A Voucher Based Political Donation System

Why?

The Unites States of America has many problems with our political system. We have an system which favors big money interests over those of the people, according to a Princeton Study^[1]. And we see this all the time too, for example Cory Booker voted against letting citizens import drugs from Canada which are way cheaper than they are in the USA. Wonder why, look no further than where he gets his money from, huh, isn't that strange he received $216,500 from Pharma/Healthcare SuperPACs^[2]. Or when Tom Price(our new Secretary of Health and Human Services) bought biotech stocks, than passed bills that would make their price go up^[3]. Nothing shady there, #DemocracyInAction

What?

What I am proposing I guess is similar to the thing they have in Seattle, idk just wanted to spit out an idea.

Instead of having our current system with big donors and SuperPACs and shit. I propose a simpler system, of vouchers of $5 per month for every voting age American. We would then enable Americans to set up an automatic donation to the party of their choice.
In order to make sure new ideas aren't blocked by lack of donors, for all parties that are capable of securing the donations of 0.1% of the population, or approximately 300,000 today, they would become eligible to receive $5,000,000 of annual funding and as long as they maintain that they will keep the funding.

Estimated Cost

1. Vouchers per eligible voter of $5 per month, If 200 mil adults^[4], annual cost would be $12,000,000,000. 
2. Funding for parties, $5,000,000 annually if they have 300,000+ donors, based on third party votes in 2016, or all non Dem+Repub votes^[5], there were 8,261,498 voters, that would result in a theoretical 28 parties, or federal funding in total of, $140,000,000

Estimated Annual Total : $12,140,000,000


Sources

[1] : http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
[2] : https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2016&cid=N00035267&type=I&newmem=N
[3] : http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/16/politics/tom-price-bill-aiding-company/
[4] : http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/how-many-registered-voters-are-in-america-2016-229993
[5] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016#Results

Alabama's Bible Cops

You know those Republican states that love passing bans on Sharia, even though Sharia law is no threat cause Muslims make up less than 1% of the US population[1] and we have the First Amendment. Well, Alabama was one of them in 2014, they passed a ban on sharia law, " Alabama, where voters passed an Amendment to the State Constitution (72% to 28%) to "ban sharia" in 2014"[2]. Well, apparently they didn't ban Christian Sharia. A new bill passed the Alabama House, which allows a church to establish their own police force[Article]. Hell, the guy who proposed it literally said they were allowed to do their own investigations. Wow, a religious police force in the USA, now just imagine if this was Muslims trying to do this. Like if the 9-11 mosque decided they wanted their own police force, the outrage that these people would raise,"OMG #CreepingSharia". Apparently none of them give a fuck when its, "#CreepingDominionism".

Article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/02/18/an-alabama-churchs-desire-to-create-its-own-police-force-raises-a-lot-of-constitutional-concerns/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States#Religion

Healthcare In Canada vs The USA

A few days ago, I wrote an post on single-payer healthcare and today, I want to focus on one of the main attacks used where people claim that Canadians are "fleeing". So are they and are they abnormally fleeing.

Well a look at the raw numbers first shows that slightly more Canadians leave their countries every year, compared to Americans, "0.13 percent of Canadians and 0.08 percent of Americans who flee their countries for health care"[1].

While this number seemingly confirms the attack that Canadians are "fleeing". Upon closer thought, this arguments seems shaky. I mean "82.99% of the Canadian population lives in counties 100 miles or less from the American border"[2]. Compared to just, " 9.06% of the US population lives in counties 100 miles or less from the Canadian border"[2]. Considering that about 83% of the Canadian population lives near the American border 0.13 percent of Canadians leaving, means that Canada does not have a bunch of people fleeing for healthcare. And the people who leave, most likely are leaving due to the rationing of care based on need, so the people who do leave end up leaving to get a voluntary procedure done a bit quickly. This is of course compared to the USA, where just 9% of our population lives by the Canadian border and yet 0.08% of our population leaves to get healthcare, while not a huge number it does raise the question, if our free-market healthcare is so great, why are people leaving. We know the poor aren't leaving, they can't afford healthcare, let a alone a plane ticket.


[1]: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/02/americans-flee-america-overseas-health-care-just-canadians
[2]: http://polistuff505.blogspot.com/2017/02/what-percentage-of-canadas-and-americas.html 

What Percentage of Canada's and America's Population Lives Within 100 miles of the Border

General

In order to determine which people lived within 100 miles from the border, 2nd level administrative districts were used and if they overlapped a circle which had a radius of 100 miles or less and was centered on the border, then it's entire population was deemed 100 miles from the border. In the USA, 2nd level administrative districts are called counties. In Canada, they are refereed to as census districts.

Spreadsheet with numbers per 2nd level admin. district found here.

