Drumpf’s Muslim Ban

I feel I couldn’t really remain silent on the subject of His Excellency King Drumpf’s recent executive order barring Muslims from entering the country, including U.S. Citizens originally born in predominantly Muslim countries, I saw this tweet:

It got me thinking about a man I knew once upon a while ago, Victor (real name Dharkur). He was Iraqi by birth, but when we invaded Iraq he defected to the U.S. And joined the U.S. Army as a translator and interpreter. He had taken a furlough of sorts into the Reserves to pursue his Engineering degree and he had gotten a job at the place I was working at the time.

He and I had several interesting conversations about Islam and it is thanks, in part, to him that when I wrote The Sultana’s Journey as part of my book Escort that I knew enough to make sense of how going on Hajj worked.

I never once felt unsafe with this man around, and considering we were in a law-enforcement type of setting I felt buoyed with him acting as my backup. As the senior officer I knew I could send him to do a task and he would accomplish it and that if I needed aid with something, Victor would be there for me.

We only worked for a few weeks together before a more permanent position became available for him at another location.

He had once lived in the south where he was engaged to a nice young white girl. Her family was Southern Baptist and at a gathering her father, uncles, and two brothers cordoned him off to the side and told him he had five minutes to leave or they were going to shoot him. His fiancée said, “No, they’re serious. I love you…so you should leave.”

As he was driving away he looked back to see the uncles coming out of the house carrying shotguns. That was how America thanked him for aiding us in battle. Keep in mind that neither of the five men about to shoot him had seen a day in the military and this was a career soldier they were about to murder. True patriotism there, I must say.

Now to be fair I only know a few dozen Muslims, but I’ve yet to meet one that made me feel unsafe. I, however, am intimately acquainted (and often times related) to violent Christians. People who regularly say things like, “We should just nuke the whole Middle East.”

Yes, because nothing proves you’re more peaceful than something like talking about murdering millions of innocent people because they pray the same god as you, but call him by a different name.

I feel much safer in a group with the Muslim acquaintances I have than the Christians I know. So if we really want to ban a hateful religion, Islam isn’t the one I’m afraid of.

~RCS

Independence Day, 2015

I won’t get into too big of a post today.  I will just take another stab at the Confederate Flag controversy by reminding everyone what flag flew over this great nation when our independence was declare.

Err, yeah that one, I guess.

So remember folks…this day celebrates the founding of America.  A land of…snakes in the grass!

Err…wait, what?

~RCS

Confederated States of Stupid

I hadn’t planned on commenting about the fiasco in South Carolina about the Confederated Flag.  Or the one in Mississippi…or Virginia…or Walmart and–y’know what, I just had planned on not mentioning it.  I’ve actually been using what spare time I had recently to write another funny story about me getting hit on.

But after a family member (through marriage, I’m not claiming the guy) posted a particular picture (which I’ll show below) on their Facebook, I decided I needed to rant a little bit about Confederate stupidity.

Now first let me give you my basic opinion on the Confederate Flag(s).  Should it be taken off of Virginian license plates, removed from the South Carolina Capitol building, and all that?  Yes, yes it should.  Should it be done to honor the victims of the shooting in a Charleston church?  No, no it shouldn’t.  Should it be done because the Confederate States of America was technically an enemy we were at war with and defeated and the fact that flying any of its flags should be considered a sign of treason?  Yes, well…I mean, as far as what it imports not actually hanging traitors for wearing Dukes of Hazard shirts or anything.

I’ve heard all the reasons not to take it down…

“It’s South Carolina’s heritage.” 

Well, so is being a British colony, but I don’t see them hanging the Union Jack from the Capitol building, do you?  I don’t see Texas putting a Mexican flag over their State Capitol anytime soon, so why would South Carolina want to fly the flag of a defeated ‘nation’ over their government complexes?

“That’s the flag that flew over that building during the war, so it belongs there to honor those who fought for it!”

Actually no, that’s the flag of the Army of Virginia, the South Carolinians fought under a totally different battle flag.

“That flag, or a representation of it, has been flying over that building since the Civil War!”

Actually no, that flag was hoisted over the capitol building in 1961 to protest desegregation ordered by the federal government.

So what is the picture that got me a little worked up?  Here it is and it’s totally not racist in the least, no siree, not even a touch of racism to it…

I lied, it’s INCREDIBLY racist.

