The Crisis Report - 44
The fight over the Debt Ceiling. It's not about "the budget".
SO,
I think the Republicans are going to force a default on the National Debt. I don’t think they are going to budge from their position. Because, they aren’t looking at a default, or “14th Amendment” last minute save by Biden, as losing.
They don’t care if things get worse. They want things to get worse. They are making ENDGAME moves.
I LOVE GAMES.
When I was eleven I started going through my Father’s things. I had always had problems with “property rights” and “boundaries” as a child. He had a LOT of books I wanted to read and he wouldn’t let me. They were “too old” for me.
#The first thing I read was “Stranger in a Strange Land”, there’s sex in it.
So, I just picked the lock on my parents bedroom and helped myself. I wanted to read “adult” sci-fi, I was tired of Andre Norton and YA stuff like a “Wrinkle in Time” and “Witch Mountain”. I wanted to move “to the next level”.
Once I started down that road, I picked all the locks in the house. Using a newly learned skill is intoxicating. The delight at the things I found, was motivating. I opened, everything.
Including his locked “hobby cabinet”. Where I found a collection of marvelous games.
I was TERRIFIED of my Father’s wrath. I was extremely careful to always put things back, exactly as I found them. I never got caught, but I had to wait until I was 13, before he took them out and offered to teach me how to play. That was the beginning of a 20 year obsession with games and “gaming”.
Which Brings me back to “Republic of Rome” — AH 1990
Rome is a “Distant Mirror” — “The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire” by Kyle Harper (2017)
Within the game, Rome is threatened by foreign enemies and potential popular unrest.
The heart of the game involves players managing the state’s affairs in a series of mock Senate sessions, wherein proposals are made and voted on to elect officers of the Senate (the Consuls and Censor, and in times of extreme emergency, a Dictator) and governors of provinces, spend money to raise or disband legions and fleets, appoint leaders to fight Rome’s enemies with said military force, enact land reforms to mollify the populace, and prosecute Senators for putative ethical lapses, among other things.
Within this framework, the players use diplomacy, alliances, persuasions, prosecutions, graft, bribery, murder and even conspiracies to advance their cause.
Wikipedia
What separates Republic of Rome from many other games is the extent to which the players have to cooperate in order to win.
If a player is too selfish or too obviously becomes powerful, he will be put down by the others. If there is not enough cooperation between all players, the game wins and all players lose. No one player can win the game without negotiating alliances and using other diplomatic skills.
While pursuing their own individual goal of increasing their faction’s Influence, the players must co-operate to insure that Rome is not overwhelmed by foreign threats, popular unrest, or bankruptcy, causing Rome to fall and all players to lose (although if a player’s faction is in rebellion against Rome they may win in such a situation). #emphasis mine.
Crashing the “GAME” is an ENDGAME MOVE. It’s what you do when you have a HUGE advantage or, when you are on the verge of losing.
WHITE Trumpublican America is on the verge of “losing”.
The Supreme Court Zealots “gut shot” them with the Dobb’s Ruling.
The Supreme Court doomed the Republican party with the Dobbs decision. The graph above shows you why.
Women 18–29 voted Democratic by a 48% margin.
Women 30–44 voted Democratic by a 15% margin.
In 20 years, those women will be the dominant political force in America. This graph tells you they will most emphatically, NOT be voting Republican.
Abortion REALLY MATTERED politically. This is true cost of Dobb’s to the Republicans. This is DEATH staring them in the face.
Sooner, rather than later.
Voters choose their party affiliation in their 20’s and early 30’s. When a generation gets radicalized heavily against one party like this. They tend to vote against it for the rest of their life.
Half of Youth Voted in 2020, An 11-Point Increase from 2016 — April 29, 2021
Our analysis of youth voter turnout nationwide finds wide variation between states and underscores the importance of electoral laws and policies that help grow voters.
We estimate that 50% of young people, ages 18–29, voted in the 2020 presidential election, a remarkable 11-point increase from 2016 (39%) and likely one of the highest rates of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18.
As the number of women over 65 declines (a bigger voting pool than men over 65 BTW) the effect of this polarization will become increasingly pronounced. In 10 years it will be extremely difficult for a Republican to get elected in a national election. In 15 years it will be impossible for a Republican to get elected anywhere, for anything except in the most WHITE states and counties.
The Supreme Court “gut-shot” the Republican party’s future with Dobbs. No matter what they win now, they are bleeding out.
However, right now, the Trumpublicans are still strong. Right now, they are at their peak. Right now, they are EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.
Because the only way forward for them. Is taking away Women’s Right to Vote. Particularly Young Women.
Which is why they are “floating” ideas like this.
How can students too spoiled to tolerate debate weigh opposing political arguments? They can’t. -USA Today “Opinion” March 2015 by Glenn Harlan Reynolds.
