes, it is indeed unfortunate that we ever considered these sorts of people capable of such. They are proving how ingrained in subordination they truly are every day that they let democracy slip away. I applaud Bush's belief that they were good enough to do this, but it is what it is.

Now back to more important things. Like lowering my damn gas prices!

Can't say I disagree with anything the president just said on the Iraq situation.

It'll be interesting to see how the Iranian elite units fare in combat, if they do indeed end up seeing action. Bet the satellites are working overtime watching those troops.

There are about 1.5 million undocumented students.
Therefore 1000's of more teachers are hired to address this population.
Thus, unions receive 1000's of more dues, gaming more money and political clout.

Given the history between the two countries it's pretty amazing to see Iran/Iraq working together militarily. It wasn't really all that long ago that Saddam was deploying chemical weapons against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War.

Yeah some air strikes will solve this.

It's all about the Sunni/Shia split. Saddam was a Sunni fighting the Shia Iranians. Iran backed Shia Maliki against Sunni ISIS. Sunni ISIS is also fighting Shia Syrians. Sunni Saudi Arabia is backing ISIS in a proxy war against Shia Iran.

And most importantly, there's very little we can do about any of it.

Oh I know about the religious split, it's just still...actually seeing the two armies cooperating still kinda makes you do a double-take.

Yeah. Artificial national borders aren't as important as religious dogma.

I smell a vote for annexation!

I wanted to counter this beaming review of Obama. How about President Obama just shut up about Iraq already and just keep looking the other way? He quit Iraq so it would be their fight, not ours. Now let them fight.

So you don't disagree with what he said, just that he said something.

O to the I to the L

Meh, at this point, let them fight, let one side win, let that side be happy and then we deal with them. If they won't deal fairly, then we go back to fighting. I'm done with this "theory" that it's all about oil. Let's instead just react to crazy oil prices. Just let them fight.

I thought I made that clear in my follow up that I disagreed.

That's strange, because that is pretty much what he said. Any US intervention wouldn't help long-term, they need to figure it out themselves how they want things to be.

President Obama says a lot of things.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/barac...-et-1402674796

I think he just wishes it was a (R) that said it. Or you know...

The guys that own the politicians won't let that happen. We care a little because of Israel, but mostly it's about oil. There's just too much money tied at risk to just react to crazy oil prices.

Here's the full transcript:

Transcript: President Obama’s remarks on the crisis in Iraq - The Washington Post

I am not trying to predict what we WILL do, but what we SHOULD do. You might very well be right.

Whew. So he'll be consulting closely with Congress on what not to do. Seems like a good use of his time! :)

To be fair, Congress have proven themselves as being downright experts on not doing anything.

You complain when he consults Congress, you complain when he doesn't. What exactly is your preferred outcome in that regard anyways???

Not sure where you get the idea that the focus was congress. Had you read the article, you would have known that was mentioned to show he wanted to talk his options over with them.

Good point.

Umm it's right in your comment. :confused: