How do you think this would play out? Changing the apportionment of the Senate, aside from being a political and legal nightmare, would also create monumental constitutional crisis.
First, the Connecticut Compromise is a democratic underpinning of the US. It was central to the formation of the nation, and any attempt to alter it would be a foundational structural change to the constitution to say the least.
I understand the concerns about one generation binding another without recourse. Legal scholars differ on whether Article V, which implements the compromise, can be amended or not.
But for the sake of argument, let's say it can. It would be an insurmountable task requiring the following:
1. A supermajority in both houses of Congress (67% in the Senate and 66% in the House) to propose the amendment.
2. Ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 out of 50 states) or by conventions in three-fourths of the states.
3. Consent of the states that would lose their equal representation in the Senate.
4. Overcome any legal challenges that would likely arise at every step of the process.
The result would be a dramatic redefinition of federalism and democratic representation. This wouldn't be a cosmetic change, it would be a fundamental alteration to the structure of the government and constitution.
Very few things were deemed "unamendable" and entrenched in the constitution before, both explicitly and implicitly, but now it would all be up for grabs. Now nothing is irrevocable.
What's to stop future generations from altering other fundamental principles? While we may complain of being bound by the decisions of our ancestors, we would be opening up a Pandora's box of constitutional instability for future generations, binding them to the whims of a (slim?) majority of the current generation's political agenda.
I think that is the best case scenario. The worst, and I think a very possible scenario, is that states losing representation would claim that such a drastic and material change to the constitution upends the root of the bargain that led to the formation of the union, and would likely seek to secede. You may have achieved your goal of changing the apportionment of the Senate, but at the cost of the union itself. There are far easier and less risky ways to achieve political change.
We could add new states. For example, Washington DC has 702,000 people with zero Congressional representation, and they're currently occupied by Federal troops without any voting recourse. If they were made a state, they'd be bigger than Wyoming and Vermont. Puerto Rico is also a US territory with 3.2 million people and zero Congressional representation. As a state it would be larger than 20 existing states. This doesn't "fix" the problem but it does ensure that more U.S. citizens gain access to representation in Congress, while also shifting power to more densely-populated areas.
True. I'm not as familiar with the politics of DC, but my limited understanding of the PR statehood situation is that the GOP is unlikely to approve what would presumably be 2 new safe democratic seats in the senate.
If I remember correctly, the governor of PR would appoint the first 2 senators. A tactic could be to promise to appoint 1 republican senator as an enrichment to approve statehood. It's a real shit situation.
There are more Puerto Ricans living in NYC and Orlando than in PR. I'd like to visit before the little family I have left there leaves or dies out.
fwiw DC is essentially the same situation as PR in this regard. DC would essentially be a blue city-state (state) which is also why DC statehood resolutions always fail.
It's an open joke in DC if you ever visit there the official DC license plate has "end taxation without representation" on it.
You are right to point out the problems with getting it passed. I would just say we need to stretch our political imaginations. Let's also remember that when the Constitutional Convention was originally convened no one thought it was going to create a new constitution - it happened sort of by accident as circumstances changed. The original purpose was to make revisions to the Articles of Confederation.
I'll put it another way. We are far from the bottom here. This system can and I believe will inflict more dysfunction on us in the coming years. A constitutional crisis is not unthinkable anymore for a variety of reasons. A modern constitutional convention might be one of the few ways of getting ahead of it.
Perhaps in such a future situation then, small states can be convinced to amend compromises they may otherwise have never considered.
You could also just do away with bicameralism, which was proposed at the original convention. Also remember as originally written the population of the states did not directly elect their senators. Thus there is already amendment precedent (17th) for making major changes to the Senate.
I don’t think either of these things requires more than a vote of Congress and the President’s signature. DC might, because of its unique Constitutional status and the current partisan Court, but there’s no argument for PR. You would have to abolish the filibuster, but Congress can do that once per session by majority vote — it’s just a legislative rule and not a Constitutional mechanism.
