POLITICAL: Replace “Pick One” with “ranked choice” aka “instant runoff”

Monday, October 28, 2024

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/RANKED-CHOICE/zdpxqrolgvx/?utm_placement=newsletter

An alternate voting method that puts a premium on finding a majority and allows voters to rank all candidates, not just cast a single vote for their favorite.

By Travis Hartman and Tiana McGee
Published Oct. 24, 2024 09:00 AM EDT

*** begin quote ***

In the United States, when only two candidates are on a ballot, the results are normally quite clear — the winner has a majority, or over 50% of the vote. But when there are three or more contenders, the vote can easily split in a way that allows for someone with less than 50% of the vote to win. Which means a majority of the votes were for someone other than the winner. 

*** and ***

Alaska and Maine are currently the only two states that use this style of voting for federal elections, though Hawaii uses ranked choice voting for its special elections.

It is being used by over 50 cities in the United States and has been in place for over 100 years in Australia and Ireland.

*** end quote ***

This seems to be a vast improvement over the current system.  And it eliminates the “wasted  vote” syndrome.  

For example, here in New Jersey, voting for a third party candidate is a waste of time, attention, and effort.  The D’s swamp everything.  Without Ranked Choice Voting, voting for a Libertarian “wastes” a vote.  With it, my vote eventually counts for something.

Think the powers that own this country will ever allow “We, The Sheeple” to express their preferences?  I don’t think so.  But I could be wrong.

Kudos to Reuters for a simple graphic explanation that even a fat old white guy injineer could understand.

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RANT: Rich Missouri couple fined for poisoning Maine neighbor’s trees blocking the view

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13545601/Maine-vacation-home-Gorman-Bond-camden-trees-poison.html

Maine vacation home owners who poisoned trees obscuring stunning ocean views from their $3.5 million property are threatened with prosecution

  •     High-profile Missouri couple fined for poisoning rich neighbor’s trees 

By Dominic Yeatman For Dailymail.Com
Published: 02:17 EDT, 19 June 2024 | Updated: 08:50 EDT, 19 June 2024

*** begin quote ***

A wealthy CEO who improved the sea-view from her $3.5million Maine vacation home by poisoning her wealthy neighbor’s trees faces fresh criminal investigation after paying $1.7 million in fines and settlements.

Amelia Bond secretly sprinkled four pounds of the lethal herbicide Tebuthiuron on trees belonging to Lisa Gorman in 2022, before offering to pay for their removal when they started dying.

Bond, former head of the $500 million St Louis Foundation, has since paid $1.5 million in compensation to Gorman after tests revealed her ploy.

*** end quote ***

Argh! 

I think that just a fine is not enough.  Time to teach these folks a lesson.  I’d bar them from the State until the trees grow back.  Maybe some jail time in Missouri, or Haiti might teach them a lesson.  Throw the book at these entitled fools.

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POLITICAL: Nullification is Constitutional and effective; as is Secession if we’re will to fight

Saturday, December 9, 2017

http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2017/12/03/surprise-the-mainstream-media-is-wrong-again-yes-nullification-does-work/

Surprise, the Mainstream Media is Wrong Again: Yes, Nullification Does Work

*** begin quote ***

You don’t have to dig into a history book to prove nullification works. I can prove it does with one word.

Weed.

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, authorizing the possession, cultivation, and use of cannabis (marijuana) for limited medical use.

The federal government claims the power to strictly enforce a total prohibition of marijuana. It makes no exception for medical purposes. Despite federal law, states have advanced the issue each year. This has happened in spite of a 2005 Supreme Court opinion supporting federal prohibition, and a relentless year-to-year increase in spending and enforcement efforts by the federal government.

Today, despite ongoing attempts to enforce federal prohibition, 21 states and Washington D.C. have legalized marijuana for medical use, and 14 states and D.C. have decriminalized marijuana possession. Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington State have all legalized marijuana for recreational use. Each year, new state laws and regulations help expand the market, and each expansion further nullifies the unconstitutional federal ban in effect.

No matter what the mainstream tells you, nullification works. History proves this. The present proves this. And we will continue to prove it in the future.

*** end quote ***

Marijuana was outlawed to protect Hearst’s paper factories from competition. Fueled by that racist and untrue “Reeffer Madness”, “We, The Sheeple” were stampeded into another attempt at “Prohibition”.

Any prohibition doesn’t work. It merely raises the cost to the consumer and allows politicians and bureaucrats to exert more un-Constitutional control over “We, The Sheeple”.

Argh!

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[Disclosure: I am a financial supporter of the Tenth Amendment Center. https://shop.tenthamendmentcenter.com/product/donate/]

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POLITICAL: I thought “all powers not enumerated were reserved to the States or the People”?

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/05/04/despite-secession-talk-breaking-up-is-hard-to-do

Despite Secession Talk, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
May 04, 2017 By Mindy Fetterman

*** begin quote ***

Recently, these efforts have ranged from fairly large, ongoing campaigns in Texas and California to smaller pushes in Oklahoma, Maine, Utah, West Virginia and New York’s Long Island, among others.  

Just last month, a longshot effort to allow Californians to vote on seceding fell apart after one of the founders dropped out amid criticism of his ties to Russia. But a new group pushing secession has vowed to collect the nearly 600,000 signatures required by July to put the measure on the November 2018 ballot.

Last May, the Texas Nationalist Movement came within two votes of adding Texas independence language to the state’s Republican platform. And in Oklahoma, Republican state Sen. Joseph Silk in January introduced a bill to remove the word “inseparable” from the sentence in the state constitution describing Oklahoma as “an inseparable part of the Federal Union.”

The move for independence, whether it’s from the right of the political spectrum as in Texas, or the left as in California, reflects the political division felt across the country, said Edward Meisse, a supporter of the Yes California secession group that just disbanded. “We have two diametrically opposed philosophies in our country, and we’re just not getting anywhere,” he said. “I think we should allow states to secede so California can be California and Texas can be Texas.”

*** end quote ***

Yeah, right! Unfortunately, once the Gooferment gets power, it will never relinquish it voluntarily. People can NOT be held against their will. If an individual did it, then it’d be called “kidnapping”. But when the Gooferment does it, it’s call “jurisdiction”. Of course, once people start to refuse their cooperation to the Gooferment, it’ll collapse. It happened to the old Soviet Union; it’ll happen here too.

With all the out of control spending, unfunded and underfunded pensions, soaring “entitlement” costs, the collapse is inevitable. The only question is “who takes the ‘haircut’?”

Argh!

Secession is the only LOGICAL solution.

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POLITICAL: Maine fights a privately financed and managed toll road

Thursday, August 9, 2012

http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-natural-extension-of-bad-idea.html

Saturday, August 04, 2012
The natural extension of a bad idea

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A businessman in Maine wants to build a privately financed and managed toll road cutting east-west across Maine, saying it will make the state an important cog in the global economy.

*** end quote ***

Naturally everyone opposes it. Saying the “state”, if there was such a thing, will get stuck.

So, why can NOT the Gang, that pretends to be an organization called “the Gooferment of the purported area called Maine”, just require an insurance bond to restore the property to it’s original condition?

OH, they don’t WANT a solution!

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