Stidmatt

Fact: There is nothing stating in the US constitution that electors in the electoral college must be chosen by the people of that state.

Fact: The tenth amendment clearly states powers not delegated to the federal government are delegated to the states, or the people. This clearly falls into the state rights category.

With these two facts in mind, if Georgia and Arizona had used this tool (the two Republican trifecta states Biden won narrow pluralities in) then that would not have flipped the election.

But this could potentially swing a major presidential election, we only have to go as far back as 2012.

 

Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida had Republican state trifectas in 2012. If those states had passed laws stating that the state legislature would appoint electors and determine how they would vote via a winner takes all vote by the state legislature, the 2012 Presidential map would have looked like this:

Which would have given Romney the Presidency.

For the sake of democracy itself, we need to abolish the Electoral College and elect the President of the United States using ranked voting with a direct popular vote.

This is one more reason why I was so excited when Gretchen Whitmer won in 2018.

This is also why Democrats need to play hard ball to defend our democracy and win elections (without breaking the law) or they won’t be able to play at all.

Yesterday Trump was acquitted for his very obvious crimes in attacking the United States Congress. The impeachment process is over, and we will never need to focus on it again.

Which means there is no excuse to get business done, pass the stimulus and for congress to do everything in their power to end this epidemic which is ravaging our country.

The very obvious list of priorities include:

• Ending coronavirus
• Supporting Black Lives Matter‘s objectives
• Fighting climate change
• Passing health care legislation to plug the holes in our health care system at a minimum

A majority of Americans support all of these main tenants. They are important goals which will make a real difference in people’s lives, and will help galvanize support for Democrats. After losing impeachment, the Democratic Party needs some really large wins in order to keep voters motivated over the next year. Fortunately for Democrats, mobilizing their base and improving the State of the Union require the same policies.

If Democrats need to destroy the filibuster in order to work on these 4 goals, it will be worth it, because it will galvanize support.

Which leads us to the Senate elections in 2022. There are several important pickups which Democrats can do if they can mobilize voters in a positive matter like they did in 2018.

I believe Democrats can potentially pickup seats Republicans in the following states:

• Florida
• Iowa
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• Wisconsin

We need to defend Georgia and Arizona with effective mobilizing of course, but this is definitely possible.

My reasoning for each state:

Florida

Florida has been a swing state for a long time. Marco Rubio won 52% of the vote in 2016 and won against former Republican Patrick Murphy. Florida has been hard hit by coronavirus, and if Democrats are able to control the epidemic and get the vote out among people most impacted by coronavirus (which will be easy to find which zip codes are hardest hit) then there is a path to victory. We should run a strong progressive for the seat in Florida. New Democrats are on a 26 year losing streak in the state. Every New Democrat Presidential nominee has lost that state since Clinton won it when I was 3 years old. Let’s not make that mistake again. Unfortunately we have Val Demings who is a New Democrat and Alan Grayson who opposes the independence of the Federal Reserve. I don’t think we will win Florida.

Iowa

Abby Finkenauer has experience winning elections, though she lost in 2020. Neither candidate is ideal, hopefully Abby Finkenauer can squeak out a win. The other candidate has never won an election.

Ohio

Tim Ryan is going to be the candidate. He supports Medicare for All. He has consistently won elections in the 13th congressional district which sometimes votes Republican. I think he can win. I hope he does.

Pennsylvania

John Fetterman has already won a statewide election. Malcolm Kenyatta would be good. Connor Lamb is a New Democrat.

We have to go with John Fetterman on this one. He has proven he can win Pennsylvania. He will win the election.

Wisconsin

Mandela Barnes is going to win. He has already won statewide elections and is the Lieutenant Governor. He is leading in the polls. He has been endorsed by Elizabeth Warren and John Fetterman. Mandela Barnes is going to be the next Senator from Wisconsin.

 

I think we are almost certainly going to win in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. We have great candidates who have proven they can win statewide elections. I think there is a chance we can win Ohio as well, which will give us 49 Democrats, 47 Republicans, 2 Independents who caucus with Democrats, and 2 Dixiecrats who vote with Republicans. That’s enough to abolish the filibuster and pass legislation next year.

 

That is how Democrats can gain control of the Senate this November.

