There is value in having states in your pocket, but remember, no matter what colour they are, they are run by politicians. So while states could be useful, there needs to be a process to subsume them to the will of the People. Greg Abbott didn’t spontaneously decide to ship illegals to NYC; it was kind of imposed upon him by the overall Texas disgust with what was going on. Abbott hit upon something to appease his electorate AND discomfit the Blues.
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Since, quite arguably, we’re at the threshold of nuclear conflict (rung 20 of Kahn’s Escalation Ladder) and we got there due to the amplification of Trump Derangement Syndrome into a geopolitical swarm in which competition for status is whoever can escalate, the probability distribution of various revolutionary options has shifted toward the more immediate. My preferred revolutionary modes from least to most immediate:
- Privatizing launch services to provide humanity with an alternative “war” against lifelessness.
- A scientific revolution based on Algorithmic Information Criterion for causal model selection.
- Sortocracy: Sorting Proponents of Social Theories Into Governments That Test Them (since without Algorithmic Information the only way to discover macrosocial causality is experimental controls with consenting human subjects).
- Property Money (since without Sortocracy some minimal monetary/property regime must be imposed to that recognizes titles and fiat money are founded on enforcement of property rights).
- Militia Money (since the need is now urgent to mobilize with minimal “argument surface” and therefore Property Money’s “sovereigns” is operationalized as those registered for the draft.)
#0 was way back in 1990 and boy did NASA drag its feet! (Although the capital markets didn’t function until they basically were forced to let loose a bunch of money to techies by the DotCon bubble.)
I proposed #1 in 2005 (to Marcus Hutter) as a prize to squeeze out the bias in Wikipedia and later in Ockham’s Guillotine to construct a macrosocial model of causation.
I proposed #2 in 2013 in the wake of the financial debacle to deal with what I saw as an emergent rhyme with The Thirty Years War.
I proposed #3 January 2020 when I saw a potential pandemic based on news reports out of China.
I proposed #4 just recently with the hardening of the dominant quasi-theocracy’s Trump Derangement Syndrome into a no-reverse-gear global swarm to impose regime change in Russia.
As time has gone on, the probability has skewed toward #4 and I’m now focused almost exclusively on Militia Money.
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Abbott is a Bushie and you are correct to distrust a Bushie.
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Any suggestions as to how I might go about creating my own “job” somewhere would be greatly appreciated. Here is my LinkedIn announcement that I’m preparing to reenter the workforce in the wake of my wife’s recent death:
The single greatest strategic opportunity is the utilization of Algorithmic Information Theory for model selection. AIT enables very high risk-adjusted return on investment, particularly when approached with incentives such as the Hutter Prize. It is no exaggeration to say this is nothing less than a revolution in the scientific method that is becoming increasingly overdue with growing human resource investments in exponentiating algorithmic and data resources. As an originator of this approach to AGI ever since 2005 and, incentive structures in general since the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, my background in this area is highly prescient, deep and more than merely “passionate”.
Next in line is recognizing that social conflicts present increasing demand for sorting proponents of social theories into communities that test them. To the extent these conflicts threaten to turn violent, as they have been with recent political turbulence, this strategy offers returns on investment in terms of obvious business opportunities such as real estate and more effective delivery of social goods. My recent religious activities have focused the pragmatics of how the Treaty of Westphalia’s principle of Cuius regio, eius religio brought an end to that most-deadly (percapita) of European wars: The Thirty Years War. But my focus in this area goes back to my advocacy of space settlement (SSI local support team leader in Miami 1981) and freedom of individual expression since the early days of what became the Internet as the futures architect for AT&T and Knight-Ridder’s experiment with mass market electronic services. Again, my background is highly prescient, deep and more than merely “passionate”.
Finally, my ideal position would address opportunities created by the increasing turbulence in monetary policy. This is producing not merely market volatility, but geopolitical instability with global resentment of the US dollar as reserve currency. Although a variety of approaches to decentralizing monetary authority have been proposed, the most famous of which is Bitcoin, none of them recognize the essential relationship between property rights enforcement and fiat monetary policy. My essay titled “Property Money” does.
That essay reflects my most recent thinking regarding the delivery of social goods and property rights which started when, in the wake of The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990, I recognized the need to privatize a much larger array of government services via what is nowadays called an “Unconditional Basic Income”:
https://groups.google.com/g/misc.taxes/c/Rokeh_3fc4E/m/jrsocFaCSM8J
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The State Legislatures are the weak link.
