Tag: Idea

A proposal by the billionaire venture capitalist and Bitcoin investor Tim Draper to divide California into three separate states will appear on the November 2018 ballot after the “Cal 3” campaign garnered enough signatures for a statewide referendum. Cal 3 is Draper’s latest effort to break up the country’s most populous state. This time around, Draper cut the number of new states in half, and cleared the requirement for petitioners, reportedly paying canvassers $3 per signature. “Three new state governments will be able to start fresh, to innovate and better serve their people.” If approved, the partition would mark the first division of a US state since the pro-union West Virginia broke from secessionist Virginia during the US civil war. “My guess is [voters] will vote this down, and this will all be a waste of time,” said Jim Newton, a lecturer in public policy at the University of California Los Angeles. “Why three states? Why not 30 states? “Even if this were to pass, it would face a real struggle in Congress, or it would be tied up in legal issues in California, or both.” Vikram David Amar, the dean of the University of Illinois College of Law, has suggested that the Draper proposal, which is written as an amendment to the state constitution, may not pass legal muster. A constitutional revision cannot be placed on the ballot in the same manner as an amendment. “We’ve gotten further and further away from the idea that this is a populous or progressive process,” said Newton.

For those who complain that politics is too political, two former Florida congressmen are floating an unprecedented antidote: A bipartisan ticket for governor. Patrick Murphy would enter the Democratic primary and if he won the nomination, would name as his running mate David Jolly, a Pinellas County Republican who has become a fixture on national news shows for his opposition to President Donald Trump. "I have to admit, it's intriguing," said Renee Joslyn, a 61-year-old registered Democrat from Miami, who received a call Monday from a pollster asking about Murphy and Jolly and the political climate in Tallahassee. "I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't as ugly as it is now." And Murphy, who has some statewide name recognition after challenging Sen. Marco Rubio in 2016, cautioned that the idea is in its infancy. Supporters asked for polling, he said, and he agreed to test the air. Jolly lost his House seat in 2016 to Democrat Charlie Crist. The centrist former lawmakers have for the past year been on a national speaking tour focused on the dysfunction of Washington and how it can be resolved through de-emphasizing money in elections and fixing the way congressional maps are drawn to maximize partisan advantage. "You have to recognize that Donald Trump tapped into anger, but I don't think his approach has been one that has healed that anger or has bridged the divide," Jolly said. I think that we're speaking to what nobody else is, the ability to work together in a bipartisan way."

In a recent essay for HuffPost, author and self-described feminist iconoclast Lisa L. Kirchner narrates how she met her soon-to-be husband. Coming off a decade spent mostly single, Kirchner recounts how the day after Trump was elected she went online to change her dating profile. Right at the top, she added a note: “If you voted for Donald Trump, keep scrolling.” She admits that, living in deep-red St. Petersburg, Florida, she rarely used the account. But she didn’t make the change “to winnow potential partners so much as to announce how sickened [she] was by the president-elect.” Seeing as the headline for this essay is “I’m a Liberal Feminist and Next Month I’m Marrying a Trump Voter,” it’s pretty clear that her note had the opposite effect. Unfortunately—or fortunately depending on how you view the unfolding romance—Kirchner’s profile started attracting more and more Trump voters, even despite the fact that one of Kirchner’s photos included a life-size cutout of Hillary Clinton. She soon realized that these MAGA-ites were interpreting “keep scrolling” as “keep reading.” An understandable error, but one that prompted Kirchner to seriously consider deleting her profile, especially after discovering her Trump-related anxiety was causing heart attack–like symptoms prompted by “a swelling of the cartilage around [her] sternum.” However, this drastic step was forestalled by one magical message from her now-fiancé: “Nice use of the parenthetical.” What parenthetical this was we sadly never find out, but the rest was, as they say, history. In a month, Kirchner will get married among a variety of guests—“some rabid Republicans, others die-hard Democrats.” “No one,” she cheers, “will refuse to celebrate love over political differences [and] … by learning to put love above all else, the pains in my heart—physical and emotional—have finally disappeared.” It’s a touching love story. Rather than votes that directly contribute to policies that make people’s lives better or worse, differing political views are analogous to contradicting opinions on whether fitted sheets are scams: With enough patience and love, they can be easily solved. — Linda Holmes (@lindaholmes) March 29, 2018 That same idea, as my colleague Jamelle Bouie pointed out, is one implicit in Politico’s recent “safari into Clinton country,” which ignored communities of color who overwhelmingly voted for Clinton to interview upper-crust white people on their feelings about Trump. Only in a world where the daily exhausting machinations of policy and politics don’t directly affect your life can you really detach yourself from the madhouse that currently is Washington, D.C. Only in that world can someone’s willingness to put himself in “a submissive stance,” as Kirchner’s fiancé did, be enough for you to look beyond their vote for a noted xenophobic sexist.

Alicia Preston I have never understood why a non-political business would get into politics with its business. If you limit your pool of consumers, you just aren’t going to make as much money as you could. Ah, yes, the evil mentality of capitalism. A New Mexico internet marketing company posted shortly after the November 2016 election that it will “no longer do business with any person that is a registered Republican or supports Donald Trump.” The company specializes in “search engine optimization.” Any guess as to what search was being optimized for this company after the post? The big dogs of the retail industry are getting in on the “politics before profits” kick, too. And, yes, this is about politics. What it may do is get some people to go back to the mom and pop shops that leave the politics where it belongs—at the dinner table. If you affiliate with the Republican Party, you are not welcome in our store. We will not offer you service.” The store is The Used Apple Store and the owner and poster is named Bill Williams. In several follow up interviews to his post, Mr. Williams compared himself and his “effort” here to that of Oskar Schindler.