1 out of 3 Fortune 500 cities are headquartered in 6 metropolitan areas. New York has 65, Chicago has 33, Dallas has 22, Houston has 21,and Minneapolis and San Francisco have 18 each.

We’re going to ignore Texas because of the great blackout of 2021, which is bad for business.

Which leaves us with 4 cities. New York and Chicago were historically much larger than the Bay Area, and Minneapolis punches far above its weight.

What makes Minneapolis and San Francisco outpace Los Angeles and Washington DC?

Well… let’s look at the following facts:

In the 1990s Arne Carlson was a very moderate Republican governor of Minnesota. He invested heavily in transit and education. Minneapolis led the country in investing heavily in building one of the most educated workforce in the nation. This was work which had been built up over multiple decades with Minnesota having a fairly bipartisan consensus which led them to having one of the most successful economies in the world. In a region which is dominated by a former over-reliance of manufacturing and economic inflexibility, 20 years of government in Minnesota built a modern workforce diversified into many different industries which made them the richest state in the Midwest.

The same story can be found in California. In the 50s and 60s California invested heavily into education, and in the 1970s there was one region in this country with a large educated workforce, a growing transit network, and many quickly growing companies. That area is the San Francisco Bay Area.

At the same time that Chicago was selling off the Skyway, New York failed to maintain the subway, Texas has unreliable power, and almost every other city in the United States was busy selling off their transit systems and becoming car dependent, Minneapolis and San Francisco grew that great combination of great transit and world class education which allow them to punch above their weight.

The only other city in the United States which has the potential to punch above their weight like San Francisco and Minneapolis is Denver, which has the good transit network which is necessary to build a well functioning metropolitan area.

In every other major city in the United States if a company wants to expand it needs to ensure that there will be enough parking for all of their employees. But this is not the case in the Bay Area, New York, Chicago, and Minneapolis. There can be improvements in local route connections, but compared to any other major city they stand out.

Boston is another city with great transit, excellent education, and Massachusetts boasts the second highest average income in the nation. I think their economy is less dominated by giants. In a way this is more healthy for Boston and the competition probably contributes significantly to Massachusetts having the second highest income in the nation.

If you look around the United States, nothing looks like it will change.

• Seattle is finally building a transit network which will be sufficient for how big the city was in 2000, and it will be running in 2040. It will never catch up.
• Portland uses MAX which is extremely low capacity, and there are no plans to upgrade the system or even extend it to Vancouver, Washington.
• Los Angeles is growing its transit network, but it will take decades for it to work for most people in the region.
• DC is dominated by the federal government, and this is unlikely to change.

Looking towards the future, cities which I expect to only grow in the future have a large population, high educational attainment in their state (at least 30% of their states population have at least a bachelors degree), and good quality transit (at least one system needs at least 1000 riders per mile, which is a quality metric, and be at least 160 km long, showing that it is long). Those cities have followed the California formula which is what created Silicon Valley. They also have stable electric grids, sorry Texas, you need to fix your shit. These cities also have at least 2 million people so they have enough people to compete on the world stage. Those cities are:

• New York
• Chicago
• Washington DC
• San Francisco Bay Area

The reasons for these are the following:

• Building a big company means people need to not be stuck in traffic. Transit is a must.
  • Traffic sets a hard limit to how far a city can grow. In order to truly compete with an area like the Bay Area, you need to be able to grow your population. If you start growing a tech sector somehow, and your population starts to grow and your city is clogged with traffic, your growth will stop.
• Building a big successful economy needs a lot of people.
• Building high value added economies requires people to be educated. The more people have a bachelors degree, the better.

This is why no other city in the United States compares. No other city in the United States is going to grow to beat the wealth which is found in these four cities for at least another 50 years unless if there are some major policy changes in the very near future which plan not just on fulfilling the needs of past growth, but also future growth.

Welcome to the Bay Area, the hub of American tech.

References:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2018/11/01/fortune-500-companies-list-cities/38215229/

First of all, Mississippi was not a state when it was part of the Confederacy. If that was true, then it would never have needed to be readmitted into the union. The fact it was readmitted (along with all the other treasonous states) means they were not states of the United States when they joined the confederacy.

