Policy commentary from an econ, data science, and comparative politics perspective
(image via PennToday) Polarization is due to a simple thing: our voting system! The Founding Fathers did not desire nor expect political parties to form, particularly not a two-party system. After all, checks and balances between three branches of government do not work very effectively when one party is guaranteed control of 2/3 branches almost… Continue reading How Can We Heal the Crisis of Our Country’s Terrible Polarization?
I stared at the screen in disbelief and wonder. This was all so much more than I could have ever expected or hoped for! It was so plainly obvious to me now what I had to do. But, let me back up for a moment… It’s the early 2000s. I was a software engineer in… Continue reading How I Joined Cal RCV
So, what is this blog all about? Quite simply, it will be aimed at exploring issues in as scientific a manner as possible to spark stimulating conversations and creating new connections and perhaps most importantly, to help me learn. Now, I know the subheader at the top of the page mentions policy commentary, and that… Continue reading What’s This Blog All About?
A few years ago, the esteemed Chuck McGlawn argued against the temptation for libertarians to let someone pigeonhole our beliefs as being fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I do like his framing and also agree that it is important not to fall into the trap of letting our rather arcane and arbitrary two-party system dictate… Continue reading A Six-Step Program for Fiscally Conservative Social Liberals
For the past several years, I’ve looked far and wide for good ratings of media sources. Media Bias / Fact Check (MB/FC) is the best one I’ve been able to find. Indeed, every criticism of MB/FC that I have ever seen fails to mention a media assessment source that is better! That says it all… Continue reading How Trustworthy Is Media Bias / Fact Check?
Posted on my Facebook on January 7th, 2021, links and image added August 23rd, 2021. Image via CNN. I'd moved most of my political content to Twitter mostly so y'all would have less politics to deal with when you just want to see how your friends and family are doing over the holidays. Plus, I… Continue reading The Capitol Riots
Image via FairVote. Originally posted at "fling93 loves fishies," my old blog. Migrated, updated links, and added featured image on 9/21/21. I’ve been carping about our two-party plurality electoral system for so long now that many of you are probably wondering what I would replace it with. This will take quite a bit of explaining… Continue reading Electoral Reform, Part I: The Problem with Plurality
Perfectly Good Ink 