Tools Used:

Google Earth Pro

mapchart.net

Google

Wikipedia

Countries

The United States of America

Map of Counties Selected

Created Using mapchart.net

Findings:

Based of 2013 data provided by Wikipedia and Google

Of the approximately 316.5 million people in the USA, 28.87 million live in counties 100 miles from the Canadian border. 9.12% of the US population lives in counties 100 miles or less from the Canadian border.

Canada

Map of Census Districts Selected

Created Using mapchart.net

Findings

Based of 2011 data provided by Wikipedia

Of the approximately 33.48 million people in Canada, 27.87 million live in census districts 100 miles from the American border. 83.26% of the Canadian population lives in counties 100 miles or less from the American border.

Data Compiled at http://bit.ly/2mCoAHU

*EDIT 3-1-2017
Added in Data for Alaska, Canada and US maps and data effected
Previously,
   USA: 28.66 mil people or 9.06% of US pop. by border
   Canada: 33.48 mil people or 82.99% of Canadian pop. by border
Removed list of counties because it was cluttering up the page

Ahh TPP Perez

What's the Democrats secret strategy to win elections, its not to go where the people of the party are at, or to be the not-corporate party it's to make TPP(Tom) Perez the chair[1], I'm not going to lie there have been some things he has done that I support like the Obama Admin's overtime laws[2]. But he also supports the TPP[3]. Yikes, well I guess this is why we have Justice Democrats.[4]

Links : 
https://www.one-tab.com/page/-WRacfw1TYae4lGnfMZz5A

Conservatives vs. "Socialism"

So Vox is reporting on some people who think are concerned about Sander's "socialism".[1]

Bernie Sanders Is Not A Socialist, No Matter How Many Times He Call Himself That

Socialism, especially in America is not what Sander's alludes to the whole I give a fuck about the people thing. Socialism, especially the one that has failed is "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods"[2]. Now you look at Sander's policies they never call for collectivizing the economy or nationalization of companies, at best his policies get rid of some such as the Healthcare Insurance Sector [3]. Sanders should really go around calling himself a Social Democrat(totally not the title for this blog). So let's stop trying to commie-scare people for someone who is objectively not a communist or socialist in the economic sense.

Social Democracy, Sounds Pretty Shit To Me

Well even though Bernie is not a socialist, I still haven't addressed the central premise of these activists, that Sander's policies and ideology leads to shitty governments and bad lives for the people. Well lets look at the standard of living in different countries, lets consider for instance that the USA ranks worse on standard of living, than fucking France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, Iceland, The UK, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, Denmark, Canada, Finland[4]. It's almost like we should have system where our massive economy, one which is over 18 trillion dollars large[5], should serve all the people rather than just the elite, just a thought.

Sources: List of Sources

Hi

I just want to rant/not be the shittiest writer on this planet.

Single Payer Healthcare - CA State Legislature Bill

According to the Mercury News, California state lawmakers introduced a bill to create a single-payer healthcare system. And as usual, the talking points used by opponents return, "'It’s been a disaster in countries like Canada,' said Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, based in San Francisco."[1].

 So, has it been a disaster in Canada. Well one way we could determine whether it's a "disaster" is to see how many people are leaving Canada to go elsewhere for healthcare. "0.13 percent of Canadians and 0.08 percent of Americans who flee their countries for health care"[2]. On the surface it looks like Canadians flee to other countries for healthcare a tiny bit more, however this can be easily explained when you consider that "an estimated 75 percent of Canadians live within 161 kilometers (100 miles) of the U.S. border"[3]. I mean if that many live that many people live that close to the border, and the healthcare system is a "disaster" you would expect that number to be way higher. Not to mention the fact that this is the amount of people leaving Canada period, not how many come to the USA for treatment.

Or if it was such a disaster I bet Canadians would hate their national and local systems.

Source : [4]

Nope, Canadians still like their healthcare system quite a bit, I mean 70% local, 73% national isn't even close to a horrible approval rating. The national number beats out the US' by 17% and the local is just 11%. And they get all of this and spend less of their GDP of healthcare too, we in the USA spend 17.1% of our GDP on healthcare in total [4], meanwhile Canada spends 10.4% of their GDP on healthcare in total [5]. So we spend way more money for a system that barely makes people happier.

And a lot of this is waste too, like all the administrators we need to keep our current system working, just at the private insurers alone we spend anywhere from $154 billion to $233 billion[6]. And this isn't even counting the ridiculously high prices we pay for drugs in the USA and other procedures[7]. And one of the major reasons for this is the way Medicare Part D was set up in 2003 banned the federal government from negotiating with drug companies[8]. Gee, I wonder what happens to prices when a major consumer comes in and will pay whatever you want, it's almost like you'll price it higher.


Sources
[1]: http://bayareane.ws/2kFVipm
[2]: http://bit.ly/2muRM2u
[3]: http://on.natgeo.com/1MdRYyS
[4] : http://bit.ly/2la7cbh
[5] : http://bit.ly/2mnky65
[6] : http://bit.ly/2mnlK9w
[7] : http://bit.ly/2lk1cO3
[8] : http://bit.ly/2eCwJby