In order to be a state a state needs to ratify the entire US constitution on the day it is accepted by congress. The states must then submit a state constitution to  congress, all of which state that they accept the US Constitution as the highest law of the land in whole as it stands when they become states.

For 49 different states this is not an issue, and for all but one state which was a state in the Confederate States of America, they ratified all existing amendments when they became states.

Except for Mississippi. Mississippi had not ratified the 13th amendment until 2013, which means it was wrongfully given congressional representation in 1870.

But there’s an issue here… and its a big one. Mississippi didn’t fully ratify the 13th amendment until 2013 when it finally got the paperwork in to Congress about its ratification of the 13th amendment, which means it didn’t technically fulfill the requirements of statehood until I was in college!

But what’s more, Mississippi never ratified the 17th, 21st, 23rd, 24th, 26th, or 27th amendment.

Also, if we look at the original text of An Act to admit the State of Mississippi to Representation in the Congress of the United States it does not state that Mississippi had fully ratified the US constitution, meaning that law is unconstitutional and should be overturned by the Supreme Court. Each US State is required to ratify the entire US constitution as it stands when it becomes a state, as the Constitution of Washington State says:

SECTION 2 SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land.

Since Mississippi has never fully ratified the constitution in full at any point since it was given representation of congress since it left the union, Mississippi has never once ratified the entire constitution at any point in time since it left the union, meaning it is still not legally a state until it finishes ratifying the US constitution. This means that to this very day it is not entitled to representation in the US Senate, US House, or the Electoral College.

What are the consequences of this action?

1. The US Senators from Mississippi are illegal, there are 46 Democrats, 48 Republicans, 2 independents, and 2 Dixiecrats in the US Congress today. With 98 legal Senators, only 49 votes are currently required in order to pass legislation to the President.
2. The 4 representatives from Mississippi are not legal. There are only 431 legal members of the United States congress today.
3. There are only 532 legal votes in the electoral college today.
4. President Al Gore won the 2000 electoral college, because Governor Bush had only 264 electoral college votes compared to Al Gore’s 266 electoral college votes. George Bush’s presidency was unconstitutional. All of his actions as President in his first term, hence, are also unconstitutional.

It’s time to get this right. Mississippi needs to finish ratification.

First of all, let’s analyze Trump’s treaty with the Taliban.

1. It was never approved by congress, so it was not legally binding.
2. It was never agreed to by the government of Afghanistan, so it was not legally binding.
3. Trump was a Russian agent, so it should have been dismissed on ethical grounds.

This means Trump’s treaty with the terrorists was never legal, especially for the first two reasons. Afghanistan now is at the very bottom of the Democracy Index for this year, as a result of Trump and Biden’s unilateral decision making and dealings with terrorists. For this reason, while the previous Afghanistan government had problems, it was not the right time to leave because it created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. It was created by Carter, Reagan, Trump, and Biden.

The second thing is the Syrian Civil War has been funded, armed, and fought by the Russian army. It has seen massive crimes against humanity which would not have happened if it wasn’t for Russian support.

The third thing is that Russia supports North Korea to this day. As long as Putin is in power, the Kim dictatorship will have a powerful ally.Wikipedia

But how does all of this relate to Ukraine? Very simply, as long as the United States was willing to use our resources to help Afghanistan develop (which we did for 20 years) it was clear that the United States foreign policy was in at least one place preventing the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century to date. It gave clear evidence of deterrence that if Russia overstepped its bounds in Ukraine or Georgia there was good reason to believe that the United States would step in and intervene, preventing Russian war crimes in Eastern Europe. We supported Syrian rebels against Russian aggression, another example of deterrence against the Russian dictatorship. Also, the 2014 war in Ukraine died down simply because Obama threatened getting involved if Putin invaded the rest of Ukraine.

That threat worked. Deterrence works both directions.

But when the United States left Afghanistan and Biden blabbered on and on about how he doesn’t want to be using military force and want to focus on his (now failed) domestic agenda, it gave Putin the signal. In Putin’s eyes following Biden’s honoring of Trump’s dealings with terrorists, which again Congress never approved, the United States was now an insular and weak country in his eyes, and it took less than a year for Putin to start amassing his troops on the Union State’s border with Ukraine.

