okay...


Not surprising, but okay...


I wasn't making you culpable for anything you didn't write. In fact, I credited the quotes to those who did write them. So, get over yourself buddy.


Again, I'm not surprised.


I am aware that he gets under your skin - you and your friends make that pretty obvious LOL.

Look, I get it. You're joking around - it's no big deal and I'm sure Kevyn isn't all that offended by all the insults you folks hurl at him. I guess I'm just saying that in the aggregate, it's the abundance of hostile reactions to what he says that winds up looking so petulant. So if Kevyn IS a troll, he's a damned good one.

I'm not disputing any of the facts. I'm saying that you can actually construct an entire illusion with proven facts alone and that's an artform that's been around since ancient Greece. I'll give you an example... the unemployment rate that presidents always mention when it drops. Obama did it and now Trump is doing it. They use one simple fact. The unemployment rate. It's an indisputable fact that the unemployment rate today is better than it's been for a long time... The illusion created is that there are fewer people out of work, but the part that gets left out is that the unemployment rate only counts people who are drawing on unemployment benefits. None of the people that have been out of work and no longer qualify for benefits are included in the picture. The fact remains true, but the context is misleading. It's a basic element of rhetorical discourse.


The article you pasted states that the author, Trent England, is a legal policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, so there's the connection and it seemed sufficient to use the HF as the example in my response.

Not even the HF itself will suggest they are unbiased. The HF is and always has been a think tank for conservative policy. You don't get a job at the HF as a policy analyst unless you have a conservative bias. This alone presents no issue for me, but as a frequent reader of HF publications, I have become very familiar with their use of rhetoric and I only mentioned it because I recognize the similarities between the article and a lot of HF publications.

Saying that I need to apply my standard to the WSJ doesn't help because I used to subscribe to that paper and I still read it on occasion... it's the same thing. Both organizations are informative, factual and respectable, the farthest thing from crack-pots like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck. But that doesn't mean they aren't biased or incapable of packaging facts to encourage a false impression.

England may have been invited to speak as an individual but his involvement in the Heritage Foundation all but guarantees that his personal bias is in-line with that of the HF and the transcript of his speech, at least in my mind, confirms that.


Well, of course that wasn't his point. When you're promoting a narrative you don't include issues that conflict with it. Nor do you overtly suggest things like the suppression of free-will if you know your audience would disagree. But the hard fact here is that he is defending the current election system which DOES suppress free-will. Sometimes all you need is logic to reveal the facts.


When you imply something it means you aren't stating it directly, so it's not like I can highlight it. But I have been explaining it.


Doesn't defending an existing law imply that you are arguing for its existence?

Also, I don't think think you're understanding my point. I actually support the Electoral College system as defined in the Constitution. The problem I have is with the current distribution of representatives, not the Electoral College and I'm dumbfounded by how this critical distinction is so invisible to so many Americans. We even have presidential candidates on the Democratic side arguing for the removal of the Electoral College. I don't know if they are really that confused or if they simply don't have the faith in their potential voters to understand the complications. It seems slogans rather than explanations win elections these days.

I think England is doing pretty much the same. He probably understands the distinction. He probably understands that the problem isn't the EC but the distribution of representatives, but he knows that the EC is catching all the flak on media and so he is using the facts of the EC (as designed) to defend it while ignoring the unfair distribution of representatives that has been developing since 1913 and turning the EC (as designed) into an agent of voter suppression (as NOT designed).

So it's by virtue of what he is saying AND what he is NOT saying that I am suggesting his support for voter suppression. He isn't saying it directly but that's how political rhetoric works. It's the art of suggesting something without actually saying it.


Why does everything have to be overtly stated? You agreed with my point because logic dictates, so what does it matter if Mr. England mentions it or not? Obviously, this is something he chose not to divulge.


Individual personal responsibility and free will is pretty much EVERYONE's stated foundational belief. Liberals, conservatives, libertarians - all of them claim that same virtue because it's popular. That doesn't mean they actually support it.

I don't know enough about Trent England to reach any conclusions about him as a person or a writer. But I am using very simple logic to test his argument in this case alone and I am finding conflicts. On one hand he is "saying" that people should have a voice, but on the other hand the system he is defending is preserving the unfair distribution of representatives that in reality conflicts with his "stated" belief and this is a reality he is leaving out. Either that or he is actually unaware of the contradiction - I'm assuming that as a policy analyst at HF, he is too intelligent for the later.


