You would think that an election system that allows people to vote for the person who most closely represents their views would be the one that is preferred. A system that comes close to this ideal is the preferential voting system where people rank order their votes for the candidates. After the first round of counting of only first place votes, if no candidate gets an outright majority of 50% plus one vote, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and the second choice votes of those who gave that person their first choice are then added to the totals of the remaining candidates. This process goes on until one candidate wins a majority. In this system, no vote is ‘wasted’ in the sense of people voting for someone who has little chance of winning, because their other preferences still count.
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Gina Haspel, a person with an infamous history or torture in the CIA, has been nominated to head that agency. Glenn Greenwald writes that it should be an easy call for Democrats to oppose her nomination and help kill it. But that may not happen because there will may well be a few defectors who vote with Republicans to confirm her.
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The right to unionize and to strike has been fundamental in improving the lives of all of us. It is the only counterbalancing weapon that low-level workers have against the power of their bosses. But the downside to strikes, apart from the fact that workers suffer loss in wages during it, is that the general public also suffers. So when for example, teachers go on strike, students and their parents are inconvenienced and teachers need their support and understanding to prevail. The situation becomes harder for nurses where striking means leaving patients without adequate care.
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For most of the American public, once US troop stop dying in significant numbers, then the wars that the US is involved in have effectively ended, even though the US continues to rain havoc on those countries and inflict immense misery on its people using its firepower. Andrew Cockburn has been covering the many wars that the US is involved in and writes in the April issue of Harper’s magazine (subscription required) that the war in Afghanistan is now effectively on autopilot, with the US continuing its bombardment with no end in sight. The same strategies are tried over and over again based on the same rationales. The fact that the strategies have not worked in the past and the rationales go counter to the actual evidence seems to have no effect on the policy makers back in the US or the commanders in the field.
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