“In 1971, the United States ratified the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake.
The idea, in those Vietnam War years, was that 18-year-olds, being old enough to be drafted, to marry and to serve on juries, deserved a vote. It seemed plausible at the time, and I myself have argued that we should set the drinking age at 18 for the same reasons.
But now I’m starting to reconsider. To be a voter, one must be able to participate in adult political discussions. It’s necessary to be able to listen to opposing arguments and even — as I’m doing right here in this column — to change your mind in response to new evidence.
This evidence suggests that, whatever one might say about the 18-year-olds of 1971, the 18-year-olds of today aren’t up to that task. And even the 21-year-olds aren’t looking so good.
As Reason’s Robby Soave notes, student demands for “safe spaces” boil down to a demand that universities fulfill the role of Mommy and Daddy. In the old days — this practice, interestingly, ended about 1971, too — colleges stood in loco parentis (in the place of a parent) and, as Soave writes, exercised extensive and detailed control over students’ social lives, sleeping hours, organizing and speaking. Now, he observes, the students are “desperate to be treated like children again.”
Well, OK, I guess. But children don’t vote. Those too fragile to handle different opinions are too fragile to participate in politics. So maybe we should raise the voting age to 25, an age at which, one fervently hopes, some degree of maturity will have set in. It’s bad enough to have to treat college students like children. But it’s intolerable to be governed by spoiled children. People who can’t discuss Halloween costumes rationally don’t deserve to play a role in running a great nation.”
Glenn Harlan Reynolds — a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.
Natelson: Let’s raise the voting age to 25, not lower it to 16 — March 2019
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she wants to enfranchise 16 year olds. Speaker Pelosi is right that we need a national conversation about voting age. But that conversation should be about raising the age to 25.
In the Anglo-American legal system, traditionally people reached majority at 21. In 1971, the 26th amendment forced states to enfranchise citizens at 18.
I well remember the debate over lowering the voting age. The argument for the 18-year old vote was not fact-based. Its principal justification was the slogan: “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote!” The slogan’s appeal lay in the fact that America was conscripting millions of hapless young men for an unpopular war in Vietnam.
Of course, the slogan is a non-sequitur: The attributes that enable one to serve as a buck private are not the same as those of a responsible voter. Since only males were being drafted, the slogan didn’t explain why we should extend the vote to 18-year old women as well. Moreover, if there should be a connection between military service and suffrage, then arguably suffrage should come only after one’s military obligation is discharged. (Some republics have, in fact, adopted that rule.)
The real reason for the 26th amendment was to reduce young people’s opposition to the war. In other words, the 26th amendment was an overreaction to a temporary political need — always a poor reason to change the Constitution.
These foolish decisions contradicted what almost every parent who has finished raising kids knows: Celebrating an 18th birthday is not a good measure of civic maturity. Those who benefit politically from youthful voting will deny this, but the evidence on the point is overwhelming. Indeed, subsequent experience has induced us to repeal step-by-step the decisions made then.
For one thing, science has discovered that the brain does not fully mature until age 25. So it is not surprising that the record of governance in most countries that allow 16 year olds to vote — Brazil, Nicaragua, Argentina, etc. — has been truly wretched.
In America specifically, we have seen how improvident borrowing by young “adults” contributed to a college debt crisis. We have witnessed the slaughter by young people on the highways. That’s why all states (with federal prodding) have hiked the drinking age to 21.
In recognition that most post-adolescents remain dependent on others, the Obamacare law lets them remain on their parents’ health insurance policies until age 26.
Clearly, lowering the age of majority has not been a success.
Restoring it to 21 would be a step in the right direction, but it would not be enough. As Obamacare supporters (including Speaker Pelosi) have implicitly recognized, there are compelling reasons for a higher age.
One reason is the scientific finding referred to earlier: cerebral maturity arrives at 25, not 21. Another is that it now takes far longer for people to learn how the world works than it used to. Life is far more complicated than it was in, say, 1900; and far more young people remain in ivory tower insulation from its realities.
There is also the rising age of practical independence. The American Founders recognized that for decision making to work well, the decision maker has to be able to exercise independent judgment. (That insight forms a basic principle underlying many provisions in the U.S. Constitution.)
In 1900 a 21-year old frequently was a self-supporting taxpayer with a job, a spouse, and a deep stake in neighborhood and society. Today many of that age live an unanchored life at the expense of parents, the government, loans, and grants.
There is another difference from earlier times: If the “old enough to fight” mantra ever made sense, it makes none today. Military conscription has not existed in America for over 45 years. (Anyway, we could exempt active service members from a voting-age hike.)
Proposals to enfranchise 16-year olds are either frivolous or attempts to seize partisan advantage. But raising the voting age to 25 should be on the national agenda.”
