Let's also not forget that the power to expand the Supreme Court relies on the Senate, which represents states rather than people. As it stands, the right has a lot more states per capita than the left, which gives them both the power to legislate and the power to appoint unaccountable judges with the support of only a minority of the population.
To improve American democracy and secure majority rule, Congress should split large existing states to reduce the disparity in state population. In 1800, no state had as many as a million people -- now, perhaps, no state should have more than ten million. To counterbalance the many states without big cities, Congress should create some states that are entirely urban (eg San Francisco), while paying attention that carving out urban-dominated states does not transform the remaining state into a stronghold for rural conservatives.
The resulting states should be justifiable on geographic and cultural grounds, while also attempting to make the composition of the Senate closer to the partisan preferences of the electorate (i.e. reduce the Republican structural advantage). This will make the Senate more representative of the population. Combined with expanding SCOTUS, it will mean that Republicans can control the constitution in perpetuity only if they can also consistently win the votes of the majority of the electorate.
We need to reject this misleading analysis that boils every government policy down to some number of deaths. Sorry, but I can perform two different analyses that would each prove to you that X number of deaths came from walkable street design, but also that Y number of deaths came from NOT having walkable street design.
How many analyses could we put together that conclusively affirm in Very Serious Academic Language that the refusal of the Fed to print loads of helicopter money and give it to patients is leading to millions of deaths?
It’s a bad mode of analysis. Only useful for comparing and contrasting. Not for affirmatively redesigning all of government.
Let's also not forget that the power to expand the Supreme Court relies on the Senate, which represents states rather than people. As it stands, the right has a lot more states per capita than the left, which gives them both the power to legislate and the power to appoint unaccountable judges with the support of only a minority of the population.
To improve American democracy and secure majority rule, Congress should split large existing states to reduce the disparity in state population. In 1800, no state had as many as a million people -- now, perhaps, no state should have more than ten million. To counterbalance the many states without big cities, Congress should create some states that are entirely urban (eg San Francisco), while paying attention that carving out urban-dominated states does not transform the remaining state into a stronghold for rural conservatives.
The resulting states should be justifiable on geographic and cultural grounds, while also attempting to make the composition of the Senate closer to the partisan preferences of the electorate (i.e. reduce the Republican structural advantage). This will make the Senate more representative of the population. Combined with expanding SCOTUS, it will mean that Republicans can control the constitution in perpetuity only if they can also consistently win the votes of the majority of the electorate.
We need to reject this misleading analysis that boils every government policy down to some number of deaths. Sorry, but I can perform two different analyses that would each prove to you that X number of deaths came from walkable street design, but also that Y number of deaths came from NOT having walkable street design.
How many analyses could we put together that conclusively affirm in Very Serious Academic Language that the refusal of the Fed to print loads of helicopter money and give it to patients is leading to millions of deaths?
It’s a bad mode of analysis. Only useful for comparing and contrasting. Not for affirmatively redesigning all of government.