News that makes us laugh, cry, or both

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Aug 29, 2009 3:51 am

I produced a gleeful cackle when I realized that Eclipse Phase has been released using a Creative Commons License.

http://eclipsephase.com/cclicense

EDIT: and the same day my copy of Street Magic shows up, too. This was a good day for Catalyst Game Labs products.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 4:04 pm

Holy fuck, the Liberal Democrats of Japan got their butts kicked from one side of the island to another.

Congratulations! Now if only the US could have a more democratic system. Sigh.

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 7:03 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Holy fuck, the Liberal Democrats of Japan got their butts kicked from one side of the island to another.

Congratulations! Now if only the US could have a more democratic system. Sigh.

Those guys were in power for, what, 55 straight years? I think we do a little better than that, transfer-of-power-wise, right here in the US.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 7:17 pm

This is nothing unexpected. The LDP has been through how many PMs in how many years?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 7:28 pm

Gelare: I'm talking about the rate of turnover (which is way too low in the Senate) and the representation (which is way too skewed in the direction of small states).

I think that situations where the Senate will have an incentive to vote against the direction the country wants will become increasingly common over the next few years, like what we're seeing with health care.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:00 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Gelare: I'm talking about the rate of turnover (which is way too low in the Senate) and the representation (which is way too skewed in the direction of small states).

I think that situations where the Senate will have an incentive to vote against the direction the country wants will become increasingly common over the next few years, like what we're seeing with health care.

Bolding mine.

Wasn't that, you know, the freakin' POINT of the Senate? That all states have the same number of votes?

It's a little like the electoral college. It's a lot of hoops to jump through, but it's intended for the benefit of the country as a whole, rather than the parts of it located around cities.

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:10 pm

Does a state have rights independent of the people that constitute it?

The senate and electoral college weren't ideas put in to make the country better, they were compromises with tiny states who wanted to wield disproportionate power and threatened to take their marbles and go home if they weren't given power.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:10 pm

How is it benefitting the country as a whole if it results in a minority getting their way against what a majority wants?

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:16 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Gelare: I'm talking about the rate of turnover (which is way too low in the Senate) and the representation (which is way too skewed in the direction of small states).

It's not exactly an overwhelming turnover rate in the House, either. I mean, you're totally right, there's a tremendous incumbent advantage for seriously every single elected post in this country. It's kind of a slap to the face that congressmen get to spend taxpayer money on things like franking to get themselves reelected.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:23 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:How is it benefitting the country as a whole if it results in a minority getting their way against what a majority wants?

Yes, there's a possibility of that. But the way it was explained in high school...

1) The Founding Fathers felt that if it were a simple popular vote, the politics of the country would quickly become city politics. And you can't run a country exclusively on city politics, because then everyone who wanted to get elected would have absolutely no reason to do anything for the people in the boondocks who were, for a long time, the people who did insignificant shit like grew the food for the country.

2) There being a part of congress where all the states had an equal say was felt to be a more equal. Well, actually, when they were setting up congress, there were two versions: Representation based on population, and the equal say measure. The debate raged for a while, then they just put both of them in there.

3) It's also supposed to protect the minority from the majority. Ideally, they should get equal rights and protection, and equal entitlement to get what laws they need passed.

My memory's gone fuzzy (it's been, what, five, six years?) so I can't provide too much detail.

But, I agree that the turnover's an issue. I mean, Senator Kennedy was in office for 47 years. Damn.

And having the Senate does make lobbying/corruption easier for interested parties. Instead of having go after 14 or god-knows how many people California and New York have, you just have to go after 2.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:27 pm

1) The Founding Fathers felt that if it were a simple popular vote, the politics of the country would quickly become city politics. And you can't run a country exclusively on city politics, because then everyone who wanted to get elected would have absolutely no reason to do anything for the people in the boondocks who were, for a long time, the people who did insignificant shit like grew the food for the country.

So why is it a good thing to do the reverse?

3) It's also supposed to protect the minority from the majority. Ideally, they should get equal rights and protection, and equal entitlement to get what laws they need passed.

