From the Onion:
...Recall that violently rejecting a tyrannical government goes against everything our forefathers believed in... ...Realize that every pressing social issue is solved through civil discourse if you ignore virtually all of human history...
HUGE NEWS: Justice Kennedy, the swig vote in the Supreme Court for years, has announced his retirement.
— Michael D. Shear (@shearm) June 27, 2018
One stolen seat, and now we're looking at a potential extreme swing right. I try to avoid alarmism, but we've been slowly losing rights for the better part of two generations, and the recent Supreme Court decisions over immigration, labor organizing, and others, mean we're continuing that trend. Kennedy's retirement now could easily lead to an extremist court further eroding what little power the average American has left. Congressional Dems need to fight fire with fire over the Supreme Court, and use the same bullshit tactics the GOP used to get Gorsuch in:
The first thing all Dems need to do is get a firm mental grip on the new rules.
— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@AJentleson) June 27, 2018
McConnell annihilated every norm of the nomination process to deny Garland a hearing or vote and steal the Court for a generation.
If you play by the old rules, you're playing a fool's game.
Merrick Garland was nominated on March 16, 2016 — or 237 days before that year’s election. McConnell said that was too close to Election Day for Obama to pick and voters should decide.
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) June 27, 2018
Justice Kennedy announced his retirement today — 132 days before this year’s election.
Dem senators, repeat after me:
— Christian Finnegan (@ChristFinnegan) June 27, 2018
“The President of the United States is under investigation for collusion with a foreign adversary and obstruction of justice. There can be no SCOTUS replacement until he’s been cleared.”
Apparently the Attorney General and the White House Press Secretary have cited the Bible in defense of a "Zero Tolerance" policy that separates immigrant children from their parents. Since teaching the Bible is what I do, I thought I'd weigh in. Here we go... 1/8
— Brian Zahnd (@BrianZahnd) June 15, 2018
It's hard to come up with a justice related issue in the Bible that's more prevalent than the insistence from the Torah, the Prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles, that we must care for least among us; and significantly, special consideration is give to "the foreigner among you."
If you want to play the chapter-and-verse proof-text game, I can do that.
"The wicked snatch the fatherless child from the breast." -Job 24:9
In this text, snatching a child from her mother's breast is presented as an example of indisputable evil.
Consider this pivotal story from the Old Testament: As the book of Exodus opens the Hebrews are the cheap labor source for Egypt. But the Egyptians are worried there are too many of these foreigners. So a law is passed to permanently separate children form their parents. (!)
For those citing Romans 13 as biblical warrant for "enforcing the laws of the land," I have two things to say.
1. The man who wrote Romans 13 was executed by the gov't for not submitting to the governing authorities out of obedience to Christ.
2. The Nazis loved Romans 13.
Now let's consider Jesus.
When Jesus was asked about inheriting eternal life Jesus pointed the inquirer to loving God with all your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself. When asked, "But who is my neighbor?", Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 10:25f)
At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, "Whatever you wish others would do to you, do also to them, for this is Law and Prophets." Jesus then concluded his sermon by talking about popular roads that lead to death and ill-constructed houses doomed to fall. Selah.
If you want to argue that the blatantly cruel policy of taking children away from refugee parents seeking asylum is necessary to keep America from having too many brown people, then just say so. But don't you dare think that you have Jesus or the Bible are on your side!
If only there were a religion in which the central figure had to flee state-ordered violence as a baby and find refuge with his parents in a foreign land. https://t.co/0NOUd9sUZF
— Ken Schultz (@KSchultz3580) June 14, 2018
One big problem with most voting systems in the US is everyone feels like they have to vote Rebublican or Democrat, because everyone thinks everyone else (who votes) will pick R or D, because our ballots are all-or-nothing: You pick one person. You might not like them the most! But you can pick only one, so it's a game of balancing who we think will be the best, versus who we think has any chance of winning, given everyone else is worried about electing the person they hate. So we get one of two candidates no-one likes much.
This is stupid; does anyone like this system? So Maine's trying a ranked-choice ballot, where you can actually pick the person you want and not "waste" your vote! Put the person you want at the top; if they get the fewest votes, they're eliminated, but then your vote goes to your number two pick instead of being thrown out! (Repeat this cycle until there's a clear winner.) Everyone's voice is heard; everyone's preferences are taken into account. In fact, everyone's actual preferences are now known (another problem with our current system: we have no clue what people actually prefer!)
Now if only we could pass this everywhere...
Maine voters Tuesday became the first in the country to use ranked-choice voting in a statewide election, and despite predictions to the contrary, there was no widespread confusion or chaos.
Instead, ranked-choice voting and the related people’s veto on the fate of ranked-choice itself appeared to boost interest in the June election, which in turn showed that the voting system worked much the way supporters said it would.
...
According to the Secretary of State’s Office, the ballots will be brought to Augusta starting Thursday, and the tabulation process will begin. In the next round, the candidate who received the fewest first-place votes will be dropped. Everyone who voted for that candidate will have their second-place choices counted instead, and that process will continue until a candidate has received more than half the votes.
What will be left is a nominee who appeals broadly to the electorate – a candidate who received not only first-place votes but a lot of second- and third-place selections as well. A passionate minority won’t be able to hijack a campaign featuring a large field like before, leaving the majority unhappy but stuck with the selection. No longer do we have to spend valuable time arguing over spoilers instead of debating the issues.
As the accompanying chart indicates, over the past decade, net issuance of public stock — new issues minus buybacks — has been a negative $3 trillion. This reduction in the supply of public shares in American companies, coupled with an increased global demand for them, goes a long way toward explaining why stocks are now priced at 25 times earnings, well above their historical average.
The most significant and troubling aspect of this buyback boom, however, is that despite record corporate profits and cash flow, at least a third of the shares are being repurchased with borrowed money, bringing the corporate debt to an all-time high, not only in an absolute sense but also in relation to profits, assets and the overall size of the economy.
It used to be that issuing bonds was the most common way for corporations to borrow money. A decade ago, in 2008, there was $2.8 trillion in outstanding bonds from U.S. corporations. Today, it’s $5.3 trillion, after the record $1.7 trillion of new bonds issued last year, according to Dealogic, and $500 billion more issued this year.
In recent years, at least half of those new bonds have been either “junk” bonds, the riskiest, or BBB, the lowest rating for “investment-grade” bonds. And investor demand for riskier bonds has largely been driven by the growth of bond ETFs — or exchange traded funds — securities that trade like stocks but are really just pools of different corporate bonds. ETFs have made it easier for individual investors to participate in the corporate bond market. A decade ago, about $15 billion worth of bond ETFs were being traded. Today, that market has grown to $300 billion.
Stuff to keep an eye on:
...Taken together, the tea leaves generally point in the same direction -- there's potential trouble ahead. Falling term spreads, low credit spreads, rising oil prices and rising interest rates could point to a recession in late 2019 or 2020 -- just in time for the next presidential election, which depending on your perspective is either great or worrying.
Of course, given the difficulty of predicting recessions, that forecast must be regarded as a highly uncertain one.
We already don't vote often enough. We shouldn't be making it any harder. We should have automatic registration at birth, and states should check registration every time we have contact with a state agency (like DMV).
Instead, the doors are wide open for skewing the system toward the party in power, through "common sense" rules (often selectively enforced, on top of their direct effects).