#alaska special election

[n00h]

My theory about Alaska's at-large district is that it is simply a sentient entity that kills its incumbents via airplane once it decides it's the opposing party's turn in the district.

Think about it: Mary Peltola becomes the first democrat to win here since 1972. She does it in a special election prompted by the death of incumbent Don Young. Not only was his death a heart attack in an airplane, but he himself flipped the seat in 1972 from democrats in a special election after the incumbent disappeared on an airplane.

Electoral victory in Alaska's At-large district isn't about winning the election, it's simply about retaining favor with that district (the sentient entity not the voters in it)

[airplanefoodblackmarket]

Mary Peltola officially won Alaska’s House seat for the Democrats!

And the Iron Murk defeated her hard-right Senate opponent, as well.

[4whomittolz]

Was drunk and bored and getting annoyed at the ridiculous coverage of the US election so I decided to fix the place.

I'm from Australia where we only have 7 states, as such I have the (objectively correct) opinion that 50 is too many states, so I decided to cut it down to 10.

A few notes on my improved US map:

•Despite Illinois making the cut, Chicago is now in Michigan, due to the state getting the entire bank of its namesake.

•Boston is also in Michigan due to special exception.

•New York is now the capital of Pensylvania

•Yes that's how you spell Pensylvania

•The border of California is just roughly the Rockies, no need to overthink it.

•Making Florida bigger actually dilutes it's power, but Texas must be abolished

•Colorado should still be a rectangle, that's my mistake, I just couldn't be bothered fixing it.

•Alaska has been returned to Canada with a hand written apology

•All the random ass islands that the US forgot to pretend they didn't colonise have gained independence

Please let me know if there are any more improvements you can think of.

Edit: As a number of you have mentioned, Alaska never belonged to Canada, and giving it to them would be incredibly wrong when the native people have been trying to gain independence all this time.

Luckily, the apology note got lost in the mail in all the turmoil, so Canada never realised they're meant to have Alaska now. The Alaskans just start quietly self-governing and hoping the US and Canada don't notice, then after a few years they declare independence.

[lordzannis]

Rudolph "Butch" T. Ware III is an American historian and the Green Party's vice presidential nominee for the 2024 United States presidential election. Here are key points about him:

Academic Background:

Associate professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Previously taught at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University

Received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004

Research Focus:

Specializes in West African history, African-American history, and Islamic intellectual history

His work focuses on Islamic thought, anti-slavery movements in West Africa and the African Diaspora, and the intersection of race, religion, and revolutionary thought

Political Involvement:

Selected as Jill Stein's running mate for the Green Party's 2024 presidential campaign

Nomination announced on August 16, 2024, during an online livestreamed event

Personal Background:

Practicing Muslim

His selection alongside Stein (who is Jewish) has been noted for creating a diverse ticket

Academic Work:

Author of "The Walking Qur'an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa," which has received positive reviews for its analysis of Islamic traditions in Africa

Political Stance:

Emphasizes addressing systemic injustice and building a sustainable, just, and peaceful world

Critical of the two-party political system in the United States

Criticism:

Some critics argue that his background is primarily academic, with limited direct involvement in social movements or political activism outside of academia

The selection of Ware as the Green Party's vice presidential nominee is seen as an attempt to create a historically diverse ticket, bringing together different religious and cultural backgrounds in opposition to current U.S. policies on issues like war, climate change, and economic inequality.

Citations: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Ware [2] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/26/tgug-a26.html [3] https://www.amazon.com/Walking-Quran-Education-Knowledge-Civilization/dp/1469614316 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Stein [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ziwTDDcaVI [6] https://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/bware/ [7] https://www.jillstein2024ballotaccess.com [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Stein_2024_presidential_campaign

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is an electoral system that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Here's a comprehensive overview:

How Ranked Choice Voting Works

Voters rank candidates in order of preference (1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, etc.).

If a candidate receives over 50% of first-choice votes, they win outright.

If no candidate gets a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated.

Votes for the eliminated candidate are redistributed to voters' next choices.

This process repeats until a candidate has a majority.

Advantages of RCV

Determines strongest overall support: Reveals the candidate with the most support across the entire electorate, not just a passionate base.

Encourages civil campaigning: Reduces negative campaigning as candidates aim for second-choice votes.