So, you are actually saying that all voters get to decide who will be excluded from voting. That should be fun to watch - LOL


Yes! I will always agree with that.


And you already conceded to the fact that the only alternative to the "tyranny" of majority rule is the "tyranny" of minority rule. This is the reality we have to deal with. As the saying goes, you can satisfy some people some of the time, but you can't satisfy all the people all the time. If every time an election happens the losers start calling the results a "tyranny" then I guess we'll always have a "tyranny".

I know I agreed that a majority would prevail (that's how democracy works) and at the time, we were calling that a "tyranny of the majority" because everyone else is. But is it really a tyranny? This is where I say, no it's not. And I'm calling bullsh*t on the founders for this one.

It wasn't ALL the founders either, it was just those from the southern states that wanted more representation in the federal government than their populations justified. They wanted to use their slave populations to justify more even though their slaves couldn't vote. They used the term "tyranny of the majority" as a buzzword in their arguments and it was total BS. Tyranny doesn't mean you got outvoted, it means you can't vote. Not the same thing. People need think about this instead of subscribing to the rhetoric of power-hungry slave owners from the 18th century.

If everyone gets an equal vote, there is no actual tyranny. Yes, there are losers but they are not barred from voting, nor are their votes devalued. The only system that would be better for all citizens would be something called a miracle.

In the meantime, with the current distortion in representation, it takes 5 votes in California to counter 1 vote in Wyoming... clearly not a fair situation. I would even argue that it's a partial tyranny because Californians effectively only get a 5th of a vote.

The only argument I've heard against a popular vote that makes any sense involves regional conflicts of interest and I think this can be handled on a case by case basis because I don't think those conflicts are as abundant as people think. If you can present at least one regional conflict of interest, I'll be more than happy to suggest a better solution for parity than the partial tyranny Trent England is defending.

In a nutshell, this is my position...

1. Stick with the Constitution which dictates that Congress shall elect the president.
2. Use the surrogate voters (Electoral College) to avoid corruption in Congress as that has ALWAYS been its purpose.

Those are the easy steps because it's already done.

3. Align representation to the most recent census to correct the 104-year fault that makes our democracy the most unfair example in the developed world.

4. Resolve regional conflicts on a case-by-case basis.

Put all the gloom and doom references to "majority rule" to bed. It hasn't been a valid issue since the 13th Amendment, when 3/5th humans were eliminated

I'm always up for more argument on this, but I just want to make sure people understand my position before engaging any further. I'm sure you understand.

I currently live in PA and I find the taxes here are much higher than they are in CA. I pay a lot more property tax in PA that's for damned sure. CA tends to lean on things like luxury tax to avoid cutting into people's ability to pay for necessities, you probably won't find a higher tax on cigarettes for instance and yes, sometimes it seems a desperate attempt to hike revenues. If California companies like Google and Apple actually paid their taxes, it probably wouldn't be such a problem.

I know your trying to drill the point that austerity is the answer, but I disagree. Just look at what austerity did to Greece. It's a short-sighted solution that fails every time and I don't know if Republicans will ever come to terms with that.

While I think you exaggerate the magnitude of California's financial woes, I will concede that over the long-run it IS a problem... but not without pointing out that almost every state in the union except maybe Alaska has the same problem, just on different scales. California's debt would crush a state like Kansas because the GDP in Kansas is a tiny fraction of what it is in California. In fact because of the smaller GDP, Kansas could never even develop such a high debt. It's popular for red state commentators to blow the minds of red state residents by pointing to the size of California's debt without explaining that they also have a much larger GDP.

I think the crux of the "problem" in CA specifically, is that it's policies are always being interrupted by a very dynamic democracy. One thing people don't seem to realize about California is that it's not as liberal as people think, there are also a LOT of conservatives here. The agricultural Central Valley rivals the redness of Texas, all the way down to the holy rollers on the radio. As a result, policies that were set to fund programs are often reversed resulting in a train-wreck and a lot of finger-pointing.

If we can just stick to a plan and enforce corporate taxes I think the problems would disappear.

