Category: Politics

Ohio House Bill 546

Letter sent to my Ohio State Representative and Senator:

I am writing to encourage you to support GA133 HB-546 introduced on 10 March 2020. The bill alters the definition of hybrid and electric vehicles to reclassify plug-in hybrid vehicles. These are vehicles that will both plug into an external source to charge for a modest electric range AND use the gasoline engine when the charge is depleted. Examples of vehicles in this category are Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius Prime, Chrysler Pacifica PHEV, Kia Niro PHEV, Honda Clarity, and Ford Fusion Energi. These vehicles are not intended to run on electricity alone — they use a combination of electricity and gasoline.

Plug-in hybrid owners have been uniquely penalized by the latest gas tax bill. Plug-in hybrid vehicle owners pay tax on the gasoline used and pay the higher registration fee for fully electric vehicles. HB-546 accommodates said payment of the gasoline tax by halving the registration fee for plug-in hybrid vehicles. Without a system to account for electric miles driven (i.e. a system that taxes road use by electric vehicles the same way the gasoline tax does), reclassifying plug-in hybrids seems like the best way to accommodate the fact that plug-in hybrid drivers are already paying toward road maintenance through the gas tax.

 

The Bro’s

The first question, of course, is are there even “Bernie Bros”? And the answer may well be NO. Like Biden’s “giant delegate lead” being reported with over 100 delegates from Super Tuesday still unallocated and data from 44 machines in Texas missing, This may be a narrative that’s being reported with little supporting evidence.

There may be “Bros” but as a numeric rather than statistical fact — how many Twitter followers does Bernie have (highlight mine)?

Are these followers particularly negative (again, highlight mine)? Not more negative than Warren’s followers. And, ironically, both Bernie and Warren’s followers appear to be more negative than Trump’s.

Even if we leave aside lexical sentiment analysis, the accuracy of which can legitimately be discussed. If we leave aside what actually constitutes negative commentary — someone who posts convey a negative-sentiment as they face bankruptcy after a serious illness isn’t the same as someone who attacks immigrants or espouses white supremacist beliefs — are the Bros Bernie’s? One thing people grappled with, back when the Internet first became a consumer offering, is that I may not be what I say I am. And not the type refuted by ‘yeah, there aren’t that many barely 18 girls on the planet’. “I’m a 32 year old guy living in Bloomington, IL who is really into R/C airplanes”. No way to tell — my ISP uses MPLS routing so my IP address geo-locates to Nebraska, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and North Carolina quite regularly. It’s not like social-media sites take any extreme measures to validate identify — a ten cent registration fee and your information needs to match up with the billing details, send us a copy of your cable bill, we need a copy of your birth certificate and state-issued ID card?! I’ve got friends who play games through Facebook who create additional accounts to “friend” and boost their game performance. Is it inconceivable that some 4-chann’er would create a social media account posing as a liberal? What percent of ‘Bernie Bros’ are MAGA’ers? How many MAGA’ers are trolls? What percent are Russian operatives? Does perpetuating the ‘Bernie Bro’ myth create division in America (i.e. something the Russians want)? Not saying there aren’t assholes who support Bernie. There are. And, statistically, I expect a significant percentage of those individuals to be active online. But what part of Bernie’s campaign is designed to *attract* assholes? But I don’t see evidence that Bernie’s supports have a higher percentage of assholes then any other campaign. A fortunate, but often ignored, facet of free speech is that freedom to speak freely does not imply freedom from consequences for your speech. Moving discourse online has significantly disrupted the threat of consequences.

Even if we discount the existence of real negativity and assume anyone who claims to be a Bernie supporter is a Bernie supporter … what can Bernie do about it? He’s already disavowed the comments and said he does not consider these individuals to be part of his movement. Is he supposed to get a warrant to unmask the identify of everyone who posts a snake emoji on Twitter and deliver a cease and desist letter? Drop by and speak to them about their online behavior?