Reduces wasted votes: Voters can support their preferred candidate without fear of "wasting" their vote.

Eliminates need for runoffs: Saves time and money by avoiding separate runoff elections.

Current Implementation

Statewide: Alaska and Maine use RCV for various elections.

Cities: 53 cities and counties in the U.S. use RCV, including New York City, San Francisco, and Minneapolis.

Military/Overseas: Several states use RCV for military and overseas voters in federal runoff elections.

Criticisms and Responses

Complexity: While slightly more complex than single-choice voting, data shows voters adapt quickly and turnout isn't negatively affected.

Cost: Initial implementation costs can be offset by eliminating runoff elections.

Delayed results: While final tallies may take longer, this ensures accurate and comprehensive results.

Conclusion

Ranked Choice Voting is gaining traction as a method to improve representation and reduce political polarization. While it requires some adjustment, its benefits in determining majority support and encouraging civil campaigning make it an increasingly popular electoral reform.

Citations: [1] https://www.lwvme.org/RCVhelp [2] https://time.com/5718941/ranked-choice-voting/ [3] https://www.rankedvote.co/guides/understanding-ranked-choice-voting/pros-and-cons-of-rcv [4] https://www.csg.org/2023/03/21/ranked-choice-voting-what-where-why-why-not/ [5] https://www.acvote.org/voting/rcv [6] https://vote.arlingtonva.gov/Elections/Ranked-Choice-Voting [7] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/preserving-democracy/2023/12/18/ranked-choice-voting-coming-to-more-statewide-ballots-in-2024/ [8] https://www.rcvresources.org/where-is-rcv-used

[foreverlogical]

● AK Ballot: Alaska voters made history in 2020 when they made their state the first in the nation to adopt a top-four primary with a ranked-choice general election, but conservatives tell the Alaska Beacon's James Brooks that they're close to qualifying a measure to repeal the system that would go before voters next year.

The campaign has until the start of the January legislative session to turn in about 27,000 valid signatures, a figure that represents 10% of the total number of votes that were cast in the most recent general election, and it must also hit certain targets in three-quarters of Alaska's 40 state House districts. One leader says that organizers have already gathered 30,000 petitions so far but will analyze them later to see if more are needed.

Under the current top-four system, all the candidates run on one primary ballot, and the four contenders with the most votes—regardless of party—advance to an instant-runoff general election. This method was first used last year in the special election to succeed the late GOP Rep. Don Young as Alaska's lone House member, a contest that ultimately saw Democrat Mary Peltola defeat former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin 51-49.

Conservatives both in Alaska and across the country were furious because Palin and another Republican, Nick Begich, outpaced Peltola by a combined 59-40 in the first round of tabulations. They blamed their surprise loss on instant-runoff voting rather than Palin's many failings or the Democrat's strengths.

"60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican," griped Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, "but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat 'won.'" But even without ranked-choice voting, Peltola still would have come in first, as she beat Palin 40-31. And since Begich took third with 28%, he may well still have lost a traditional primary to Palin had one been used.

Furthermore, a poll conducted right after the special by supporters of ranked-choice voting showed that Alaskans saw their new voting system as anything but "convoluted." Instead, 85% of respondents found it to be "simple," while 62% said they supported the new method.

Hard-right groups, though, soon had even more reasons to hate the new status quo. Thanks to the top-four system, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a rare Republican who's crossed party lines on high-profile votes, would no longer face what would almost certainly have been a tough GOP primary against Donald Trump's preferred candidate, former state cabinet official Kelly Tshibaka. (Murkowski famously lost her 2010 primary to a far-right foe but won the general through a write-in effort.)

Instead, Murkowski and Tshibaka easily advanced to the general election with Democrat Pat Chesbro and a little-known third Republican. Murkowski led Tshibaka 43.4-42.6 in the first round of general election tabulations, but the 10% of voters who supported Chesbro overwhelmingly broke for the incumbent and helped lift her to a 54-46 victory. Peltola also won her rematch with Palin 55-45 after initially leading her 49-26; unsurprisingly, both Palin and Tshibaka ardently back the effort to end the top-four system.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

For decades, it’s been unthinkable that Alaska could let a Democrat occupy its only seat in the House of Representatives, which had been held by the late GOP Rep. Don Young since 1972. But in the background, as Americans in the lower 48 were captivated by races in Georgia or Arizona, that’s exactly what’s happened: Alaskans voted 55-45 in favor of Democrat Mary Peltola, a former state legislator who just won her first full term over celebrity ex-Gov. Sarah Palin.

