Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. ~Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
1 get rid of a lot the states powers,
2 the parties need to get party discipline and throw out the "nutters".
3 have strict uk style election campaign limits
4 replace the vast expenditure on tv campaigning with uk model of party political broadcasts.
5 have more equal constituency sizes (which will stop small agricultural states leaching of the bigger ones)
6 force all organizations (Unions and Company) to run a political fund for any lobbying and have it confirmed by vote every 7 years with opt out allowed)
(1) would require an amendment to the US constitution. The powers of the Federal Government are spelled out and those not explicitly spelled out are supposed to be reserved to the states. A general way to think about the US is 50 different countries, each with their own president government and constitution, with a common limited government superior to them to make sure they get along. To take more power away from the states and give it to the Federal Government, you'd have to amend the constitution.
(2) Easily done, but seems to misinterpret US elections. The parties could get rid of the 'nutters' (although who are the nuts depends on who you are) but that doesn't prevent the nutters from getting elected. The US doesn't vote for parties, it explicitly votes for individuals. One party or another can back an individual, but it's not required and on election day you're voting for a person, not a party.
(3) Probably some issues with our 1st amendment and prevention of individuals from running campaign adds. The US has a very broad definition of Freedom of Speech that is basically unheard of anywhere else in the world.
(4) See (2), basically the same reason of voting for an individual instead of a party.
(5) We would have to change how elector's districts are divided up and this would require an amendment of Article 1 Section 2. The electors are apportioned among the states, but no state can receive less than one. In order to have 'more equal' distribution, you would have to have one person representing people in multiple states. Also, I'm not necessarily sure of the point behind it. The parent pokes at "small agricultural states" receiving a disproportionate share of Federal Dollars. Well, see here. The agricultural states are (usually) the ones getting less back in dollars than they pay in taxes. The smallest one is Wyoming and it gets 84 cents back out of every dollar it pays in taxes. It looks like we do not have this as a problem.
(6) May actually be possible, but I'd like to know why "every 7 years" was chosen instead of something more often or less often.
I'm still genuinely curious. Is your constitution based on voting for individuals, not political principles? Don't regard this as an attack, but I'd appreciate a short explanation
I answered this above without realizing you had asked this at the end of your post. I don't take it as an attack. The answer is yes and I realize the US is very much in the minority when it comes to this. Although, I wonder if you mean "political parties" instead of "political principles". The only time I know of when we don't vote for an individual, we are voting for a pair of individuals (President and Vice President). The President and Vice President are elected as a pair, one running for President and the other for Vice President. On no ballot I know of will you find Party X or Party Y except as a subheading under an individual who we are voting for. We also vote for a lot of things all the way down to Dog Catcher in some areas (no joke). Here's an incomplete list of people in my area we'll be voting for on 2nd November. Here's one from where I used to live. They only have five things to vote on this year. One year, there were over twenty.(again, no joke) We vote on A LOT of things in the US.
18 hours down is only 99.6% uptime averaged over the year assuming no other failures. A well maintained server can have 99.99%-99.999% uptime.
And here you just went and mixed two different time periods. Do you seriously believe a 99.99% or 99.999% uptime is measured over a single year? Lets look at when the previous time the Army rootserver went down. Was it anytime within the last two years? If no, then they have 99.99% uptime.
They're trying to mine the market's volatility for money.
You mean like Day Traders were doing 10 years ago? You don't need to be an HFT to make money from volatility.
Martha Stewart went to jail because she had money in IMClone, and was called before the news was out by somebody telling her an FDA trial had a failed result. She sold immediately, and then we she realized she had fouled, faked her phone records about the call. Gotta play fair... they are watching.
Er, no. Martha Stewart went to jail for Obstruction of Justice. She was never convicted of anything else, including insider trading.
I wonder if that's a potential possible conflict free source, as you say.
Yes, it would be conflict free. At that point it would be no different from you donating your wife's organs when she dies.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