But it doesn't do that. A voter in Wyoming has 70 times the representation of someone in California. Why is this a good thing?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:47 pm

Hey, I just remember the explanation of the purpose it was intended to serve. Whether it does that or not is another story.

The Senate is intentionally balanced by the House of Representatives. The guy in Wyoming may have a lot more 'representation' allotted to him in the Senate, but the state of California is much more represented than Wyoming, despite the cap on the number of representatives (Mr. Willmann joked they did that so they could stop expanding the damn building). So if people in California cared enough, they could make a loud noise in Congress.

Really, I see a bigger problem is in the animosity caused by the party system. As far as I can tell, the Republicans are blocking healthcare reform because 1) A Democrat suggested it 2) It may profit them, personally, to keep it from happening. The same applies to pretty much any other issue. "The guy on the other side is suggesting a bill? I won't vote for it because it's part of an insidious plot to ruin America, and designed by this low-down dirty rascal for that purpose. How do I know he's a low-down dirty rascal? He's on the other side!"

And the way things have gone...Congress more or less does its own thing. It's not like people fervently petition their congressman that much. So right now, party affiliation is more important and more indicative than what state you represent.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:56 pm

The Senate is intentionally balanced by the House of Representatives. The guy in Wyoming may have a lot more 'representation' allotted to him in the Senate, but the state of California is much more represented than Wyoming, despite the cap on the number of representatives (Mr. Willmann joked they did that so they could stop expanding the damn building). So if people in California cared enough, they could make a loud noise in Congress.

The 'state' of California doesn't mean shit. Voters in Wyoming and California have roughly an equal impact in the House. California is represented more, but the individual voters are not. This means that oftentimes 'California' voters are represented more than 'Wyoming' but that's because there are more people in California. THAT'S WHAT IT MEANS TO HAVE A DEMOCRACY. The proposal with the most votes wins.

And you certainly do not balance out a good system by stacking a bad one on top of that. That gives you a bad system.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:04 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Voters in Wyoming and California have roughly an equal impact in the House.

No they don't. Every single district in California has more people than the entire state of Wyoming.

EDIT: Fixed tags

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:05 pm

A man in Wyoming doesn't get represented at all. The power of a senate seat is so tremendous on the national and international scale that it is individually worth hundreds of millions of dollars one way or another. The entire population of Wyoming is 532 thousand, and is basically meaningless against the financial impact of the favor of national corporations and interest groups, let alone foreign corporations and national governments who are interested in senate seats.

It's arguable whether it was ever a good idea to give disproportionate representation to the smaller states. But the total power of the US is so massive at this time that the representation power of the smaller states is no far beyond their own ability to exert influence of any meaningful kind.

Dick Cheney never represented Wyoming's people, he represented international corporate interests. And there wasn't enough native money in the whole state of Wyoming to actually do anything about that. And there never will be because small bullshit states are small and bullshit. If you give them meaningful power you're actually just giving it to carpet baggers who have enough power to take control from the outside.

-Username17

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:06 pm

A voter in Wyoming has 70 times the Senate representation as someone in California (that is, they have 70 times the Californian's share of a senator).

They have equal (roughly) amounts of House representation (E: oh. Apparently they don't there, either).

Those are the only facts that matter unless you consider the "state" its own entity with rights and entitlement to representation independent of its people, a belief that has been, in reasonable circles, debunked over a century ago, and which is now only advanced by such esteemed organizations as the KKK and the Libertarian Party, and by politicians such as Ron Paul.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:10 pm

Before we go into a rant about the "balance" in the Federal Government, we need to understand that it ain't there no more; they BROKE THE SYSTEM!

The "House" was the people's chamber, elected by the people based on the "population" of the state (one of the few things that gets better over time, especially when the slavery BS was dropped).

The "Senate" was the states chamber, elected by state legislatures. It was a final stop block to ensure that the federal government would not run roughshod over the states. This was dropped in the 20th century with direct election of senators. (One more step in the rise of the uber supreme federal state as envisioned by liberal Democrats.)

