Secrets of the City

None of the MN voters alliances’ arguments against IRV seem very strong to me…

IRV is undemocratic because it counts the secondary choices of some voters while counting only the first choice votes of others!
‘
uhhh….?
but the ’second choice’ of a voter, when their first choice is eliminated, would then become their first choice.

It is highly impractical because it easily leads to unreasonably large fields of candidates making it nearly impossible for voters to identify them.

There could be some sort of limit, but of course this would then be unconstitutional. Although they currently have limits on what % of support is needed to participate in certain things. So, there would have to be a check in place that lets each party vote on which canduidates are really viable. Nope, that wouldn’t work either….hmmmm

IRV, is the shit. I wish it were implemented in more elections.

Did any of these citizens bitching about IRV take a comparative poli sci course? They should look into that.

We don’t even have proper permanent storage for the spent fuel rods we have now, but apparently we need to build more nukular plants so we can have even more spent fuel rods that we have no place to store.

Damn those Yucca mountain residents! Not in my backyard, INDEED!

It is highly impractical because it easily leads to unreasonably large fields of candidates making it nearly impossible for voters to identify them.

Anyone can get on the ballot already, if they can round up enough signatures. I don’t see IRV leading to more candidates being able to get enough signatures to get on the ballot.

i like how on the voters alliance page, buried amongst the mostly sensical quotes, we find this gem:

“When theres a lot of smoke, theres just a whole lot more smoke.”

– George Foreman.

brilliant….

I agree mnblrmkr…i think we could still keep a ‘viability’ check in place, as in, certain # of sigs, etc

I wish I still had my copy of the california gubenatorial recall ballot (I was living out of state so I had it mailed to me). That thing was insanely full of ridiculous candidates.

Also IRV is awesome. These people are retarded and either don’t understand how it works or just really really really love the shitty two-party system we have now that excludes anyone without the backing of coke or pepsi.

I welcome new nuke plants. I wouldn’t object to seeing a few somewhere nearer the metro than Monticello, but my first choice would be to put one in the backyards of the Minnesota Voters Alliance. Big surprise that St. Thomas staff figures into another insidious plot.

“The court warned that voters can harm their favored candidate simply by ranking them as their first choice.”

Huh? How do they figure? MVA logic sounds like MAZ logic. Maz, are you responsible for this nonsense?

I wish I still had my copy of the california gubenatorial recall ballot (I was living out of state so I had it mailed to me). That thing was insanely full of ridiculous candidates.

Isn’t that the election where Gary Coleman from Diff’rent Strokes and porn star Mary Carey were among the candidates? Hilarious!

Did any of these citizens bitching about IRV take a comparative poli sci course? They should look into that.

I did, and I can solve this IRV nonsense with three words:

Just pick one.

The reason we see IRV is simple – people hate having to choose between the candidate they want and the candidate that can win, so they want to “vote their conscience” knowing that they won’t bring about hell in a hand basket. Perot or Bush, Nader or Gore, whatever whatever. It’s all the same.

Make the same choice election winners have to face every day in the jobs we elect them to do – the perfect or the good? Either way, grow a pair and just f*ing pick one.

Maz knows a thing or two about nuke plants. Or was that planting nukes — in downtown Moscow — with the push of a button.

I have been inside the naval weapons facility where Polaris missles get their “driving instructions,” so to speak. Chilling, yet the science is fascinating.

Seriously, though, there will be no new nukes in Minnesota. Xcel has already ruled them out.

Make the same choice election winners have to face every day in the jobs we elect them to do – the perfect or the good? Either way, grow a pair and just f*ing pick one.

Because we aren’t picking one? I highly doubt that the problem with people who like IRV is that they aren’t “picking one”.

Yeah, that’s be fine and well if we didn’t have a two party system. Can you think of a better way to convince people to look outside of the two party framework right now? IRV is the fast and damn good way to do this.

I wish I still had my copy of the california gubenatorial recall ballot (I was living out of state so I had it mailed to me). That thing was insanely full of ridiculous candidates.

This ballot?

Ya – get a third party candidate with a coalition of a majority of voters. Gasp! The thought! Newsflash: That’s what the two major parties do right now. Few of these folks, little o’ them folks, bada bing bada boom 51 percent.

I’m starting to wonder if any of the IRV folks ever took a civics class.

In the climate change recommendations, “and land use and workplace strategies to reduce driving.” Telecommuting has yet to really catch on with many companies big or small. An extended light rail or subway (dare we dream?) system would require a commitment lasting a generation or more.

Do we collectively have the attention span necessary to …oooh a puppy.

Okay, first off, true IRV would allow for multiple candidates from various parties. Secondly, it’s not this caucusing, primary BS.

Secondly, I’m starting to wonder why no one takes comparative politics.

I think that IRV (or STV, if you’re nasty) actually forces people to grow a pair. I mean, really are we so completely inept that we can’t handle that? Or is do you think that most people would prefer to walk up to the booth and be like, “Me want president”. Wow, that’s ballsy.

The Democrats and Republicans scrape for every vote they can get and they should turn over their power because a bunch of people can’t make up their minds, or they think its unfair?

Well, boo-hoo!

I’m very happy we’re looking into more nuclear plants. The knee-jerk reaction against them is mostly emotional, and is an example of peoples’ unwillingness to balance pros and cons of difficult decisions, and instead throw ideas off the table with the first sign of a negative. Every option we have for energy comes with downsides. It’s a matter of evaluating them and patching together a solution that has the least negative consequences in total, and nuclear is part of that solution – at least in the short term.

You’re not talking about building a “short-term” nuclear power plant are you Jeff?

That’s billions of dollars of investment. Once it’s running, it’s running for a long time.

“Patching together a solution.” That’ll instill confidence.

Is there a reason why we don’t build breeder reactors in the US?

They seem to be a much better technology with considerably less waste at the end of the use cycle. Is this still because Jimmy Carter thought that terrorists could get ahold of Plutonium?

But The Rat surely knows that, in the long-term, we’ll all be dead, doesn’t he?

All we have to do is figure out one pesky little issue and I’d actually be ok with nukular. What to do with the spent fuel rods. In Yurp, they reprocess the spent fuel into weapons grade, but that process is quite expensive if I remember correctly. Nukular could be part of the solution if there was a reasonable (to a normal person, not AWOL) way to deal with the spent fuel.

Just picking a state, or a city, or a region and saying, “You are now the dumping ground for all the country’s spent radioactive fuel.” is not going to work.

We might not be alive right now. I might just be something you dreamed up.

Dream other dreams, and better.

I have to point out the absurdity in the weblink headline to this article on Startribune.com.

“Bush budget makes tax assumptions” is the link title.

DUH! Every budget proposal makes tax assumptions.

Seesh. It would be pretty hard to lay out a budget proposal for a future year without making tax assumptions.

The Rat’s being a pain in the ass as usual but I’ll clarify. By “short term”, I mean, “someday, we should operate on 100% renewable power but right now we need a stop-gap to cut carbon emissions and reliance on oil.” I don’t mean six months, Rat, I mean decades.

“Patching together a solution.” That’ll instill confidence.
Oh suck it. No matter how I say anything, you turn it into a stupid game of semantics, literalness, and emotional connections you find to various words, even when you know goddamn well when I mean. The point being – and I think there’s board agreement on this among most mnspeakers – the energy solution is multi-faceted.

Do you ever have an original thought, idea, or suggestion about anything, or do you just exist to waste peoples’ time and play the pseudo-skeptic nuisance?

Is this still because Jimmy Carter thought that terrorists could get ahold of Plutonium?

Or don’t you remember this?

I’m certainly no energy expert. I’m for what works. Because if you don’t have energy, you don’t have progress. You don’t have progress, you don’t have a clean environment. That’s why the U.S. is clean and India is decades behind. It’s proven all over the world. Raise the standard of living, and the environment gets cleaner.

What you always hear from the greenies is “we have to do something to stop growth.” That seems to be a recipe for environmental degradation.

So you’re saying after a certain amount of decades, these nuclear power plants, which provide clean energy lose their usefulness? Paris, the City of Lights, is lit with nuclear power. Why can’t it work forever? It doesn’t have to be short term.

Pawlenty’s name is getting thrown around this Super Tuesday eve.

The U.S. is clean? Want to cite some sources on that claim?

We may not take dumps in the street or have lots of cattle running down the streets of Minneapolis, but I’m not sure that qualifies us as being clean.

Hummers and F350s ain’t exactly low impact. Check it out.

I don’t know where you’ve been Nate, but I’ve seen some places that you wouldn’t wanna live.

We may not take dumps in the street or have lots of cattle running down the streets of Minneapolis, but I’m not sure that qualifies us as being clean.

Compared to most of the world, I would say the U.S. is very clean.

Costa Rica????

You outta see San Jose.

149 countries the U.S. is 39th. And they give them low marks because of what they think is too many large vehicles.

We are putting more weight on climate change,

So that’s not saying that the U.S. is polluted. That’s saying something political.

Raise the standard of living, and the environment gets cleaner.

A good part of that is simply because we push off our messy manufacturing to other countries. Unfortunately, many pollutants don’t recognize man-made political boundaries.