Rob Natelson: Senior fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver. He has published extensively on the Constitution and is the author of The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant. A version of this article originally appeared in The Daily Caller.
Lower the voting age? Let’s raise it instead — Boston Globe March 2019
“In 1971, the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age nationwide from 21 to 18, largely on the strength of the claim that if 18-year-olds were old enough to be drafted — many young men were being called up and sent to Vietnam — they were old enough to be given the vote. The moral force of that argument couldn’t be denied, but let’s face it: The quality of American politics and governance wasn’t improved by letting 18-year-olds vote.
Let’s require Americans to wait until they are 25 before they can cast a ballot. That would immediately boost voter turnout, since participation in elections rises as the concerns of adulthood rise. The more likely people are to have jobs, to support themselves, to be married, to worry about schools or mortgages or taxes, the more likely they are to take an interest in how they are governed — and the more likely to show up on Election Day.
Pandering to children will do nothing to elevate our democracy. Restoring the link between democracy and adulthood, on the other hand, just might. Young people who join the military should immediately be entitled to vote; everyone else should have to wait until they turn 25. Keep Americans from the polls until their prefrontal cortex has finished growing. More mature voters might just mean more mature politics. Isn’t that an outcome worth pursuing?
Voting age should be increased — The Prowler 3/17/22
In a world where the government controls most things in one’s life, voting is very important. Because we are putting people in charge of our lives, we should also try to research what they plan on doing with that power. It is important that we choose the very best candidate that we see fit.
Going about figuring the best candidate is an option some people do not take. They hear about who their friend thinks is the best candidate and just go with that. It is often a struggle to get people to simply research the candidate they want to vote for.
This can all stem from one thing: immaturity. The current legal voting age is 18 in America. Although that age is legally the best option because of requirements in the Constitution, it is not the best in practice. More and more young people are voting, which is in some ways problematic.
At 18 years old, one is getting nearer to that plateau of maturity. Humans do not reach full maturity until 25 years old. This means that tons of immature people are voting in elections each year.
An increase in the voter age would boost the average intelligence of the voter base and would therefore better the political decisions affecting America. Older age often correlates with a larger bank of wisdom.
With a slight increase in legal voting age, a fair amount of change could be injected into the political world. Creating a healthy environment in which educated and mature individuals can express their right to vote and affect America’s well-being for the better.
Republicans Are So Mad at the Huge Youth Turnout They Want to Increase the Voting Age — The New Republic 11/22/2022
Gen Z came out in huge numbers this election. Now Republicans are trying to decide what the new voting age should be.
Young voters turned out in record numbers for Election Day and overwhelmingly voted Democratic — sending Republicans into a moralistic panic over the voting age. Young voters — who favored Democrats by about a 2-to-1 margin — helped tip the scale left in several crucial races, including Pennsylvania and Michigan.
By Thursday morning, conservatives were clamoring to raise the voting age, although they couldn’t seem to agree on what the new age should be: There were arguments for 21, 25, 30, or simply until voters had gotten “a lil life experience.”
Audio Reveals Top GOP Lawyer’s 2024 Strategy: Make It Harder for College Students to Vote — CommonDreams.Org April 2023
A longtime Republican lawyer who aided former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election told GOP donors that the party should be working to roll back voting on college campuses and other initiatives aimed at expanding ballot access, according to audio obtained by progressive journalist Lauren Windsor.
“What are these college campus locations?” Cleta Mitchell, a top GOP attorney and fundraiser asked during a presentation at the Republican National Committee’s donor retreat in Nashville last weekend.
“What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed,” lamented Mitchell, an avid voter suppression campaigner who has represented Republican organizations, individual lawmakers, and right-wing groups such as the National Rifle Association.
According toThe Washington Post, which reviewed a copy of Mitchell’s Nashville presentation, the GOP attorney’s remarks “offered a window into a strategy that seems designed to reduce voter access and turnout among certain groups, including students and those who vote by mail, both of which tend to skew Democratic.”
“Mitchell focused on campus voting in five states — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Virginia, and Wisconsin — all of which are home to enormous public universities with large in-state student populations.”
Top GOP lawyer decries ease of campus voting in private pitch to RNC — WAPO April 2023
The GOP Is Making It Harder for College Students to Vote — Bloomberg April 2023
Young voters are increasingly turning out to support Democrats.
GOP lawmakers seek to restrict use of student IDs to vote.
Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Tighten Voting Laws on College Campuses — NYT March 2023
Party officials across the country have sought to erect more barriers for young voters, who tilt heavily Democratic, after several cycles in which their turnout surged.
“When these ideas are first floated, people are aghast,” said Chad Dunn, the co-founder and legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. But he cautioned that the lawmakers who sponsor such bills tend to bring them back over and over again.
“Then, six, eight, 10 years later, these terrible ideas become law,” he said.
