Raptorpat

Has Sweeney alleged that it was fraud yet to his massive political base?

The question is: to what extent is it due to persuasion versus turnout? Like, I assume there two odd-year states have their long-running gubernatorial track records of flipping away from DC because it's a comparatively low turnout election where turnout is only goosed for the aggrieved side.

I suppose it depends on whether you believe in the merits of independent redistricting, or if you believe it is akin to "unilateral disarmament". On one hand, yeah the commission is a mess and wasn't particularly negotiated around success. And the Senate Republicans built in a bonus, basically if the GOP is still in control of the Senate, it's a majority vote to override, and if the Dems won control it's a 2/3 vote to override. But faced between fixing it or allowing the majority to do whatever it wants, they opted for the latter. Instead of getting rid of the "Republican bonus" and applying the 2/3 rule universally they wanted to make the bonus the actual rule. I'd say they've earned the fallout, but they already have dual supermajorities that will override the commission this year so it was really a future power grab. Anyways, given this and the voting rights stuff failed, if they immediately tried again the next time it could go to a vote would be 2023. But given there are even less elections of consequence that year, it only makes sense (to me at least) to hold off until the 2024 presidential cycle ballot.

The Republican Party ran a scorched earth campaign against the five Constitutional Amendments and the Democrats did... nothing. To adopt a constitutional amendment, the legislature has to pass it once, then pass it again in the subsequent term, then it goes to public referendum. For all that effort shielding the little baby sea turtles from predators, they sure did leave them on their own for the last 30 yards to the sea. In reverse order: Prop 5 (passed): this was a purely bureaucratic amendment to increase the financial jurisdiction of NYC civil courts from $25k to $50k, which hadn't been updated since the 1980s. It's unfortunate that a local, technical adjustment has to go to a statewide referendum, but for whatever reason it's in the state constitution and this is the process. To that end, the state GOP chair said something along the lines of "I don't particularly care about NYC courts, so we're just telling everyone to vote 'no' on everything so they don't get confused." Props 4 & 3 (failed): prop 4 would lift the constitutional requirement that absentee voting requires an excuse, and prop 3 would lift the constitutional 10-day registration deadline in order to vote. The GOP campaign framed no-excuse absentee voting and same-day registration as inviting fraud, and the Democrats did nothing. Prop 2 (passed): this enshrines an affirmative right to clean air, water, and a healthful environment in the state constitution. The GOP opposed it because the nature of affirmative rights empowers the state to enforce it through regulation and litigation. However the simplicity of the language made it impossible to negatively characterize, so it passed. Prop 1 (failed): I will spare everyone the extensive details, but this proposal incorporated numerous positive or technical cleanup change to the apportionment and redistricting process, but all of that was logrolling to mask that it reduced the 2/3 majority threshold to override the new redistricting commission to just a bare majority. It's impossible to summarize concisely and a little bit slimy, so it was real easy to attack.

Weird factoid: Phil Murphy is the first Democratic governor to win reelection in NJ since 1977

Evidently the VA House is split 50/50 and they'll have to work our a power-sharing agreement. https://projects.cnalysis.com/21-22/state-legislative/results/virginia

Probably. Once all the votes are counted, the question will be (assuming it's all federalized) are Dem-voters from previous elections staying home because they're disappointed with the party's performance nabs-style (or otherwise indifferent), or were they really only on board in the first place purely to get rid of Trump and aren't actually Dem-leaning?

Their Senate isn't up for reelection for another two years so that stays Dem. VA probably has the worst election calendar of any state.

In other news, NY AG Letitia James just formally announced she is running for Governor. The announcement video is a general combination of her bio and recent accomplishments, but it will be interesting to see what her real messaging will be given she is primarying an incumbent who is going out of her own way to check off all the right boxes to be reelected in her own right.

Also keep in mind the VA state House is all up for re-election too (but not the state Senate). Question is, is Virgina a blue state or a blue-leaning swing state?

my condolences kudasai

happy birthday @DBZ4ever!

There's a bill moving in the NY legislature (I would expect it to pass next year) that would require employers to disclose a salary range upfront when posting job openings. A couple years ago they banned asking for prior salary history, on the grounds that it is used to undercut low earners which creates a repeating cycle.

it was a rather stern choice of words over Facebook messenger.

I've been yelled at for using the phrase "labor shortage". "It's not a labor shortage, it's a wage shortage." Which I can't really argue with that.

I don't know enough to speak to that, other than like a digital purchase of a game/movie means you're not buying a physical copy of that game/movie. But my guess is they just wanted a blanket rule that maximizes revenue with the least ambiguity.

Much of the tax system is built around the concept of taxing transactions, because the constitution says there can be no "direct tax" - hence things like the income tax or the local sales tax where the government takes its cut in the transaction. For a while there was a real disparity between in-person and online sales, no one knew who had jurisdiction over the internet so it wasn't sales taxed. Great for online shoppers, but it undercut physical retailers (on top of the added comparative costs of physical retail sites etc.) and it siphoned away tax revenues for localities that generally don't really have many other means of generating revenue. So to balance the scales for physical retailers and to make localities whole, NY law for example treats all online sales as occurring in the location of the consumer, so that's why you have to pay your local sales tax regardless of wherever you buy something online.

New York has local elections and five statewide constitutional amendments, available here. Three of which are elections reforms. One eliminates the ten-day voter registration requirement, and the other authorizes permanent no-excuse absentee voting. The final one (well really proposal #1, the others are #3 and #4) does a wholesale cleanup of various elections stuff in the constitution but also tinkers with the redistricting commission originating in a 2014 amendment. Mixed bag on that one, depending on your perspective, but also very in-the-weeds.

vamped that is a baby not a pumpkin

dead bug in unopened spaghetti I guess we'll starve

Here is the original because why not https://youtu.be/lrzKT-dFUjE

I am suddenly elderly

I think I bought hard-to-find GameCube ports of older resident evil games on my mom's eBay account.

Also that's not what the debt ceiling is or how it works.