 

Yeah…there’s three problems with the comparison.

1. All hail the white folks who hoist the flag of an enemy army who fought and killed Americans; but oh not, ‘dem dirty Negroes is stomping on the flag in a peaceful protest?  Speaking of peaceful protest…why is it okay for the white kids to have rifles while waving an enemy battle flag, but the black kids having a peaceful protest where they stomp on the flag is so terrible?

2. Cute that the white martyrs get their faces blurred, but the black kids have their faces plastered on the picture.

3. The comparison is totally disjointed.  This is the argument I always have with my Republican friends about stuff like bibles in schools or the ten commandments on the courthouse steps.  We are talking about a government building flying the flag of an enemy army; compared to a private citizen desecrating the U.S. Flag.  When a government building places something it implies that the government is supporting whatever that thing is or whatever it signifies.  If I hang a Don’t Tread on Me flag it probably means that I’m upset with the government, likewise if I hang a laminated picture of the Quran on my porch it probably means I either am Muslim or support Islam in some, rather strong, manner.  So if a government building hangs the Quranic verse in stone on their front steps, it implies that government authority favors Islam and Muslims.  If the government building hangs only a Quranic verse, it means it favors that religion over others, which is contrary to the protections of the constitution.  Similarly if a government building hangs the flag of an enemy army, that technically implies it has joined that army or is currently under control by the enemy.  It needs to be besieged and rescued immediately by the Army!

If Louisiana placed a French Flag above the capitol building, these same Confederate-lovers would be inconsolable about it.  Imagine if the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. placed an English flag on a pole in front of the building.  Why not?  We beat them, too.  It’s part of our heritage, isn’t it?  But no, that would be totally unacceptable.

Bunch of Jackasses.

~RCS

Obama Has Gone Too Far!

That’s it, he’s just gone way too far this time!  I am finally ready to fully embrace Republicanism (uhh, again, I guess since I voted for McCain =/ ), because this time Obama has just taken it a step too far.  Obamacare was bad enough, but now he’s actually gone and staked a claim on an American Monarchy.

That’s right, Obama has declared himself a Monarch!  That’s right, he has declared himself…

…Princess Obama!

Haha, isn’t it cute?

~RCS

Now if only his policies didn’t suck.

Obamacare Sucks…Again!

I’ve spoken before about the ‘Affordable’ Care Act, better known as ‘Obamacare’.  As you might remember I wasn’t too keen on it, especially citing the fact that I don’t utilize medical services very often.

Well, a few months ago, right before Tekkoshocon 2014, I suffered a pretty good medical scare.  At first we thought I had an about-to-rupture appendix, but it turned out to be a kidney stone (umm, yay?).  I have discovered that a 3mm stone trying to pass through the 1mm wide passageway between the kidney and the bladder is incredibly painful.  Painful enough that I, who gets regularly praised for my high pain tolerance, finally agreed to let my wife take me to the hospital (of course remember that I thought I was suffering appendicitis).

She was *very* convincing.

So we’ve gotten the bills for the doctor, the ER, the Urologist, the lab, the lab technician, the pharmacy, and everything else I got billed for (at least I didn’t get charge for a $20 can of soda, this time, like when I had Strep Throat).

All in all, I was looking at about $8,000.

Yeah, I’ll give you a second to take the number into consideration for a three-hour ER.  I wasn’t admitted and put in a bed for the night, I didn’t have any surgery performed, they just ran some tests and said, “Yup, it’ll pass in a few days.  Here’s a ‘scrip for pain and here’s a ‘scrip for nausea.  ‘Bye.”

So…GTFO and pay me eight grand.

Now here’s the issue I had with Obamacare before: I could pay $120 a month to get a Bronze plan that covers 60% of my bills…after a $5,500 deductible.

Now, a few things have changed since I last made a post about Obamacare.  My wife is no longer working, so our income is lower.  Our household now qualifies for the tax credit to lower the marketplace insurance cost.  That same $120 plan is now only $86 a month.  So now I’d only have to pay $1,032 a year, instead of the aforementioned $1,440 a year.  Of course, the site’s still not sure…one page says yes, the other says no.

So by paying $1,440 a year, plus the $5,500 deductible, I would reduce the remaining $2,500 by 60%.  So I’d only have to pay $1,000.  So all in all, instead of paying $8,000, I would only have to pay a total of $7,940.

