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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2024

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  • People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

    You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

    Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

    You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

    – Banksy











  • Switzerland has a direct democracy component to their government.

    The pure form of direct democracy exists only in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[27] The Swiss Confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with strong instruments of direct democracy).[27] The nature of direct democracy in Switzerland is fundamentally complemented by its federal governmental structures (in German also called the Subsidiaritätsprinzip).[5][6][7][8]

    Most western countries have representative systems.[27] Switzerland is a rare example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of the municipalities, cantons, and federal state). Citizens have more power than in a representative democracy. On any political level citizens can propose changes to the constitution (popular initiative) or ask for an optional referendum to be held on any law voted by the federal, cantonal parliament and/or municipal legislative body.[28]

    The list for mandatory or optional referendums on each political level are generally much longer in Switzerland than in any other country; for example, any amendment to the constitution must automatically be voted on by the Swiss electorate and cantons, on cantonal/communal levels often any financial decision of a certain substantial amount decreed by legislative and/or executive bodies as well.[28]

    Swiss citizens vote regularly on any kind of issue on every political level, such as financial approvals of a schoolhouse or the building of a new street, or the change of the policy regarding sexual work, or on constitutional changes, or on the foreign policy of Switzerland, four times a year.[29] Between January 1995 and June 2005, Swiss citizens voted 31 times, on 103 federal questions besides many more cantonal and municipal questions.[30] During the same period, French citizens participated in only two referendums.[27]

    In Switzerland, simple majorities are sufficient at the municipal and cantonal level, at the federal level double majorities are required on constitutional issues.[20]

    A double majority requires approval by a majority of individuals voting, and also by a majority of cantons. Thus, in Switzerland, a citizen-proposed amendment to the federal constitution (i.e. popular initiative) cannot be passed at the federal level if a majority of the people approve but a majority of the cantons disapprove.[20] For referendums or propositions in general terms (like the principle of a general revision of the Constitution), a majority of those voting is sufficient (Swiss Constitution, 2005).

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland






  • So why isn’t the DNC forming a national push for Ranked Choice voting? Stopping the Republicans is bigger then preserving the democratic party.

    Joe biden needs backup on the debate stage. We need more chances to defeat the republicans. We need more then two viable political parties.

    All that is possible with electoral reform. We don’t actually need to wait for federal reform. How we vote is controlled at the state level. This means all those blue states can push through this much needed reform with little Republican resistance.

    We deserve the *freedom * to vote for someone who best represents us, secure in the knowledge that our vote will still be counted even if our preference didn’t won. We deserve to be free of the spoiler effect.

    The only thing standing in our way in blue states is the democratic party. Don’t they care about beating the Republicans more then being in power?