redcairo

PS I'm seriously wondering how Utah and Kansas got on the list at all LOL -- although, the KS officials are nearly rabid about illegals so they must have more illegals than one would expect, given their location. I know we have quite a population in my little city in Northeast OK but I imagine in the big cities it's dramatically more. Still it's evident the numbers by the borders are highest.

I can't remember who posted this -- maybe jumpvote -- but it's allegedly the real stats from the states on the voting numbers.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VAcF0eJ06y_8T4o2gvIL4YcyQy8pxb1zYkgXF76Uu1s/edit#gid=2030096602

I'm confused on the "non-citizen" votes. I can see that maybe they remove that # from the calculation of "eligible population" however that has nothing to do with the people who voted, since only a % of the population actually votes.

I find this very confusing. Here's a re-sorted couple of columns showing the largest % of non-citizen by state. But does this merely reflect the "estimated population of the state?" Or is this, for example, one possible reason why a few million DEAD citizens are said to have voted?

This song is by Imagine Dragons. But it's being performed by Pentatonix, an acapella group, and Lindsey Stirling, a violinist. The vocal-percussionist of PTX (beatboxing some call it), Kevin Olusola, is also playing cello in this.

It's a dark song but I really love the result of all this collaboration!

RC

It's laughable that only 3.4% of voters, at most, signed the change.org petition for it.

 

Regardless, it's a very real possibility for the electoral college to vote against Trump. It ain't over til it's over.

Agreed. I'm completely neurotic about it. When I was interested in politics for the first time in SO long early in the cycle (long before the primaries), and woke up to a voice shortly telling me HRC would be president, I concluded it was my subconscious telling me the outcome was more fixed than it seemed and didn't want me to get my hopes up and be horribly depressed. But I figure I was obviously just wrong. Although it's the first time this part of me ever "volunteered" info that turned out to be wrong. But until he is literally sworn in I'm going to feel like maybe it was right. And at this point it would cause such horrible fallout if it changed, now I'm genuinely worried.

I just want this to be OVER. Honestly the angst associated with all this is ridiculous.

RC

It seems very clear to me that the primary reason the news is keeping up the hype and the funded bussing and groups are keeping up the marches is because they still hope to convince the electors that it's just "such" a problem that gee whiz, no matter what, they should change their minds. The obsessing on every thing that happens, or doesn't happen, or happens a certain way, in the administration that is NOT EVEN IN OFFICE YET, is just another way of going "look what a disaster it is! you have to stop the train wreck!"

Which would be like giving in to a three year old having a tantrum and would very likely spark REAL riots, so I sure as hell hope not.

Also I trust absolutely nobody when it comes to this frantic need to not-have-lost, so as far as I'm concerned, while I'm totally in favor of whatever kind of review makes voting known to be legit, the 'recount' obsession is just a way for someone to try and insert, as one guy put it, the vote fraud they didn't realize they needed to do in the first place LOL.

So far one of the state claimed for voting machine irregularities appears to have paper ballets. The others, even Nate Silver said shows no irregularity when considered in the demographics of the voting everywhere else in the country. And to me, until someone makes something a lot more substantial out of the "three million dead people voted" -- because I am willing to bet most of those were for HRC -- then the obsession on the rest seems unbalanced.

Not that anybody wants to be balanced about anything...

RC

Hopefully we can all see this as good news.

Oil Company Surrenders 15 Land Leases on Sacred Native American Land

...There are two land leases left on the holy land that are still owned by other energy companies, but the U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary, Sally Jewell, is determined to prevent them from drilling on the Blackfeet territory. ... “This is the right action to take on behalf of current and future generations,” said Secretary Jewell. “Today’s action honors Badger-Two Medicine’s rich cultural and natural resources and recognizes the irreparable impacts that oil and gas development would have on them.”

Wait: edited to add: but how does this relate to South Dakota where Standing Rock is? This is about Montana isn't it? SR is the Sioux. M is the Blackfoot.

No, you create polarized strawmen neither of which are reasonable. The choice is not "do no business whatsoever" or "care nothing for the environment or for lands of neighboring peoples" as if those are the only two choices in the world.

