UserWiki:Kirk

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Ideas

Why Curate the Web? Why bother curating the web when search engines like Google or Bing can locate most information you're looking for quickly?

While these search engines are powerful tools in locating information quickly, they also have their limitations. They are driven by advertisers and rely mostly on keywords. They tend to bring up a more superficial, shiny object type of information as a result. This type of information while not necessarily anathema to democracy is not really what is needed for a deeper democratic participation. Information is not the same as knowledge and what this site strives for is to provide a resource where readers can gain knowledge rather than just information. While a Google search will usually return a valuable Wikipedia article on a particular topic, beyond that the information is sporadic and not well sorted. Often it will return disinformation driven by propaganda advertisers such as conservative "think tanks". Usually it brings up a lot of what I call "information garbage", useful for answering simple superficial questions but not useful for deeper learning. What is needed for gaining knowledge rather than information is a curated reading list built by a person who has some background and interest in that particular topic.

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Original Content

Biden [is] officially the nominee of the Democratic Party. And when you look at what politicians can offer a country you look more at the types of administrative appointments and their general overall policies and those of the party they belong to, rather than what they are as a person. Judging their policy initiatives by their personality or even what they say during their election campaign can be deceptive.

You seem interested in my hypothesis regarding the current presidential election, usually I don’t talk about it with people because I find people’s decisions are generally emotional driven and they are not interested in a more rational indepth discussion.

So let’s look at 6 priorities that I considered to be very important in terms of political policies: Judicial Appointments, Environmental Policy, Climate Change amelioration and adaptation, Income Inequality/Racism, Democracy and Health Care.

Look at Trump's appointments to the judicary- they are straight from the Federalist's Society training camp where they learn "Judicial Originalism" . And they now control the SCOTUS and several lower courts. Biden's judges would most likely be along the lines of Obama's - pretty moderate but certainly not wild-eyed originalists that want to recreate the social contract of 1776 including its rather heavy handed religious fundamentalism. Would Biden pick better judges than Trump? Clearly, yes! Would he be perfect? No.

Next look at Trump's executive actions regarding environmental policies. Trump has rolled back more environmental protections than any other president in history, he has pretty much granted all the wishes of the fossil fuel/resource extraction industry. In states that are also controlled by the fossil fuel/resource extraction industry (Utah happens to be one of those states) as do most other Republican controlled states this has big ramifications. Over the next few decades, because those changes in environmental policy can not easily be rolled back. It will mean more mining, more fracking, more drilling for oil, less protections against air pollution, toxic run off in streams and rivers. Less protections for wildlife, habitat, the air we breath etc, etc etc. Would Biden be better in regards to environmental policies? Clearly Yes! Would he be perfect? No.

A good example of this is Bear’s Ears National Monument, this land which was set aside by Obama to be protected from resource extraction and development. But Orrin Hatch (r-Utah) was very angry about this, so he got Trump (or I think Zinke was the Interior Secetary at the time) to revoke the Bear’s Ear National Monument and take out large portions of land and leave them open to mining interests. Most likely uranium mining. Me thinks Hatch has some investments in the Utah mining industry.

Next let’s look at Trump’s policies regarding Green House Gas emissions which is causing runaway Climate Change at an unprecedented rate in the Earth’s history. Climate Change is the one thing that will most shapes the Earth’s ecosystem and human civilization in the decades to come and is already creating extreme weather, wild fires, coastal flooding, heat waves and much more: Links to some presentday effects of Climate Change Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris Accords, we are now the only country in the world that is not a party to the Paris Accords. He has also rolled back all of Obama’s initiatives to reduce GHG emissions. Where the US has been the largest emitter of US historically and still is on a per capita basis, China is presently the largest emitter. Would Biden be better on GHG emissions and Climate Change adaptations. Clearly Yes! Would he be perfect. No.

Next let’s look at Trump’s and the Republicans policies regarding Income Inequality and Racism. I lump the two together because they are very much intertwined where politics and public policy are concerned. Trump stands out among Republicans as someone who clearly puts voice to his racist tendencies and he has been rewarded with a strong devoted fanbase. It is a more obvious form of the decades long Republican “Southern Strategy” . I highly recommend watching 13th (the 13th amendment outlaws slavery but allows for prisoners to be used as slave labor). The 13th does an excellent job of connecting politically determined public policy with racism and continued income inequality. It is hard to image a president who was elected by 46% of the voting public to be more obviously racist than Trump is. Complimenting white supremacists and calling them “fine people” while denigrating peaceful protesters and lumping them with looters. His whole election strategy was based on vilifying dark-skinned immigrants and especially Mexicans and it continues to be his re-election strategy.

As for as income inequality goes that is a long term and successful project carried out by think tanks like the Heritage Foundation . By convincing people that government provides no useful communal services for people the Republican party has been able to shift the tax burden (how those communal services are paid for) from the very wealthy (who can most easily afford it) to those who can least afford it. Services such as infrastructure maintenance, health care, prisons, parole system, court systems, the many, many city services, social security, medicare, medical, indigent legal services, etc, etc, I could gone on and on with more time. All these services are increasing being paid for by local fees and fines rather the through progressive federal income taxes. Simply put, the fees collected to run necessarily government services are increasingly regressive (meaning those who can least afford them are paying them) Trump has worked hand in hand with the Republicans to continue this trend and at the same time massively increased the national debt (by cutting taxes on the very wealthy) all while seemingly complaining that the National Debt is too high and it is the Democrats fault. This National Debt is very useful to the Republicans because if and when the Democrats ever take power they will claim nothing can be done because the National Debt is so high, while they are the ones responsible for creating the massive debt in the first place. What is it now 26 trillion? When Reagan took office and began the “Supply Side” economics revolution the National Debt was under 1 trillion. Will Biden be better than Trump on these issues? Not quite so clearly, but yes probably. Racism and Income Inequality are very entrenched issues in our national psyche it is really doubtful one person could do much about it. But at least we could have someone in the position of president who isn’t spouting openly racist stuff that the media isn’t repeating over and over again.