That being said... here's an excerpt from the executive summary for California's 2019 budget.

The Budget Is in Remarkably Good Shape. It is difficult to overstate how good the budget’s condition is today. Under our estimates of revenues and spending, the state’s constitutional reserve would reach $14.5 billion by the end of 2019‑20. In addition, we project the Legislature will have an additional $14.8 billion in resources available to allocate in the 2019‑20 budget process. The Legislature can use these funds to build more budget reserves or make new one‑time and/or ongoing budget commitments. By historical standards, this surplus is extraordinary.

Again, certain numbers might be intentionally left out of the picture to produce a rosy tint, but I've been reading a LOT of rosy reports from a LOT of sources inside and outside of CA about this in recent years. I actually do think Jerry Brown has done an outstanding job of cleaning things up as he did once before way back when.

So, I think you bring up some good points, but I think your conclusions are somewhat biased. It's also a *little* annoying when you KNOW your state is a giver state so you KNOW some of the money you pay in federal tax is going to other states to subsidize them and the people in those "taker states" are telling you how financially irresponsible YOUR state is. As my English dad would say... "that's a bit thick." ;)


That pretty much describes the condition of the entire U.S. economy.

That's a matter of perspective. If you ignore all the abuses, the exploitations and the oppression so common in our history, then yes, the picture looks pretty good.


That's just plain false. The fact is, before the Republicans initiated the progressive movement a little over 100 years ago (a movement currently championed by the left) the vast majority of Americans WERE poor and frequently abused by their employers. The middle-class is a relatively new thing that came about as American workers fought for better compensation. You take a lot for granted my friend.


If you are still referring to the poor, probably not. Most impoverished people are too busy trying to survive to find much time for politics. The "left" is generally a reference to people who are themselves OK, but want to help others in need. The right appears to have a hard time understanding that, but I suspect it's more a matter of not wanting to admit it.

Nothing in education is a guarantee but what we CAN say is that critical thinking has never been a part of K12 education. For any kind of formal training in critical thinking you have to go to college. That doesn't mean you can't learn critical thinking without college, you can, but for the formal training... college.


I agree that college graduates are increasingly finding no return on their investment. This is a trend that started long before Obama the Great and has more to do with the profit potential of private universities that churn out more graduates than the job market needs. If anything, Obama the Great made public college more accessible to more Americans but that has nothing to do with the value of the degrees being earned. In any case, I'm not sure how any of this relates to critical thinking. Whether or not a college degree translates into money has absolutely nothing to do with critical thinking. Indeed, most career paths don't even require critical thinking.


I doubt that. Last time I was in England I noticed that a LOT of these entry level jobs were taken by highly educated Europeans that couldn't find jobs to match their education level. The only difference is that these young Europeans didn't owe anything. Burdening students with enormous debt is a distinctly American tradition.


You never took liberal arts. I can tell. Liberal arts is the category of education that includes critical thinking and if you were thusly educated you would know that the formality is open-ended. In fact a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their heads around liberal arts because it's so abstract and lacks the mechanical rigor of "correct answers". So, if formal training in critical thinking stifles a persons ability to test and evaluate concepts it's because that person failed to understand what he was being taught.


So, this is a perfect example of how conclusions are reached without critical thinking. I'm very familiar with this argument and it seems you are simply subscribing to it. A critical thinker wouldn't subscribe so readily... he would ask more questions like, WHY are these conservatives being banned? The subscriber will probably think the answer is obvious because it's included in the subscription... "liberals don't want to allow conservative ideas." But the critical thinker would look beyond that...

...He would notice the complete absence of ANY policy on ANY campus that prohibits conservatives views or the right to present them in public speech.
...He would then notice that such presentations are canceled on a case-by-case basis.
...After questioning each case, he would begin to recognize a pattern...

I'm using Berkley as the exhibit here, since that school seems to be a focal point for this argument and I've already done the research. The pattern is really obvious once you see it. The ONLY time a presentation is denied is when the subject matter falls into a category of speech that is known to cause unrest AND the security that would keep students safe in such situations is unattainable. Ann Coulter's case is a perfect example... She scheduled a speech a few years ago at Berkley. The school knew her subject-matter had the potential to cause unrest and gave her some scheduling options where security was available. She came back and said she wanted a different day. The school, which outsources security, was not able to make it happen for the day Coulter requested. Most honest presenters would have continued to work with the school to find a date that works for them and for the school, but Coulter instead went to Fox and declared that Berkley denied her because they don't want her to speak. In other words, she was reinforcing the false premise that you apparently subscribe to. Everything else I have to say about that, such as her intention to sabotage the school is speculation but I think reasonable.