Peltola had just enough time to drop off her suitcase in Washington after winning the seat in an August special election. Palin was also her main opponent then, and in the months since, Peltola only grew her lead. She was helped in part by ranked-choice voting in its Alaska general-election debut. The system, which transfers votes to second-choice candidates when a voter’s first pick is eliminated, has drawn national attention and sometimes controversy.

Elections are a long affair in the 49th state, where challenges like distance, isolation, and tough weather abound, and mail-in ballots that are postmarked by election day have up until ten days to arrive for counting. The Alaska Division of Elections doesn’t count absentee, mail-in, and questioned ballots—many of which come from rural, predominantly Alaska Native regions—until after election day.

It’s not a system that benefits election-denying extremists like Palin, and Palin is not a good loser. The ex-governor has been hinting since polls closed that she’ll challenge the results of the race. She was sowing doubt and misinformation about ranked-choice voting as early as August, as I reported at the time:

“It’s bizarre, it’s convoluted, it’s confusing and it results in voter suppression,” Palin told the CPAC crowd. “It results in a lack of voter enthusiasm because it’s so weird.” None of that is true. Maine has been doing ranked-choice voting since 2016, and several cities and municipalities around the country have also adopted the system. “There isn’t a higher rate of incomplete or spoiled ballots in ranked choice races compared to ballots in elections using plurality voting,” Amy Fried, a professor of political science at the University of Maine, told Mother Jones. “Nor is turnout lower.” Rick Pildes, a constitutional law professor at the New York University School of Law, noted, “There’s no evidence voters have been confused or don’t understand how to rank candidates one, two, three.”

Palin was the first to sign her name last week to a citizens initiative that would overturn ranked choice voting.

For her part, Peltola has been frank that ranked-choice voting helped her, as she told Teen Vogue earlier this month: “I was very pleasantly surprised by the outcome. The timing was just right. [This new voting system] will help us get out of closed partisan primaries, which result in very extreme and sometimes fringe candidates winning.”

With Peltola’s win, Alaskans have demonstrated that being geographically disconnected from the rest of the country doesn’t mean they’re less connected to preserving democracy and abortion rights. Palin, who had the endorsement of Donald Trump, is an election conspiracist and proponent of misinformation. Peltola has openly supported codifying abortion rights into federal law—like her campaign slogan promises, she’ll be a “pro-choice, pro-fish” voice in Congress.

[plethoraworldatlas]

The Interior Department finalized sweeping drilling restrictions in the western Arctic on Friday that could thwart future oil development in Alaska, a move aiming to bolster President Joe Biden’s environmental legacy ahead of the November presidential election.

The department also rejected a proposed mining road through the Alaska wilderness that would have allowed access to undeveloped mineral deposits, including copper and zinc. In a final supplemental environmental analysis, Interior suggested “no action” for the 211-mile-long Ambler Road, which mining interests and Alaska’s delegation have championed for years. The administration concluded the road would significantly and irrevocably affect wildlife and other resources in a way that cannot be mitigated.

Both the Ambler Road decision and the final rule restricting oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) underscore the Biden administration’s attempt to curb mining and drilling on public lands and shrink industry’s footprint in favor of wilderness, recreation and wildlife habitat.

John Podesta, senior adviser to the president for international climate policy, said the pair of decisions would conserve Alaska lands for generations.

“The Biden-Harris administration has now protected more than 41 million acres of lands and waters across the country, leaving a huge mark on the history of American conservation,” Podesta said in a statement.

Both decisions target developments that are backed by political leaders in Alaska, which relies heavily on oil and minerals extraction for revenue.

The final rule for the NPR-A lays out “maximum protections” for oil development on roughly 13 million acres of protected lands in the 23-million-acre reserve. The proposed rule was first announced last year to soften the Biden administration’s approval of ConocoPhillips’ Willow project — a divisive 30-year drilling project also in the NPR-A.

