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Honestly the first two should be a federal thing. I just don’t understand how a federal election has 50 different ways of doing and qualifying things and not on

Honestly the first two should be a federal thing. I just don’t understand how a federal election has 50 different ways of doing and qualifying things and not one way for a position that affects the whole country. If we were to pull up on a Alien planet and see this kind of election style we would ridicule the ridiculousness that is the US election system. Don’t get me started on how it makes any sense that we don’t leverage the power of the government for something as crucial as life. Why in the god damn fuck is giving birth in this country not free?

bhupy 5y ago
> I just don’t understand how a federal election has 50 different ways of doing and qualifying things and not one way for a position that affects the whole country. This is how it works in the EU as well, and per the GGP commenter, the prescription was for the US to be more like the EU, which is how it was set up in the first place anyway per the GP comment. > Don’t get me started on how it makes any sense that we don’t leverage the power of the government for something as crucial as life. Why in the god damn fuck is giving birth in this country not free? Except there are several different viable ways of providing universal healthcare. You can have a single payer system like Canada/Denmark/American Medicare, you can have a single provider system like the UK/Veterans Administration, you can have a purely private non-employer funded system like Switzerland or the Netherlands, you can have a public-private mix like Germany, or only universal catastrophic coverage like in Singapore. Each approach has its own trade-offs, and those trade-offs are political in nature, where some States might prefer one set of trade-offs and others may not. This is exactly how Canada's single payer healthcare came about. Saskatchewan was the first Province to offer single payer in 1947, followed by Alberta in 1951, etc. By 1961, all Provinces had some form of a single payer healthcare system. To this day, Canada's single-payer system is Provincial, not Federal. The Federal government provides supplemental funding, but that only happened after each Province independently developed its own system, and only after all Provinces unanimously agreed to the Federal health transfer. As of 2020, Federal transfer payments in Canada only amount to 22% (https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/45/E1408 https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/45/E1408).
beerandt 5y ago
>leverage the power of the government Because people get paid to do those jobs, and the government mandating that they do it for free, or for some reduced price is theft of labor. We've already fought that war.
rayiner 5y ago
We’re 50 different states that are, in theory, supposed to be quite independent of each other. (In some ways, even more so than the EU. For example, the EU has no equivalent of our anti-commandeering principle. The EU can direct national administrative organs to carry out task, while the U.S. federal government can’t direct state administrative units. The issue of why taxpayers won’t pay doctors to deliver children is orthogonal to the point I’m making. If taxpayers in California or New York want to do that, they should do it.
- dctoedt 5y ago
  > We’re 50 different states that are, in theory, supposed to be quite independent of each other. That ship sailed over the horizon a long time ago, like at the latest with the adoption of the 14th Amendment nearly 150 years ago. When you took the oath to become a lawyer, you didn't swear allegiance to whatever state you happened to be living in at the time. And sociologically, I'd venture that most U.S. citizens think of themselves as Americans, not as Marylanders or Texans (OK, granted, a lot of Texans think of themselves as Texans first, which isn't a good thing).
  - ericns 5y ago
    Texan's thinking themselves Texan's is bad because it might be a hurdle to further illegitimate concentration of state power to the federal gov't. Looking at your bio, I'd guess your party to the democratic/republican conspiracy to localize government power in Washington, DC via courts and unconstitutional laws (FISA, all drug laws, PATRIOT ACT). You're all ABA (prosecutors, judges, legislators, politicians) and have set yourselves up in places beyond legal accountability. Y'all then selectively enforce your laws against those that seem to impede your ability to concentrate power (last couple presidents ordered the execution of American's without trial, where you boys at on that?). Hilarious a lawyer cites the 14th Amendment which IIRC mostly references equal protections while ensuring their ilk are beyond that legal accountability.
    - dctoedt 5y ago
      I'm guessing you were my downvote, and yet I can't downvote your comment. The relevant text of the 14th Amendment here is its opening declaration: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States ...." [0] (Emphasis added.) In other words: Under the 14th Amendment, United States citizenship takes precedence over state citizenship — kind of like the old boast, civis romanus sum: I'm a Roman citizen. (The implication was: fuck with me at your peril.) Cf. Act 22:25: "As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, 'Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?'" To be sure, there are Lost-Cause diehards who claim that the 14th Amendment never actually came into effect because the Southern states refused to ratify it and so it didn't get the necessary 3/4 of states; courts have consistently rejected that claim [1]. If anything, the former Confederate states should be grateful that they didn't get the treatment that the Allies meted out to the Germans and Japanese in 1945 and afterwards — one recent commentator, remarking on the outrages perpetrated in and by the post-Civil War South, tweeted that "Sherman should've mowed the deep south like a lawn, making multiple passes." [2] [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv [1] https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2000/attacking-14th-amendment https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/... [2] https://twitter.com/pptsapper/status/1313470161974947843 https://twitter.com/pptsapper/status/1313470161974947843