While democratic principles are the best thing we currently have, Democracy itself is horrid. This is why we have a constitutional republic and not a democracy. This isn't just a conservative rant; there are plenty of liberals in Califorina who would love to shove it to the voters and force gay marriage down their throats through the courts alone. Pure democracy ultimately leads to tyrany of the majority.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:19 pm

When the Constitution was originally drafted, they included an article called the Three-Fifths Compromise. This compromise allowed three-fifths of the population of slaves within a state to be counted for enumeration purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of the members of the United States House of Representatives. However, since this arrangement also allowed slave states to gain new seats in the House simply by purchasing more slaves (and thereby allowing them to overrun the legislature), they decided to allocate two representatives to every state regardless of population in the Senate in order to balance the interests and concerns of slave states against non-slave states in Congress. This was called the Connecticut Compromise, and it really didn't work out very well. Although non-slave states had fair representation in the Senate, southerners dominated the Presidency, the Speakership of the House, and the Supreme Court prior to the Civil War due to the fact that they had more people in Washington working on their behalf and they had more power in the Electoral College then non-slave states (because slave populations translated directly to EC votes).

So yeah. There's no lofty democratic ideal responsible for the way that our legislature is structured. It was designed that way to accommodate the needs and interests of slaveholders and states that thought it was an awesome idea to keep other human beings as property and work them to death on plantations.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 9:21 pm

tzor wrote:Pure democracy ultimately leads to tyrany of the majority.

I'm going to leave aside the issue of gay marriage for a second and just focus on the democracy part.

Let's reverse your position. What if most people in the United States didn't want gay marriage but the people in the small states wanted gay marriage? Why is this a better system? More people end up pissed off than the other way around. At least in the purely democratic system you have less people pissed off.

So what's the alternative? Tyranny of the minority? You mean like we had in those proto-democratic legislatures like in Great Britain beforehand that the founding fathers copied?

Seriously, if you don't like pure democracy then where do you want the ultimate power of the government to derive from? The alternatives are unanimity, democracy, oligarchy, or a dictatorship. That's all. Saying things like 'protects us from the tyranny from the majority' means that you actually want some spectrum between democracy an oligarchy or a dictatorship.

I also strongly encourage everyone who responds to tzor's post to completely ignore the gay marriage part. I can see what's going to happen anyway: subsequent posts focus on that part and not tzor's criticism of pure democracy and the opportunity is lost. As usual So for god's sake, pretend he said that California wants to, say, enact a law that subsidizes Harry Potter books. But I know in typical Den fashion everyone is going to get sidetracked anyway. So why am I even bothering?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 10:30 pm

I have no idea what kind of bullshit they teach in mandatory US history classes, but the following things are not true.

1) The Senate and Connecticut compromise has shit all to do with slavery: States that wanted proportional representation: New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania. States that wanted state representation: Maryland, Rhode Island.

It's about population. Bitch states wanted state representation so they could keep disproportionate power.

2) Why we have both types of representation: It sure as hell isn't because we didn't want city politics. It is because we wanted a constitution, and we needed two things to have a functioning nation: 9 out of 13 states to approve, and both Virginia and New York.

The point being that just like now, Big states didn't need little states except for pseudo legitimacy and not having to deal with shitty customs on some paths, and little states would go bankrupt without big ones. So because we needed a bunch of states to approve it to sound good and convince the others to jump on board, we had a Senate.

So what does all this mean?

The Senate is bullshit and always was, and always will be. City politics are good politics, because cities have more people and the people there do more shit. City politics would result in fewer stupid farm subsidies, and more big ass corporations owning all the farmland and outputting lots of good food for cheap.

That's a damn good system. It's mostly what we have now, except the Corporations that bought the Senators so they could buy the farmland left all the stupid subsidies on the books because they could.

No one but people from podunk states has ever wanted the people from podunk states to have more say than anyone else.

The reason democracy is awesome is because stupid people can be told to vote for what smart people say.

And yeah, it doesn't always work because at some point the stupid people came under the impression that clergy and fox news count as smart people, but I'll be damned it's a lot better than:

Dictatorship: The one smart guy does what's best for him.
Oligarchy: A group of rich people make sure they stay rich.

Absolutely we have shit that we decide you have to convince more stupid people of before you get to change, but their is nothing un-democracy about the constitution having special trump crap in it.

