Will's Opinions

This is the blog where I weite opions. My main page is http://wcprice2.tumblr.com/.

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Rating the US Amendments

It has been 47 years since congress passed a constitutional amendment. The 27th was ratified only 26 years ago but congress passed with the Bill of Rights. I personally think we are long overdue for some constitutional amendments but seeing as US politics today is a lot like bear excrement that probably isn’t happening anytime soon. In the meantime here is my opinion and rating of the existing 27 amendments in descending order. The 27th Amendment. 9/10. This is probably the coolest amendment given its record setting ratification period of over 200 years. It is kind of a no brains idea and I think it is laughable that the 13 original state legislatures were like “nah I could be a senator some day I don’t want this shit holding me back.” The 26th Amendment. 4/10. I guess the voting age has got to be somewhere but it is only arbitrarily 18 because that was the arbitrary age that you got drafted at during Vietnam. Anyway I wish they had arbitrarily chosen 17 instead because at least 17 is prime. The 25th Amendment. 7/10. Took them too many words to get the point across if you ask me. A necessary amendment but I think we should look back at mid 1960s and the sudden wiliness to pull back the presidents power a little bit we can all agree that there was a lot more to do here. The 24th Amendment. 10/10. One of the best amendments. A nice compromise of today’s political landscape. Republicans hate taxes and Democrats hate it when you make it hard for poor people to vote. Absolutely the only standing amendment that would have a snowballs chance in hell at ratification in 2018.

The 23rd Amendment. 5/10. Wow we were really close to a solid amendment here then we went and blew it with 6 words “but in no event more than” yeah so we going to limit DC’s voting power because Tom from Wyoming isn’t over represented enough? Also if we don’t pass an amendment giving DC citizens actual representatives before I am 50 I’m starting a revolution for taxation without representation. The 22nd Amendment. 3/10. I think term limits are a good thing. I think that the 2 terms is 1 too many. I think there should be an election the year after the midterms to extend the presidency by 2 more years for a maximum of 6 years served. Some would say this creates a longer lame duck period but who cares as it is today the president is just running for office that year anyway. The 21st Amendment. 2/10. Should have decriminalized all drugs. The 20th Amendment. 3/10. First of all we know you mean eastern time but have some dignity and specify it. Secondly I take significant issue with how we are supposed to choose a president if something happens to our elects. Lastly, limiting the ratification period of an amendment is lame. The 19th Amendment.  10/10. If only they had stopped at the word State or added “or any other reason” to the end of the sentence I would give this an 11/10.  The 18th Amendment. 2/10. Gets some credit for always being an easy question on the AP US history exam. Doesn’t matter anymore and also was trash to begin with. The 17th Amendment. 9/10. Wow, can you imagine what today’s lobbyist would do if we had not gotten this through before 1980? It actually terrifies me when I think about how most of our federal laws came before this. I understand at the time it was different but boy are we not in the same world we were in 1787 The 16th Amendment. 6/10. Income tax is one way of doing it. The 15th Amendment. 10/10. Okay welcome to the ones you actually know. This one is like the 19th, they came so close to writing a perfect law but they missed it.

The 14th Amendment. 6/10. Wow is the 14th amendment a mixed bag. I really wish they had thought this one through a little bit more especially since it has evolved to be the corner stone of a shit ton of constitutional debate and supreme court rulings. Let’s break this one down by Section. Section 1 4/10. Welcome to the infamous equal protection clause everybody. Woo-boy. This section really starts off quite wonderfully. I wish they had defined some of their terms. Liberty, due process of law, and equal protection are all too vague. Unfortunately, we have a bunch of idiots that interrupt this as “it is okay to stuff children in cages.” So, I don’t know, maybe a clarifying statement that makes it obvious that you can’t stuff children in cages. Section 2 7/10. Indigenous people should count. Section 3 4/10. Meh.  Section 4 6/10. For some reason I feel like section 4 covers the necessary basis and we can let them be elected and scrap section 3. Maybe I’m too easy on the rebel scum. Section 5 5/10. Seems obvious. The 13th Amendment. 10/10. We should do a better job enforcing it. The 12th Amendment. 6/10. Fine but we all know the original way was more fun. The 11th Amendment. 3/10. Fun fact a few months ago the New Jersey Senate post ratified this amendment. It is still pending ratification in the general assembly. I think this amendment is bad because well I’m a federalist piece of trash that Jefferson would hate.  The 10th Amendment. 5/10. It is really difficult to believe that every ounce of power in the pages and pages of federal laws and executive orders is granted to the federal government by the constitution. Everyone basically points at this amendment when it is convenient for their political leanings and ignores it when its not. I’d be okay with a return to enforcement but only if like a lot of really important things are added to the constitution first. The 9th Amendment. 10/10. A truly great amendment. Could use an update to modern language but all around wonderful. The 8th Amendment.  2/10. What is excessive? What is cruel and unusual? Why is execution still a thing? Hod did we end up with mass incarceration? The answer to all of this and more whenever our government figures out the 8th Amendment is greatly in need of a refresh.

The 7th Amendment. 7/10. Needs updating like pretty much all the bill of rights but overall one of the least outdated parts. I think it would be really funny if every-time somebody got a parking ticket over 20 dollars we insisted on a jury trial. Then we would just have a collective citizens agreement to jury nullify any parking tickets from street cleaning days in Pittsburgh. That would be great. The 6th Amendment. 9/10. I am sure there is likely something wrong with this amendment but I’m not smart enough to understand what that is. I like it although I don’t think we enforce it so... we should do that? The 5th Amendment. 3/10. Screw the military getting their own trials that is dog shit. You defend our freedoms you should be tried under the freedoms we enjoy. I also think they need to be explicit about who has the authority to quantify just compensation for private property taken for public use. The 4th Amendment. 7/10. It is good. Could be enforced better. Unreasonable should be defied. The 3rd Amendment. 8/10. I don’t think this could ever even come up today but I love it so much. The 2nd Amendment. 0/10. Why is the amendment so different than all the others? How do the comas in the original vs the ratified copy change the meaning? I really don’t see how this can be interrupted to be anything other than one of the following 3: I have absolute rights to arms including nuclear warheads. I have absolute rights to revolutionary era weapons including canons but no specific rights to anything invented after the ratification of this amendment. Or I have no specific rights at all to any weapons unless I am in a regulated militia. Very few people seem to be arguing any of these points making this the single worse amendment of the whole Constitution.  The 1st Amendment. 10/10. Has really stood the test of time. This is a good one.

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I guess I am an Oprah Centrist

Okay so I know this is mostly just “this week in social media” and everyone is going to move on tomorrow but the Oprah conversation has brought several things to the front of my mind that I want to get out there. Whenever I try to write one of these it usually turns into an illegible mess so apologies in advance to the 2 of you that actually read past this point. On another note I am well aware that I have a 3rd graders understanding of grammar and spelling so no need to tell me by correcting all my mistakes.

I am blown away how passionate people I know to be liberals/progressives became overnight about whether or not Oprah would make a good President of the United States. Didn’t any of you pay attention in middle school? Sometimes you have to read all the multiple choice answers even if B really jumps out at you. Sometimes option “E” is “Not enough information provided”, “none of the above”, or “sometimes B and sometimes C.” I think all of these are better reactions than 90% of the “Hot takes” on the Oprah subject. I’m not saying you personally do not have legitimate evidence to support your opinion on how Oprah would do as president. It is possible you do. What I am saying is: it is highly unlikely that every liberal/progressive in my social media circles conveniently finished the research necessary to form an informed opinion right before they sat down to watch the golden globes.

But since all of you seem to have done just that can one of you please highlight some of the key points from your research for me? All my other friends are playing some cruel joke where they are fixated on the kinds of arguments I’ve come to expect from conservatives. The ones where you boil a complex question down to a simple point that is easily agreeable on the surface and is based almost entirely in ethos or pathos with no logos to be found. I am going to focus on the one I have seen the highest volume of but believe me regardless of what side of this “debate” you’re on the arguments I’ve seen from you I find equally illogical.

“Oprah doesn’t have any experience in politics therefore she is a bad choice for president.” I had quips w/ this narrative during the Trump campaign and regret not voicing it more at the time. I think my main issue with it is it gets thrown around so nonchalantly and is incredibly loaded.

First off there was a time in our nation that you had to be white and male to be a politician. Do you realize how whitewashed and man washed congress is even today? 91% of the Senate and 88% of the house is non-white[1] (compared to almost 40% of the USA[2]). Curiously enough only a fifth of congressional representatives are women when they make up something like half the country.[1] So yeah I think we are going to have to elect some officials with no experience if we are ever going to balance those scales. Or you know we can make the same arguments the white male executives that run my company make every time they have to appoint a new Senior Vice President who happens to also be a white male. And look I’m not saying experience isn’t a good reason to pick somebody for a job - I’m just saying nothing will ever change if it is going to be a deal breaker every time. You’d think a bunch of millennials always posting memes about entry-level jobs asking for 8 years experience would get that.

Second of all where the hell are you drawing the experience line? Barack Obama had only been a politician for 9 years when he started his 08 campaign. Only 2 of those were in DC. I am sure you learn a lot as a state legislator but I can’t imagine you touch on things like diplomacy and military strategy as an Illinois State senator two things that the president is actually supposed to do. The point being is Obama had not spent anymore time working on peace in the middle east than you spent doing GenEds for your bachelors degree. Actually maybe that explains why he kind of sucked on that front… I joke but I don’t think outside of serving in a high ranking cabinet position there are very many people that you can really say have the “experience” of being president. A general may have all the military strategy in the world but not no the process of a Bill. A 30 year senator probably has the bill thing down to a science but might be completely lost in his first national defense brief. I imagine Oprah has both those two beat on a lot of the soft skills that go into being president such as public speaking and outreach.

Third and most obvious of all - those people with the “experience” are the ones that got the nation to where it is today. (I am just going to assume you probably have some problems with where the nation is today if you do not just go ahead and skip this part.) Look I’m not saying there aren’t people in the Senate, House, Governor Mansions, etc that wouldn’t make great presidents. I am saying that the vast majority of the people in those positions are opportunist, crony capitalist, and/or owned by lobbyist. Like it or not there was some truth to Trump’s “drain the swamp” message and a reason it resonated with people. (I think it is pretty clear that was just a convenient campaign message and he abandoned it minutes after taking his oath but it doesn’t mean there wasn’t some truth to it.) Once you take out the people who are complicit in the broken system you’re left with a pretty thin field of potential presidential nominees to choose from.

I personally want anything but a thin field in the 2020 primaries. I think the most important thing to do is consider all the options on the table. Legitimately research and understand their platforms and differences. And most importantly of all make them take a stance outside of “I am not Trump.” Maybe Oprah will actually put together a team of people and a platform that can offer real progress to the American people. Something that will ignite people not just to cast a ballot for her but also to campaign heavily down ticket to make sure her well laid out plans get have a snowman’s chance in hell at implementation. Maybe Warren, Booker, Sanders, Zuckerberg, or Gillibrand will do it. I do not know. What I do know is that we should not back or discount any of them before they have even announced their candidacy, let along delivered us a platform.

There are a couple of other points/things I wanted to talk about but didn’t find the right place for here maybe I’ll write a different blog post some other time to discuss it. Anyway thanks if you actually read this jumbled mess. I love you!

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Where do we go next?

It is currently 10:55 PM CST on Tuesday, November 16th 2016. Right now it looks very likely that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States of America.  My Twitter and Facebook feeds are filled with cries of panic and disbelief in reaction to the news. I can relate. The last few weeks I haven’t been sleeping well. I haven’t been as productive at work as I usually am. And all around I have been less cheerful than usual. Anxiety that this moment would come was causing all of this and now that I’m here I find myself reflecting on how I and everyone else in my social networks could let this happen. Make no mistake I let this happen. You let this happen too. Everyone in America is responsible for the outcome of this election not just the ~48% of the voting population that cast their ballots for Trump. I’m not writing this blog to place blame or make anyone who wasn’t a Trump supporter feel guilt on top of their fear and anxiety. If I am making you feel that way I would request you to stop reading. Ironically, writing this is helping me deal with my own fear and anxiety. So how am I responsible for Trump becoming one of the most powerful people in the world? Well for starters I did not donate or campaign for any of his competitors once. I knew months before the election who I would be voting for and that I desperately wanted them to win but I didn’t once pick up the phone to convince a stranger to feel the same way as me. I make a comfortable salary and could’ve easily donated to my candidates campaign but for whatever greedy reasons I didn’t. I now regret that decision. Rewind further to primary season. I was “meh” on the 2016 election from the start. I had close friends enthusiastically supporting Bernie Sanders but I never got as excited as them. Partially because I’m not as far left as a lot of them, partially because I never believed Bernie had a chance. But what I did do during Primary season was silently watch as many Bernie supporters became increasingly negative towards Hillary Clinton. I ideally clicked past post from very liberal friends demonizing one of the great liberal politicians of our time. Meanwhile Trump’s reign over the GOP primary made me laugh. I got satisfaction from watching what seemed like an unelectable meme destroy conservatives from within. Little did I know the opposite was really going on. I guess if I could go back in time I would take Trump’s candidacy more seriously from the beginning. I would work harder to convince die hard Bernie supporters that Clinton could also be a champion for liberalism and progress. But if I am going to be real honest with myself Donald Trump isn’t president because of the 2016 election. Donald Trump is president because of what I let my country become over the last decade.It is no secret that bi-partisan governing has been nigh nonexistent in American federal politics for years. But our politicians weren’t the only ones refusing to work across party lines. Almost everyone I talk to is set in their outlook on life. I regularly play devil’s advocate in discussions just to see how people respond. Usually it isn’t well. Conservative or Liberal usually the person chooses to attack me in order to defend their position. I am bigoted, naive, or dumb for having an opinion that isn’t that person’s opinion. I am sure many others have experienced this and like me are even guilty for being the other person. Why do I think this is what gave Trump the election? I’m not an expert and I’m probably spewing BS here but it seems intuitive to me. As we pushed ourselves further and further apart from each other by refusing to discuss our difference and writing off those with different views as *insult X* we created a completely polarized nation. And what could be more polarizing than a reality TV star / famous business man that talks about building a wall to keep out undocumented residents?  Every time I didn’t explain fully and defend my beliefs to people who disagree with me I promoted that polarization and voted for Trump. Every time I ignored somebodies woes about Obamacare or abortion instead of having an intelligent conversation and at least trying to understand that persons views I voted for Trump. And every time I called somebody racists, bigoted, or sexist for their viewpoint instead of explaining why I thought their views were problematic I voted for Trump.  If I truly believed my opinions were right on all these issues that I hold so close to my heart then why would I ever let anybody disagree with me? Why would I ignore the fact that half the country clearly doesn’t see it my way? After all what good is an opinion if I can’t convince other people to agree with me?