 

Yup, because of the premium and deductible I only save about $60 from the original $8,000.  And next year, if I got another kidney stone (blessed fate, please do not be tempted to make that happen?) I’d only save $40, again.  And if nothing happened and I didn’t see a doctor or go to the hospital all year, next year, I’d still have to pay $1,440 for nothing to happen.

 

And if I only had $6,000 worth of costs from the situation, like if I had been able to swallow the chalky crap instead of needing to get the IV-injected stuff for the CT scan, or something like that, then the numbers would be even worse.

Original Cost: $6,000

Premium: $1,440 (or $1,032 with tax credit)

Deductible: $5,500

40% of Remaining ($500): $200

Total Cost to Me: $7,140 (or $6,732 with tax credit)

Difference: $1,140 – $732, depending on tax credit

Yeah, so…I’d actually pay out more than I was charged, if I had insurance for more minor things, with the insurance.

 

But what makes the situation even more tilted in my favor is…the hospital I go to has a plan where people without insurance get a 50% discount if they pay their bill on time.  This means that my $8,000 bill was actually only $4,000.

I paid a total of about $4000, with no insurance.  Obamacare will charge me a fine (paid along with my taxes) at the end of the year for not having any insurance; that fine is about $160.  So I’ll pay a total of $4,160 without insurance.

Anybody want to calculate that difference?  Here, I’ll do it for you…I’ll even account for the premium discount for my wife not working…

With Insurance: $7,532 (with tax credit, as mentioned $7,940 without credit)

No Insurance: $4,160

Difference: $3,372 less ($3,780 if I don’t actually get the discount)

 

And before you jump on the same bandwagon as my mother, I’ll address the defensive question I always get when I point out those numbers to her: “But what if something really serious happened?  Like…you got cancer and needed treatment?”

Let’s say I need $80,000 worth of treatment for my cancer.  Guess what?  I’d still have to pay the $1,032, plus the $5,500 deductible.  Then 40% of the remaining $74,500.  That’s $29,800, plus my $5,500 deductible, plus my $1,032 premium.  Grand total cost to me would be $36,332.

Okay, so that is still saving 54% on something that expensive.  Just one problem with that point: It still equals out to 140% of my gross annual income.

If we assume I can afford to pay $3,000 a year on medical costs, then I would never break even on that total.  So spending ~10% of my annual income on paying off my medical bills, after the first year I would go from owing $36,332 to owing, roughly…$37,366.

This is because at 10.99% interest rate, the debt would go up by about $333 a month, whereas 3k a year only equals out to 250 a month.  So each month I would actually go 83 dollars further in debt.

And before you say that such an interest rate on medical bills is ridiculous…Wyoming hospitals charges upwards of 18% interest on hospital bills.  I chose 10.99% because if it was any higher, I’d get a Personal Service Loan from my bank and that’s their PSL interest rate.

If I’m going $83 deeper in debt every month, when I’m already spending more than 10% of my income on the bills; I would have to declare bankruptcy.

You know what would happen in this situation if I didn’t have insurance at all, with or without the 50% discount for uninsured people?  I’d have to declare bankruptcy.  So why not save myself a grand a year and declare bankruptcy, instead of paying some company to force me into bankruptcy for their own profit?

Either way I wind up broke; probably homeless and starving.  Thanks Obama.

~RCS

Obamacare: What Does It Do For The Poor?

I’m sure you’ve all heard about this thing called the Affordable Care Act, and if you’re one of the 37% of Americans who don’t know it’s also known as Obamacare.  Now if you’ve been here for a while you know that I’m pretty critical of Republicans, and also of Democrats, and of Independents, and Gr—okay, y’know what I’m just pretty critical of anyone in office, running for office, or voting.

Now during the presidential election I wasn’t too keen on Mitt Romney, because I think there are few things worse than a Republican president.

Unfortunately one of those few things worse than a Rep. president, is a Democrat president.  Here’s my philosophy:

I am in the poorer multitudes of the nation.  I was born poor, I was raised poor, I am still somewhat poor, I support minority and female equality, and I’m not particularly religious.  Republicans come right out and tell you that they hate the poor and non-religious, and especially minorities and women.  Everything they say and do suggests that.