Under the final plan, drillers will likely face new hurdles and regulatory hoops to get projects approved. For example, the Bureau of Land Management will make companies offset “reasonably foreseeable and significantly adverse effects” of drilling proposals, a difficult to quantify standard, according to some observers. BLM will also be allowed to regularly update boundaries of “special areas,” which are regions where oil and gas development is most restricted

[robynochs]

For the election of Democrat Mary Peltola to the U.S. House of Representatives from Alaska, I give thanks.

Peltola, the 1st Alaska Native elected to Congress and -- by all accounts -- a coalition builder --, beat Sarah Palin 54.9% to 45.1%.

Peltola Wins Bid to Serve Full Term in the House for Alaska

[news-of-the-day]

2/13/23

The Turkish-Syrian earthquake death toll topped 36K. There is now mounting anger over the lack of help, particularly in Syria. As I mentioned a few days ago, Syria has been under a civil war for over a decade, so a lot of political issues have come into play: the central government is less willing to help because the areas affected have been fighting against it, and the ways for aid to come in from the south goes through an active fighting hotspots. The Turkish side is also suffering from similar issues: no rescue teams, no food, blankets, etc., so anger is turning toward President Erdogan, who is currently campaigning in an election. One reason why this earthquake was so deadly is shoddy construction work; buildings that were supposed to withstand vibrations just toppled. So the government announced it was arresting over 100 contractors, but many view this as a deflection tactic away from Erdogan, especially considering the officials who accepted bribes from these contractors weren’t also arrested.

Three more balloons were shot down: on Friday one over Alaska, and on Saturday two over the Yukon and Lake Huron. These ones were much smaller than the one earlier in the week, which was the size of two buses.

About a million people in France marched in protest against Macon's pension reforms.

The FBI conducted a search of former Vice President Pence's house and found classified documents. The special counsel investigating Trump's actions on January 6th also subpoenaed Pence.

1) Washington Post, NPR, Al Jazeera 2) Vox, NYT 3) Le Monde 4) Washington Post, CNN

[beardedmrbean]

Washington — The husband of Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska has died after a plane crash in her home state, her office announced Wednesday.

Eugene Peltola Jr. died Wednesday morning, her chief of staff shared in a statement.

"We are devastated to share that Mary's husband, Eugene Peltola Jr. — 'Buzzy' to all of us who knew and loved him — passed away earlier this morning following a plane accident in Alaska," Peltola's chief of staff Anton McParland wrote. "He was one of those people that was obnoxiously good at everything. He had a delightful sense of humor that lightened the darkest moments. He was definitely the cook in the family. And family was most important to him. He was completely devoted to his parents, kids, siblings, extended family, and friends — and simply adored Mary."

The statement said the congresswoman "is returning home to be with their family, and we ask that their privacy be respected during this time."

Peltola's office did not share any additional details about the nature of the accident, but the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday morning that it was investigating the crash of a single-engine Piper PA 18-150 Super Cub near St. Mary's, a small town in western Alaska. The Federal Aviation Administration said the crash resulted in a single fatality. 

Peltola, a Democrat who beat former Rep. Sarah Palin in a special election last year, is Alaska's only representative in the House. She is also the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress. She spoke at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage on Monday when President Biden visited to commemorate 22 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

Alaska politicians are no strangers to tragic plane deaths. Former Sen. Ted Stevens died in a single-engine plane crash in Alaska in 2010, having previously survived a crash in 1978. Alaska's at-large congressional seat was made vacant last year when Rep. Don Young, then the oldest member of Congress, died of natural causes on a plane to Seattle while traveling home to Alaska. Young won that seat decades earlier after the state's then-representative went missing and was presumed dead in a plane crash. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 25, 2022