I mean even if we accept the premise the problem is if you start to engage with this game then the next Congress can do it too.
Pretty soon you'll have "Middle Dakota". And on and on.
At a certain point the USA is going to have to address its structural issues - the founders foretold of this necessity. It's why the amendment process exists in the first place.
Getting rid of the filibuster is a good thing in general. The GOP-led states have already moved into mid-cycle gerrymanders and routine gerrymandering of the state legislatures to eliminate fair elections there: I'm sure eventually someone will have the idea of adding new GOP states. Adding two actual territories/districts that are full of actual unrepresented Americans happens to be a good idea on the merits, since those people are being screwed by the Federal government.
If you're referring to telcos sharing their tech with government there are a few examples of Ericsson working with the Swedish military:
> Brigadier-General Mattias Hanson, CIO, Swedish Armed Forces, says: “Strengthening Sweden’s militarily and acting as part of a collective defense requires us to increase our defensive capabilities. We need to utilize the latest technology and all the innovative power of the Swedish private sector. Sweden has unique skills and capabilities in both telecoms and defense technology..." [0]
The crux of all religions. The only comparatevely harmless religions are the ones who don't claim that gods demand absolute obedience, but their orders are spoken through a chosen few; otherwise they're just a form of primitive government.
There is a difference however, of faith based on evidence vs. faith based in no evidence. Without getting into too much details here since it is not the avenue, Islamic faith is strictly based on evidence.
Naturalistic religions, so called "paganism", also worshipped living beings or natural phenomena like a particularly big tree, a mountain, a forest, the Sun, etc. Some of these didn't demand obedience nor spoke through a ruling elite. Bonus points for worshipping things that could be verified as real.
No, "faith" is actually an integral component of "the Christian faith".
Go read the first part of Acts 4, where a section closes with: "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus." So...yes! We do believe in a God that can empower average people to speak in above-average ways.
> You have a lot of faith in the qualities of average priests.
>> To be fair, faith is the crux of Catholicism.
So, in context (which the downvoters seem to have missed), "faith" is being used equivocally here. There a difference between having faith in Christ and his promises and faith in his claims of divinity on the one hand, and having "faith" in a priest or whatever else on the other. Hence, my question whether this was some kind of a bad attempt at humor or whether something was meant by it.
(FWIW, authentic Christian faith is not an arbitrary faith in anything you please. This is blind faith which is irrational. This is why we can speak of preambula fidei. There must be reasons for faith. When a friend tells you something about his inner life that you cannot know directly, you may believe him given an ensemble of evidence and reasons that cannot prove his claim definitively, but are nonetheless very supportive of it. Furthermore, the claim makes sense of what you do know about him.)
But part of the faith is faith that God can communicate through imperfect mortal vessels.
> Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
> The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”
Like, that's the whole deal about all of the prophets, popes, priesthood in general. They are all mortal and imperfect, but God still speaks through them.
> authentic Christian faith is not an arbitrary faith in anything you please
But he's not talking about an arbitrary faith. He's talking about faith in the capacity of priests -- clearly a relevant subject. And there are, indeed, _preambula fidei_ here: that the priest was taught in seminary, that the priest was approved by the Church, that the priest (through the bishop who ordained them) participates in a line of apostolic succession going back to Jesus, etc.
What you've written is simply an intellectual jumble. What does faith (the theological virtue) and acceptance of the apostolic succession have to do with "faith" in the capacity of priests, here, as competent homilists?
99% of the jokes I've made throughout my life don't land. For better or worse, if I find something amusing I impulsively share it.
In this case, I thought it should be obvious that OP must have faith in priests, given that they're Catholic, which requires faith as a prereq.
If you read my comment as a slight against Catholicism, I can understand, but I wouldn't feel comfortable publicly joking about any religion other than my own. If that's the case, you're in good company, with the multitude of nuns who've admonished me for similar offhand comments spanning 20 years of Catholic education from pre-k to college, this is old hat for me.