Environment impact studies exist for a reason, every business in that industry knows, and this argument over whether something is going to destroy waterways should not be coming up at the last second. This reflects an abysmal failure of the business, not the people.

I am not against development of in-country resources although I would prefer they be used for our own people, rather than selling them offshore so that we can then pay money to import the same stuff in. But that is preference and not an argument I am making, simply a mention.

I am aware that most energy resources have environmental impacts and this is something we have to deal with, but as noted, this is a known factor, there are ways of looking into it and planning for it.

You pointedly never address the responsibilities of the business.

You pointedly never address government using militarized authority on behalf of a corporation.

You only want to address that the natives shouldn't be allowed to have their lands because it would be economically more convenient if they weren't in the way and it's fine 'cause they'd be better off anyway.

The number of issues with that argument kind of exceed the ones about the pipeline.

RC

 Hello Stosh,
 

How ,in your opinion, is the greater good preserved , by sending the pipeline though more valuable real estate,

Since real estate is privately owned one must ask: more valuable to whom? So whoever is richest automatically is favored? But never mind that --

As mentioned... repeatedly... we do not own the real estate of the natives (aside from 99% of the continent). It is not ours to put anything through or to wipe out critical water sources for even upstream.

If I have to make a decision about where I'm going to park my car with the leaking oil, my options do not include parking it in my neighbor's driveway because for me that's cheaper, cleaner, and hence more convenient. Because... that land is not mine so it shouldn't even be in the list I give myself of possibilities.

Native lands are sovereign. Acting like this is not so because treaties or borders are "just a mental construct" is an incredible kind of casual, arbitrary moral relativism (-- a complete lack of integrity).
 

to satisfy the desires of Some people rather than others?

I understand you are basically implying in several ways now that those greedy natives have no right to that land being considered theirs anyway, and that granting any recognition of natives apart from "the rest of us on this continent" is an injust thing.

But this is not about arbitrary desires, or people imagining "rights" others don't deserve. It's simply that it is not appropriate to casually decide in 2016 that we don't really care about those borders anyway. The land is not our land any more than Canada.

If they needed to go through native land, an agreement should have been made with the tribal leaders about it up front.

If they were arranging it in some way that genuinely endangers multiple water sources, then they should have paid for a study on that to ensure it was either ok or to work out another routing or approach up front.

That's part of the cost of doing business.
 

Your just saying screw consumers, theyre asian ,

So... if I suggest that wrecking the environment is not ideal, or violating the sovereign lands of neighboring peoples is not ideal, and all for something a corporation is making money off by selling to a foreign country -- as opposed to doing something for our own that would at the least have a lot of jobs or an end-product that helps us more directly -- it's because I'm a racist? You've essentially implied that here.
 

screw business, they are all geedy and dont give free stuff out,

I've been in business all my life. Much like I have no reason to reject asians, I have no reason to reject business. I'm a fiscal conservative -- I'd say I'm more friendly toward business than half the voting base of the country.
 

screw the people on adjacent lands ,

If the pipeline is so damaging that it is a threat to any lands where it runs, then the problem is not merely what land it runs through, but the project itself. I don't know that it is that dangerous or damaging, only that I haven't yet seen (it might exist) appropriate best-practices any such business should pursue that would include environmental assessment for the planned routing.
 

screw americans they dont need businesses to run the economy.. the only thing that anyone should be concerned about is the tiny amount of footprint the pipline might have. Nobody should do anything, noone should have jobs or clean burning affordable natural gas!

I am thinking your ability to see one reasonable comment, and invent for it a huge parade of irrational rant and racism you then project upon someone else, explains a lot about the current social situation in our country on a larger level than just this issue...
 

In this economy, money needs to circulate, meaning that goods and services change hands.

Yes, yes, I do have some idea of how these things work. Fact remains that when a big corporation does environmentally-affective stuff in country X, in order to sell to country Y, usually country X pays in environmental damage and the corp benefits in shareholder profits, but unless there are substantial jobs generated by the project, the locals in X aren't usually benefitting all that much.

I do agree that sales to foreign markets do matter to the economy on a larger scale, of course. I am not against oil pipelines and we're going to get a lot more of them soon if the new President has his way. I simply believe that business has its own responsibilities which include investment in appropriate research, and appropriate measures taken when there are unavoidable issues.

