I loathe the Electoral College more than the next guy, but that's not right. The problem in this election of 1852 wasn't the electoral college, but the bargain that prevented California from being properly represented in Congress. If they'd apportioned appropriately, California would have had a large majority of the electoral college by itself, and Hale would have won easily.
Keep in mind also that this is the pre-Civil War era when the 3/5's compromise was in force, which gave the Southern slave states disproportionate power in the House and EC, on account of having a large number of people who can't vote but are partially counted for apportionment purposes.
Nobody has to pander to Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, the Dakotas, or Nebraska, because there is no need to campaign there. Their electoral votes are not up for grabs, and so both parties can completely ignore them; if every vote mattered, then you'd probably see more campaign events there, if not necessarily by the candidates on the tickets.
I've been chewing on a scenario kind of similar to this thread's for a while: Virginia/Maryland/Delaware taken from 2013 to 1861. The difference in population wasn't as big as here, but it's still fairly stark if you look it up. The compromise engineered is simple, at first, unlike this thread: Virginia had 13 seats in 1860 and has 11 now, while Maryland went from 6 to 8. They more or less cancel out, so the Delmarvans elected in 2012 serve until March 1863. The Census introduces the hard part, which became a multi-step process. First, the whole House was apportioned according to the combined 1860/2010 population data, but using the cap of the 1861 House size. Then I took the number of seats that VA/MD/DE gained in comparison, added that number to the aforementioned House size, reapportioned with that new number, and finally transferred seats from VA/MD/DE to the other states in proportion to population, such that none of the downtime states lost seats from the 1861 apportionment. The biggest state was still Virginia, but with 46 seats, followed by Maryland with 33, and then New York at 31. The same sort of principle could have applied here, but of course it's a very different political situation.
I'm getting the feeling you are equating the fuck-up's caused by corporations -that are blocking hostile to their income ventures and use media to raise tensions with local or nation wide population to BLOCK or HALT a project for as long as possible to milk their existing setup till the end- and blame it on the government who has its hands tied with its own laws, that are called on by misinformed, or bribed people.
Huh. This is all fine and good, right until the point where you now have your belly filled, easy access to clean water, and a tall wall around your settlement. Only to discover the next year that all of the ground water is poisoned from runoff from lime powder you used for your houses, conservatives in curing leather, or poorly treated human waste.
There is a distinct difference between doing something out of life threatening necessity, and doing something you know will shoot you in the foot, but still going along with it HOPING that it will not happen, or worse yet: doing it anyway knowing full well that it will happen, but you will not have to deal with the consequences and fix it.
A cool cup of yucca juice in your hands!
The biggest issue with maintaining Wiki servers is with allowing them enough bandwidth for 8 billion monkeys.
I get the feeling you're never going to agree with the rest of the people in the thread, and it's mostly because the apparent model of environmental assessment you run off goes:
In the name of Westwood!
In the name of WESTWOOD!
IN THE NAME OF WESTWOOD!
WESTWOOD LIVES!
I vastly prefer GDI to Nod but Westwood's great cinematics are mostly for Nod... Probably because Joe Kucan.
See, there's a bit of a problem with this claim, which is the whole reason the Electoral College exists. Basically, it's a matter of "MINORITY REPORT".
Because the West is mostly urbanized, a lot of us don't realize that Nature is dangerous.
A city dweller is in the balance better off banning guns.
EVERYONE is better off requiring licensing for guns and gun safes to be had in households with small children.
Rural dwellers are NOT better off banning guns. Licensing and gun safe requirements? Sure. Bans? NOPE.
If you're living alone or relatively isolated in the countryside when the nearest neighbours are a phone call and 5 minutes (if they deign to come help), and the nearest cops are over 30 minutes away, and you hear suspicious noises downstairs, or wild animals show up that are rather more aggressive than feral hogs (real wild boars are incredibly aggressive and will try to gore you)... Well, it's all up to you to save yourself.
BTW according to the USDA map on this Guardian article (The Guardian is well left wing and still has to concede that the tweeter has a point), feral hogs are a problem in every county of California except one:
What about the 30-50 feral hogs? Man's defense of assault weapons goes viral
A Twitter user’s loaded question has been widely mocked, but there’s actually more to it than many have assumedwww.theguardian.com
While shooting most rapidly breeding animals is considered ineffective as they flee very quickly at the sound of gunfire (evolution OP plz nerf) that does imply shooting one or two at least repels the survivors for a while.
And, as previously noted, if the cops are over 30 minutes away... Well, not everyone lives in a country like the UK where a burglar breaking his ankle can sue the homeowner (Home Alone shenanigans would never be allowed in the UK). Here out in the barbarous frontiers of North America, we actually have the right to defend our homes from intruders.
The Electoral College ensures that the less densely populated states aren't just drowned out by the more urbanized states. Every single large enough group of people has tribal tendencies, and in the case of city-dwellers used to collective security (police) and general lack of wild animals... we have serious Ivory Tower syndrome.
The only notable North American settlements where I know city-dweller's attitudes on guns are close to rural attitudes are all the places north of Edmonton in latitude. After all, if you're regularly at risk of hypercarnivore attack, you know Nature is a dangerous place.
This is a joke, right? Because the amount of environmental regulations in California are the product of a society that can afford them. Environmentalism is a LUXURY, which comes after immediate needs of food, water, shelter, and protection from hostile tribes of humans.
Expect it to be adapted in Local systems as something like: "Can animals get around it reasonably safely (for animals and people)? Yes? Then they will adapt. That's evolution for ya, red in tooth and claw. Quit yer saviour complex, it's disgusting how much you look down your nose at Mother Nature. Speciation and extinction occur all the time, and if a species didn't adopt the 'expansion is the only protection against extinction' strategy than it's about to get subjected to macroevolution."
(Please note that this is for minor things like roads, bridges, etc. and not for huge amounts of idiocy like clear-cutting large forests or cutting tons of access-ways through forests)