Democrats come out and say that they love the poor, non-religious, women, and minorities…and they jump right in line with the republicans to favor giant, fanatical-Christian, corporations and organizations.  When a Democratic president appoints a Spiritual Adviser, you know you voted for the wrong person.

Anyway before I start a riot let me to get to my point: Obamacare.

Obamacare sucks.  I don’t have health insurance and in the past 5 years I have only been to the doctor once, and it was Emergency Care.

So let’s look at and compare getting insurance versus not getting insurance.

When I wound up in the emergency room, the prices were ridiculous: $230 just to talk to the doctor and another $430 just to be taken to a back room and have a nurse check my pulse.  So that’s $660, total.

So I’ll admit, in 5 years’ time, I’m $660 in the hole to start.

So now let’s look at what an Obamacare plan would get me…

If I get a Bronze plan which pays for about 60% it would cost me roughly $119.19 a month, that equates to $1430.28 a year.

So in 5 years’ time that would equal…$7151.40 that I would have paid for insurance coverage.  And before you talk about the premium subsidy, my state doesn’t cover my income level for the subsidy, so I have to pay 100% of the premium (trust me, I’ve checked).

But, on the positive side, my $660 hospital bill would have only been about $264.

So in 5 years’ time I would have only spent $7415.40 in medical costs.

Whereas in real life I only spent $660 in 5 years’ time.

However, the Obamacare law makes it required to have insurance.  If you don’t, you have to pay a penalty, based on your income.  My particular penalty would be, as of 2016…$650 a year.  That winds up being $3250 in 5 years’ time, but I’d have to pay 100% of my medical expenditures.

So without insurance, under Obamacare, I pay $3910 in the same 5 years’ time.

Before Law: $660

With Insurance: $7,415.40

Without Insurance: $3,910.00

Cost Difference: $3,505.40 more with insurance

Now the argument I always hear is, “What if you get hurt really bad or really sick?”

What’s it matter?  If I get hurt at work, workman’s compensation covers it.  If I get hurt in a business, their liability insurance covers it.  If I get hurt in the car, my car insurance will cover it.  If I fall off a ladder replacing a light bulb, I have medical liability coverage on my homeowner’s insurance.

Basically as long as I don’t get hit by a meteorite while jaywalking in another borough, there’s something out there that covers my injured ass in case of an accident.

Now illness is a real issue, that’s what took me to the ER a few years ago.  I had a throat infection (Strep Throat) and it caused my esophagus to swell shut, I began to asphyxiate and had to get antibiotics and steroids to keep from blacking out (and eventually dying).

There’s cancer, strep, hep, food poisoning, malaria, bronchitis, all kinds of things that can go wrong.  So let’s go for gold…I get cancer and it costs me $50,000 in treatment.

Well guess what?  My Bronze plan only covers 60% of that, so I still have to pay $20,000 out of pocket, not to mention the $7,415.40 for the premiums.

That’s a total of $27,415.40 for 5 years of cancer treatments.

After taxes, that equates to 186% of my yearly income.  So that means, if I saved 1% of my post-tax income every year…it would take me 138 years to pay that off, and that’s assuming they aren’t going to charge me interest or up my premiums for having cancer.  Remember, Obamacare says that an insurance company can’t refuse me for having a pre-existing condition, but it doesn’t say they can’t charge me higher premiums for having cancer.

So if I don’t have insurance, there’s a chance I’ll wind up broke and penniless.  But if I get the insurance, I’m guaranteed to wind up broke and penniless.  And now Obama’s stupid law has weighed things down to make sure I wind up broke and penniless a little sooner.

All the Affordable Care Act does is help insurance companies.  If the government is going to require a free citizen to own or have something, then it should be paid for by the government.

You can reason the legal requirement for car insurance because owning a car is not necessary to life.  If you don’t want to pay car insurance, don’t drive a car.  If you don’t want to pay homeowner’s insurance, then rent.  If you don’t want to pay health insurance…uhh, then die, I guess?

If health insurance is required, then it should be free; regardless of income.  I don’t care if you make ten grand a year or ten million a year, you should be able to walk into a hospital and receive free medical care in a timely and efficient manner.  I’d rather just pay an extra 2.5% of my yearly income in taxes and be able to see any doctor, any time, for any reason.

Republicans call Obamacare the worst thing to happen to America since the birth of the Democratic party; Democrats call it a stepping stone to a better system.  But in truth it’s somewhere in the middle: It’s certainly not what we need and it’s actually moving in the wrong direction.

