Drawing the Lime.

     If you’ve been to Lower Greenville, the Katy trail, or White Rock Lake in the past few months you will have noticed the hundreds of dollar an hour bikes that litter the sidewalks and pathways. There were over two hundred and fifty complaints in the first eighteen days of January alone about these bikes which have had no regulations on where they can be placed. There has been talks by  the city of  council Dallas for regulating these bike share companies. Recently Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax sent a statement to these bike share companies “may be left with no choice but to begin removing bicycles in its rights of way, sidewalks, trails and/or trail heads that are identified

     One thing that I find interesting is that in lime bikes 2017 year end report they said that they had 45,000 active users in Dallas and Lime Bike alone has 15,000 bikes (each Lime bike costs around 2,500 dollars per bike). That’s about 3 riders per bike which means many bikes are left unused for a majority of the day with a high supply of bikes but a low demand to ride them This creates problems for both people and the bike share companies. This results in a majority of bikes being unused, and since it’s a dock free system the main place they get left are sidewalks and pathways which are inconvenient to others who do not use the bikes. The problem for the bike companies is that they are not currently making profits according to the economist.com the companies aren’t even making profits yet based off of data from Ofo and Mobike. Over the next few months its going to be interesting to see how these companies try to increase their size and revenue while also fighting the restrictions by thew city. These companies to increase revenue needs to increase the size of their fleet so they will increase their capitol but that also means they will need more land to put the bikes.

The AR-15: A Military Fire Arm for Civilian Use

     On april 28th 1996 at a cafe in Port Arthur Tasmania Australia 28 year old martin Bryant  began shooting his semi automatic AR-15 and semi-automatic .308 FN rifle at the civilians in the cafe within half an hour he had killed 35 people and injured another 23, this was Australia’s most deadly mass shooting. Compared to United states mass shootings there were only two with more casualties, Orlando in June 2016 and Las Legas in October 2017.  

      After this tragedy Australia passed strict gun laws banning semi automatic fire arms and shot guns, established a 28 day waiting period for the remaining allowed guns,  and destroyed over 600,000 guns that were turned in by civilians. Since these laws were passed the gun related  homicide  and suicide rates in Australia have each decreased over 50% each and in the 21 years since then there has not been another mass shooting in Australia .

     In the wake of the recent vegas shooting many writers are asking for the United States to act in a similar way to the Australians in aspects of gun control often mentioning the fact that Australia was strongly conservative and believed that guns were an important part of Australian culture. I do agree that the United States should take the same approach that Australia has but although it will be much harder to pass in the U.S.. Supreme court Justice Antonin Scalia, states:  “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited…”. It is “…not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”  I believe that one of these limits to the second amendment should be the AR-15 and that the United States should ban the AR-15.

     The AR-15 is one of t most popular guns in the United States with over 8 million owned ,this was also the gun used in the Sandy Hook, orlando, Port Arthur, las vegas, and Sutherland Springs shootings all of which  each killed over 25 people. This has been the gun of choice for the majority of mass shooters. The primary reason the AR-15 is so deadly is because it was derived from the M 16 models used by the United States armed forces , this gun was designed with the sole purpose of killing people quickly and efficiently. The only major difference between the two guns are that the M 16 can fire fully automatic while the AR can only shoot semi-auto, however in the military soldiers are trained to primarily use semi automatic firing increase accuracy and save ammunition. The AR-15 should not be allowed for civilian use even under the second amendment.

The Obsolescence of the Electoral College

      In 1787 the electoral college was founded by the constitutional convention of 1787. The primary reasons for the founding of the electoral college system were that information traveled slowly, the worry that factions(like political parties) would arise. I believe the Electoral college should be removed because the reasons it was founded are outdated.

 

     The electoral college should be removed because of one of the reasons it was created was because of the lack of communication and unity between states  in the beginning of the united states when the states and federal governments were still dividing up their powers.communication during this time was incredibly difficult because there were very few channels connecting the states together and the ones that did exist were very slow making it much harder for the voters to stay informed as well as  making it significantly more difficult to count votes, but now we have much faster and more efficient forms of communication making it effortlessly easy to communicate with anyone in the united states in seconds  so it can be much easier to vote and count the votes by utilizing modern technology.

“In the 18th century, communication and transportation were primitive and the country was sparsely populated. Most citizens were assumed to have no knowledge of candidates for federal office.” – Daniel Ullman, professor of mathematics at George Washington university

 

     Another reason the electoral college should be removed is because it emphasizes mainly the republican and democratic parties, making it harder for third party and independents to make legitimate runs at the presidency. With the winner take all system of electoral votes the larger parties have an advantage because they have a much larger backing, with many voters deciding based on the party on the candidate not necessarily on what the candidate promises or believes. The party system has essentially become the factions that Madison warned about in The Federalist no. 10 , the electoral college “enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens” making politics more about elections and less about law and policy.

“When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” – James Madison

     The electoral college makes many citizens believe that their vote does not matter especially those who vote in states that consistently vote for the same party each election. with the winner takes all system makes voters feel as though their vote doesn’t matter in consistently blue and consistently red states. by removing the the winner takes all system or the electoral college voters will feel as though they have more of a say in the election and will increase participation in elections.

 

 

 

Why the Local Vote Matters

A citizen’s vote is incredibly impactful to the outcome of local elections. With a smaller populations size each vote makes a larger impact, for example on one election day in Ohio seven different items on the ballot were decided by just one vote however many Americans believe that their vote does not matter especially when it comes to the presidential election every four years due to the idea that a single vote does not effect such a large election and the system of the electoral college, but the fact is every Americans vote matters especially in the local elections. In 2014 less than twenty percent of voting age citizens voted in their local elections which is a problem because this means that around a fifth of the population is making the decisions of the entire population and that fifth is often not an accurate sample of the entirety of the population which means the election results often don’t match the views of the citizens.

For everyday life local elections are very impactful because you vote on your city council members, these members then represent that city for two years, they will vote on large scale issues like infrastructure (for example the trinity toll road), how schools are managed and the standards they are held to, and they also decide the structure of the public transit system  . It is very important to choose your representation amongst the city council because they can affect a citizen more directly.

Local elections also give the citizens the power to directly vote on certain issues like the recent vote in Arlington on whether or not to build a new stadium for the Texas Rangers in which the citizens could vote directly on whether or not to allow the build. The voters of Arlington decided in favor of the one billion dollar stadium.

The local vote is one of the most important duties and privileges among american citizens and the more participation in these votes the more accurately the government represents the citizens they are governing. An election that has a larger percentage of population is much more likely represent the political views and ideals of the community.