InfoHedon

Apr 29

Approval Voting: A Voice for Independents -

America hates Independents. At least it gives that impression. Independents take just two of our 535 US Congressional seats. And only 20 of these outsiders sit among the nation’s 7,382 state legislators.

Yet, 40% of Americans identify as Independent. How could Independents be so underrepresented—by a factor of over 100?

Answer: Our vote-for-one Plurality Voting system suffocates Independents. Plurality ensures this result by coercing voters away from their honest favorites. No one wants to throw away their only vote on a less-than-viable candidate. And it’s this dishonest voting under Plurality that explains the disconnect with whom we elect.

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We need a voting system that lets you vote your honest favorites—always. Enter Approval Voting. Approval Voting is simple. The ballot looks like Plurality, most votes wins, and you still just check off candidates (no ranking). But Approval Voting lets you pick as many as many candidates as you wish. And that’s crucial.

To take this in, imagine Plurality compared to Approval Voting for the 1992 and 2000 US Presidential elections. (See figure.) How would you vote?

Plurality Voting cripples Independents through artificially low support. Conversely, Approval Voting avoids this when it lets voters choose their favorites. So it makes sense that Approval Voting would give Independents more accurate support.

And it does. A 2009 German study looked at this question for its state elections. Approval Voting gave Independent/third-party candidates roughly five times more support than with Plurality. (See figure.)

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As you think about how life couldn’t be any harsher for Independents, know that it can at least be better. Our democracy is only as good as its voting system. The US uses winner-take-all elections. And Approval Voting can operate within that framework for both local and federal elections.

Independent candidates need a voting system that accurately measures their support before they can get anywhere. Approval Voting achieves that. And it may be the only way Independents ever get their voice. It’s up to you to tell others about Approval Voting.

Everyone should consider Approval Voting their most important issue because the voting system is the determinant for all other issues.

Apr 17

Approval Voting: A Voice for Independents | Independent Voter Network -

We Have a Representation Problem

America hates Independents. At least it gives that impression. Independents take just two of our 535 US Congressional seats. And only 20 of these outsiders sit among the nation’s 7,382 state legislators.

Yet, 40% of Americans identify as Independent. How could Independents be so underrepresented—by a factor of over 100?

Answer: Our vote-for-one Plurality Voting system suffocates Independents.

… 

We need a voting system that lets you vote your honest favorites—always. Enter Approval Voting. 

Apr 06

Obama Defends Bush Administration's Torture Program -

The “sunshine”-promoting Obama administration has used the Espionage Act to charge its 6th whistleblower. For those keeping track, that’s twice as many uses as all previous administrations combined.

So what did this whistleblower do? He revealed CIA torture programs under the Bush administration. Lock him up!

Mar 29

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Mar 20

dragonbloodink:

If you have or will have student loans, you need to read this.

Something potentially life-changing for millions of people has happened.

On March 8, 2012, Rep. Hansen Clarke introduced H.R. 4170, the Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012. This act proposes that people with federal student loan debt pay 10% of their discretionary income for a period of 10 years, and then the rest of the debt would be forgiven. I’m not clear on the details, but I’m also hearing that somehow it proposes to roll private debt into federal debt so it would apply, too.

Student loan debt is financially crippling millions of people and having negative effects on the economic recovery efforts.

Suze Ormond gives a very good explanation here of why student loan debt is contributing to the economic crisis in America. Not to mention the personal cost for young people trying to start out in life with the double whammy of a poor economy and serious loan debt. What’s even less certain is how this will affect Americans for generations to come, with some calling young Americans “The New Lost Generation.”

When you can barely afford to pay your loans, you aren’t buying cars. You aren’t buying houses. You aren’t spending a lot of money on consumer items or vacations. You’re trying to scrape up enough money to pay that bill so Sallie Mae will stop sending you threatening letters.

Think what would happen if suddenly, all of the people sending most of their paychecks to student loan companies had hundreds of dollars more to spend on other things.

• Think how many people would move out of their family home and get a place of their own.
• Think how many people would buy a car.
• Think how many couples would decide to get married.
• Think how many people would be able to start saving for retirement, or be able to afford health insurance.
• Think how many people would buy clothes, shoes, electronics, or better-quality food.
• Think how many people would stop considering suicide as the only way out of an apparently impossible financial crisis. 
• And now think how all that money flooding into the economy would improve things in America.

This is one economic problem that is not going to get better over time without action. It’s actually getting worse. It’s not only students themselves suffering. With nowhere else to go, many have moved back in with families and are relying on family support. That’s making it very hard for their parents to retire.

To date, the government has done little to nothing to help out people with existing student debt, despite economists screaming from the rooftops that student loans are a bubble about to burst and when it does, it could tip the country right back into another full-blown recession or even depression. At the very least, it’s likely hampering efforts to get the economy back on track.

It’s telling when you consider where the government chooses to help. The government bailed out the banks. It bailed out the auto industry. It put in place measures to help people facing foreclosure. It’s looking at addressing credit card rules. But what has it done to help people with student loans, which – again – is now a larger problem than credit card debt?

This is a groundbreaking measure and it needs people to get behind it immediately and show their support, to let Congress know what such a relief could mean to a generation of young people struggling under a mountain of debt unlike anything our country has seen before.