bhupy 5y ago

> I just don’t understand how a federal election has 50 different ways of doing and qualifying things and not one way for a position that affects the whole country. This is how it works in the EU as well, and per the GGP commenter, the prescription was for the US to be more like the EU, which is how it was set up in the first place anyway per the GP comment. > Don’t get me started on how it makes any sense that we don’t leverage the power of the government for something as crucial as life. Why in the god damn fuck is giving birth in this country not free? Except there are several different viable ways of providing universal healthcare. You can have a single payer system like Canada/Denmark/American Medicare, you can have a single provider system like the UK/Veterans Administration, you can have a purely private non-employer funded system like Switzerland or the Netherlands, you can have a public-private mix like Germany, or only universal catastrophic coverage like in Singapore. Each approach has its own trade-offs, and those trade-offs are political in nature, where some States might prefer one set of trade-offs and others may not. This is exactly how Canada's single payer healthcare came about. Saskatchewan was the first Province to offer single payer in 1947, followed by Alberta in 1951, etc. By 1961, all Provinces had some form of a single payer healthcare system. To this day, Canada's single-payer system is Provincial, not Federal. The Federal government provides supplemental funding, but that only happened after each Province independently developed its own system, and only after all Provinces unanimously agreed to the Federal health transfer. As of 2020, Federal transfer payments in Canada only amount to 22% (https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/45/E1408 https://www.cmaj.ca/content/192/45/E1408).

beerandt 5y ago

>leverage the power of the government Because people get paid to do those jobs, and the government mandating that they do it for free, or for some reduced price is theft of labor. We've already fought that war.

rayiner 5y ago

We’re 50 different states that are, in theory, supposed to be quite independent of each other. (In some ways, even more so than the EU. For example, the EU has no equivalent of our anti-commandeering principle. The EU can direct national administrative organs to carry out task, while the U.S. federal government can’t direct state administrative units. The issue of why taxpayers won’t pay doctors to deliver children is orthogonal to the point I’m making. If taxpayers in California or New York want to do that, they should do it.

dctoedt 5y ago
> We’re 50 different states that are, in theory, supposed to be quite independent of each other. That ship sailed over the horizon a long time ago, like at the latest with the adoption of the 14th Amendment nearly 150 years ago. When you took the oath to become a lawyer, you didn't swear allegiance to whatever state you happened to be living in at the time. And sociologically, I'd venture that most U.S. citizens think of themselves as Americans, not as Marylanders or Texans (OK, granted, a lot of Texans think of themselves as Texans first, which isn't a good thing).
- ericns 5y ago
  Texan's thinking themselves Texan's is bad because it might be a hurdle to further illegitimate concentration of state power to the federal gov't. Looking at your bio, I'd guess your party to the democratic/republican conspiracy to localize government power in Washington, DC via courts and unconstitutional laws (FISA, all drug laws, PATRIOT ACT). You're all ABA (prosecutors, judges, legislators, politicians) and have set yourselves up in places beyond legal accountability. Y'all then selectively enforce your laws against those that seem to impede your ability to concentrate power (last couple presidents ordered the execution of American's without trial, where you boys at on that?). Hilarious a lawyer cites the 14th Amendment which IIRC mostly references equal protections while ensuring their ilk are beyond that legal accountability.
  - dctoedt 5y ago
    I'm guessing you were my downvote, and yet I can't downvote your comment. The relevant text of the 14th Amendment here is its opening declaration: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States ...." [0] (Emphasis added.) In other words: Under the 14th Amendment, United States citizenship takes precedence over state citizenship — kind of like the old boast, civis romanus sum: I'm a Roman citizen. (The implication was: fuck with me at your peril.) Cf. Act 22:25: "As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, 'Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?'" To be sure, there are Lost-Cause diehards who claim that the 14th Amendment never actually came into effect because the Southern states refused to ratify it and so it didn't get the necessary 3/4 of states; courts have consistently rejected that claim [1]. If anything, the former Confederate states should be grateful that they didn't get the treatment that the Allies meted out to the Germans and Japanese in 1945 and afterwards — one recent commentator, remarking on the outrages perpetrated in and by the post-Civil War South, tweeted that "Sherman should've mowed the deep south like a lawn, making multiple passes." [2] [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv [1] https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2000/attacking-14th-amendment https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/... [2] https://twitter.com/pptsapper/status/1313470161974947843 https://twitter.com/pptsapper/status/1313470161974947843