When these people complain of how it will likely affect multiple rivers and water supply, the biz should have been able to whip out an environmental report and say, "We knew we had to drill under a river and we had an environmental impact study done and here is the information about it and the reason that complaint should not stop progress." This should already exist and should have been part of the plan proposed to the government of the state in question when arranging for permits. Acting like people complaining now is wrong is missing the point -- people don't SEE what is coming until it's there -- the people responsible for that planning, that study, are the people running the business. It is part of the responsibility of operating in that industry and especially at the level of really large projects like that.

I might add that I used to work in the oil industry. I managed administration for a corp for the western region of the country, plus alaska and mexico, and although my work was related to a combination of rig servicemen, pipe threading, inventory sales of all kinds, and general business stuff -- so I was not physically standing on a rig getting my hands dirty -- still I learned a decent amount about the industry, and volunteered for a nonprofit that educated the public on all the things petroleum is actually used for (it's in tons of products). I truly am not against this industry.

I am against doing business so badly that you intrude on lands you don't own ONLY because some conflict-of-interest vested-interest party in or related to the company arranges it to spare their own land; against doing it so badly that you can't even plan ahead for the route you planned ahead; and against my government operating as the jackboot military for private interests, of which this is not the only example.
 

Its when a chunk of society is not linked in that theres poverty in that community. Preserving rules or a border which discourages integration into the economic community creates an impoverishment due to noninclusion. If you can largely self sustain on all levels , that can work to your advantage.. otherwise , youre an economic backwater.

This is a radically different topic than everything else under discussion. I actually agree that total segregation -- as well as mass murder, mass displacement, and more -- contributed to economic devastation for the native tribes and the lands they ended up stuck on (since we'd taken the better ones). While they were still trying to find enough to eat, we on a larger scale were building infrastructure. Now we live in the 21st century and a shocking number of people on reservations don't even have utilities, and in some cases even running water.

Reagan once said, observing the situation, that "humoring them" with segregation was something that shouldn't have been done -- he would have had to spend months of effort coming up with any more insulting way to put it. But fundamentally, in terms of infrastructure and economy, it's true it did not work out well for them at all. However I don't think observing this makes it ok to simply pretend their lands are not sovereign when we decide it's more convenient to ruin their land instead of our own. That really is adding insult to injury.

RC

So you actually are making that point. OK. I kept thinking you couldn't possibly be going there with it and I must be misunderstanding.

As a larger topic beyond this situation -- perhaps, but the issue of the rivers stands regardless of their land.

I think, sometimes the natives care more than others BECAUSE it is their land. For the same reason, way back when, government only wanted landowners to vote -- they wanted people with something vested, who cared about the land and its future.

How much does the average person care about the land? I have to say I don't think it's much, if any public event I go to is any indicator. Because people don't individually own it, don't even think about it.

So when someone is going to do something that affects something like waterways, do people protest? Sometimes. Most the time, not. Not unless some environmental group happened to have noticed. The natives protest because they noticed, and they noticed because it is THEIR land affected.

Their land has certain elements in place that non-native lands don't. They can't just move 150 miles west like we can and be in a nearly indistinguishably different place. They have only got so much land and something that damages the natural resources of that land is a big deal -- you can't get it back, it can't be undone or fixed once a river is polluted or things like that.

The movie "Thunderheart" was fiction but it was based (loosely) on the wounded knee situation in the early 1970s. Not the greatest movie but a decent example for this same kind of thing.

Anyway, aside from all that, I see a larger issue here, that being the government operating as a military enforcement for corporate interests over the good of the people.

I fail to see how a pipeline for natural gas to go to china is about the good of our people. If we were keeping it and using it, then I could see it as being so. But all I see this doing is enriching a few already rich people. The jobs resulting are pathetically few and probably zero to the tribe anyway. The collateral damage for something our country is NOT benefitting from -- just some shareholders in a corporation -- seems inappropriate to me, and that's even if it wasn't threatening something so vulnerable.