Heather Cox Richardson

Yesterday, Representative Mary Peltola (D-AK) won Alaska’s House seat for a full term after taking it this summer in a special election to replace Representative Don Young (R-AK), who died in office in March after 49 years in Congress. Peltola is the first woman to represent Alaska and, as Yup’ik, is the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress. Peltola was endorsed by Alaskans of both parties, including Republicans like Senator Lisa Murkowski. Peltola promised to protect abortion and the salmon fisheries and was elected thanks to Alaska’s recent adoption of ranked choice voting, in which votes from poorly polling candidates are redistributed to those at the top until one gets more than 50%. This method of voting tends to favor moderates. Peltola’s reelection stopped former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, whom Trump endorsed, from reentering politics. Murkowski has also won reelection, defeating a Trump-backed challenger endorsed by the Alaska Republican Party. Trump targeted Murkowski after she voted to convict him for incitement of insurrection during his second impeachment after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The reelections of Peltola and Murkowski illustrate that we are, in many different ways, at a sea change moment in American history. In the past two years, Democrats have successfully pushed back on forty years of efforts to dismantle the business regulation, basic social safety net, promotion of infrastructure, protection of civil rights, and international cooperation that were the fundamental principles underpinning American government after the Depression and World War II. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with the Democratic Congress, have rebuilt some of the economic fairness of the old system and invested in infrastructure, while Biden, Harris, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have strengthened the foreign alliances that the former president had undermined. Democratic leadership is also changing in the House of Representatives as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) have stepped out of the top three leadership roles in the House to make way for members of a new generation, presumably Representatives Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Katherine Clark (D-MA), and Pete Aguilar (D-CA). Pelosi’s team has defended the liberal consensus and expanded it into health care and measures to address climate change; the new generation of Democrats seems likely to center issues like childcare and racial equality more fully than their predecessors did. These changes embrace the demographic change the last election made so clear. Gen Z—the generation born after 1997—is racially and ethnically diverse. Its members want the government to do more to solve problems than it has done in their lifetime, and they are now politically awake. That generation looks much like the Millennials from the generation preceding it—those born between 1981 and 1996—and both groups strongly favor Democratic policies. Peltola reflects another change visible after the election: the record number of women elected to office this cycle. Peltola will add one more woman to the House of Representatives, bringing the total to 124, one more than the record set by the current Congress. Murkowski will bring the total of female senators to 25, which is one fewer than the record of 26, set in 2020 thanks to a few special appointments for unexpectedly empty seats. But the place women’s representation really changed in 2022 was in the number of women elected to govern their states. In 2018, just 16 female candidates ran for governorships. In 2022, there were 36 governor’s contests, and 25 women ran in them. Until now there have been only 45 women governors in our history, and only 9 in office at one time. Beginning in 2023, a record number of twelve women will hold governorships. Incumbent female governors in Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, New Mexico, Michigan and South Dakota were reelected. Voters in Arizona, Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Oregon elected new governors who are women. And New Yorkers elected Kathy Hochul, who took office initially in 2021 to replace resigning governor Andrew Cuomo. Meredith Conroy and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux of FiveThirtyEight note that historically, voters are less likely to vote for women for solo offices than as group lawmakers, but Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics, told Jennifer Shutt of the Idaho Capital Sun that a number of factors fed the success rate of women candidates this cycle. First, there is now a long enough history of women in high positions of leadership that voters have confidence in them, especially as some of them—like Kay Ivey in Alabama and Hochul in New York—stepped into their positions after their male predecessors resigned in disgrace. Even more key, perhaps, was the June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion guaranteed in 1973 by Roe v. Wade. Women turned out to protect their right to healthcare in this election and, not surprisingly, they turned to women governors who made protecting abortion care central to their reelection campaigns. The female governors have a great deal of legislative experience, perhaps in part because their rise through the political ranks has been slow as it has been hampered by resistance. Republicans reelected female governors in South Dakota, Iowa, and Alabama and added Trump’s former White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as governor of Arkansas. While Sanders has no experience in elected office, the other three—South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, Iowa’s Kim Reynolds, and Alabama’s Kay Ivey—all have significant experience in their state governments and, in Noem’s case, in Congress. The same is even more true on the Democratic side. Maine’s Janet Mills, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, New York’s Kathy Hochul, New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham, Oregon’s Tina Kotek, and Kansas’s Laura Kelly all have legislative experience; Maura Healey of Massachusetts twice won election as state attorney general. While Noem made headlines for her fervent support of former president Trump, the new Democratic governors all ran as competent administrators who strongly opposed Trump-type politics. Maine’s Mills ran against a former governor who once described himself as “Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular,” and Michigan’s Whitmer was such a target of the former president that she became the target of a kidnapping and murder plot. This focus on competence and moderation clearly boosted Peltola and Murkowski, along with female candidates for governor, but the expansion of representation still does not come close to reflecting the actual percentage of women in the U.S. population. Nor does it reflect racial and ethnic identities. Women representatives are more diverse than in the Senate, but only two women senators—Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI)—are Asian American, and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) is Latina. Since Vice President Kamala Harris resigned from the Senate to take her current office, there have been no Black women in the Senate. Of the women governors, only New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is Latina, and voters have not yet put a Black women governor at the head of a state. They did, though, put Karen Bass, a Black former congressional representative, in charge of Los Angeles, with record voter turnout. Bass will be the first female mayor in the city’s 241-year history, and her charge is a big one: the city’s 3.8 million people give it more inhabitants than 22 U.S. states. Voters have also embraced other diversity: the new governors in Massachusetts and Oregon are openly lesbian. That female candidates won so many seats—some contests had women running against each other—is “a really good reminder that women get to be as diverse in their viewpoints and perspectives, priorities, et cetera, as their male counterparts,” Dittmar told Jasmine Mithani of The 19th. “We get to see that being a woman candidate, being a woman doesn't mean the same thing for everybody.” The expansion of our political representation to reflect the many different people in our diverse democracy can only be a good thing.