~RCS

Do We Still Need Daylight Saving Time?

With Daylight Savings Time having recently passed I’ve been thinking about this for a bit, lately.  My thoughts are pretty simple:

Daylight Savings Time is stupid.

It made sense a century or two ago when 80% of our population were farmers and were starting to join the industrial workforce.  Folks like my great grandfather who worked 8-10 hours a day, then went home to tend to the fields on the family farm.  Especially in the days before electric lighting and such.

But that time has long since passed.  The main reason I’ve heard for DST is energy preservation.  Well let’s look at who supported changing the dates of Daylight Savings time, supposedly to reduce energy consuption:

In Favor:

Sporting Goods Manufacturers, Convienience Store Associations, and a Foundation that helps the blind.

Against:

A bunch of religious associations (meh), the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium (makes sense), the Air Transport Association, and…Edison Electric Institute.

That’s right, candy manufacturers and marketers (the convienience store part) fought to get an extra hour of daylight in October while the Edison Electrical Institute said it was a bad idea.  Because with an extra hour to trick or treat on, Halloween can bring lots of stores and candy makers a ton of money; roughly $2 billion, actually.

So what do the scientists say is right?  Does daylight savings time do anything at all, much less changing the date of DST?  Keeping in mind that the Energy Policy Act that caused this shift in DST was expected to cause a 1% decrease in energy consumption

The Center for the Study of Energy Markets says, “These results suggest that current plans and proposals to extend DST will fail to conserve energy.”

The California Energy Commission says savings from DST being changed amounted to an interval, “[…] ranging from 1.5% savings to 1.4% increase (in energy consumption).”  They estimated a probably savings of .2% savings in energy, but said that the results were so miniscule that they didn’t breach the margin for error.

A few researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, claimed that due to the increased usage of Air Conditioning in the summer and heat in the cooler seasons that they, “[…] unexpectedly found that daylight time led to a 1 percent overall rise in residential electricity use, costing the state an extra $9 million.”

Author Michael Downing has some interesting words on the matter, too, including, “Daylight Saving increases gasoline consumption, something the petroleum industry has known since 1930,” and “This has been long – tremendously effective spending policy. Retail stores love Daylight Saving.”

In other words…Daylight Savings Time does nothing that it’s supposed to.

It does, however, cause a lot of hectic situations for the common populace.  I know a lot of people who have clocks or phones that they use as alarm clocks that malfunction with DST.  My phone is one of them, actually.  My phone corrects itself at 02:00 to gain or lose an hour, but the alarms that are set don’t change.  So if you set the alarm for 07:00 before you go to bed at midnight (7 hours until alarm) and the phone’s clock springs ahead, expect to be woken up at 08:00, because the alarm hasn’t changed, it continues to count down from 7 hours.  Similarly if the clock falls back an hour expect to be woken up at 06:00, because 7 hours have passed.  My phone is a smart-phone running on the Android OS; proving that ‘smart-phone’ is a misnomer.

DST is just a tool for the corporate oligarchy to abuse and mislead us, just like ‘Black Friday’ sales.

~RCS

Barack Obama Wins 2nd Term

I’m not exactly sure if I’d call it a win for him, but Obama is our president for another 4 years.  Or at least until a psychotic Republican can murder him; I’m betting on it being Karl Rove, right now.

Now I’m not a big fan of Obama, by any means, but I am very happy that Mitt Romney didn’t win.  And I’m incredibly elated that a bunch of Tea Party psychoes are gone from Congress, too.  Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Roger Rivard, Tom Smith (especially since he’s here in PA), John Koster, and especially that ass-hat Joe Walsh whom I couldn’t stand in the least.

But of course there are some butthurt Romney fans/Republicans out there.  I’ve heard folks talk about how much they hate Obamacare, so they’re moving to Canada.  Head’s up folks, Canada laughs at how conservative Obamacare is; they actually have tax-funded universal health care, and have had it for a long time.

Of course there was Karl Rove freaking out about Ohio going Democrat on Fox News, there was Donald Trump’s massive tantrum wherein he called for Republicans to unite and lead an armed revolution on Washington D.C. (if not for the faulty reason, I’d actually be able to get behind that idea; head for the House of Representatives, though, not the White House), and here’s a few more examples…

This tumblr page called White People Mourning Romney is rather amusing.