More on conspiracy theories and the Democratic Primary

Statistical analysis can make you suspicious — ‘black swan’ statistical outliers (which are still possible outcomes) and amazing coincidences where outlier possibilities are reality. Maybe it’s more fun to think about the conspiracy theory possibilities — there’s drama and intrigue. Whereas an unlikely occurrence happening because unlikely doesn’t mean impossible … that’s far less entertaining.

The Super Tuesday results are still not complete today. Where are results still pending? There are 115 delegates not yet allocated to a candidate. 13 of these are classed as “Democrats Abroad” — saying that the results for “Democrats Abroad” is outstanding because ballots are still in the post is reasonable. I’d expect a large portion of “Democrats Abroad” ballots to  be posted (although there are evidently like 400 in-person polling sites too). And I don’t know how “Abroad” they’re talking about — Canada? Germany? Australia? McMurdo Station? The ISS? I’m willing to remove these delegates from the Super Tuesday list (IIRC, their in-person voting spanned a week coming up to Super Tuesday too). Of the remaining 102 delegates, one is from a state where Biden is in the lead. Not quite 1% of the outstanding delegates are in a state where Biden is in the lead. Is it possible that this outlier is an amazing coincidence? Sure. But could the DNC be creating a narrative where Biden has a decent lead in the electoral count ahead of voting this coming Tuesday with the intent of influencing voters (some 60% of whom say electability is more important than the fact the candidate agrees with them about issues)? Hard not to go there.

State Winner Delegates Unallocated Delegates % Unallocated Biden Bloomberg Gabbard Sanders Warren
Alabama Biden 52 0 0% 44 0 0 8 0
Arkansas Biden 31 0 0% 17 5 0 9 0
Maine Biden 24 0 0% 11 0 0 9 4
Massachusetts Biden 91 0 0% 37 0 0 29 25
Minnesota Biden 75 0 0% 38 0 0 27 10
North Carolina Biden 110 0 0% 67 4 0 37 2
Oklahoma Biden 37 0 0% 21 2 0 13 1
Tennessee Biden 64 1 2% 33 10 0 19 1
Texas Biden 228 0 0% 111 10 0 102 5
Virginia Biden 99 0 0% 66 0 0 31 2
American Samoa Bloomberg 6 0 0% 0 4 2 0 0
California Sanders 415 61 15% 148 15 0 186 5
Colorado Sanders 67 27 40% 10 9 0 20 1
Utah Sanders 29 13 45% 2 2 0 12 0
Vermont Sanders 16 0 0% 5 0 0 11 0

On technology, elections, and conspiracy theories

There are murmurs of a conspiracy to defeat Sanders (there’s also a president outright saying it). There is also push-back against these murmurs because diminishing people’s faith in the Democratic process suppresses voter turnout.

Questioning if this is a conspiracy is almost moot — did a bunch of people get together and plan this or did dozens of individuals achieve this state in an uncoordinated fashion? I don’t care. We’ve had a long run of elections that create legitimate doubt in how well the result reflects the will of Americans. And not just Clinton’s popular vote victory in 2016 — I’d go back to Gore, but I’m not terribly familiar with the American elections in the 80’s, and I wasn’t alive long enough to be aware of elections in the 70’s.

I watched news reports on Tuesday night announcing that Biden had won the popular vote across all of the states that had voted on Super Tuesday and had results to far. Except … California hadn’t started reporting yet. Cali has 30% of the delegates, and I am not interested enough to go check state populations to get a better number. But how meaningful is the popular vote stat with 30% of the vote outstanding? Delegate count too — I’ve been tracking delegate assignment based on NPR’s data, and a sixty point spread with 144 delegates from Cali unassigned (228 total unassigned across all Super Tuesday states) isn’t a huge blowout. I’ve also quite lazily started tracking by adding all of Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Kobluchar’s delegates to Biden’s count — 687 to 531 is a much bigger spread, and the 144 from Cali aren’t going to close that gap (although delegates from Cali plus Warren’s 65 might do it). I don’t know if delegates in each of the states where Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Kobluchar have delegates *can* be reassigned in the first round or if their delegates become like super delegates and only really count in the second round (or if their delegates can be reassigned at all). But this seems like the sort of research some media outlet should pay a reporter to perform. If Bloomberg can only reallocate a dozen of his delegates in the first round, the delegate count looks a lot different than it does when I’ve got all 58 of his delegates assigned to Biden.