You haven’t made the case that America is clean, Rat. You’ve just made the case that there are places in the world that are dirtier. That’s like claiming that someone is not a prostitute because they only charge a dollar, when everyone else charges five dollars.

But the people who benefit from coal-fired powerplants because the provide them with electricity for the first time live within those political boundaries.

And those hydroelectric dams that are opposed for the sake of “species diversity” mean that people don’t have to burn wood in their homes, harming children’s lungs more than a smoke filled bar.

But there’s plenty of people around, so maybe that’s not important.

You’ve just made the case that there are places in the world that are dirtier.

If Switzerland is supposed to be the standard of clean, I guess I have. But you’re talking about a landmass in Switzerland that’s a fraction of the size of Iowa.

So by saying that Switzerland is clean and the U.S. is sewer are you really making a useful comparison?

“What you always hear from the greenies is “we have to do something to stop growth.”“

Damn it you caught us, always saying completely brain dead and retarded shit like “we have to stop growth”…no wait, those are wingnut talking points that have no basis in reality.

nevermind.

First off, I’m a Democrat.

those are wingnut talking points

Not on this board.

“You don’t have progress, you don’t have a clean environment. That’s why the U.S. is clean and India is decades behind.“

That is just wrong on so many levels…

Feel free to elaborate.

I don’t care if you are a Martian. Those are wingnut talking points.

Or don’t feel free to elaborate.

Because nobody is saying “we have to stop growth.” That’s recasting an environmentalist argument as an anti-business argument.

Green IS a growth industry.

I hope so.

But this isn’t the first go-round for the Green Revolution.

The industrialized countries have the luxury of entertaining such notions.

But people bent on survival don’t have that.

And when I say the first go-round: In the last one they outlawed DDT and millions have died of malaria.

I don’t know where you’ve been Nate, but I’ve seen some places that you wouldn’t wanna live.

Well Rat. I’ve lived in India for a year and a half, and have been to pretty much the rest of Asia. So it is with some degree of personal experience that I can talk about “clean” or not.

So while I enjoy the fact that there is overt trash and refuse lying about my feet while I walk around most places in America, I also sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic and ponder the amount of carbon I’m dumping into the air. Unlike trash and literal shit on the ground, this is pollution that I can’t see but has even more dire consequences.

I think the “trash/clean” talk is like “weather/climate” discussion.

There are places I wouldn’t want to live in the apartment building across the street from me.

I can’t see but has even more dire consequences.

Than traffic in Kolkata or Mumbai? Jakarta? Bangkok?

Let’s note for the record that a recent MPR/Humphrey poll found that a whopping 2 percent of Minnesotans feel global warming is the most important issue facing our state.

Transportation and the always politically-motivated immigration registered at 8 percent. My question: When does transportation get the politically-motivated tag?

In the last one they outlawed DDT and millions have died of malaria.

myth. The increases in malaria cases began well before DDT was actually banned (and in fact, in some countries DDT remained the pesticide of choice until 1994). Increases in malaria were seen as early as 1964, but DDT wasn’t banned until the 1970s (in the US it was 1972, and even that was not a total ban).

This was due to a number of reasons.

Among them:

In order to pay for the DDT programs, many countries were forced to suspend non-pesticide programs.

The US, which funded much of the remaining programs only paid for 5 years, after which, other countries suspended the programs for lack of funds.

Insects resistant to DDT were seen as early as one year after DDT eradication programs began. If DDT use had continued at the same pace as it had in the early years, it would have been largely useless within 10 years due to widespread resistance.

Finally, the Plasmodium itself was quickly becoming resistant to the drugs used against it.

Many, if not most, of the deaths you cite would have occured anyway if we had continued the DDT programs.

With improved spraying techniques, we could and probably should reintroduce the limited use of DDT in certain areas, but it has to be part of an integrated management program.

Because nobody is saying “we have to stop growth.” That’s recasting an environmentalist argument as an anti-business argument.

Does this count?

“We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”

myth. The increases in malaria cases began well before DDT was actually banned

OK, I’ll accept that, even though you didn’t provide a source. But it doesn’t follow DDT would not have saved countless lives.

If DDT use had continued at the same pace as it had in the early years, it would have been largely useless within 10 years due to widespread resistance.

That’s supposition.

With improved spraying techniques, we could and probably should reintroduce the limited use of DDT in certain areas, but it has to be part of an integrated management program.

Tell that to the survivors of the victims of malaria.

myth. The increases in malaria cases began well before DDT was actually banned

OK, I’ll accept that, even though you didn’t provide a source. But it doesn’t follow DDT would not have saved countless lives.

Most of that comes from several years of grad school studies: plant physiology and weed science. But here’s one link.