—

Notes:

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/01/17/generation-z-looks-a-lot-like-millennials-on-key-social-and-political-issues/

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/17/us/election-news-results#jeffries-clark-and-aguilar-are-positioning-themselves-as-the-new-top-three-democrats

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-historic-number-of-women-will-be-governors-next-year/

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-sarah-palin-don-young-alaska-donald-trump-cf3fa90c1f8bed60b49eaf3162e79c69

https://www.murkowski.senate.gov/press/release/murkowski-votes-to-convict-president-donald-j-trump

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/24/1139155670/mary-peltola-wins-alaska-election-congress

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/23/politics/peltola-palin-alaska-election-results/index.html

https://worldpopulationreview.com/states

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-11-25/los-angeles-mayor-election-voting-record

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/23/black-mayors-karen-bass-the-fifty-00069497

https://19thnews.org/2022/11/women-representation-governor-house-senate-charts/

https://www.idahostatejournal.com/freeaccess/record-setting-number-of-women-elected-as-governors-in-midterms/article_7b7013c4-660a-11ed-9b21-8be07d05c746.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[richardnixonlibrary]

#Nixon50 #OTD 3/27/1973 President Nixon met with Congresswoman Corinne “Lindy” Boggs. Mrs. Boggs won the special election held to fill the congressional seat of her husband, Thomas Hale Boggs Sr., who was declared dead several weeks after his plane disappeared over Alaska on October 16, 1972. In 1974, she was elected to serve her first full term. She represented Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District until January 1991. In 1997, Cong. Boggs was appointed 5th United States Ambassador to the Holy See. 

Fun Fact: One of the Boggs’s children was the renowned television journalist “Cokie” Roberts. (Image: WHPO-E0507-04A)

[arcticdementor]

In his 1941 classic of political science, The Managerial Revolution, James Burnham claimed that the need for managerial skill and technological competence had made the inherited forms of capitalism and democracy utterly unsuited to the challenges of his time. Ruling would belong not to capitalist entrepreneurs or elected politicians but to skilled managers. For only the managers had the sufficient training—that is, the training necessary to produce, mobilize, and deploy human and nonhuman resources to achieve victory in war and prosperity in peace. Events and ideas since Burnham have made much of his book appear dated. The owner-entrepreneur has returned: just as Henry Ford took the automobile to mass production, Elon Musk has done the same for space rockets, while at the same time revolutionizing the electric car and social media. Moreover, thanks to the work of Friedrich Hayek and our experience of Communism, nobody today has the faith that managers have the ability to plan the nation’s or the world’s economy, or even conduct a business efficiently, without being subject to prices that float more or less freely according to supply and demand. Nonetheless, the managers are still with us, and returning to Burnham can help us understand their aspirations and limitations. Returning to Burnham will also help us understand the present form of political conflict that is occurring in almost every democracy, between one faction that represents the credentialed professional-managerial class and the other that seeks to constrain, chasten, or, even in its more delusional moments, dissolve that class.

…

Management control is management by indicator. Managers substitute numerical proxies for results that are difficult or impossible to quantify or simply beyond their control. Sales managers cannot force sales, but they can force sales calls. The coffee shop manager cannot make sure customers come to get coffee, but she can make sure that the staff is on hand to serve them if the customers do come.

