American Politics XIV: The Dawning of the Age of the Pumpkin

[San Lumen]

How is that fair or Democratic?

don't know and don't care.

So in other words a Republican would always win statewide office in Nevada despite only winning counties that make up about ten percent of the state. How could they claim to be representing everyone when only a small minority elected them?

american politicians are good spin doctors. they managed to convince you that a law that was never intended to reduce inflation would reduce inflation simply by naming it the inflation reduction act.

You therefore admit you don't believe in free and fair elections or the very concept of Democracy.

That is in no way relevant to my question.

[Valrifall]

Great so it's an irrelevant point and either way my original point stands.

no, because the cities still have a lot more potential voters. also typically with either access to voting locations

But like I said their populations aren't enough to swing an election so if that fraction of nonvoters is roughly equal (it is) it doesn't affect my point because that's how math works.

There aren't enough people/voters in "urban" places isn't enough to swing elections. No matter the system you need rural people, even supposing perfectly ideologically driven votes where we get 100% urban hivemind.

The only reason you like this system better is because you've convinced yourself of minoritarian status, which isn't strictly true, it's only a piece of propaganda from conservative think tanks.

[Sordhau]

Not really. More like they saw the trends and jumped the gun a little early in order to benefit the most from them. The Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of a shift of power away from the rural countryside and toward the major urban centers. The more we advance technologically the further this shift is taken. The need for vast, fertile farmlands is gradually diminishing and as a consequence cities are becoming more important. We haven't quite reached the point where rurality itself has become obsolete but the trend is inevitable and Dems had the foresight to try and take advantage of it first and gain a monopoly. This is why the GOP is shrinking with the rest of rural America and will likely become defunct before the end of the century and why if the EC didn't exist they wouldn't be able to hold power at all without radically changing their policy stances to appeal to urbanites, the overwhelming majority of whom vote Dem, because the focus of power would be on cities and not states.

ah yes, the inevitable future where cities don't eat

Lab grown meats and high rise farms, my dude.

[Finalis]

don't know and don't care.


american politicians are good spin doctors. they managed to convince you that a law that was never intended to reduce inflation would reduce inflation simply by naming it the inflation reduction act.

You therefore admit you don't believe in free and fair elections or the very concept of Democracy.

i believe in democracy with a healthy restraint on the people's power.

That is in no way relevant to my question.

you asked me how politicians in that case would convince the people that they're representing them. i provided you an instance where they were easily able to convince folks like you of something that was never true.

[Sordhau]

i believe in democracy with a healthy restraint on the people's power.

That's not democracy.

[Finalis]

ah yes, the inevitable future where cities don't eat

Lab grown meats and high rise farms, my dude.

sounds infinitely more expensive and complicated and unnecessary. we've had the technology for vertical farming for quite some time, yet strangely it hasn't caught on

[San Lumen]

You therefore admit you don't believe in free and fair elections or the very concept of Democracy.

i believe in democracy with a healthy restraint on the people's power.

That is in no way relevant to my question.

you asked me how politicians in that case would convince the people that they're representing them. i provided you an instance where they were easily able to convince folks like you of something that was never true.

What restrains? By making it so your side almost always wins a statewide election?

Someone elected by ten percent of the population would not be seen as legitimately elected by most people.

[Finalis]

i believe in democracy with a healthy restraint on the people's power.

That's not democracy.

[The Alma Mater]

You therefore admit you don't believe in free and fair elections or the very concept of Democracy.

i believe in democracy with a healthy restraint on the people's power.

No, you just said you do not care about anything as long as the republicans win. That is the opposite of "healthy restraint on the people's power".

[Tarsonis]

It's pretty awful, ngl...

Yeah how awful the coast of your state decides statewide elections. If only there was a system for statewide elections where the rural less populous counties could overrule them and you win every time.

California has no water because the "coastal elites" give it all to almond farmers. Maybe if the actual rural voters who do the farming weren't completely out voiced by thr city voters, their state wouldn't be burning down.

[Valrifall]

Lab grown meats and high rise farms, my dude.

sounds infinitely more expensive and complicated and unnecessary. we've had the technology for vertical farming for quite some time, yet strangely it hasn't caught on

The trend, however, is still towards smaller rural communities as farming continues to get more efficient, leading to urbanization.

