this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
637 points (96.2% liked)

News

23287 readers
5390 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags into its fourth month, the U.S. government under Pres. Joe Biden has found a clever new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons and ammunition they need to defend their country.

It is, in essence, an American version of Germany’s circular weapons trade—the so-called Ringtausch. The United States is gifting older surplus weapons to Greece with the understanding that Greece donates to Ukraine some of its own surplus weapons.

Greek media broke the news last week. According to the newspaper Kathimerini and other media, the Biden administration offered the Greek government three 87-foot Protector-class patrol boats, two Lockheed Martin C-130H airlifters, 10 Allison T56 turboprop engines for Lockheed P-3 patrol planes plus 60 M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and a consignment of transport trucks.

All this hardware is U.S. military surplus—and is available to Greece, free of charge, under a U.S. legal authority called “excess defense articles.” Federal law allows an American president to declare military systems surplus to need, assign them a value—potentially zero dollars—and give them away on the condition that the recipient transport them.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] darkstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I think your question is misguided. Democracy doesn't mean a two-party system race to the bottom. Democracy can see democratically elected politicians that better resonate with each individual voter by eliminating first past the post voting and using ranked choice voting instead. The problem isn't that "half the country disagrees". You can't please everyone. The problem is that we've been divided and weaponized against each other, so the tribalism keeps us from finding common ground we may have. I doubt anyone votes FOR a candidate anymore. They seem to just vote AGAINST another candidate. Democracy works. It's our implementation of it that's failing.

[–] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Time to prune the Tree of Liberty

[–] SteveCC@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago

Working hard to put people before Party - https://represent.us/

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works -2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Ranked choice voting isn't a game changer. Almost every problem in US politics can be traced back to the hundred year old cap on the size of the house of representatives.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 9 points 9 months ago

The system has more than one critical flaw.

[–] Pretzilla@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not institutionalized lobbiests and corruption?

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works -1 points 9 months ago

By having more reps their power is diffused, and a single lobbyist can't meet meaningfully with twice the members they are now. The increased size would make lobbying more expensive and put a higher demand on campaign contributions, which is another expense. It also changes district size, which is important because a company may need more locations to have a meaningful impact on those districts.

While it's possible the percentage of corrupt representatives stays the same, the increase in absolute number should make it easier to expose some of them. This could serve as a small check on corruption.

The biggest thing is that it's more than twice as hard to get 20 people in agreement than 10.