Out of 17 states that generally require voter ID, Idaho will join Texas and four others — North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee — that do not accept any student IDs, according to the Voting Rights Lab, a group that tracks legislation.
Arizona and Wisconsin have rigid rules on student IDs that colleges and universities have struggled to meet, though some Wisconsin schools have been successful.
Republican-controlled states target college students’ voting power ahead of high-stakes 2024 elections — CNN 05/02/2023
An analysis by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that voting on college campuses soared in last month’s election for a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. In that contest, the liberal candidate who prevailed, Janet Protasiewicz, had made protecting abortion rights a central feature of her campaign.
Among the voting wards in the city of Eau Claire, for instance, the highest turnout came from the ward that served several University of Wisconsin dorms — with nearly 900 votes cast, up from 150 in a Supreme Court race four years earlier, the paper found. Protasiewicz won 87% of those votes.
Prominent conservatives have spotlighted these voting trends.
“Young voters are the issue,” Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s former Republican governor, wrote in a widely noticed Twitter post following the state Supreme Court election. “It comes from years of radical indoctrination — on campus, in school, with social media, & throughout culture,” said Walker, who is president of Young America’s Foundation, which works to popularize conservative ideas among young people.
“We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again.”
Millennial GOP candidate wants to raise voting age to 25. Some young Republicans fume. — WAPO 5/12/2023
2024 GOP hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy proposes raising voting age to 25 -Hill
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is proposing that the U.S. raise the voting age to 25, with exceptions for those 18 and older who serve in the military, work as emergency responders or take a naturalization test.
“The United States faces a 25% recruitment deficit in the military and just 16% of Gen Z say they’re proud to be American,” Ramaswamy said in a statement. “The absence of national pride is a serious threat to our Republic’s survival.”
Ramaswamy proposes raising voting age to 25, unless people serve in military or pass a test — AP 5/11
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to announce constitutional amendment to raise voting age to 25 — Fox News 5/10
Ramaswamy said proposal is ‘fundamentally different’ from Jim Crow laws and that there is “no room for funny business like you had in the Jim Crow era.”
“We’re going to be talking about this to a large audience of actually young people in Iowa. Gov. Kim Reynolds is going to be there tomorrow. There is going to be the perfect place to roll this out tomorrow night to lay out one of the most, I think, bluntly, ambitious proposals we’ve rolled out in this campaign.”
“Which is to say that we want to restore civic duty in the mindset of the next generation of Americans. And how we want to do it, is to say that, if you want to vote as an 18-year-old, between the ages of 18 and 25, you need to either do your civic duty through service to the country — that’s six months of service in either military service or as a first responder, police, fire or otherwise — or else you have to pass the same civics test an immigrant has to pass in order to become a naturalized citizen who can vote in is country.”
“At age 25, that falls away,” he added.
The GOP candidate also said his proposed amendment would “supercede” the 26th Amendment that sets the national voting age to 18.
The 26th Amendment was passed in 1971 and one “of the arguments for that was that if you’re going to have a draft, military draft, that brings 18-year-olds in, then they ought to have the right to vote.”
“Which, actually said, that this is a relatively familiar notion to us, tying the voting age back then to the age that you could be drafted in the military says that there’s a deep and this is a long-standing tradition in our country, tying civic duties to the privileges of citizenship.”
How long do you think it will be before DeSantis or Trump starts saying this?
The shape of the “New America” the Trumpublicans are working towards is becoming more clear.
They won’t stop holding elections, that would be un-American. But only the “Whitest” most reliable parts of the population will get the privilege of voting. Because letting “criminals, women, and immature young people” vote is just crazy.
They want the “appearance of Democracy” without actually being a democracy.
White minority rule forever.
That’s what’s coming if they win in 24'. That’s their ENDGAME GOAL. It’s the only way they can hold onto power.
The Worse, the Better is their strategy for 24’.
“The Worse, the Better,” — John Adams in 1814 letter discussing the lead up to the American Revolution. — Joseph Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (2001)
The quotation, “The Worse, the Better,” means that if things get worse, then that will help them get better. It has wide application, but the main application is the idea that the political situation must get intolerable so people will rise up and so something about it, e.g. have a violent revolution.
Republicans say their party ‘will never lose another election’ if they win. They will fix the voting system to make sure of it.
Right now, they are trying to make things get worse. I think they are going to force a default on the National Debt. I don’t think they are going to budge from their position. Because, they aren’t looking at a default, or “14th Amendment” last minute save by Biden, as losing.
They want things to get a LOT WORSE by the next Election, because they think they can “fix” who gets to vote.
DEMOCRATS IN 24’.
VOTE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.
It might be the last time you get the chance.
Any questions?
This is my analysis.
This is what I see.
This is my “Crisis Report”.
-rc 05152023