Thirty years ago, it would have been difficult to recompute ranked-choice votes as candidates dropped out of the primary. But the one thing I think caucuses get right is that someone who puts their vote behind a non-viable candidate gets to reconsider and have their vote “count”. It would be algorithmically trivial to provide a full list of candidates. Pick your first choice. Now pick your second choice. Pick your Nth choice. You’re a huge Gabbard fan who wouldn’t consider voting for anyone else? Great, you get to abstain after your first selection. Would prefer Warren but consider Sanders a good second option, you can vote accordingly and abstain after your second choice. Don’t mind “voting” for any of the candidates? Then you can work your way through *all* of them. This is ideally suited for electronic ballots where your already-selected candidates can be removed from subsequent selection options. But so what if someone’s 1st through Nth choice is Sanders … he’s either still in the race & their 1st choice counts or he dropped out & they’ve abstained from voting. Maybe you voted for Buttigieg because you think he secretly harbors super progressive views but has the McKinsey experience to speak like a centrist. Your second choice was Warren, followed by Sanders, followed by no one. Buttigieg dropped out on Monday, and your vote is reassigned to Warren. She dropped out today? You voted for Sanders. Instead of allowing the individual candidate to decide where their delegates go, allow individual voters to decide. It would add an interesting nuance to primary coverage because the results of previous elections would effectively change as candidates drop out. But it would allow the results of the primary to better reflect what voters actually want. I’d extend this to the general election as well. Maybe it made you feel good to protest-vote for Stein. You could stop there and abstain on the second choice. Or you could pick a second preference.

And I’d be remiss to avoid pointing out that direct representation isn’t the impossibility it used to be. In 1790, getting the near four million Americans together to read through legislation and vote was an inconceivable undertaking. Getting the near 63 million Americans together in 1890, or even he 250 million in 1990 would have been an insurmountable task. But the technology is available today to do this. What impact would getting rid of the Legislature have on the Democracy in our system? Direct representation is a technical possibility. Yes, there are problems that would need to be addressed. Security. More importantly accessibility. As much as it may seem otherwise, 100% of Americans don’t have a smartphone in their hand. Requiring access to relatively costly technology could be seen as an attack on the rights of poorer individuals. Or individuals who aren’t technically savvy. You can use a computer at your free, public library – maybe the public libraries have extended hours during the voting season. Maybe there are secure Internet kiosks set up in town halls across the country. Maybe broadband access gets better funding. Maybe there’s additional funding for community education to teach people how to engage with the direct representation platform.

Even without changing the entire structure of government, I think the IRS should create a new class of tax-deductable donation restricted to federal government agencies. “Donations” to the agency are a 1:1 reduction in tax owed. The ‘donation’ process is inline with filing taxes — not like I need to cut a 4k check to NWS and then wait for my 4k refund check. I pay 10k in taxes? I could earmark 4k to the EPA, 4k to the Dept of Education, 2k to NOAA (hopefully there would be enough granularity that I wouldn’t need to select Commerce), and be done. I could allocate 10k to the military. I could spend hours agonizing on how I think my tax money would best be apportioned. Or I could just pay my taxes without any of these deductions and *that* is the money Congress would have available to budget. This idea, ironically, implements a populist version of “starve the beast”. And maybe I’m wrong and trillions of dollars would still pour into Defense and EPA would be left unfunded. But it would provide a way for citizens to clearly show their priorities. It could, if constructed properly, provide an end-run around the Hyde Amendment. *Your* federal dollars *didn’t* get used, but someone else could volunteer *their* federal dollars.

