Stidmatt

I was taking my walk today when I thought about how my company should offer four weeks of paid vacation.

To an average American, this might seem excessive, but in reality, most highly developed countries provide this by law. Twenty days is the minimum paid leave for all workers in the European Union. Regardless of their income or age. Of countries with a Democracy score over 6 and a GDP per capita over 20000, the only countries with less than 20 days paid leave are Canada, Israel, Japan, Singapore, and the United States out of 27 countries.

I believe the United States should mandate 20 days of paid leave by law, but I also believe the United States is the country that needs this policy the most.

We start with 193 member states in the United Nations.

Now, paid leave is a pro-family policy. In a small country like Austria, you can drive to see your family within an evening from anywhere in the country. You don’t need to spend vacation time to see your family. So, to argue this is about keeping families together mostly applies to countries where it takes significant time and money to get from one part of the country to another. The maximum amount of time I will generally drive in a straight shot without an overnight is 8 hours, so a distance of 800 km. 800 ^2 = 640,000 km2. I want to start by narrowing my list to democracies larger than 640,000 square kilometers.

We are left with only 17 countries that fit these parameters.

I want to narrow down my list further to democracies with incomes above $20,000, which is enough disposable income for the average person to afford to travel long distances. Countries with incomes below $20k have bigger issues and are out of the scope of this analysis.

The only democracies larger than 640 square kilometers with incomes over $20,000 are the United States, Canada, Australia, and France. They all have populations of over 10 million.

France barely makes the cutoff, and the train from Marseilles to Lille, from one side of the country to the other, takes only 4.5 hours. It is totally feasible for the French to take weekend trips to any other part of their country.

Australia is huge, but most of it is empty. Over 70% of Australians live in a straight line along the coast from Melbourne to Brisbane. Most Australians can see the majority of their family on a 3-day road trip.

Canada is similar to Australia. It is gigantic, but like Australia, most of its land is practically empty. Two-thirds of Canadians live in a straight line from Windsor to Quebec City. In a 10-hour drive, you can drive past most Canadians. Ontario makes the list by itself, but most of its area is empty. For family members in BC or Alberta, most of them can fly to Ontario and meet the rest of their family.

The United States is a completely different beast. Texas alone is larger than my 640,000 km2 cutoff, and California is not far behind. We have more land area than any other country except Russia and China. Boston to Washington, DC is almost an 8-hour drive; through that area, you only pass by around a third of Americans. Americans are extremely mobile because we have more choices of places to live and work without leaving our country than any other wealthy democracy. This leads to families being spread across vast distances, from Washington to Florida, California to Massachusetts. This example is from my family. Both of my grandmothers live in Washington; my paternal grandmother had siblings in Nevada, Ohio, and Florida, among other states, and my maternal grandmother has siblings in California and Massachusetts. The ability for families to get together regularly with only two weeks of vacation is not feasible in this country, unlike any other advanced democracy in the world. It is impossible to keep families together in a country this vast and this mobile with such a small amount of paid vacation.

If you have only two weeks of paid vacation per year and want to travel once abroad, assume you only have 14 days. The first and last day will be spent flying, and the first day you land somewhere, you will lose a significant amount of time to jet lag, leaving you with only 11 quality days to explore, assuming you only go to one city. For each additional location, subtract one day of true immersion in your destination. 4 destinations then leave you with only 8 days to really enjoy a place, only two days per location. That’s not enough to get to know a place. Not enough to get to know the people and the culture, and I believe this is by design.

If you have 4 more weeks and 4 destinations, you start with 28 days of total travel time, down to 25, including flying and losing one day to jet lag. You lose 4 more days, leaving you with 21 days to really enjoy yourself, or 4 days per city, which is enough time to truly explore a city. One day for the tourist destinations, one day to explore, one day to wander aimlessly or spend time with new friends you made. The quality of time and the experience of a place is totally different when you spend at least 4 days in a location to get to know the people and culture.

That’s when American tourists might start to learn about things like modern healthcare systems and take those ideas home with them.

Even if I don’t leave the United States, with 4 weeks of paid vacation, I could choose to spend one week exploring New England with my family, one week down in Georgia with my aunt and cousins there, one week in California visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins, and one week back in Washington with my parents and grandparents.

4 weeks of paid leave is a family value, and it should be the law of the land.