The fact that it took him several months to amass his troops on the border with Ukraine was no mistake. He did that because he was testing whether the West would show a sign of strength in the sign of Russian aggression. If the West had shown strength in Putin’s eyes before the war started, I doubt the war would have began at all, because it would have shown clear proof to Putin that invading Ukraine would be a tragic mistake.

Also, Putin will never use nuclear bombs. Anyone who thinks that needs to go study some international relations. As soon as he does that in a war of aggression in the modern era (especially considering nuclear bombs are significantly stronger than the ones the United States dropped on Japan) he is a dead man. He won’t do it. Putin never does anything which he believes will threaten his reign of terror. That’s how he has stayed in power for so long.

After amassing troops on the Ukrainian border for months, with no sign of Western retaliation (that would have been a great time to give Ukraine immediate NATO membership, it would have saved thousands of lives) and no strong sign of strength from the United States or the European Union, Putin saw a green light that now was a time to attack.

In the west you poke bear, in Russia bear poke you.

Why has the war gone on so long? Well, granted that Russia won’t use the nuclear bomb (because of mutually assured destruction, which doesn’t necessarily have to be from nuclear weapons, military tactics like the bombing of Dresden are just as effective) and NATO hasn’t done everything it can to end the war scared that sending more weapons to Ukraine will prompt Russia to use the bomb (again, a bad hypothesis of people who don’t understand game theory, Realpolitik, mutually assured destruction, or politics in general) Russia continues to test the limits of how it can invade the west. Economic sanctions won’t be enough.

It’s 1938 and this is Sudetenland. The withdrawal of Afghanistan was the annexation of Austria. Putin is Hitler. Biden is Chamberlain.

The only way to make sure that we don’t see the invasion of Poland (which would be World War III) is to make sure that this is the last action Putin does in his life.

As I’m going to bed having a chat with my partner about what a horrible scumbag Ronald Reagan was, I thought about a brief summary of US presidents for people who don’t know much about modern American history.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents, and through the New Deal we saw the first form of the modern American social safety net.

Harry Truman continued FDR’s work.

Eisenhower literally freed the slaves at Auschwitz and ARPA started under his leadership. Great president.

Kennedy made massive political moves towards civil rights at home and abroad. He was killed before he was able to see them through.

LBJ signed more civil rights legislation than any other president. Medicare, Medicaid, Food stamps, voting rights. All of that is due to this one president. The modern American social safety net is 90% due to this one president.

Comrade Nixon negotiated with the North Vietnamese to not sign the peace treaty President Johnson was working on. He was a traitor. He also started the War on Drugs. He was also a quitter.

Comrade Ford pardoned Nixon. He was a traitor.

Carter started the NSA.

Ronald Reagan negotiated with the Iranians to keep Americans hostage (treason) and actively ignored the AIDS crisis. Bloodthirsty bastard.

George HW Bush was part of Reagan’s cabinet and an accomplice to his crimes.

Bill Clinton deregulated Wall Street.

George W. Bush signed the PATRIOT ACT into law which is vehemently unconstitutional.

Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform. Best president of the last 50 years. No competition.

Donald Trump actively ignored the AIDS crisis, took aid from the Putin regime, negotiated withdrawal of Afghanistan without the input of the Afghans, and attacked the US capitol. He is a sick traitor and needs to be arrested for his crimes.

Joe Biden hasn’t signed any long lasting legislation yet. Hopefully he will.

It is clear from this that Roosevelt, Kennedy, LBJ, and Obama were the best Presidents of the last 90 years.

We need to keep electing Democrats, implementing Democratic policies, and moving our country forward.

Vote Democrat.

From these two graphs we can determine the state of the US housing market. The number of houses being built per year is slower than it was in the 2000s. The price of housing has increased.

Lower supply, increase or keep demand the same. This is why prices will rise.

According to the National Association of Realtors, over 80% of home buyers are buying their only home. Second home buyers are not the primary reason the market is increasing in size.

We need more housing to be built. We need supply to increase substantially to fulfill the demand for houses. We need condos and mixed use neighborhoods. By reducing demand for rentals, the cost to rent will go down.

The rate of housing being built does not correlate with the unemployment rate.