Period
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October 1, I blog about “Militia Money”, predicting that the existing monetary regime would respond by extending the draft to women.
Octoboer 11, the Democrats extend the draft to women.
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I disagree somewhat here. In 2012, after Sandyhook, Obama wanted to just decree gun restrictions via exec order. The legislature of Wyoming passed a bill that stated in essence any federal agent caught in Wyoming enforcing those orders would be arrested on the spot. Now, that might have been an empty gesture, but there weren’t any arrests made on the basis of those orders in Wyoming since. I think the same thing has happened in places like Tennessee, Texas, and Florida (mostly in response to COVID insanity). I think the States can be a powerful tool in rebuffing the stupidity coming out of DC.
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Your contention of state legislatures being the weak link is premised upon the fact the 17th Amendment pretty much gutted a lot of state power - at least vis a vis the feds.
Still, much business is done via state legislatures. And state legislatures give the state particular characteristics. I just left Illinois, with its general nanny state sense and all-pervading governmental presense, to come to Texas, where there is still some restriction and nonsense, but way less. People in government here, even in the blue Dallas government, are cheerful, helpful, and willing to go the extra mile to get you what you need. NOT SO in Illinois.
The relationship of states to the federal government was terribly altered by the 17th. Before states had a significant moderating effect upon the federal government, keeping its “mandates” to some reasonable level. They also tended to keep the feds out of local issues and internal issues in general. Not so any more, as they have no voice in the federal government.
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Evidenced by the fact that the current POTUS is being pilloried over crime inside inner cities–absolutely NOT a federal issue. But, because of the Right’s refusal to draw a line in the stand and say no more and the Left’s lack of consideration for the effing rules, we have local law enforcement doing the job of the feds in many areas, i.e., immigration and federal drug enforcement.
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The State Legislatures APPOINT the Electors in a manner they Direct. (And the method can change at their whim….)
It is reaffirmed in all 5 SCOTUS Opinions on 12 December 2000.
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There ARE some state constitutions that lay out the voting process (PA for example). Changing that would require legislature action - and most likely a public referendum.
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Probably not: State Legislatures have this power from the Federal Constitution (and affirmed in ALL 5 Opinions of SCOTUS on 12 December 2020).
Yes—for Federal Representatives and Federal Senators.
Appointment of Electors very different
I recognize the constitution gave states - more specifically state legislatures - the power to decide how elections would occur. But that was a general, broadly worded power, left to states to decide how to implement. Some decided to put that process in their constitutions, thereby making it necessary to have a constitutional amendment process to change, which in most states requires action by the legislature. So PA, for instance, had a wholly illegal election in 2020 because the governor and court colluded to change the constitution without any legal justification.
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Go deeper: there is NO right to vote or even have an election to appoint Electors. The General Assembly could have YOU appoint the Electors.
The “right” to have an election is false (in the case of POTUS). Ruth Bader Ginsburg was passionate (and correct) about this.
If the election doesn’t pass the general assembly’s “sniff” test—it is certainly within their powers to “gavel into session” and appoint as they see fit. They are the “check and balance”
The State Constitution gives them “cover” to do———nothing.
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But you are looking only at the Federal perspective. This would apply to all those state legislatures that are not constrained by their own constitutions. A state legislature cannot act against its own constitution no matter what the Fed says - unless it is specifically forbidden to do so per the fed constitution. The Federal constitution only gives the state legislatures the right to set up elections as they see fit. It does NOT say the state can’t, with the legislature’s approval, incorporate those rules into the state constitution.
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Between 1792 and 1860, South Carolina never held a popular vote for President. Its electors were, in each case, chosen by the state Legislature. This was never challenged.
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The Federal Constitution gave the State Legislatures the plenary power to appoint electors.
The word election does not appear.
I’m moving on……
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If you read the novel, Scandlemonger by William Safire, you get the sense that the presidential elections were designed to be that way. The scenes of Jefferson’s surrogates working behind the scenes to secure legislatures choose electors friendly to Jefferson was a great depiction of this process. It is also what prompted me at the ripe old age of 22 to decide that voters should have zero role in electing the president and that we should go back to the old ways.
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