Remember a few months ago when every pundit from the NY Times to the Nation called Ukraine to do a ceasefire? Russia is now losing territory as Europe has allowed Ukraine to attack the Russian military. The rest of NATO has chosen to completely bypass the leadership of the United States, openly supporting Ukraine to do whatever is necessary within international law to win the war this year.

The reality is that Biden was telling the truth when he said, “Nothing will fundamentally change.” He was telling the truth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_q2LBA38NI

Over the last 8 years, we have seen the terrorists take over Afghanistan, Russia has invaded Ukraine, and almost 40,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza. The Trump/Biden administration is responsible for the withdrawal of Afghanistan; while the US has delivered weapons to Ukraine, we have limited what they can do with them, creating a war of attrition. We have failed to enforce international law in Gaza, which only feeds the terrorist’s narrative that the United States and Israel are enemies of Islam.

We have seen the ratcheting of border restrictions across the world as eVisas are becoming more common. The world is less free today than when Obama was President.

He also was telling the truth when he focused on how he would focus on working with people he disagreed with. This is not a bad statement, but it necessitates the follow-up question of how you will work with your allies. Will Biden prioritize working with ilk like McConnell, Netanyahu, Putin, and the Saud dynasty over working with allies like Warren, Macron, Scholz, and Trudeau? Back in 2015, that might have been seen as a silly question, but today, it is a question we must ask of every future candidate.

When you focus on how nothing will change, the question is, why vote for you? If someone wants to argue that well when Biden said that it was 2019 and the economy was good. But Trump had already laid the groundwork for the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

We need to focus on more than just being better than Trump. We need to reach for more.

I think Harris will win the election, and I think she will be fundamentally different from Biden. She does not talk about Israel on the campaign trail, and Tim Walz has openly criticized the way Netanyahu has conducted the war in Gaza. That means I believe that by January 20th, time is up for Netanyahu, which is good. Removing Netanyahu will obviously improve safety in Palestine, but also in Israel, as that will open the door to recognition of Palestine and a normalization of relations between Israel and its majority-Muslim neighbors. She cannot say it on the campaign trail because she is running for the incumbent party, but her vice presidential candidate makes it clear where she will go.

She could have chosen a conservative Democrat like Manchin or Sinema, a strategy similar to what Obama did in 2008, but she chose not to. She chose a fairly progressive Democrat the same age as her. She has chosen an ally who will strengthen the ticket. We have a former sexual assault prosecutor running alongside a former teacher. This is a ticket that is going to take the rights of children in Gaza and Ukraine seriously.  This is a major departure from the policies of Trump/Biden/Blinken/Sullivan.

I hope I am right.

Many cities in the US have built their transit systems around their highway networks because all they need to buy are vehicles, and they can quickly have reasonably competitive transit services up and running for cheap.

This brings us to West Seattle. West Seattle has numerous buses that go downtown; they all go along the West Seattle Bridge, up Highway 99, and then into downtown Seattle towards the 3rd Ave bus jam.

However, the Alaska Way viaduct no longer exists, so the only express part of the ride is now the West Seattle bridge, which is clogged until the exit to WA-99. Without the Viaduct, the bus stops being as fast as it used to be, increasing demand for driving.

If you are dependent on buses and highways for transit, the issue is that when you have a major corridor for transit using highways, you need to replace it in a way that does not punish transit riders.

If you simply remove a bus highway and do not replace it with rail, you will end up with worse transit. Worse transit will lead to a higher car modal share, which puts more pressure on politicians to increase parking, reduce density, and make all infrastructure more expensive. When demolishing a highway carrying mass transit, you need to replace it with a rail that is better than bus lanes. Otherwise, you might make your transit less urbanist.

This is why the West Seattle Link is a good project. Even light rail carries more people than buses and for a lower cost per passenger kilometer.

You can either have a car-dependent city or a rail-dependent city.

Republicans are trying to make the Mexican border a political issue this election. Let’s investigate how to make a stable situation:

The main causes of people crossing the border illegally is the following:

• There are few legal pathways for Mexicans to work in the United States.
• There are more low-skill jobs (which means you don’t need special training to do them) than people able and willing to do them in the United States, but many people in Mexico are willing and able to do them.
• Relative incomes between the US and Mexico, as the disparity grows, border crossings increase.
• Relative safety in the US vs Mexico. This is caused by income inequality and the drug war.