…

The managers base their claim to control policy on their technical specialization. Those who are scientifically trained “are the science,” as Dr. Fauci said of himself. But there are two failings of this kind of control, one obvious and one subtle. The obvious failing is that any specialization is based on training in the use and relevance of special indicators, while discounting or ignoring matters those indicators do not even aspire to measure and that specialists ignore because they are not trained to weigh them. For example, closing schools during the COVID pandemic did great, and in some ways irreparable, harm to the education of students who should have been in school—harms that many observers at the time thought were outweighed by the supposed mortality and morbidity benefits of the closures. The more subtle failing is that because managers use indicators instead of goals and deploy their credentials as a defense against accountability, the managers are not even especially good at their jobs. Jurisdictions that closed schools did not in fact have lower excess deaths or even lower COVID-19 mortality.

…

Compliance, as generations of librarians, schoolmarms, and HR ladies demonstrate, is a peculiarly female occupation and preoccupation. Alaska fishermen are still overwhelmingly male. The government inspectors who ensure that their boats are OSHA compliant and don’t overfish are much more likely to be female. The growth of the state in the form of regulation has made every workplace more oriented around females. This has empowered women professionally, economically, and politically, creating a coalition (women are now a majority of the voting-age population) that stands athwart any political check on the managers.

[chels10621]

What's New?

Hello everybody! Long time no see???

Ha! It has been a minute since I've made a blog, and a lot has happened.

So far, this year has been good. No huge hiccups. Nothing crazy. We're already almost done with August and moving on to September. Where did seven months go? Or eight months.

Families are doing well for the most part, so that's good. Work has been pretty good, nothing special going on. Except the fact that we are moving to a new office next month. It's shedding my drive time by 10 minutes and I don't have to take the toll to work. So yay! There are a lot of features at the new office. Also, earlier this week, we were informed that we'll be going into the office three times a week after we move into the new office. That's going to be fun *says sarcastically*.

POLITICS!! I really don't want to get into it, but it's something that needs to be addressed. It's election year and people are out for BLOOD! Not literally though. So BIDEN decided to run for president again, but after the first presidential debate that they had in May (I think), it was a huge disaster. It was an embarrassment for the American people and for the Democratic Party. A month later, I believe, Biden dropped out of the campaign. HOWEVER, he endorsed his VP, KAMLA HARRIS!

This woman hasn't NOT ONCE visited our borders, to see what is going on. Hasn't said anything about what she's going to do about handling the border control, managing the inflation, housing market, the economy, etc. She is going to allow illegal immigrants to walk into our country, with free Medicare, free money, and PAY NO TAXES. But the American people are going to pay for those taxes. Now, I think it would be cool to have a female be the president of our country. However, as a woman, we allow our emotions get the best of us. So no. I'm sorry.

My husband has been watching a lot of political videos and news for a bit now, and I'm just at a point where I'm tired of seeing it. I'm tired of hearing it because it's the same thing. I think it's kind of sad that the American people are struggling financially. People are buying houses that they can't afford, picking which bill they want to pay, and groceries are through the roof. People can't even afford cars.

I'm going to be honest here. I'm 32 years old (yeah, I'm still pretty young), but I'm ready for a house. My husband and I have been living in the same apartment complex for five years now, and we're tired of it. I'm ready for this country to go through a HUGE change for the good of this country. I've seen videos where someone is going to random people, and asking who would they vote for this year's presidential campaign, and they would vote for Trump. THE MAJORITY OF THESE PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR BIDEN. They realized that having Trump in office was better. People want to accuse Trump of being a racist and narcissistic man, but he knows how to run this country and cares about the American people.

Okay, phew I think I'm done. Hubby and I are getting back into the bandwagon of Alaska. Yep, you heard me right. We're biding our time, and waiting to see what the Lord guides us. We've been praying for a better job opportunity for hubby because we can't make it here any longer. Especially if we plan on having children um real soon. Like starting this year coming up.

Anyway, I think I've covered quite a bit. So until next time guys.

[bllsbailey]

Andrew Yang Is Either Smoking Something or Working to Get Back Into the Dem Party's Good Graces

Remember Andrew Yang? We barely do. Yang made a big splash in the 2020 Democrat primary as a fresh-faced Millennial who could unify the two factions of the Democrat Party and maybe even the nation. Once the Democrat Party divested themselves of such nonsense and anointed former VP Joe Biden as the nominee, Yang tried to parlay his unity politics into a run for New York Mayor but was once again rejected. In 2021, he left the Democrat Party, wrote a "Dear John" letter, and registered as an Independent. 