We need to build high density mixed-use neighborhoods with condominiums. Then the cost of housing will go down.

Several different levels of diversification…

The lowest level of diversification possible is where everyone is forced to be part of the same system managed by a small group of people. Participants have no direct say how decisions are made. If it goes down, there is economic collapse.

The second lowest level of diversification is where a large percentage of people are invested in one giant pool, with little yo no say in what gets invested, and very limited options regarding what their money gets invested into. This is very common in traditional pension systems. If that fund is poorly invested everyone who participates is screwed.

The next level of diversification (which is practically impossible under current law) is where everyone in a country invests into the same fund. The fund is very diversified. But ignore this, because it won’t happen.

The final level of diversification is every person is able to make decisions regarding their accounts. Ideally each person has some very basic knowledge of economic and investing (or a qualified economist who is either a fiduciary or personally vested in that person’s economic well being, let’s say, a child or grandchild) and they have a large array of funds to choose from which are offered by a wide variety of companies. Each person chooses a mixed portfolio of multiple index funds which are managed by multiple firms. If one of those firms goes down, don’t sweat. If one of those funds goes down, you might not even notice. As long as the ROI stays high for the economy, you’ll be fine. No one person is overly exposed to the risk of any one asset and that means that society will function and society will be able to take care of the small number of people who do poorly.

 

That’s how diversification works.

Republicans talk about privatizing Medicare. What this means is that instead of the government running Medicare a private insurance company runs health care for seniors. They don’t want to do this of course because seniors are expensive to insure. So it will never happen. But the main thing Medicare does is it is able to negotiate lower drug prices because of its size, and that makes it cheaper than private insurance. Medicare spends all of the money it gets every year. It is not a savings plan. It is an insurance program run by the government. Because of its size it has the ability to push prices down.

Social Security OASI is completely different. You put money in when you work, you take money out when you retire. It’s a state mandated maximum benefit plan. It had a surplus until recently, though the reserves will be depleted to 0 over the next 20 years. OASI does not need to negotiate with any big company, it just gives money back to the people who participated.

Here are the similarities between OASI and Medicare. They are both managed through the Social Security Administration.

That’s it. Even some young people can access Medicare if they are disabled enough. Besides both being managed by the Social Security Administration, these programs have nothing in common.

So if someone were to make Medicare like the rest of American health care, it would be an absolutely terrible idea. The very large benefits of Medicare (in the form of universal health coverage for seniors and saving us billions of dollars a year) would be lost. We should actually expand Medicare to cover everyone if we won’t do a public option. It would save us billions of dollars a year. I don’t care either way if we go with a German or a French system, just do it soon.

Privatizing OASI on the other hand would be moving to an index fund system and allowing people to control their retirement savings and get all of the benefits, not just up to a fixed amount. It’s the system Australia uses. Some people might lose money, but the vast majority would be better off. Anyone who drops below the poverty line in retirement could still get assistance from other programs. The biggest benefit is that your benefits couldn’t be reduced via executive order anymore.

The basic TLDR is that privatizing Medicare is not like giving people the option to put their OASI taxes into an IRA. They have really nothing in common. I wish more people would understand the difference.

OASI is not insurance. It’s a maximum benefit pension. Medicare is an insurance program. OASI pays out monthly like any other pension which isn’t in default. Medicare only pays out when you see a doctor. Totally different.

I was thinking today about the idea of sticking all of the most important financial advice onto a 3×5 note card. A few ideas came to mind.

• Pay off high interest debt as soon as possible (high interest > 8%) but not low interest debt if the alternative is investing in higher interest assets
• Take employer matching IRA contributions as much as you can, they’re tax free and can be quite large.
• HELOCs can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to mortgages and you can own your home 20 years earlier with the right strategy.
• Take rewards with your purchases whenever you can (just pay your credit card off at the end of the month), it can pay up to 4% cash back on every purchase. Free money.

This is true, these are the best pieces of advice I have ever received… some of them from school, some from friends, some from life… But when you get down to it, all four of these are really the same thing…

• Cost benefit analysis

Cost benefit analysis, look at the costs and benefits of every decision you make, and make the decision which is the best.

That is the most important lesson I ever learned in an economic class.