Here are the realistic solutions to these situations:

So, if we wanted to reduce illegal border crossings from Mexico, we could have a legal pathway for Mexicans to work in the United States at any job. That would end the need to cross the border illegally without harming the US economy. This is the only realistic way to solve the first two points.

For the third point, either see Mexican incomes approach that of the United States or have a severe recession in the United States.

For relative safety, we need to end the drug war, which will significantly shut off the flow of money to violent cartels.

But Republicans are not interested in solutions. They want a police state.

The Every Vote Counts Amendment is almost perfect, but it needs some tweaks.

Every Vote Counts

Section 1. The President and Vice President shall be elected by the people of the several States and the district constituting the seat of government citizens of the United States.
Section 2. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of Senators and Representatives in Congress from that State, except that the legislature of any State may prescribe less restrictive qualifications with respect to residence and Congress may establish uniform residence and age qualifications.
Section 3. The persons having the greatest number of votes for President and Vice President shall be elected.

Section 2. Every United States citizen who is 18 years of age or older has the right to vote for President. It is the responsibility of the county or territory where that elector is registered to vote to provide a paper ballot by mail to the elector, if the elector requests it. It is the responsibility of the postal service to return all ballots free of charge to the county or territory auditor when mailed from within the territory of these United States. Counties and territories are responsible for signature verification of the ballots they receive.
Section 3. If a ticket has received a majority, defined as at least half of the total valid votes, for President and Vice President, they shall be elected. If no ticket has received a majority of votes, then the ticket which has received the fewest valid votes will be eliminated and those votes will then count towards their highest ranked choice who is still in the election. Repeat until a ticket has a majority of votes.

Section 4. Each elector shall cast a single vote jointly applicable to President and Vice President. Names of candidates may not be joined unless they shall have consented thereto and no candidate may consent to the candidate’s name being joined with that of more than one other person.
Section 5. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any candidate for President or Vice President before the day on which the President-elect or Vice President-elect has been chosen, and for the case of a tie in any election.

Section 5. If a Presidential candidate dies before election day, the Vice Presidential candidate on the ticket will be the Presidential candidate for that ticket, and may choose a new Vice Presidential candidate. If the Vice President on a ticket dies before election day, the Presidential candidate on that ticket may choose a new Vice Presidential candidate. If both the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate on a ticket die before election day, that ticket will be eliminated from the election and all votes for that ticket will be reallocated towards the next choice on the electors ballot.

Section 6. The Twenty-Second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 7. Congress may not infringe on the right for any sitting or former member of congress, president, vice president, member of the cabinet, governor, or state legislator from being a candidate for the Presidency. Congress shall have power to regulate Presidential ballot access to other persons.
Section 8. The order of names on the ballot for President shall be determined by the United States order of precedence first, and then all other candidates by alphabetical order.

Section 6 9. This article shall apply with respect to any election for President and Vice President held after the expiration of the 1-year period which begins on the date of the ratification of this article.

In my opinion, this solves all the issues I see with our current Presidential election system:

1. The Electoral College is abolished, ending the inequity built into the system.
2. It establishes ranked voting, allowing voters to vote their conscience, and prevents the spoiler effect.
3. It guarantees a right to vote by mail.
4. It extends Presidential suffrage to citizens in the several territories.
5. It establishes a positive right for all adult US citizens to vote.
6. It guarantees absentee paper ballots, and the post office will deliver them free of charge.
7. It guarantees a right for members of congress, governors, members of the cabinet, and other high-ranking officials to run for the Presidency.
8. It establishes the order in which the ballot will be printed.

I think this will establish a solid system for future Presidential elections.

First and foremost, every Presidential election is unique.

You cannot accurately predict an election’s outcome by the candidates’ offices in the race.

No matter who Harris picks as her running mate, this election will be unique because it is the only election in which an incumbent Vice President has run against a former President. This is funny because 2020 was the first election in history where a former Vice President ran against an incumbent President.

However, there are some trends that are interesting to observe.

When analyzing the offices held by the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates from the two major parties in every election since 1828, every combination is unique.

The most common combination for a winning ticket is the sitting President and sitting Vice President.

The most common losing ticket is two Senators, the second most common winning ticket.

Most combinations are rare enough the results are not statistically significant. But it is clear that incumbent President/Vice President tickets win 71% of the time.

