12-12-2021, 07:38 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-12-2021, 07:45 AM by Anthony '58.)
We installed (or maintained) a lot of right-wing dictators during the Cold War, including some utterly reprehensible characters like the "chomo" Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, and the apartheidists in Rhodesia and South Africa, in whose comparison the Thieu regime in South Vietnam totally paled, on the theory of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
And the term "neoliberalism" needs to be retired, on the grounds of the confusion it causes - at least in the United States anyway. A far more concise alternative would be neoclassical liberalism, since it seeks to re-create the policies advocated by Adam Smith, in more-or-less unvarnished form (furthermore, as Michael Lind so correctly pointed out in Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America, what distinguishes neoliberals from conservatives is their respective stances on social and "moral" issues, just like what distinguishes left-liberals from national liberals - like present company! - is their respective stances on economic issues).
So far as Joe Manchin goes: How can he possibly behave any differently from the way he does, representing as he does a state that Donald Trump won by 39 points in 2020?
And I guess that the House would have no input on the Washington D.C./Puerto Rico question - plus Hawaii can be given a third congressional district (and fifth electoral vote) by adding such Pacific territories as American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands to it (the Virgin Islands can also be made part of the state of Puerto Rico - but it is doubtful that doing so would increase the number of House seats/or electoral votes accruing to Puerto Rico, due to the small populations of the three islands).
But the most useful reform of all for the House is to divide the population of each state by the population of the least populous state (currently Wyoming) to determine how many House seats each state gets, rounding off the result to the nearest full seat. This would result in California having 69 House seats, instead of the 52 it will have starting with 2020 election. This, together with the one seat to which Washington D.C. would be entitled, Puerto Rico's six (with or without the Virgin Islands), and Hawaii's third seat (as above), that's 443 House seats (up from the present 435) right there - and in addition to California adding 17 seats, Texas, Florida, New York, etc. would get multiple additional seats as well, and so on down the line. We might even end up with a House consisting of exactly 500 seats - the UK, with one-fifth our population, has 650 seats in its House of Commons; and many key constituencies, such as Staten Island, would henceforth have stand-alone seats in the House (New York's 11th Congressional District encompasses, in addition to all of Staten Island, portions of the southwesternmost tier of neighborhoods in Brooklyn).
And with the enhanced clout given to states like California and New York in the Electoral College, there would be no need to abolish the EC - at least for the time being.
And the term "neoliberalism" needs to be retired, on the grounds of the confusion it causes - at least in the United States anyway. A far more concise alternative would be neoclassical liberalism, since it seeks to re-create the policies advocated by Adam Smith, in more-or-less unvarnished form (furthermore, as Michael Lind so correctly pointed out in Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America, what distinguishes neoliberals from conservatives is their respective stances on social and "moral" issues, just like what distinguishes left-liberals from national liberals - like present company! - is their respective stances on economic issues).
So far as Joe Manchin goes: How can he possibly behave any differently from the way he does, representing as he does a state that Donald Trump won by 39 points in 2020?
And I guess that the House would have no input on the Washington D.C./Puerto Rico question - plus Hawaii can be given a third congressional district (and fifth electoral vote) by adding such Pacific territories as American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands to it (the Virgin Islands can also be made part of the state of Puerto Rico - but it is doubtful that doing so would increase the number of House seats/or electoral votes accruing to Puerto Rico, due to the small populations of the three islands).
But the most useful reform of all for the House is to divide the population of each state by the population of the least populous state (currently Wyoming) to determine how many House seats each state gets, rounding off the result to the nearest full seat. This would result in California having 69 House seats, instead of the 52 it will have starting with 2020 election. This, together with the one seat to which Washington D.C. would be entitled, Puerto Rico's six (with or without the Virgin Islands), and Hawaii's third seat (as above), that's 443 House seats (up from the present 435) right there - and in addition to California adding 17 seats, Texas, Florida, New York, etc. would get multiple additional seats as well, and so on down the line. We might even end up with a House consisting of exactly 500 seats - the UK, with one-fifth our population, has 650 seats in its House of Commons; and many key constituencies, such as Staten Island, would henceforth have stand-alone seats in the House (New York's 11th Congressional District encompasses, in addition to all of Staten Island, portions of the southwesternmost tier of neighborhoods in Brooklyn).
And with the enhanced clout given to states like California and New York in the Electoral College, there would be no need to abolish the EC - at least for the time being.
"These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation" - Justice David Brewer, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892