His family came to El Paso and received government aid. A handout, as many would call them.

Do I care? No, it's the 'american dream'. But the modern us conservative sure seems to care about the government helping people.

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:no. you cant have it both ways. either let them operate like an actual business, or convert them to an agency. i would do the latter as i view them as infrastructure.

way to avoid the topic, though.

To be honest, I really haven't been following the story closely enough to know whether what the writer is saying is accurate and how unusual/unfair the division of pension liabilities was at the outset. The author of the piece notes in his short bio there that he is the author of The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, so I'd probably take when he has to say with a grain of salt. Would the post office even be profitable without those decisions by the government, fair or unfair? They lost $3.3 billion in the first quarter of the year, which seems like a lot.

I do know operations have been profitable for a number of years, from a variety of sources. Presumably pensions would have to be funded in some way to some extent, so I'm not sure whether re-structuring this alone would be sufficient to make them profitable.

But people are paying for all that crap that gets dumped in your mailbox and the post office has a virtual monopoly on that type of advertising. The revenue stream is very healthy.

Of course the other problem with the post office is that political pressure forces them to maintain offices in places where it makes no sense to do so. You can drive through otherwise empty "towns" (really just wide spots in the road" with no other business than a post office. The proposal to close 180 post offices in Arkansas alone is meeting stiff resistance from the Arkansas Congressional delegation.

Fucking rural people have this image of self-reliance, yet their roads, their electricity, their phone service, and their mail are all subsidized by everyone else. I doubt there's a group in America with a bigger sense of entitlement that rural residents. Fucking 2 Senators from every state was a bad idea from the get go. Britain finally addressed the problem of rotten boroughs, why doesn't America? If only the framers had gone along with the Virginia plan we could have avoided all this.

just googled the virginia plan - if both houses would be proportional representation, what's the point of two houses? Why not just one large house? What's the 2nd house accomplish? Or another way, how is it different than the first house?

Monkeyboy wrote:well at least part of north america hasn't completely lost its mind

Alberta's something. The two right parties combined for almost 80% of the vote while the two left parties were under 20%.

Gotta get that oil.

Every state legislature other than Nebraska is set up that way. Staggered terms, different manner of election, different term lengths, different sizes, different procedures, different areas of responsibility would result in significant differences. With the filibuster, mathematically Senators representing about 10% of the US population can block legislation. Fucked up system.

jeff2sf wrote:just googled the virginia plan - if both houses would be proportional representation, what's the point of two houses? Why not just one large house? What's the 2nd house accomplish? Or another way, how is it different than the first house?

yeah, and what's with all the clumsy real estate analogs insinuated in our governmental apparatus? what do the legislative bodies need "houses" for, anyway? There's plenty of fine hotels in DC. Let them convene in the Mandarin Oriental, ffs

Tim Holden getting his clock cleaned tonight.

Edit: Might have been early on this. It's closer, but still not that close.

Tom Smith is the guy who will hopefully lose to Bob Casey

I'm kinda shocked about the Tim Holden thing.

Apparently 80 percent of the redrawn district was new territory.

Patrick Murphy lost tonight in the primary for AG. I dislike him a lot, though I think someone here was a big fan...Bakestar, maybe?

Not that I dislike him for any great reason. He voted against the resolution that congratulated the Giants for beating the 18-0 Pats.

CNN has Romney under 100k votes in NY at 77% of the vote reporting. If the % of the vote reporting isn't broken there, that's something more than stunning. That would be inexplicably terrible and embarrassing for the NY GOP. Which might be incapable of embarrassment, but still.

Hah, well I just sort of assumed (shows what happens when you assume) that state/congressional primaries would be tonight since it was a later primary...nope! Those aren't till June. Wtf is New York doing? Why run a stand alone presidential primary this late in the process?

Still kind of hope the results are effed up. Why are 5x as many people voting for Romney in PA than NY? Under 1% of state population voting in the GOP primary?

i voted for kane.

sam rohrer continues his long-game strategy of losing every race he contests. cheers to him.

unfortunately, i have no democracy in my state house area OR my state senate area. both democrats ran unopposed, and there are no republican challengers. one of them is great (judy schwank), the other is terrible (tom caltigerone). ugh.

Yeah I was kind of "there" during the very, very early stages of Murphy's political career, semi-hosted his first campaign appearance, etc.. I thought this would be a great opportunity for him to obtain statewide office (that Congressional district was way to volatile), but oh well.

Fox News mole guy got served with a search warrant today

What an idiot

Republicans got rid of two Democratic house members from pa just by redistricting. Off-year voting doesn't matter! I hate people that stayed hone in 2010 to 'send a message'.

A friend of mine won the Democratic primary for the PA House 182nd District. Nice win for a 32-year-old newcomer to defeat an entrenched incumbent.