I liked this woman’s point about comparing your candidate’s defeat to a tragedy, by reminding everyone what a real tragedy is.

Now this a fuckin’ tragedy! We let that reproduce; why?

That being said I can’t wait until 2016 when we’ll have the Democrat ticket of Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden (they need him for entertainment value) vs. the Republican ticket of Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio (sorry Chris Christie, you fucked up by accepting aid for your beleaguered and destroyed state from Obama; shame on your for doing your job as governor!).

~RCS

No, I’m just kidding…I surely can wait.  Hell why is that three days after the election I’m still seeing Super Pac ads for the Republicans?  Did they not realise what day the election was?  Emphasis on was.

Mortal Politiks! Friendship?

Anyone remember the old game Mortal Kobmat II?  Of course you do.  You were probably doing one of three things:

1. Buying it for your kid without knowing what the game was about.

2. Playing it.

3. Protesting against it’s unmitigated violence.

Either way, you probably know about the Mortal Kombat series of games someway or the other.  But in Mortal Kombat II, particularly, there was a feature called Friendship.  Instead of performing a Fatality you could, instead, perform a Friendship.  The following video shows the different Friendships from the starting point (@ 7:12 into the video), but if you put it back to the beginning you can watch all the fatalities, too.

So as you can see, even with brutal fist fighting between sworn enemies you can find friendliness.  So why not in political races?  Here’s a nice video where South Dakota Republican, and incumbent, Kristi Noem created a political ad which pretty much makes the following points:

Her Opponent is well educated, has a long history of international business and political activity, and throws one hell of a party.

She is…a poorly educated home-maker who’s never been out of the state, and hates corn dogs.

Just watch the video for yourself…

Now, really that’s not a bad comparison for a die-hard Republican.  It says this: Matt Varilek went to a lot of colleges (liberal brainwashing facilities), wants to strengthen the EPA and regulate fossil fuel usage and acquisition (probably the #1 industry in South Dakota), and is just a hard-partying wealthy career politician.  While Kristi Noem is a family-oriented middle-income job maker.

Perfect for the lower and middle income Republicans who would already be voting for Noem.  But what about the Independants that they’d need to sway to win the election?  Well to them it probably sounds like this:

Matt Varilek is a highly educated, worldly, efficient and well-respected man in the international, business, and political fields.  Kristi Noem is an inexperienced woman who never got over being Homecoming Queen.

Not exactly a spot-on last minute political ad, I don’t think.

~RCS

Electoral College…You’re Fired! Pt. 2

So, last time I spoke about the Electoral College.  Today I’ll say how I think it should work.

I think each state should have equal footing.  We don’t adjust a state’s importance based on how many people live in it…we don’t have 50 differently sized stars on the flag, we are a union of 50 states all of equal rank and stature.  Except in the House of Representatives (which should be gotten rid of) and the Electoral College (also needs rid of).

California has 55 votes, Texas has 38, and Alaska has 3.  Bullshit, they’re all states, they’re all equally liable to be given federal funds, and they all deserve equal representation.  We don’t have 310 million stars on the flag; we have 50.

The government should work like this…

Federal–>State–>County–>Borough/City–>Household

The federal government decides the fate of the nation as a whole, all 50 states.  Each state decides the fate of it’s respective counties, however many.  Each county decides the fates of its assorted boroughs and cities.  And each borough or city determines the fates of its respective households, i.e. the people themselves.

Counties shouldn’t decide the presidential election and the federal government shouldn’t decide your local property taxes.

So here is how I think the Electoral College should work.  Each state has 10 electoral votes, regardless of size, population, or anything else.  You need to win 256 electoral votes to win the elections.  Why 256?  Because that’s 50+% of the 510 possible votes.

510?!  Yes…Washington DC currently has 3 electoral votes, so it will be raised to 10 like all the other states.  D.C. doesn’t count as its own state, but it does have sway in the election specifically because it does not answer to any specific state.

Why 10 votes?  Because the electoral votes will be based on the popular vote, we’ll get rid of electors entirely.  Now you will get 1 vote for each 10% of the popular vote you get in a state.  So if you only get 17% of the popular vote, instead of winning the presidency…you’ll only have 86 electoral votes.  If you have 78% of the popular vote you will win the presidency with 397 electoral votes.

Much better, right?

~RCS