The privileged ones are... People like Princess Ivanka who has never spent a minute of her life in reality. Many other students work their way through college, like I did.


Again, lots of college students are working their way through college doing the same things those lesser educated Republicans are doing at the same age. So it's not a strong argument. I DO understand what you're trying to say here and I'm familiar with the sentiment. But it's mostly grudge.

I did college AND trade school and I have to say, the trade school was a better deal for me when it came to starting a career, but that's because, like I said, very few careers require critical thinking. Trade schools don't teach critical thinking, they teach what you need to know to follow procedures. My college paid off when I made the move from operations to engineering because while companies don't mind hiring trade school graduates to follow procedures they prefer college graduates to work on innovation projects.

So if we're still talking about critical thinking, your point about trade school education is entirely irrelevant. Like I said, most jobs don't require it. Truck drivers, electricians, construction workers, pretty much ALL the blue-collar work and a surprising portion of white-collar work, such as accounting, falls into the "follow procedures" category and I think trade schools ARE the best option for that. Critical thinking isn't critical until you get to innovator jobs that require out-of-the-box thinking and probably accounts for less than 10% of the job market.

I think for most people, the value of critical thinking is a matter of self-defense in a world where people are constantly being scammed or misled and that includes politics. Exploitive politicians like Trump get elected BECAUSE of a lack of critical thinking among the voters. When critical thinking is sparse, rhetoric and falsehoods win. As Jonathan Swift wrote more than 300 years ago, "Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.” Why? Because critical thinking is less common than bandwagon-loyalty, that's why.

Finally, I want to expand on my first response... As I've said, You don't have to go to college to learn critical thinking. In fact, I think the BEST opportunity for developing a person's critical thinking is at home at a very early age. Sadly, many children are told what to do without giving them choices. THIS is what stifles critical thinking more than anything else. Among the families I know personally, I find the conservative households are the worst when it comes to allowing their children to explore concepts on their own. They are more often told what to do and what to think as part of the process the parents *think* is necessary to cultivate an upright citizen. It's unfortunate because children are most adaptable at an early age and when they are not raised to make their own decisions, they struggle more with the formal concepts of critical thinking when they get to college and THIS is why the point about which party has the more "educated" members is often misunderstood - it's not that college MAKES people better critical thinkers, it's that people who are already more capable of critical thought are more likely to succeed in college. So the score is more a symptom than a cause.

I can see the mistake. I also thought the OP was a double when I first looked at it. I noticed he hasn't been back since so there's a good chance he hasn't even realized the mistake. I thought his comment was more witty than insulting (or it would have been if the OP was a double) What is obvious is that he was directing his comment to the OP not debeda.

What I find hilarious about all this though is how you folks are demanding that he apologize after trashing him with insults that are sooo much worse.

"He is a pathetic excuse for a human being." - crazylibertarian

"He has to be the most miserable human on the planet." - tug484

Honestly, you sound like petulant children.

That's funny... the best thing you ever did in your career is end it. I tell ya what, if you couldn't handle common core then I would say you're right.


If they were getting great results on the STAR test then it was either because they had other teachers to help them or you were covering the material they needed to know.

I think it's too early to tell if Common Core will work or not. From what I can tell, the people who bitch about it don't really get it.

The traditional American education system didn't teach people to think. It only taught people to memorize things they've been told. As a result, we have generations of people who have been conditioned to subscribe without intellectual challenge.

On one hand, that makes us easy to herd like sheep. "4 x 4 = 16 BECAUSE my teacher said so" turns into "Tax cuts are good for us because Trump says so". I would even go so far as to say this fits in with the flock paradigm where Americans raised in the tradition of religious hierarchy are conditioned to follow on faith alone, which is why I think the Christian-Right, more than any other demographic, are inclined to follow without challenge.