This is coincidentally a trend on the scale of human civilization.

[Finalis]

i believe in democracy with a healthy restraint on the people's power.


you asked me how politicians in that case would convince the people that they're representing them. i provided you an instance where they were easily able to convince folks like you of something that was never true.

What restrains? By making it so your side almost always wins a statewide election?

yes

Someone elected by ten percent of the population would not be seen as legitimately elected by most people.

again... all it took to convince you that inflation was gonna go down is by passing a climate/spending law named the inflation reduction act.

they can convince you of literally anything they want at this point.

[Sordhau]

Lab grown meats and high rise farms, my dude.

sounds infinitely more expensive and complicated and unnecessary. we've had the technology for vertical farming for quite some time, yet strangely it hasn't caught on

It is more expensive, and that's why it hasn't caught on. But the future is always going to be expensive. If we get our panties in a twist over the price tag on future technologies all we're going to do is end up losing the race.

[Finalis]

sounds infinitely more expensive and complicated and unnecessary. we've had the technology for vertical farming for quite some time, yet strangely it hasn't caught on

The trend, however, is still towards smaller rural communities as farming continues to get more efficient, leading to urbanization.

This is coincidentally a trend on the scale of human civilization.

trends change over time. crowding leads to the spread of more transmissible diseases and also to more mental illness. people need space to live healthily.

[Zurkerx]

Over 300 classified documents so far found at Mar-A-Lago

The initial batch of documents retrieved by the National Archives from former President Donald J. Trump in January included more than 150 marked as classified, a number that ignited intense concern at the Justice Department and helped trigger the criminal investigation that led F.B.I. agents to swoop into Mar-a-Lago this month seeking to recover more, multiple people briefed on the matter said.

In total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Mr. Trump since he left office, the people said: that first batch of documents returned in January, another set provided by Mr. Trump’s aides to the Justice Department in June and the material seized by the F.B.I. in the search this month.

The previously unreported volume of the sensitive material found in the former president’s possession in January helps explain why the Justice Department moved so urgently to hunt down any further classified materials he might have.

And the extent to which such a large number of highly sensitive documents remained at Mar-a-Lago for months, even as the department sought the return of all material that should have been left in government custody when Mr. Trump left office, suggested to officials that the former president or his aides had been cavalier in handling it, not fully forthcoming with investigators, or both.

The specific nature of the sensitive material that Mr. Trump took from the White House remains unclear. But the 15 boxes Mr. Trump turned over to the archives in January, nearly a year after he left office, included documents from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. spanning a variety of topics of national security interest, a person briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over.

The highly sensitive nature of some of the material in the boxes prompted archives officials to refer the matter to the Justice Department, which within months had convened a grand jury investigation.

Aides to Mr. Trump turned over a few dozen additional sensitive documents during a visit to Mar-a-Lago by Justice Department officials in early June. At the conclusion of the search this month, officials left with 26 boxes, including 11 sets of material marked as classified, comprising scores of additional documents. One set had the highest level of classification, top secret/sensitive compartmented information.

The Justice Department investigation is continuing, suggesting that officials are not certain whether they have recovered all the presidential records that Mr. Trump took with him from the White House.

Even after the extraordinary decision by the F.B.I. to execute a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, investigators have sought additional surveillance footage from the club, people familiar with the matter said.

It was the second such demand for the club’s security tapes, said the people familiar with the matter, and underscored that authorities are still scrutinizing how the classified documents were handled by Mr. Trump and his staff before the search.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. declined to comment.

Mr. Trump’s allies insist that the president had a “standing order” to declassify material that left the Oval Office for the White House residence, and have claimed that the General Services Administration, not Mr. Trump’s staff, packed the boxes with the documents.

No documentation has come to light confirming that Mr. Trump declassified the material, and the potential crimes cited by the Justice Department in seeking the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago would not hinge on the classification status of the documents.

National Archives officials spent much of 2021 trying to get back material from Mr. Trump, after learning that roughly two dozen boxes of presidential records material had been lingering in the White House residence for several months. Under the Presidential Records Act, all official material remains government property and has to be provided to the archives at the end of a president’s term.