Tickets with a Senator as the Presidential candidate and a Representative as the Vice Presidential candidate have been run 5 times and lost every time. It’s the most common losing ticket, and a ticket like this has not been sold since 1964. The last ticket of this shape was in 1848.

All of this is to say that while there is clearly an incumbency advantage, any other office held by candidates has little to no impact on the election.

Candidate quality and the record of the incumbent administration are the best predictors of whether a candidate will win or lose the election.

Arm Ukraine and force a peaceful resolution to Palestine to win the Presidency.

Over the last 60 years, the two parties have diverged.

On the one hand, Johnson passed major civil rights reform.

On the other hand, Nixon negotiated with hostile regimes to not sign peace agreements with the United States for political gain.

But on the other hand, Jimmy Carter has pushed for and eradicated Guinea Worm.

However, Ronald Reagan sold weapons to terrorists.

But on the other hand, Clinton passed gun reform and enforced UN missions to end genocide.

But on the other hand, Bush curtailed constitutional rights and started an illegal war in Iraq at Netanyahu’s urging.

But on the other hand, Obama expanded access to health insurance to millions of Americans.

But on the other hand, Trump actively backtalked doctors during a pandemic and his court appointments led to the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

However, Biden passed gun reform.

How is one to choose between the two parties?

Here’s a more balanced way to look at it:

Democrats are not perfect, but Republicans are horrendous, and they have been for the last 60 years.

With Biden ending his campaign and Harris as the presumptive nominee to be the next president of the United States, there is clearly only one path to protecting democracy at home and worldwide.

That is to elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States.

She was one of the most consistent Democrats in the Senate, so we won’t have to worry about her moving toward Republicans. However, she is likely to be harsher towards New Democrats when they inevitably oppose her proposals, which will help her push policy through.

Trump will be more supportive of Israel and will certainly not work towards a peace agreement between Palestine and Israel.

Trump will stop supporting Ukraine.

Trump wants to ban abortion.

Trump wants to abolish the Affordable Care Act.

Harris is none of these things.

We need to vote for Kamala Harris.

• People who think Democrats need to approach the center were never going to vote Democratic in the first place. No one will ever vote for a black man who supports extending health care to disabled people… oh wait… the best performance for a Democrat since 1964… twice.
• George McGovern is the ideal candidate. He is from South Dakota and blames our inflation crisis on the Great Society. He’s definitely going to win as the moderate candidate we can all support!
• The New Democratic lie is a fraud. The closer New Democrats get to power, the worse Democrats do across the board. We should have had a landslide in 2022, and they failed.
• I fully believe Biden won in 2020 because of COVID-19. If COVID was not around and Biden ran against Trump, it is now obvious Trump would have won the electoral college again. It’s funny how not campaigning in swing states gets Republicans elected.

I’m a reliable Democratic voter, and I have benefited massively from the Affordable Care Act since I was born with cerebral palsy. If the ACA is repealed as Republicans promise, I will have to leave the country or not have health insurance. Those are the stakes of this election.

I read the article in Politico that the Biden campaign was not even polling in swing states over the last month, and that is absolutely unacceptable. Biden handpicked his campaigns top operatives himself, according to the article. Tim Kaine made this mistake on only focusing on safe wins in the 2010 election. We know how that turned out, voter turnout dropped relative to 2006 levels, and we lost the election. Hillary Clinton’s campaign and DNC operations under Debbie Wasserman Schultz did not invest in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin despite them having republican governors, and we know how the 2016 election turned out.

Twice in my life my fundamental rights have been threatened by Republicans and high-ranking Democrats have failed to protect the rights of disabled people by absurd campaigning strategies. To see President Biden following in Kaine and Clinton’s footsteps this year is infuriating to me. The DNC and the Harris campaign need to instead follow the strategy Howard Dean used in 2006 and President Obama successfully used to sail to victory with wide margins, even as Democrats were destroyed in the House elections under the strategy of only funding races we know we can win.

There is only so much I can do as a single voter. My phone banking in swing states helps a small amount, but is only a drop in the bucket compared to the resources the DNC has. I implore the DNC to continue the tried and true 50-state strategy which gave us victories in 2018 and 2020 under the leadership of Jaime Harrison, and that the DNC needs to force the Harris campaign to campaign in all 50 states, otherwise history shows Trump will probably win.