The LAPD chief is restating a longstanding policy put into place by the LAPD in the late '70s* to encourage illegal immigrants who didn’t violate other laws to report suspicious activities and crimes they’ve witnessed to LAPD without the fears that doing so will lead to their deportation.
California has a history of standing up to the Feds when funds are at risk. When NCLB was still in force and Common Core was being implemented, the US Dept of Education said we had to give both our old state tests and pilot the new Common Core tests in the same year. Our Dept of Education said No, we are not doing the old test any longer. We are pilot testing on every California student because we need to see if the computer systems can handle the load and the old tests are obsolete. We aren’t generating any scores for the pilot test year. The US Dept of Education said, “We can keep your Title 1 funds.” We said, “OK try it.” In the end, the US Dept of Ed gave in and only kept a few million dollars from some obscure Title that didn’t amount to much on the scale of California, but let them save face a bit.
We have already told the US Dept of Ed the same thing regarding pilot testing of the new Next Generation Science Standards tests. They aren’t happy, but they made less noise this time.
California’s elected officials from local to the stage legislature to statewide office to our Senators have said we will resist whether by saying no, through the courts, though state legislation, etc.
The refusal to take federal funds goes both ways, politically. Think of all the states that declined money to expand Medicare. I live in one of those states. Many of my fellow residents were hurt by that decision.
@hebegebe my point was not really to debate the merits of whether or not illegal immigrants should be deported. I think the significance is in the police department’s refusal to enforce and their willingness to give advance notice of that intention.
When some Western states refused to lower the speed limit to 55 back in 1974, the feds cut off highway funds. The states reluctantly complied.
All this “they didn’t vote” rhetoric bothers me when the candidate who won the popular vote isn’t the president elect. People in Oregon (and most other states) aren’t wrong to think that their vote didn’t matter if it actually didn’t.
The popular vote is not how the game is played. Play a different game, and you might get a different outcome.
Whether you are with the majority or the minority of Californians, it is easy to feel like your vote doesn’t matter in CA. Our senator will be proposing legislation to change that though this article implies it will be unlikely to get anywhere (and apparently not the first time it’s been proposed.)
True. Percentage turnout is higher in battleground states.
Voter turn-out is higher in WA and OR than the US average, and certainly more than many of the states that voted red. We’ve had a fair number of marches in Seattle, though Wed was the only one where I heard sirens and helicopters and that was to keep them off I-5 (the N-S freeway going through the city). In Seattle, there’s been little violence and few arrests. My sense from friends who have gone is that it is more about solidarity against hateful rhetoric, against intimidation of blacks, hispanics and Muslims, and protesting Trump nominations that are viewed as proponents of bigotry and racism. Obviously there is also anti-Trump/Not My President messages too. That’s not too surprising in a city that voted overwhelmingly blue.
They are not out there marching to keep ObamaCare, though I’m sure they would like that, but to protest registration of Muslims, normalizing neo-nazi organizations, witch hunts against hispanics, cutting access to birth control and abortion while shrugging off sexual assault as normal guy behavior—all of which they see as something Trump promised to do and which they assume he will attempt to carry out. You may not think that is what Trump championed nor something that he will attempt to put in place, but that is assuredly what many of those protesting think.
Not MY President slogans and chants also speaks to a President Elect not holding the views of the people protesting and a reflection of not supporting the views expressed by the President Elect. Don’t misread it as “he won’t be president”. It’s like misreading BLM as meaning no one else’s lives matter.
It doesn’t take a genius to see why they won’t scrap the electoral college, from the beginning it was designed to give disproportionate representation to small states, it was one of the main purposes of it (the other was as a check and balance to the ‘power of the people’, given that until fairly recently most states did not require the electors to vote for the person they were pledged to). Put it this way, there have been 5 elections in the history of this country where the popular vote getter lost. The most interesting one, and possible the most historically significant, Hayes got elected in large part because of political haggling, the Democrats agreed to the “Hayes Compromise” that gave 20 undecided electors to Hayes (even though Tilden won), and in return the Republicans gave up on reconstruction which allowed for the creation of the Jim Crow south. The most interesting fact is that two of the 5 happened in recent times, within 16 years of each other, and the winner and their party also tells you why the electoral college is not going anywhere, anytime soon. Despite the clamor for ‘let the people’s voice be heard’, which would entail one man one vote, no one is going to give up a system that can be gamed in your favor in a close election, not to mention that getting rid of the electoral college might actually make divide and conquer less effective as an election tool, which has resulted in the division of the country as a whole even more.
I thought about starting a pros and cons of the Electoral College thread but thought that might be viewed as political.
First of all, the campaign would have been conducted very differently if the count was for the popular vote only.
But I see other major problems (aside from the fact that it would take a Constitutional Amendment to change it and the small states that would lose power will never agree).
- Many states would be left out entirely. If those areas and the people in them didn't feel they were represented, what sort of rebellion might occur especially since the interests of urban areas are so different from rural ones.
- If the vote were close, say within 1% (ala Florida 2000), the entire country would have to be re-counted. Mayhem.
- It takes away from the very idea of how the country was founded as a republic of states. If 'states' as such do not matter, why have a Senate in which each state is equally represented regardless of population. That doesn't equal one person/one vote either.
Couldn’t an argument be made that the entire population of a single state can’t be represented as a whole? If you are red in a blue state or blue in a red state and all your representation goes the other way, it’s easy to feel you are not being represented. Perhaps a compromise where a relative number of the electoral votes could be an answer to address this.
Methinks that the current protesters wouldn’t be protesting the electoral college if the situation was reversed.
True, but Trump’s supporters would be protesting instead.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Before we get too far down the rabbit whole of a discussion of the electoral college, I’m closing this thread. It looks like there’s nothing left to say in terms of the original topic.