The New Neo

[NOTE: I happened across this post I wrote in November of 2008 about voting reform, and I thought I’d repost it now just to highlight how clear things were on this score even all those years ago. So here it is.]

After 2000, there were many calls for voting reform. Same in 2004, and now again. Voting fraud—or even the perception of it—can’t help but undermine trust in the legitimacy of the government, and that’s not good. So one would think that fixing the problems would have bipartisan approval.

One of the main arguments, and the focus for at least some of the rage, against George Bush was the voting turmoil in 2000. Bush was not responsible for Florida and the butterfly ballot, but he was the beneficiary and it served to channel anger against him and to amplify it, right at the outset. The same is true of Acorn shenanigans in the election of 2008 as they relate to Obama, and his previous connections to Acorn only make the perception worse.

This sort of doubt directed at a President-elect does not bode well for the institution of the Presidency itself, nor for the country. So why wouldn’t both parties do all they could to change it?

“Dream on, neo” you say. And you would be correct. Each party wishes to maximize the number and/or proportion of its own voters, for obvious reasons. For Republicans, this means making rules tougher (or at least keeping them traditionally tough) about who is allowed to vote. No motor voter. Definitely no aliens being able to present a utility bill on voting day. Forget about felons. I happen to agree with these rules, even in the abstract. I think that voting should be restricted to citizens, for example—I’m funny that way. And I am fairly certain I felt that way even back in my liberal Democrat days.

However, Democrats have a strong interest in allowing such people to vote, because they tend to vote Democratic. It’s really not rocket science. As the party encourages expansion of voting rights and winks at fraud that aims to include these voters, and solidifies its power as a result, why would that party ever vote to restrict the practice?…

It is sad but true that few politicians who are favored by certain voting policies would slit their own throats and vote against them, merely for reasons of justice or fairness or ethics. This is why, once this begins, it is unlikely to end—at least, as long as that party continues to be in power. And that party is more likely to stay in power as long as the voting policies that favor it are in place. It is a vicious cycle, or a wonderful cycle—depending on your point of view, and your party.

(1) The SCOTUS Deep Leaker is still unidentified. And I think he or she will remain so.

(2) Draconian COVID Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand has resigned:

I’m leaving, because with such a privileged role comes responsibility. The responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not,” The Guardian quoted Ardern as saying. “I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple.”

Ardren knows that she used to be the right person to lead. And now she knows that, although she still would be the right person to lead if only she hadn’t suddenly run out of gas with no filling station in sight, now that her tank is low or even empty she can’t be the great PM that she once was. It’s that simple.

(3) Alec Baldwin has been charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the “Rust” shooting case, as has the film’s armorer:

Prosecutors also brought involuntary manslaughter charges against weapons handler Hannah Gutierrez Reed, who loaded the gun. The assistant director David Halls, who investigators said gave the loaded revolver to Baldwin just before a rehearsal in an old wooden church at Bonanza Creek Ranch, a popular movie location near Santa Fe, accepted a misdemeanor charge in a plea deal…

The decision comes three months after Baldwin and the film’s other producers struck a proposed settlement agreement with Hutchins’ family to end the wrongful death civil lawsuit they filed early last year.

I haven’t written much about the case, nor have I followed the details very carefully.

(4) The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee panel, appointed by city supervisors in May of 2021, wants every eligible black person there to get $5 million “as recompense for the ‘decades of harm they have experienced’ as ‘the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy.’”

And not just a cool five million each, but also “wiping out all debts associated with educational, personal, credit card and payday loans for black households.” Will the city of San Francisco pay off all these loans as well? Sweet! San Francisco, that hotbed of segregation.

Note the requirements to be eligible: at least 18, have called themselves black on official documents for at least 10 years, and at least two out of eight others, of which four are these:

…being born in or having migrated to San Francisco between 1940 and 1996, and having proof of residency for at least 13 years, being personally or a direct descendant of someone jailed in the “failed War on Drugs,” or being a descendant of someone enslaved before 1865.

Extraordinary. It would also bankrupt the city. Virtue-signaling gone mad. But probably just the opening move in a series of negotiations.

(5) Not to be outdone, New York is thinking about reparations for black people too, this time for slavery. You know – New York, that famous slave state, the one that fought with the South in the Civil War? No? You don’t say!

“We saw what happened in California. We want to pass a bill that starts a conversation about reparations,” said Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages (D-Nassau), chairwoman of the New York Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, to The Post.

Assemblywoman Taylor Darling (D-Nassau) said it would be a “slap in the face” if Gov. Kathy Hochul and the legislature don’t green-light a reparations study commission.

Darling also scoffed that the $223,000 figure that California’s task force recommended for each black descendant there was too low.

That figure of $223,000 isn’t the one discussed in #4 above. It’s a different figure, recommended earlier by a statewide California task force. And “start the conversation” is another term for “make a bold opening bid.”

I lived in a house for twenty years that also had St. Charles steel cabinets. They were great. That’s the only similarity that house had to anything Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed.