That program, along with several others was introduced to reduce Philadelphia’s obscene obesity rate.
Although too late to be a factor in the last measurement Philadelphia’s Obesity rate has been falling, at least among children.
I have read the briefs of the parties challenging the laws in every state that has entertained a legal challenge. I assume that a highly motivated legal challenge would include the most objectionable parts of the law and it’s implementation.
And the article lists any number of steps that are more likely to have affected that drop:
provided nutrition education to all public school students whose families are eligible for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) since 1999;
removed all sodas and sugar-sweetened drinks from public school vending machines in 2004, making it one of the first jurisdictions in the country to do so;
implemented a comprehensive, district-wide school wellness policy in 2006, including guidelines for school meals, snacks, and drinks, physical activity, and nutrition education;
banned deep fryers in school kitchens, and switched from serving 2% milk to 1% and skim milk, in 2009.
And what is your reaction to them? Is it “well, I’m an expert on the demographics of urban areas in that state, and thus I know that the impact will be minimal” or is it “I’m confident that impact is minimal because I know it would be minimal for me” or is it “whether or not that impact is minimal depends on precise details I’m unaware of, so I can see where the lawyers for that side might do some research to come up with a convincing argument…”?
Does anyone here but you give a flying fuck about this practice being legal or not? I’ll happily concede that the voting repression laws are technically legal, but they are most definitely morally reprehensible.
So, this was an argument for the legality of a practice?
Fuck off, you mendacious obfuscating piece of shit.
Fortunately, the judiciary is there to (sometimes) correct the mistakes of the legislature. I like the judiciary, I must say, perhaps because they represent order, while legislatures thrive in and create chaos.
Speaking of which, the policy may be legal and morally reprehensible, but it’s also mathematically unsound. By Bricker’s own pulled-from-the-ass estimate, he “bet” there’d be 200 illegal voters in an electorate of three million (a ratio of 1 to 15000). Later, he moved the goalposts (or perhaps more accurately, shrunk them) with this:
Four votes out 232,000 is a ratio of 1:58000, which is somewhat not “precisely the same position” as 1:15000, leaving me to suspect that math is not Bricker’s strong suit.
But anyway, let’s go with his first ratio, since it’s more favourable to his idea that voter fraud is a problem. So some kind of voter ID card is put into place, along with the mechanisms for producing and distributing said cards (though details on how this would work, I note, are often lacking). If even one legitimate voter out of 15000 has enough problems with the process that they can’t get an ID (and every single one of the alleged 200 illegal voters is stopped), then Bricker’s “solution” has already created the same size problem that it ostensibly solves.
If even one legitimate voter out of 14925 has a problem getting the ID (resulting in 201 blocked voters out of an electorate of three million - and all 200 of the original illegal voters are blocked), then Bricker’s “solution” has created a bigger problem than it ostensibly solves.
It was when I challenged his “200 out of 3 million” claim (post 4552) that he started on his “I think you don’t understand my argument” nonsense (4555), soon followed by a variant on his standard fallback position: “it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense - if the legislators want to pass it, they will - neener neener neener.” (4566)
Well, I hope more judiciaries will intervene on the side of reason. Neener.
The third is closest. I am not an expert myself, but the entire purpose of the adversarial legal system is to let each side marshal their strongest arguments.
The two are not fungible. An illegal vote is absolutely prohibited. A vote not cast because someone feels it’s too difficult to do so may, or may not, be a problem. It depends on whether the difficulty is unreasonable.
Voodoo. If a Santeria priestess announced that voters would be punished with a Voodoo curse, and I showed you that five hundred votes were stopped, would that be sufficient cause to take some sort of legal action against the priestess?
I won’t even go that far. They aren’t technically legal, and at least one court has ruled on that.
Voter ID laws might be sufficiently sanitized to pass constitutional muster, but, to date, they have been written so badly as to be obvious for the partisan assaults on voting liberty that they actually are.
They haven’t even bothered to craft a fig-leaf that the courts could wink at!
And whether the difficulty is assigned to one class of people more than to another, which violates equal protection requirements.
A voter ID law which targets the poor, students, the elderly and retired, and people who speak languages other than English is absolutely prohibited. It is every bit as evil as someone registering ineligible voters.
I’m not talking about how someone “feels”, I’m talking about the likelihood of actual bureaucratic barriers getting in the way of someone who genuinely wants to vote and would gladly go to vote on the day of the vote, but can’t get the ID card necessary to vote. If even one legitimate voter out of 15000 can’t manage it because they lack certain documents or for any number of reasons that one could picture one person out of fifteen thousand falling prey to just out of simple bad luck, then you’ve created a problem as great as your own estimate of the problem you claim exists. More people than that die of heat stroke, I mention just for the heck of it.
So a vote that should have been registered does not get registered. I don’t think it unreasonable to see this as a problem of the same magnitude as a vote being registered that should not have been. Personally, I find it more offensive to get in the way of a legitimate voter than to let an illegitimate voter by, but no matter.
Is there some legal obligation those 500 people had to get documents from the priestess, who declined to supply them or delayed in doing so? If not, relevance?
I pointed this problem out when he first brought up closely-contested elections as a “problem” and claimed that voter ID was a “solution.”
It isn’t! It is statistically almost exactly as likely to cause the problem as to solve it!
Worse: if four votes out of 232,000 can decide an election, then the goal of a voter ID law must be to make our trust and assurance in every voter’s registration 99.9982 per cent certain. Just showing a photograph isn’t good enough, as there are lots of people who bear a two or three per cent resemblance to each other. We would have to use a full DNA test to identify each individual as a legitimate voter.
Close elections are a problem inherent in democracy itself. If the two political parties are equally divided (and they would seem to be!) the odds are high that the four swing voters are also divided. Only one chance in 16 that all four of them voted the same way.
(If one side is using cemetery residents to vote, who’s to say the other side isn’t using Canadians to vote? Bricker not only has to show that the problem exists, but, for his proposal to solve it, he also has to show that it is biased. Otherwise, we might end up excluding 3,192 people who voted one way…and 3,191 people who voted the other…and the election is still decided by three votes.)
The thing is the current requirements probably prevent people from voting now. Anytime there is 1 requirement (assuming the requirement isn’t ‘breathing’), then there will be some subset who won’t be able to or won’t bother to comply. The argument here is what are reasonable requirements and the philosophical bent of the arguer.
You know, reading that again, for a second there I couldn’t believe he actually said that. Yep, #2501.
I don’t quite agree. Simply registering voters who might not be eligible doesn’t strike me as nearly as odious as trying to stymie people known to be legitimate voters. As an example, there were numerous volunteers helping to register blacks to vote in southern states in the fifties and sixties. Some of those voters would not be able to pass the voter-eligibility requirements imposed on the day of the vote (i.e. the infamous Alabama literacy test) so technically they were not eligible to vote. It was still the right thing to register them.
I realize that’s a pretty-far-afield objection and won’t harp on it.
If he hasn’t already, I’m sure Bricker will be proud to point out to you that he doesn’t have to prove a damn thing - if a legislature wants to pass it, they will.
Sure, which is why I asked some time back if Bricker knew of any politicians who were promoting the idea of voter ID while also promoting the idea of making these IDs easy to get, i.e. someone who had given some thought to the idea of not creating a bigger problem then the one they were ostensibly solving (generously assuming honest intent).
I don’t recall him naming any, but the invitation is open to all. Even then, a bureaucratic process that only proves nightmarish and unmanageable to one person out of 15000 is probably working pretty well, as bureaucracies go.
I’ve seen him say stupider things. It’s actually a tad refreshing when we get a glimpse of his true feelings.
Sincere question for Bricker, if he can dismount his high hypothetical horse long enough to contemplate the real world.
Can you point to any national elections that were very likely swung by fraud or malfeasance, whether voter ID would have prevented it or not?
I’ll go first. The Presidential elections of 1960, 2000, and 2004 would likely have had different results if the wills of legitimate voters had been strictly followed. (Though I guess experts think JFK might still have won in a squeaker.)
Can you point to any national elections that were very likely swung by felons’ votes, illegal or otherwise?
Don’t wait for the consecutive translation into legalese, please. This is a test to see whether you are aware of the real world, or your catatonia is too deep.
Hence why I mentioned that it was part of a series of actions taken. Standing alone it won’t do much, but it is considered a brick in the building of a less obese Philadelphia.