Now let’s look at the state of democracy in our country and whether Biden or Trump would be best to improve our rather poor state of democracy. Our country currently ranks 25th on the Economists Intelligence Unit Democracy Index. Trump has openly attacked a free and fair press and tried to replace it with his own idea of what is newsworthy. A free and fair press is integral to any democracy in fact it is probably the most important factor when looking at whether or not a country is or isn’t a democracy. Income inequality is another reason why our democracy is so weak. When billionaires have such an inordinate voice when it comes to making policy and laws, the voice of the many get drowned out. And income inequality, though not the stated goal of the Republican party, is clearly a policy objective of both Trump and the Republican party.

As far as electoral politics is concerned, Trump continues vocalizing the decades long trope of the Republican party, that voter fraud is widespread, especially among illegal immigrants and in cities. Of course the obvious policy objective here is; voter suppression. By creating this false dialogue it gives Republican controlled states to put in place laws that have been known historically to suppress the vote. Laws such as requiring voter ID’s when many poor people especially those black and brown people don’t have ID’s that meet their requirements. Taking away voting stations from highly populated areas so that those in cities must wait in long lines in order to vote, while those in rural areas have no wait. Making voting by mistake a serious crime (it is not always clear to someone whether it is legal for them to vote due to a past criminal offense or a naturalization status) . Republicans have recently been enthusiastic users of Gerrymanding to maintain the majority in a number of states. Democrats have historically used Gerrymanding as well, especially in the Jim Crow South. But today’s gerrymandering is something of a new animal with the degree of data available, voting patterns can be analyzed with sophisticated models and members of state and federal congress can essentially pick their district that is guaranteed to elected them. This is currently being used in a number of States where the overall population votes for Democrats but the representatives in congress are overwhelmingly Republican. All these serious electoral problems can be laid at the feet of the SCOTUS. They are responsible for essentially invalidating the Civil Rights Era voting act, which blocked most of the aforementioned abuses. And also looking at the issue of gerrymandering and essentially giving it the green light. Will Biden be better than Trump on these issue? Well these issues are not really the domain of the president but a president can have some influence here by appointing judges that don’t strike down legislation meant to protect against voter suppression and gerrymandering. There are probably also some executive branch decisions which can help with our chronically low voter turn out. So yes Biden would clearly be better on these issues. `

So lastly let’s look at health care. Our country has one of the least efficient health care systems in the world, meaning we pay the most per capita but get results that are far down the list of countries in terms of outcomes. I won’t detail the problems because I think you are familiar with many of them. Most of the problems with health care in this country can be traced to the profit motive and how it is connected with health care delivery in the US to a degree that few other countries make that profit motive connection. So reducing that profit motive connection would go a long way to improving the US healthcare system. One important way of reducing that profit motive is reducing the rationing of healthcare to only those who can afford it, by making healthcare more available to everyone. The ACA was an incremental step in that direction, it could have gone a lot further but some of its better ideas were blocked by the one or two moderate Republicans needed to secure its passing in the US Senate. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is the person most responsible for taking the public option out of the ACA. However the ACA did go a long ways to increasing availability of healthcare to millions of people. I happened to be one of those people. As soon as the bill passed the Republicans staked their future on vilifying the ACA and doing everything possible to repeal it or make it less useful. The misinformation campaign perpetrated by the Republicans was very successful in helping them retake the House and then the Senate. They were unsuccessful in completely killing the ACA and now they no longer wanted to talk about it because it is currently more widely supported and many of their lies are clearer now. However Trump is continuing the war against the ACA and any legislation that makes healthcare more widely available while continuing to cover those with pre-existing conditions. The SCOTUS may overturn the ACA in the next few months, most likely they will wait until after the election, because it would hurt Trump’s chances of winning and certain vulnerable Republican Senator’s chance of winning if it was overturned before the election. As much as the SCOTUS pretend to be non-partisan the majority of 5 is very clearly Republican and they often twist their decisions to the preferred Republican outcomes. So would Biden be better than Trump on health care, clearly Yes! Would he correct the many, many complex problems with our healthcare system and especially its focus on treatment of symptoms rather that prevention, of course not. Would he even be able to save the ACA if it was struck down by SCOTUS probably not. But at least congress would have a chance to get something passed if Trump was gone and the Senate went back to the Democrats.

I know you may not agree with my list of the 6 priorities that need to be addressed either by electoral politics or people-level actions, but here they are again just to repeat them: Judicial Appointments, Environmental Policy, Climate Change amelioration and adaptation, Income Inequality/Racism, Democracy and Health Care. If you think think one of these is not very important please state which one. If you think something else is more important please state what it is. If you see errors in things I have stated please feel free to point them out (supported with references of course).