Among the items they knew were missing were Mr. Trump’s original letters from the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, and the note that President Barack Obama had left Mr. Trump before he left office.

Two former White House officials, who had been designated as among Mr. Trump’s representatives with the archives, received calls and tried to facilitate the documents’ return.

Mr. Trump resisted those calls, describing the boxes of documents as “mine,” according to three advisers familiar with his comments.

Soon after beginning their investigation early this year, Justice Department officials came to believe there were additional classified documents that they needed to collect. In May, after conducting a series of witness interviews, the department issued a subpoena for the return of remaining classified material, according to people familiar with the episode.

On June 3, Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterespionage section of the national security division of the Justice Department, went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with two of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, and retrieve any remaining classified material to satisfy the subpoena. Mr. Corcoran went through the boxes himself to identify classified material beforehand, according to two people familiar with his efforts.

Mr. Corcoran showed Mr. Bratt the basement storage room where, he said, the remaining material had been kept.

Mr. Trump briefly came to see the investigators during the visit.

Mr. Bratt and the agents who joined him were given a sheaf of classified material, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Corcoran then drafted a statement, which Ms. Bobb, who is said to be the custodian of the documents, signed. It asserted that, to the best of her knowledge, all classified material that was there had been returned, according to two people familiar with the statement.

Mr. Corcoran did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Ms. Bobb did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Soon after that visit, investigators, who were interviewing several people in Mr. Trump’s circle about the documents, came to believe that there were other presidential records that had not been turned over, according to the people familiar with the matter.

On June 22, the Justice Department subpoenaed the Trump Organization for Mar-a-Lago’s security footage, which included a well-trafficked hallway outside the storage area, the people said.

The club had surveillance footage going back 60 days for some areas of the property, stretching back to late April of this year.

While much of the footage showed hours of club employees walking through the busy corridor, some of it raised concerns for investigators, according to people familiar with the matter. It revealed people moving boxes in and out, and in some cases, appearing to change the containers some documents were held in. The footage also showed other parts of the property.

In seeking a second round of security footage, the Justice Department want to review tapes for the weeks leading up to the Aug. 8 search.

Federal officials have indicated that their initial goal has been to secure any classified documents Mr. Trump was holding at Mar-a-Lago, a pay-for-membership club where there is little control over who comes in as guests. It remains to be seen whether anyone will face criminal charges stemming from the investigation.

The combination of witness interviews and the initial security footage led Justice Department officials to begin drafting a request for a search warrant, the people familiar with the matter said.

The F.B.I. agents who conducted the search found the additional documents in the storage area in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, as well as in a container in a closet in Mr. Trump’s office, the people said.

Mr. Trump’s allies have attacked the law enforcement agencies, accusing the investigators of being partisan.

The intense public interest has now spurred a legal fight to see the search warrant’s underlying affidavit. On Monday, a federal magistrate issued a formal order directing the Justice Department to send him under seal proposed redactions to the affidavit underlying the warrant used to search Mar-a-Lago by Thursday, accompanied by a memo explaining its justifications.

In the order, the judge, Bruce E. Reinhart, said he was inclined to release portions of the sealed affidavit but wanted to wait until he saw the government’s redactions before making a decision.

So, it's a lot more: in those 15 boxes that were handed to the National Archives back in January, there were 700 pages of classified material. That excludes what the DOJ and FBI took in June and August of this year. In fact, they couldn't even look at these documents until May as it took the DOJ asking Biden to authorize their release to them and due to extended negotiations with Trump's Lawyers:

“As you are no doubt aware, NARA had ongoing communications with the former President’s representatives throughout 2021 about what appeared to be missing Presidential records, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes of records to NARA in January 2022,” Wall wrote. “In its initial review of materials within those boxes, NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials.”

NARA aides did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter, and Corcoran could not immediately be reached.

The correspondence shows that even though NARA retrieved the 15 boxes in January, Justice Department and FBI investigators didn’t see their contents until May, after extended negotiations with Trump’s representatives. The letter also shows that in the interim, DOJ asked President Joe Biden to authorize NARA to provide the records to investigators despite an effort by Trump to claim executive privilege over the records. Wall indicated she had rejected Trump’s claim because of the significance of the documents to national security.

“NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them,” Wall wrote.

Biden, according to Wall, then delegated the privilege decision to her, in consultation with the Justice Department.

[Finalis]

sounds infinitely more expensive and complicated and unnecessary. we've had the technology for vertical farming for quite some time, yet strangely it hasn't caught on

It is more expensive, and that's why it hasn't caught on. But the future is always going to be expensive. If we get our panties in a twist over the price tag on future technologies all we're going to do is end up losing the race.

losing the race to what? living in a pod and eating bugs?

believe it or not people do like space and living amongst animals.

[American Legionaries]

i believe in democracy with a healthy restraint on the people's power.

No, you just said you do not care about anything as long as the republicans win. That is the opposite of "healthy restraint on the people's power".

Sure it is, the people should be healthily restrained from electing Democrats.

[Sordhau]

The trend, however, is still towards smaller rural communities as farming continues to get more efficient, leading to urbanization.

This is coincidentally a trend on the scale of human civilization.

trends change over time. crowding leads to the spread of more transmissible diseases and also to more mental illness. people need space to live healthily.

Space, yes, but 400 acres of land, no. Advancements in medicine can handle diseases, advancements in mental healthcare can handle mental illness, all we have to do is give them the funding they need and they'll make society more livable for everyone.

[Finalis]

trends change over time. crowding leads to the spread of more transmissible diseases and also to more mental illness. people need space to live healthily.

Space, yes, but 400 acres of land, no. Advancements in medicine can handle diseases, advancements in mental healthcare can handle mental illness, all we have to do is give them the funding they need and they'll make society more livable for everyone.

why not 400 acres of land? in a country as vast as america there is literally no reason to have people crowded together. you have more space than you know what to do with.

and strangely, with all the advancements in mental healthcare, the rate of mental illness is not going down. it's going sharply in the other direction. you could always just stop fighting human nature and instead move with it.

[San Lumen]

Yeah how awful the coast of your state decides statewide elections. If only there was a system for statewide elections where the rural less populous counties could overrule them and you win every time.

California has no water because the "coastal elites" give it all to almond farmers. Maybe if the actual rural voters who do the farming weren't completely out voiced by thr city voters, their state wouldn't be burning down.

How are they out voiced? Newsom won 30 counties out of 58 in 2018.

[Finalis]

California has no water because the "coastal elites" give it all to almond farmers. Maybe if the actual rural voters who do the farming weren't completely out voiced by thr city voters, their state wouldn't be burning down.

How are they out voiced? Newsom won 30 counties out of 58 in 2018.

and he's done wonders for the state!

[San Lumen]

What restrains? By making it so your side almost always wins a statewide election?

yes

Someone elected by ten percent of the population would not be seen as legitimately elected by most people.

again... all it took to convince you that inflation was gonna go down is by passing a climate/spending law named the inflation reduction act.

they can convince you of literally anything they want at this point.

In other words only your side should be allowed to govern. You don't believe in Democracy at all. You want a one party dictatorship and elections to give the illusion of choice.

[Finalis]

yes


again... all it took to convince you that inflation was gonna go down is by passing a climate/spending law named the inflation reduction act.

they can convince you of literally anything they want at this point.

In other words only your side should be allowed to govern. You don't believe in Democracy at all. You want a one party dictatorship and elections to give the illusion of choice.

until people stop being so needlessly stupid

[Sordhau]

losing the race to what?

The countries that invested in more efficient technologies who will then use those technologies to gain economic, diplomatic, and military advantages at our expense. This is why being cutting-edge is important.

believe it or not people do like space and living amongst animals.

Yet ruralization takes up space and drives animals to extinction. Consolidation of the population into urban settings is far better for the environment and ecology, as it gives rural lands back to nature. We can expand our preserves and national parks tenfold, ensuring that our nation's natural beauty is left untainted for future generations to enjoy - with an added benefit of a healthier environment.

[San Lumen]

In other words only your side should be allowed to govern. You don't believe in Democracy at all. You want a one party dictatorship and elections to give the illusion of choice.

until people stop being so needlessly stupid

Are you merely saying this because they don't share you values or vote for your candidates?