My goal is to do as much as I can to advance our society. There are phenomenal public servants doing great work every day – but our system is stuck. It is stuck in part because polarization is getting worse than ever. Many of the people I know are doing all of the good they can – but their impact is constrained. Now that I’m not a member of one party or another, I feel like I can be even more honest about both the system and the people in it.

In 2022, Yang attempted to translate these noble aims and outsider momentum into "The Forward Party." Yang was convinced that a combination of Open Primaries and Ranked Choice Voting was the key to reforming the two-party system. His third-party efforts made a big splash but ultimately went nowhere. With the demand for a greater focus on election integrity and the horrible results from Ranked Choice Voting in places like Alaska, Maine, and New York, that concept, as well as open primaries, has been receiving greater pushback and has fallen out of favor. To put a finer point on it, so has Yang. Just like the "No Labels" party, Yang's unified goals, common ground schtick is of little interest to the American people. They want leaders who will actually uphold the Constitution and civil liberties, who will focus on all Americans and not just special interest groups, and they want their leaders to actually lead, not seek consensus.

But like every wannabe, also-ran, and hanger-on who has been surrounding Democrat Party politics, it has not stopped him from weighing in on whether Joe Biden should step down, as my colleague Levon Satamian wrote about on Thursday. Satamian included an X post from Yang that read, "You know if there had been Democratic primary debates we might have figured this out 6 months ago. #swapJoeout" Kind of an odd take, since a Democrat primary did nothing to keep them from anointing Biden as the nominee in 2020. His post received the appropriate ratio, this one doing a good job of unmasking Yang's real motives.

Bingo. But not just struggling for relevance, struggling to get back on the inside track of the Democrat Party. If that post didn't confirm his obsequiousness, another post Yang made hours later confirmed the dark stain on his nose.

If Joe Biden does step aside he would immediately go down as one of the greatest Presidents of all time - and his legacy would be one of personal triumph and nobility. #swapJoeout

First thought: What is he smoking and where can it be purchased? The Wall Street Silver account beat us to it.

Other commenters were far less vague. WARNING: The imagery is a tad graphic.

Yang trying to play both ends against the middle was also not lost on the X-verse. If the Democrat Party Yang left is so broken, then how can the head of the party, who is too incapacitated to get through a debate, ever be considered a great leader? Make it make sense.

And then there are the shattered illusions. Their populist idol has been found to have feet of clay.

If it means that Yang can get a seat at the table under the new Democrat regime, with or without Biden, then he'll say whatever he needs to. It's clear he was promised something and is just one of the many barbarians at the gate in this bloodless coup. Unsurprising, but sad nonetheless.

[cleoselene]

yeah, the time to have this "change the system" conversation is not 7 months before the general election. I think people just want things to magically get better under a benevolent mythical dictator. But you're right. Movements have to happen from the ground up. To be fair there are what... 3? 4? including Sinema Independent Senators which is actually kind of surprising in a system like ours but they are all pretty specific and special cases. New England and Alaska just march to a different beat and Sinema's just a sellout

so many people are failing so hard at the most basic fundamental question of democracy that faces as voters in 2024:

fascism or nah?

democracy or nah?

authoritarianism or nah?

but the way some of you talk about Joe Biden it makes me think you wish that he was more authoritarian. I choose to believe people simply don't understand the legal separation of powers, I choose to believe it's a civics failure

but more and more I think there's just an appetite for authoritarianism. I think that's what draws people to Trump, actually. I think that's where you get dummy leftists saying "Why didn't Biden just sign an executive order to [insert thing that the courts would CERTAINLY immediately overturn here, like student loan cancellation, which is exactly what happened]?" and you're like "well, the courts" and they're "why didn't Biden just stack the courts" and you're like "well, the Senate" and they're like WHY DOESN'T HE STEAMROLL THE SENATE and it's like BECAUSE HE FUCKING CAN'T IT'S AGAINST THE LAW. And why isn't the senate better? because stupid fucks don't vote

people just want a benevolent dictatorship without realizing that such a thing has always been a fucking fantasy. a dictator is a dictator is a dictator.