But another consequence is the fact that America has become dependent on foreign innovators. Most of what we call American ingenuity actually comes from innovators that were imported from other places with better education systems. For some business leaders this is not such a bad deal. Stupid voters who can't innovate and smart innovators that can't vote. But others have decided it would be better to teach American kids to actually think.

For a lot of older Americans this is an understandable shock. Their poor education leaves them struggling with abstract concepts and they get frustrated with having to figure it out. If someone can just tell them what the answer is, they can memorize it. ;)

Common Core is an attempt to teach kids how to actually think so if no one is around to tell them what the product of 4 and 4 is, they can figure it out through their own logic.

Again, I don't know if Common Core will actually work, but at least I know the intention behind it and it's funny as hell to see simple minded people react to it.

You can't prove that because some of your "conservative" media channels lie through their teeth. LOL - See? We can play that game too.

It's not that hard to catch either... Republicans have come up with too many theories and accusations about why the popular vote was miscounted to take any of it seriously. The one thing all these theories prove is that Republicans can't stand the idea that they could be outvoted.

What part did you not understand?

I don't think World Citizen could be any clearer (or lucid. LOL) He is asking how we feel about raging as we do over superficial things like ideology while our fellow humans are suffering from real issues like starvation, warfare and disease.

My answer to that question is that some of us don't give a crap about our fellow humans and are more concerned about winning ideological arguments. The problem is that obsessions with ideological arguments can often result in real consequences. For instance, millions of people are on the verge of being inflicted with the consequence of climate change which has been allowed to develop largely because ideological differences in the policy machine that dictates our response to global warming.

Good point slatten. Mmmm. so I've changed my mind - I don't want equal representation now. (LOL - just kidding). Seriously, if I could have it my way, I would make every voter take a citizenship test first to eliminate the millions of knuckleheads that vote for party because they don't have the intelligence to vote for issues. Trump would not have even got past the primaries.

But that would be a tall order because the last thing those who own this country want is an educated democracy. The reason why these plutocrats favor the unfair advantages of the little states is because the little states are in general less educated and therefore more easily fooled. Asking the plutocracy for a vetting system to weed the dumbshits out of public decisions would be like asking Putin to give us Crimea.

I think the best thing we can do is give all citizens an equal chance to participate in public decisions and do what we can to educate ourselves and each other to increase the odds that decisions would be sound.

Thanks for posting that two-part transcript. BTW, if you're just copying what someone else wrote then you can always link to it. (saves room on the servers) ;)

I read the transcript... it's actually pretty good rhetoric. The facts are there for validation while at the same time developing a misleading context. This has always been the genius of the Heritage Foundation and similar think tanks. I mention this because it ties in directly to the point being made in England's speech, that a democracy based on a popular vote is subject to tyranny by the majority.

I can't argue with that because it's a fact... but that doesn't mean other facts aren't being omitted and that's the basis of this kind of rhetoric. What is notably absent from this particular spin is the distinction between LAW and WILL.

In other words, if you make it a LAW that every citizen gets an equal vote, it will be left to the WILL of the people to keep it real. If you make it a LAW that citizens get unequal votes then WILL (for many) becomes irrelevant.

Trent England is implying that we must suppress popular votes as a matter of LAW. There is no way anyone can say that doesn't interfere with free will. In fact for all this worry about tyranny of the majority, the suggested solution is just another form of tyranny... tyranny of the elite.

And who gets to decide who the elite will be? Republicans? Rural states?

At least if you make the LAW equal, ALL American citizens will have a chance to exercise their will. Trust me, I have grave concerns that many of us, maybe even the majority will screw it up. We Americans are by far the most politically uneducated people in the developed world, so my expectations are not high. But at least the LAW would give us the freedom to TRY and make good decisions and if we don't, we only have ourselves to blame.

In my opinion, equal law suites the American tradition better. The "land of the free, home of the brave" means we value freedom and are willing to endure all the threats and dangers that come with it. Giving everyone an equal vote = freedom. Enduring the threat of "mob rule" is the price we should be willing to pay for it. The same can be said of any of our freedoms... the threat of hate speech, the threat of mass shootings, these are all prices we pay for our freedoms which is exactly why the land of the free is home to the brave.

If your scared of majority rule, then you should live in China where the LAW makes majority rule impossible.