So, the logic that eminent domain should be equally applied to sovereign lands within our borders, such as native lands, because "it's for the greater good," I just don't see this. I don't see where the greater good is, when it is simply about some company making money, not about the government "really NEEDING this for everyone's good." It isn't the government building it. It isn't the good of our people at all that it's involved with.

So I don't think government has any justification for being the weaponized enforcement team for corporate interests, particularly when as part of doing so they are apparently ignoring environmental issues, and simultaneously violating sovereign lands.

Would we do it to Canada? Would that be ok too? Canada's just a border. Borders are mental constructs in the same way.

RC

From the armchair this is agreed, but what point does it have in the practicality of the current discussion topic, unless you are suggesting the government ignore or rescind native lands' sovereignty?

RC

Treaties , and rights are just mental constructs,, like racism.

I disagree... a treaty is a legal construct. It's more than an opinion, it's a contract with consequences.

Americans can collectively choose whether or not to extend certain privileges or not.

Sure. We already did. It's not like this is still up in the air, "whether we deem native lands theirs."

I do get that you might think people of one skin color deserve special treatment, special regard, and that mental constructs like states have rights. It just takes too much effort to disabuse folks of all that.

?? How do you come up with this? Has anybody on this thread said this? They have spoken only of environmental risk and tribal land.

Just like its the norm to consider them as not having individual opinions which may not coincide withe the tribal conclusion.

I don't even know what that means in the context you said it.

Youall might want to protect peoples rights, but these arent rights equal to Other american citizens.

? We are not protecting their rights, just observing the fact that it is legally their land, and also that it is reasonable for anybody to be concerned of environmental risk to important waterways.

It's not like we are patronizing them as special snowflakes we need to protect because "they have rights." It's really not like that. E.g. We don't avoid landing on Russian lands because of their rights. We avoid it because it is their land, not ours. (And because in Russia's case, they might shoot us if we do. :-))

The Tribe isnt concerned as much with the welfare of everyone else, deeming infrastructure important, as it is with preventing use by people of other persuasions.

Tribal lands are not about the benefit of the USA. The entire USA is about the benefit of the USA -- the tribal lands are the tiny tradeoff for what made that possible. The tribal lands, such as they are -- not where the natives began for the most part -- are for the benefit of the people who own them, yes this is true. Just like we have doors on our houses and fences around our yards solely to prevent use by people who aren't us. I don't see any of this as a bad thing.

RC

I don't think he realized they are legally sovereign. Most people I know don't know that, I suspect.

RC

Do you consider the inhabitants of that land to be subject to american laws? Like labor laws. sales tax, can they vote in US elections ,, to a degree its expected that they do , but they are exempted from some of the impositions that the rest of us have to sustain. They have special privileges , and whether one considers those to be just , is precisely the issue one should decide, and I think theres ample evidence to suggest that The US govt can indeed Do certain takings.. the issue resolves to whether its just - or legal. I can have sympathy for individuals, but not a state. I can deep what I feel is just , but not what is to be judged legal, which is determined in the court. 

I was referring to the legal status of the lands. The status of the citizens is no different than ourselves as far as I know. To whatever degree it may be, it would be in accordance with prior treaties. Considering how few treaties our government has truly upheld in its time, I support upholding whatever pieces of whatever is left.

That is why when I lived in CA I voted against the english requirement bill. I would have voted for it in any state except CA. Because the Treaty of Guadalupe where the lands were ceded was clear that the language would always be welcome in those lands. And although making english the 'government' language was not really saying you could not speak spanish, it is very easy to see it going that way such as in schools. So I voted in accordance with what I felt was the existing law that should be maintained.

I support existing law regarding their lands whatever it may be. Actually I support existing law everywhere, since there is no way to really see what the law IS, if it's not enforced, at which point it can be challenged if inappropriate. I am utterly against legal arbitraryism by weak management.

However, that being said, I have observed the corruption and abuse of issues such as "eminent domain" which originally were designed simply to allow our nation to say, put a railroad in, but have been horribly applied to simply allowing a city to wipe out a whole swath of homeowners in a rundown part of town, in order to build pricey newer homes or businesses the city could make more tax money off, and which nearly always ends up evidencing that people on the voting board own land, property or business that ends up making a boatload off that "dispossessing a ton of people from the homes/properties their families have owned for eons." So I am skeptical these days, any time I see E.D. being used for just about anything other than highway "expansion" (meaning literally widening a highway that already exists) or the rare highway connectivity project.