I fully support The Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012 as a way to help stimulate the economy, remove a financial and emotional burden from millions of people, and help pull the country out of the sinkhole it entered nearly four years ago.

The Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012 will stop the bleeding. We need other things to happen, too.

• We need representatives to call for student loan reforms to stop the problem for future generations.
• We need representatives to call for colleges and universities to bring down tuition for current and future students.
• We need representatives to support community and technical colleges.
• We need to change the tenor of conversation about higher education in America.
• We need media to start asking the hard questions about why this happened in the first place.

But first, we have to put a tourniquet on the debt that is bleeding Americans dry.

If you support this bill, contact your representatives and senators and tell them so immediately. Call them. Email them. Write letters. 

For more information, check out http://forgivestudentloandebt.com/

You can track the bill through GovTrack here.

Sign the petition here!

And SPREAD THE WORD!

(via jonathan-cunningham)

Mar 13

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Feb 28

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Feb 19

[video]

afternoonsnoozebutton:

So you think The Help is a good movie.

(Daily Mail)

(via jonathan-cunningham)

Feb 17

Absolutely effective male birth control. -

ifellintoarabbithole:

No side effects. Good for up to 10 years. Will likely be available in the next five years in the U.S.

It’s a pity that men won’t use it because they have to have a needle in their penis. 

It’s a pity when people spread nonsense and doubt so to risk others not having the opportunity to better control their fertility. It’s a pity.

Feb 12

Man arrested for YouTube video critical of US foreign policy -

jonathan-cunningham:

Over the past several years, the Justice Department has increasingly attempted to criminalize what is clearly protected political speech by prosecuting numerous individuals (Muslims, needless to say) for disseminating political views the government dislikes or considers threatening.  The latest episode emerged on Friday, when the FBI announced the arrest and indictment of Jubair Ahmad, a 24-year-old Pakistani legal resident living in Virginia, charged with “providing material support” to a designated Terrorist organization (Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT)).

What is the “material support” he allegedly gave?  He produced and uploaded a 5-minute video to YouTube featuring photographs of U.S. abuses in Abu Ghraib, video of armored trucks exploding after being hit by IEDs, prayer messages about “jihad” from LeT’s leader, and — according to the FBI’s Affidavit — “a number of terrorist logos.”  That, in turn, led the FBI agent who signed the affidavit to assert that ”based on [his] training and experience, it is evident that the video … is designed as propaganda to develop support for LeT and to recruit jihadists to LeT.”  The FBI also claims Ahmad spoke with the son of an LeT leader about the contents of the video and had attended an LeT camp when he was a teenager in Pakistan.  For the act of uploading that single YouTube video (and for denying that he did so when asked by the FBI agents who came to his home to interrogate him), he faces 23 years in prison.

Let’s be very clear about the key point: the Constitution — specifically the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment — prohibits the U.S. Government from punishing someone for the political views they express, even if those views include the advocacy of violence against the U.S. and its leaders.  One can dislike this legal fact.  One can wish it were different.  But it is the clear and unambiguous law, and has been since the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which overturned the criminal conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader who had publicly threatened violence against political officials in a speech.

The video doesn’t even appear to advocate violence. God, how terrifying- to think I could be imprisoned for voicing the ‘wrong’ opinion. I really do feel like this is a clear line toward fascism that we didn’t just cross, we leaped over.

Feb 10

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Feb 02

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Feb 01

19 Things That School Children Are Being Arrested For In America

lost-and-searching-in-america:

19 Things That School Children Are Being Arrested For In America

#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume.

#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.

#3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket.  The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.

#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.

#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up.  Instead of being sent to see the principal,they were arrested and sent to court.

#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.

#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.

#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school.  It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples.  So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this?  The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.

#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.

#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture.

#14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police.  The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back….

“Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.”

#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor andtasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.

#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom.  The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.

#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.

#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.

(via jonathan-cunningham)

jonathan-cunningham:

kateoplis:

The New York Times has had it with the NYPD blocking its photographers at | The Atlantic

New York Police officers continue to interfere with photographers and reporters trying to cover news, and a New York Times photographer who was prevented from shooting an arrest at an Occupy Wall Street rally last weekend said police had reason to hide their actions from the press.

The department’s treatment of reporters in the field has been so bad, media outlets say, that 13 news organizations signed a second letter to the New York Police Department from a New York Timeslawyer on Wednesday, demanding responses and follow-up after their first scathing criticism of the department’s handling of the press. The new complaint to police comes after two officers prevented Times freelance photographer Robert Stolarik from photographing a protester’s arrest at Sunday’s rally in support of Occupy Oakland, the letter says. The letter, which Capital New York posted in full, cites a Times story that reported “officers blocked the lens of a newspaper photographer attempting to document the arrests.” […]

We’ve reached out to the New York Police Department for comment, and will update this account when they respond.

I love how surprised and astounded the New York Times is that the police would do this to them. 

“B-But we did everything you asked! We lied about your warrantless wiretaps for two years, we changed the definition of torture to suit you, WHY DON’T YOU LOVE US?!”

Still, it’s nice to see them (finally) showing some backbone.