Trent England left ALL of this out of course because he (along with the Heritage Foundation) wants us to submit to LAWS that block our freedom of self-determination.

I believe it was 3/5ths.


How did they with representatives? I'm not sure what you mean.


I don't have a "revision". I was describing the facts. If you're referring to my suggestion that every citizen be counted equally, the idea is to change the distribution of representatives. I was not suggesting that we remove the EC (as I said, the EC makes no difference). Nor did I suggest we switch to a popular vote (because that would require a Constitutional Amendment, which would not be needed if representation returned to what the founders intended before Congress broke it in 1913.)

If you're problem is with my suggestion that we give each citizen an equal vote, then I'm sorry but I think that's the way it should be and so did the founders of this republic.

Let me ask you this... Do you think it's fair that the 40 million Americans in California are suppressed? Because they are. I've done the math... one voter in Wyoming has the power of 5 voters in California. So your concern about people in small states not having a voice is exactly the reality of the larger states today, which actually makes you a hypocrite... You oppose the popular vote because you think it might give an unfair advantage to larger states so you defend the status quo because it gives an unfair advantage to rural states which isn't fair either, nor is it what the founders intended despite popular misinformation.

To this day, no one on your side has ever answered this. Gee, I wonder why.


Yes, a popular vote is ONE FORM of democracy... People have been calling it "mob rule" for centuries, most notably in situations where tyrannical forces are trying to break down democracy by weakening the faith citizens have in their own determination. This was the case during the fascist and Soviet takeovers from almost 100 years ago and with fascism back on the rise it looks like it's happening in America right now. And yet... another example of "mob rule" is the popular vote that Americans participate in every two years to elect our representatives. Where's outrage there bro?


No... 49% will be unhappy because they didn't win. There's no reason to assume the next vote won't be different. I understand that in many rural communities it's all about loyalty and that's fine, but most Americans live in places where they actually think about the issues and their minds DO change. Maybe you should give American citizens a little more credit instead of assuming they are all mindless sheep.

A lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 won't be voting for him in 2020.

I got that from the debt clock for California. https://www.usdebtclock.org/state-debt-clocks/state-of-california-debt-clock.html So I'm not pulling it out of my ass... I read your link and it starts off talking about the contradictions in the estimates... (My years in business intelligence has educated me pretty well on how easy it is to come up with multiple perspectives on one data set, depending on the story you want to tell. It's kind of a sport). So my question is... how do we know the number YOU found is accurate?

Also, notice the authors have pointed out that they are *projecting* future values... (sneaky). So, in case you didn't know this... that 2.8 trillion is NOT the actual debt - it's a projection of what the debt MIGHT be in the future.

Look, you can labor the numbers all you want if you think that's going to prove some point. I think the bigger point is that debt by itself is a meaningless assessment of an economy. Heck the U.S. has the largest debt in the world... According to your shallow logic that would make America the shittiest place on earth. Is it? Or is the U.S. (like California) a massive economy that can handle massive debts?

Seriously, if this is all you got... there's no argument and I already know you hate California for whatever reason. So we're done, right?

OK, well - first of all states have NEVER been sovereign entities, they have ALWAYS been subordinate to the republic which is why federal representation is an issue in the first place.

That being said, yes, the tradition is that states should be as close to sovereign as possible and as an anti-federalist, I have a true appreciation for that. I was just curious what your reasoning is. I agree that sharing a representative between states conflicts with the autonomy of the state, but so does the entire federal government, so I'm not seeing a convincing argument here.

The other point about states is that they are not always homogeneous either. Sometimes people can be at odds with each other within in a single state. It seems a lot of people don't realize this but California is incredibly conflicted and so is Texas. So again, your argument seems arbitrary.

But that's fine - let's just say for argument's sake that no state should share a representative. This leaves us with the math problem that led me to the suggestion in the first place.

If Wyoming with a population of 577,737 people gets 1 representative California with a population of 40 million would need 69 representatives (14 more than they already have) to provide each voter the same representation. That's just one, currently underrepresented state. Obviously, we would need a much larger House of Representatives. So we could do that too, but if we want to stay close to the 435 seats we currently have in the House, red states are going to need to start sharing.

It's one or the other - I don't care which. But continuing to allow a small minority of Americans to dominate the vast majority is undemocratic at the very least.