It takes basically 60 of a 100 senators to do anything anymore. We don't call this not a democracy because it's not 100%, it just means you have to have 60 out of 100 people convinced of something to change it, instead of 51.

Similarly it only takes 3/4ths of stupid people agreeing and convincing 51 Senators and 51% of the house to write:

"This 'er be a Christian Nation! And all of them's who do not worship our Lord Almighty Savior of All King of Kings Great Sorrowful God ..... Jesus Christ, shall be'n Hanged at dawn!"

But that doesn't make us less of a democracy because you have to convince 3/4ths to be that stupid instead of just half.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 11:42 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I also strongly encourage everyone who responds to tzor's post to completely ignore the gay marriage part. I can see what's going to happen anyway: subsequent posts focus on that part and not tzor's criticism of pure democracy and the opportunity is lost. As usual So for god's sake, pretend he said that California wants to, say, enact a law that subsidizes Harry Potter books. But I know in typical Den fashion everyone is going to get sidetracked anyway. So why am I even bothering?

I second the notion; I only used it because I just saw a video where a Califorina Liberal was flaunting her desire that the courts and not the people should decide those things. Ironically, I happen to support the rights of gays to marry. I'm caught here; I hate the tyrany of the majority and I hate the dictatorship of the judical (for life) legislators.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 12:13 am

(Note I hit the wrong button and deleted my post. Frankly most people act calmer when kicked in the groin than me trying to retype a post. So bear that in mind; this post is terse because I don't give a fuck.)

Kaelik, your comment about the slave issue not relating to the house/senate is spot on but the urban/rural divide is shit. Urban centers were not overpowering compared to rural areas and the north had only a few decades of industrialization freed from colonial bullshit rules. The big thing is that many of the 13 states were a whole lot larger than they are today. New York owned Vermont. Virgina owned West Virginia. Massachusetts owned Maine. Rode Island, was however, a piece of crap. So was Delaware. Connecticut and Maryland were mid sized states. Western territorial expansion sure didn't favor the small states.

That said, bi-cameral legislature was considered by some of the founding fathers to be the keystone of a stable republic and if you didn't have it; as France post revolution; you're screwed. (Or so said "I told you so John Adams when all hell broke loose and heads rolled.)

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 12:32 am

tzor wrote:but the urban/rural divide is shit.

I think you missed my point. I was not claiming that it was an urban rural divide at all. I was expressly negating someone's earlier claim that it was to balance urban and rural politics.

I did throw some fuck you rurals in there, but those were mostly just off topic.

There is nothing about the 1776-1790 America that would have indicated that rural America would be more represented in the Senate.

Sure it turned out that way in the 1800s and later, but that's coincidence. There was a not inconsiderable chance that many of the larger states (mostly southern ones) would claim large tracks of land stretching westward. If Georgia stretched all the way to the Mississippi, and Virginia had kentucky and Tennessee, there is no reason to think Senators of those states would care more about farmers than City people.

The Senate by design was explicitly for states, under the old "Federal" program which really doesn't apply anymore, and hasn't for a long time. The States don't fight with the Nation over power, leaving us free. That's not how it works. And as such, the Senate serves the sole current purpose of being the bitch of rural idiots and corporations.

This was not the intended purpose.

tzor wrote:That said, bi-cameral legislature was considered by some of the founding fathers to be the keystone of a stable republic and if you didn't have it; as France post revolution; you're screwed. (Or so said "I told you so John Adams when all hell broke loose and heads rolled.)

As for the bicameral legislature, yeah, that shit all was reasoned out, but it has nothing to do with how the representation is apportioned within each legislature, all you have to do for that shit is just have different year terms, or have the elections not take effect for 6 years, or any other thing that makes it so the two houses aren't in agreement.

Or so the theory goes, see House of Lords for examples, not that it matters, since in the US, both houses work together all the damn time.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 12:56 am

Urgh.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009 ... ion=justin

Cheney...Why doesn't he just come out and say it?

http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2952

I mean, every time he appears in the news now, it's like he's flaunting that he's broken no small amount of laws and violated principles America has held dear for a long time now. Only without actually saying that.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 4:14 am

Kaelik wrote: Oligarchy: A group of rich people make sure they stay rich.

I thought that's what America was?