God willing, I'll mature or start telling better jokes some day.
Increased severity of punishment has little deterrent effect, both individually and generally.
The certainty or likelihood of being caught if a far more effevtive deterrent, but require effort, focus, and resources by law enforcement.
It's a resource constraint problem and a policy choice. If "they" wanted to set the tone that this type of behavior will not be tolerated, it would require a concerted multi agency surge of investigative and prosecutorial resources. It's been done before, if there's a will there's a way.
I've read that fMRI may be used as an objective diagnostic tool for autism. This was a few years back and I'm not sure how further research panned out.
There was no need to hold real estate expos because the ethnic cleansing was a bit more direct during the Armenian and Assyrian genocide.
It was atrocious then and it's atrocious now. There's almost something worse about zionst making it a business now. It's one thing to ethnically cleanse an area out of hatred, it's sick on a whole new level to try and turn a buck in the process.
1 Samuel 15 in the Old Testament describes this situation perfectly. According to the Bible God told Saul and the Israelites to destroy the Amalekites (a familiar term if you’ve listened to Israel refer to the Palestinians as “Amalek”) and all of their cattle as well.
“But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves[b] and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.”
Now this could be interpreted as a direct instruction not to profit from the conflict. Something Israel is planning on doing once the Palestinians have been removed from Gaza and they build luxury hotels on top of uncountable dead bodies of children. You could argue that even if you grant Israel religious justification for destruction of Gaza, they would not be granted religious justification for profiting from it.
It’s a pointless thing to bring up other than that I think it exposes this whole thing for the colonialist enterprise it really is, and calls into question how much religious belief is really driving the decision making over there.
That’s an odd synchronicity to say the least. I haven’t opened a Bible in years (unless you count googling verses online) but for whatever reason I’ve been thinking about this specific passage ever since I heard about Israeli govt officials referencing it. So it’s definitely swirling around in the collective unconsciousness of “the west”.
I'm sure some ERP implementations go smoothly, but I've never heard of one.
About 10 years ago, I arrived at a company in the immediate aftermath of a failed implementation. There were many contributing factors, many of which I'm sure are common to other projects gone awry.
Is this problem as prevalent as it seems? How have these firms not developed a better methodology to avoid the most common pitfalls?
First, the Connecticut Compromise is a democratic underpinning of the US. It was central to the formation of the nation, and any attempt to alter it would be a foundational structural change to the constitution to say the least.
I understand the concerns about one generation binding another without recourse. Legal scholars differ on whether Article V, which implements the compromise, can be amended or not.
But for the sake of argument, let's say it can. It would be an insurmountable task requiring the following:
1. A supermajority in both houses of Congress (67% in the Senate and 66% in the House) to propose the amendment.
2. Ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 out of 50 states) or by conventions in three-fourths of the states.
3. Consent of the states that would lose their equal representation in the Senate.
4. Overcome any legal challenges that would likely arise at every step of the process.
The result would be a dramatic redefinition of federalism and democratic representation. This wouldn't be a cosmetic change, it would be a fundamental alteration to the structure of the government and constitution.
Very few things were deemed "unamendable" and entrenched in the constitution before, both explicitly and implicitly, but now it would all be up for grabs. Now nothing is irrevocable.
What's to stop future generations from altering other fundamental principles? While we may complain of being bound by the decisions of our ancestors, we would be opening up a Pandora's box of constitutional instability for future generations, binding them to the whims of a (slim?) majority of the current generation's political agenda.
I think that is the best case scenario. The worst, and I think a very possible scenario, is that states losing representation would claim that such a drastic and material change to the constitution upends the root of the bargain that led to the formation of the union, and would likely seek to secede. You may have achieved your goal of changing the apportionment of the Senate, but at the cost of the union itself. There are far easier and less risky ways to achieve political change.