Nearly anything else, particularly huge-long things like pipelines, can be run anywhere you want them to run. There are usually tons of choices about how and where. Some may require it be a bit longer to 'go around' something like native land, but IMO then that's just the way it is. As far as I'm concerned, when any project is a potential threat to either non-owned territories -- such as Canada, Mexico, or Tribal lands -- or to critical elements in our own territories (such as water sources, nuclear plants, and so on) -- I think it would be fair if people protesting demanded justification for "why" the routing "has" to go the way it has been planned rather than another way.

RC

Also, I think it should have to be demonstrated 'why' it 'had' to take the routing it did (the pipeline) since it sounds like the original plans had something different. Also, I think the fact that the legal authority in the state owns part of it is a conflict of interest given the situation. Also, I think the use of state law enforcement to support a corporate interest is an even more serious conflict of interest.

The latter issue is one that is growing more significant in many ways around the nation at this time including in many bills and laws, where basically the government is being co-opted as the armed security force of corporate interests.

RC

Native Americans actually have a different situation. As humans they are citizens just like the rest of us. But as far as their land goes it's actually sovereign within our territories -- much like a 'state' would be but a bit moreso.

RC

I think he was joking.

Well at least someone is willing to publicly say something about the truly bizarre racism fetish used like a gradeschool namecalling-chant.

ROFL!  Well it's clearly part of the same global conspiracy.

Speaking of humor, this made me laugh out loud (it may not be true but it's still funny to me):

Democrats took an early lead which dramatically changed later in the afternoon once Republicans got off work & went to vote.

RC

Well at least someone is willing to publicly say something about the truly bizarre racism fetish used like a gradeschool namecalling-chant.

Great political cartoon about that:

RC

Well eminent domain will kick in if it absolutely must go over or under a river or something, but at the least they can get it off their land, though I agree that is not going to solve the bulk of the complaint about its risk to the water supply. Still it shouldn't have been routed through their land, not even a little, to begin with.

> pizza gate

When I was a kid, I thought Watergate was that someone had left a gate open, and it had caused this big flood, and apparently it was all Mr. Nixon's fault, so he was really in trouble.

I wonder what little kids today would think of everything being something-gate. It must make for some good psychology. :-)

PS My introduction to politics was in 1st grade, when we were shown a picture on the wall of Richard Nixon. It's kinda just been downhill from there. LOL

RC

The solution is obvious.

 

We need an international law (can start at the national level) prohibiting unvetted news and an international enforcement agency (again, starting at the national level) to ensure that only properly approved information is spread. Only missing part is a name for this review & enforcement authority...

 

 

 

I know! I know!  We'll call it TASS!

RC

It would not come to that if people would stop being trolls and telling make believe stories as true. These fake news sites are as damaging as yelling fire in a crowded theater, maybe worse.

1. "News sites" are not what is referenced on facebook. News sites have their own websites. They may have a page there like the gazillion individual, but FB is more a personal platform.

2. I think it goes without saying that what people think is 'true' is very much in the eye of the beholder. Who chooses? And a lot of actually-fake news sites (e.g. tabloid magazines) often turn out to have stories that later are found to be true. What then.

3. Since the allegedly 'real' news sites are lately the ones lying/fake/suppressing, it's a whole lot of gall for them to point the finger at some tiny by comparison, independently owned websites for not being "real news" -- when they are massive, behemoth, country-changing "news" organizations, yet can be as bad or worse as the sources they accuse.

4. The problem is in the corporate-owned, megalithic-sized 'news' sources that are "politicized" to use the PC term, or "corrupt and trying to sway people to their opinion even when it means ignoring or even contradicting facts" in plain english.

Any censoring done -- as it is already such as on twitter -- is not done "for the good of truth and the children," ok. It's mostly done for political disagreement, it seems.

RC

I think the complaint is not just about it being on native land -- but rather, about the predictable (a given) leakage of a pipeline possibly affecting a river and groundwater supply once in place.

But I think it very quickly became more of a "moral of it" issue due to the pathetic management response.

RC