Disillusionment

The exit polling where upward of 60% of voters say it was more important to nominate a candidate who could beat Trump than someone who agrees with them on issues … that’s pretty unbelievable to me. But it’s especially odd that “dude who can beat Trump” is also the dude who wasn’t dragged through the mud as a tangent to the impeachment trial. Anyone want to guess what this year’s “but her emails!!!” will be?

Parliamentary systems

Reports are Warren’s reassessing her continued candidacy too. Sad to see her leave the race, but I’d love to see her and Sanders form a combined ticket.
It would make the American election process a little more like the Parliamentary systems (no one has the needed majority, you start negotiating with other parties to develop a unified platform until some combination has enough sway) if candidates in the primaries would slot themselves into administrations as people drop out (not just VP, either — pick someone to head State, Education, HHS, etc).

Super Tuesday

In a way, it seems like reporting is being built to fit a narrative. A woman on one of the afternoon radio shows in Cleveland was on some iteration of The Real World. I remember her talking about how the producers pick a narrative for each contestant — who is the villain, who is the underdog, who is a slob. They then go back over the hundreds of hours of footage and edit together a show that fits their narratives. The reality is that everyone had emotional breakdowns or left a dirty plate in the kitchen. She was picked as clingy. I remember her talking about how she was trying to call her boyfriend. There’s some way they allocate phone time — I don’t know if you get a few minutes whenever or if you’ve got a window. Whatever the method, her boyfriend kept not being available when she’d call. And that was it for her opportunity to contact the outside world. They didn’t show the attempts to call that led up to her breaking down after missing him. And, as a one off, breaking into tears because one cannot talk to one’s partner does sound clingy and codependent.

Differential, even handing Biden delegates for all those who endorsed him {and I haven’t bothered to verify that those delegates *can* vote for Biden}, is 146 — although Warren has 51 and is evidently taking a day to reassess, so hopefully she’ll drop and endorse Bernie well ahead of next week’s primaries. But even with a 150 point spread, 300 delegates from California are not assigned. Ignoring Cali, there’s a narrative that Biden won handily. But Cali’s pretty big to ignore. The reporting was similar coming out of Iowa too — Buttigieg won – he is so far ahead in SDE’s. Oh, he lost the popular vote pretty significantly *and* the delegates are pretty evenly split. But *facts* got lost with the logistical problems and then New Hampshire voting.

Can they drag out the California results for a week so Michigan goes to Biden because he’s ahead (if upward of 60% are saying they are voting for ‘someone who can beat Trump’ v/s ‘someone who agrees with them on issues’ … seems like ‘ahead in the polls’ would sway a lot of voters). Or does showing Sanders trailing motivate younger people to get out and vote in the coming weeks (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/03/04/super-tuesday-bernie-sanders-youth-votes-fell-short-compared-2016/4947795002/). It’s easy enough to sit home if you think you’re guy is winning — and I’m certain it’s a lot easier for retired people to take some time and vote compared to someone working two jobs and taking care of their kids — but if the race is close?

If the political parties wanted to design a system to diminish faith in the ability of people to select who leads the country, the ability of people to push the direction political parties go … Republicans have gerrymandering, but the Democrats have this primary process.

Debate Edition: South Carolina

I don’t think anyone won this debate, and the interrupting was incredibly annoying. It was like someone at CBS said “hey, people liked the energy and conflict in Nevada … what can we do to replicate that?” and came up with non-moderation and asking borderline offensive leading questions. No winners, but a few exchanges stood out to me.

Stop and frisk was a question Bloomberg knew would be asked. And he knows it’s something other candidates are going to target. I have no idea how he doesn’t manage to come up with something better in his debate prep. I contrast this with Sanders’ response on previous votes against gun control. I thought his response in the former debate — the state in which society existed in the 80’s, and what his constituents wanted in he 80’s, informed his vote. We’ve got different problems now, and he’s got different beliefs now because of this new information. This debate, where he outright called some of his votes bad … that seems like a much better approach on the stop and frisk questions. Bloomberg started down that path:

“I’ve met with black leaders to try to get an understanding of how I can better position myself and what I should have done and what I should do next time.”