No question that it would have saved lives right then and there, but at the cost of making it that much more difficult to deal with in the future. Resistance does not always develop to the single pesticide used. It will often develop against the whole class of pesticides that it belongs to.

If DDT use had continued at the same pace as it had in the early years, it would have been largely useless within 10 years due to widespread resistance.

That’s supposition.
Not so much. Resistance is going to happen. It’s a matter of evolution, and 6-10 years is a generally accepted time frame for resistance to herbicides and pesticides once they are put into widespread use. The only way to slow the development of resistance is to make it part of an integrated management program. Like I said, insects with resistance to DDT was being found within 1 year of the beginning of eradication programs, and even today, there are areas where DDT is useless agaisnt the mosquitos that carry Plasmodium.

With improved spraying techniques, we could and probably should reintroduce the limited use of DDT in certain areas, but it has to be part of an integrated management program.

Tell that to the survivors of the victims of malaria.

The simple fact is, that by the time DDT was dropped in the fight against malaria, it wasn’t working anymore. Just like chloroquine was dropped as a treatment for malaria: the plasmodium was resistant, not just to it, but to mnost of the quinine family of antimalarials.

Could you make the case that an outright ban was the answer at the time?

You said it wasn’t working. Is that to say it wasn’t working at all?

Looks like the WHO has recommended DDT use. Shame about the previous victims of malaria, which may have been on the path to being wiped out.

“..proponents argue that until better strategies are developed, carefully controlled DDT use is warranted because in recent years, nothing else has succeeded in lowering deaths from malaria.”

LINK:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/15/healthscience/web.0915malaria.php

Could you make the case that an outright ban was the answer at the time?

You said it wasn’t working. Is that to say it wasn’t working at all?

I think you could (but it still isn’t a total ban. There are exceptions for public health). There may have been places where it was still working, but malaria cases were already starting to rise again in most places due to the development of resistance long before the ban. Because of the mobility of insects, it would only be a matter of time before resistant populations migrated elsewhere.

The argument I would have made is that a ban would be necessary in order to protect entire classes of pesticides from obsolescence (I would also argue that given the loss of effectiveness, we really didn’t lose much in the way of benefits). Resistance doesn’t always just affect the pesticide at issue. Any pesticide with a similar mode of action may be at risk.

That said, I think it may be worth investigating small scale, targeted use of DDT in some areas (indoors). This won’t work in every area, because there are many places (India for one) where the mosquito population is largely resistant.

Here’s a wiki page that discusses some of this, as well as some of the environmental issues surrounding DDT.

But notice they’re talking about targeted, limited use indoors, which was never actually banned. (and which I agreed should be considered where appropriate) There are still large areas where DDT will not be effective (India) due to resistance.

From the same article:
“It would be naive to say DDT is a magic bullet for malaria. It isn’t,” stressed Attaran. It won’t work in some places where mosquitoes already are resistant to a range of insecticides, he noted. He suspects DDT will be of most use in eastern Africa, where that problem hasn’t yet emerged.

Attaran called for research “to make sure we’re using insecticides and DDT not in a willy-nilly way but in an optimal way in the right places.”Nor, scientists cautioned, is indoor spraying alone a solution, as mosquitoes bite everywhere. Countries are being encouraged to adopt comprehensive malaria programs that also include newer, more effective medications, as Bush’s malaria chief, Adm. R. Timothy Ziemer, was to outline Friday.

Continued widespread use of DDT was never going to eradicate malaria. The mosquitos and Plasmodium had already turned the tide of the fight to their favor long before DDT was banned.

Rat, I don’t see how limitless growth somehow will magically make things clean. Things get clean because people who give a shit do something about it. I don’t care how rich it makes us, we can’t keep burning oil forever, we have to step up and change it. The person who noticed that what we really do it just push off our filth on third-world countries is right: we’d only be greener than India if we didn’t import anything.

Why can’t it work forever? It doesn’t have to be short term.
Look, if I can sell people on using more nuclear, I’ll be happy to revisit this when I’m 70. But nuclear power isn’t renewable. I only suggest it because it doesn’t produce CO2 or rely on us killing brown people to obtain it. It still takes non-renewable uranium – the mining of which is a bit messy – and leaves us with non-disposable waste.

Because nobody is saying “we have to stop growth.” That’s recasting an environmentalist argument as an anti-business argument.
I will say that. When a conservative can tell me how we can grow limitlessly in a finite space, I’d love to hear it. We need a no-growth model for an economy that can sustain itself, soonish.

Wow. A wonkish but interesting thread on DDT and malaria, born from a discussion on nukes. Only on MNspeak…