But instead of continuing down a path of showing personal growth, he decided to tout his achievements.

“We’ve improved the school system for black and brown students in New York City. We’ve increased the jobs that are available to them. We’ve increased the housing that’s available to them.”

In one way, I get what he’s trying to say. But it was about the worst way I could have imagined saying it. I had an instant “umm, Brown v. Board of Education” mental response. Again, I’m certain he is speaking to the reality which is that there are schools and neighborhoods where a minority is the clear majority. But even a well phrased version of the response falls into Warren’s “so he’s saying he’s nice to some women” response. It’s ok that he made a lot of people’s lives hell for just walking down the street because he also increased funding to the school district?

And I thought that was the oddest bit right up until Buttigieg:

“I am not looking forward to a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump, with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s, and Bernie Sanders with a nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s.”

Essentially he is against the civil rights movement? The anti-war movement? The women’s lib movement? Hell, the gay rights movement?! All of which were “revolutionary politics” from the 60’s.

I was surprised that Bernie didn’t have a better response for his previous and current comments about Castro. Taking what Bernie said on Sunday on its own, he’s rejecting a “reductio ad Hitlerum” association fallacy (Hitler liked dogs, thus liking dogs is awful … Castro did a lot of awful things, therefore since Castro did it it was awful). His statements from the 80’s are essentially that there are reasons Castro wasn’t overthrown that Americans don’t understand. Which, in fairness, is totally true. There’s a dearth of communication between Americans and Cubans, so I’m certain there is a great deal of the internal political environment that was (and is) poorly understood. It *is* true, too, that people who opposed Castro were thrown into prison. Which had more impact Castro’s ability to stay in power – appeasement or totalitarianism? Americans don’t know. I doubt Cubans really know, either, since it’s not like we can isolate each input to quantify it’s impact. I’ve visited other countries with totalitarian governments, and I can absolutely say that people accepted reduced freedoms in return for an improved standard of living.

Even saying ‘hey, we could benefit by looking at what Castro did to increase literacy’ … what’s the harm? I mean, maybe ‘what he did’ was mobilize the army and anyone who couldn’t pass a fourth form reading exam has a dude with a Kalashnikov rifle standing over them as they study. Shoot anyone who couldn’t pass the exam and thereby achieved a statistical 100% literacy rate. We can look at that and reject the idea. But maybe ‘what he did’ was offer a grand to every individual who passed the fourth form reading exam and it proved to be a great motivation. Or double the number of teachers in elementary schools. Or funded adult literacy programs in every small town … which are ideas we could certainly try.

We do ourselves a disservice if we reject any idea about anything just because of its source. Hell, we do ourselves a disservice to ignore *bad* ideas from *bad* sources just because they (or the situation which gave rise to them) makes us uncomfortable. I can study something without agreeing to 100% believe and support everything about it. I’ve watched Doc McStuffins with my daughter and don’t believe the toys come alive every time we leave the room (although it *would* explain the mess!). I’ve read Harry Potter but haven’t managed to become a wizard. I think I can study what the Sandinista government did without deciding they had the right way of things, finding an armed mob, and taking over the government next Thursday. I can look at how Cuba increased literacy or started producing low-cost medication without starting a guerrilla war.

On Socialism and Socialism

One needs to differentiate between government-controlled means of production (colloquial ‘socialism’) and the employee-owned means of production that he supports (democratic socialism). Because there’s a big difference between the government taking over factories and putting out a five year plan for agricultural and manufacturing production and selling some control of companies to employees (who, logic dictates, would be driven to keep their product innovative and competitive beause they all want to have a job ten years from now so American capitalism would look for long-term prosperity instead of a few execs finding a way to get millions this year by driving the company into the ground).