Big State, Small State, Red State, Blue State

 It wasn't all that long ago, in historical terms, that thirteen sparsely-populated and newly independent states huddled along the north Atlantic shore of North America. They were all governed in the British traditions, having long been -- proudly, for the most part -- British colonies. Despite their large geographic size in an era when the fastest travel was at the pace of a galloping horse or a large sailing ship, they weren't terribly important to the British Empire, let alone to the wider world. The sugar-growing islands of the Caribbean were where the future seemed to be. These rebellious former colonies were nothing, really, but a market for British goods at the start of the industrial revolution, and maybe they could provide some foodstuffs and wood for ships. 

 The new states were jealous of their sovereignty. There was a certain amount of half-hearted cooperation among them, but even as the Treaty of Paris was being celebrated in the few New World streets, strains were growing between the various states that could easily have led to the dissolution of the malformed new nation. Some of the leading figures of the day, men that we still revere (despite their lack of foresight in having been rich, educated, articulate and white and, for the most part, slave-holders), saw well enough into the future, and appreciated the importance of unity among the States, to -- long story short -- create the Constitution that has been, since that era, our foundation as a nation.

 The creation of the Constitution necessarily required compromises, many compromises, to get our government off the ground. One of those compromises, called the Great Compromise, found a way to balance the interests of large and small states. It gave us two legislative houses: one representing The People and one representing The States. The small states (small in population) would never have joined the union without the sweetener of equal representation in the Senate, where every state, no matter how large or how small, gets two senators. 

 Those small states are mostly still small, and they've been joined by other states with small populations: Alaska, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Maine, Hawaii, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas ... and so on. All the smaller states benefit enough, by virtue of the Great Compromise, to satisfy themselves that they have some protection for their interests when in conflict with the larger states. Without that added degree of protection, there would have been no United States of America, and the wise leaders of the larger states in 1787 understood that.

 And there is one other aspect of the Great Compromise, one that is relevant here: the Electoral College. When a president of the United States is elected, it's the College that elects him (or, probably someday soon, her). The College is made up of delegations chosen by the several sovereign states, fifty of them now; delegations equal in number to the total representation of a state in the two houses of congress. So a large state like Texas, where I live, gets at present 40 electoral votes; California, the state with the largest population, gets 54. At the other extreme, a handful of small states (plus the District of Colombia) each get 3 electoral votes. It is another way in which small states are protected in a small way from the tyranny of the majority. A bit of lagniappe to encourage the small states' accession without really hurting the larger states.

 Now, though, some 200+ years down the road from Philadelphia, adherents of one political party want to do away with the Electoral College, because in a closely divided country such as we have now (not for the first time), they find that it's possible for the people of those small states, the ones that got the little sweetener of slightly increased representation in the Electoral College, can put a candidate over the finishing line even when that candidate gets fewer votes overall. It happened in 2016, giving us a president who will, I don't doubt, go down in history as the worst we have ever had. It happened in 2000, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but won the Electoral College vote. It happened in 1876 and again in 1888. (In 1824, the winner was chosen by Congress when nobody won the Electoral College vote.) 

 The Democratic Party wants to do away with the Electoral College as undemocratic. Well, in a sense, it is: a Wyomingite's presidential vote counts for just a tiny bit more than my Texas vote does in the same race. I'm not terribly worried about that, as a voter, because (a) it's a minuscule difference, and (b) there's an upside. The upside is that, in order to win an election, a party has to make its message appeal to all parts of the country. As the Democrats saw in 2016, even when running a capable but somewhat disliked candidate against possibly the most moronic and incompetent candidate ever to glide down a golden escalator, they couldn't win the Electoral College, even with a sizeable majority of the popular vote, because their message didn't resonate in the vast heartland of this country. They won the big states on the East and West coasts, and other states in those areas, but they lost the South (of course) and the Intermountain West and the Midwest because not enough of those voters favoured the sort of message the Democrats were putting out; they preferred the ludicrous lies and platitudes of the insurgent party. Many of those people still do, but not as many. 

 Electoral College or no, the Democratic Party as it's presently constituted holds a tremendous advantage in national races for the presidency, the senate, and the house. If its adherents could temper their rhetoric to national sensibilities, instead of only talking about things of interest to voters in the big cities of the country, they would have permanent majorities in Congress and every president from here on out. They'd be unbeatable. 

 And they should talk about their record, too. They probably won't win most of the Southern states (and y'all know why) in my lifetime, but if they could show people that it's been the Democratic administrations that have slowed the national debt (and even, once upon a time, a generation ago, reduced it); it's under Democratic administrations that the economy has done best since the 1970s; and now, finally, it's under a Democratic administration that bridges are being fixed, utilities upgraded, airports rehabilitated, and roads repaired. (How many "Infrastructure Weeks" did Donald Trump have, when it was all over? I lost count.) 

 The things important to all those counties coloured red in the top map are a little bit different from the things important to the blue counties ... but not by all that much. Most of their interests coincide. The Democrats, if they can hone their message, will win a lot of those red counties and red states if they stick to talking about what's doable. 

 And what's doable does not include getting rid of the Electoral College. It would require the assent of three-quarters of the states, meaning just thirteen (small) states can prevent it. They might get New Mexico to go along, and they might get New Hampshire and Vermont to give up their electoral edge. But that leaves more than 20 small states, more than enough to prevent ratification of that constitutional amendment. So they should just drop it, and try not to sound so damned radical. They should leave the stupidity to their opponents, who do it so much better these days anyway.

Fact Check

 One of the more trivial news stories of recent months has to do with the push by interested parties to increase the number of direct flights from around the country to Reagan Airport. Other interested parties oppose the proposed changes.

 Reagan Airport, if you're not familiar with it, lies on an island in the Potomac River at the edge of Washington DC. It's very convenient to the National Mall and all the offices near there. Some years ago the government built Dulles International Airport, half an hour west, in Virginia. In order to push the use of the inconveniently located Dulles, they adopted some complex regulations that limit the number of flights that can use Reagan.

 Consequently, a number of major cities around the country can't get direct air service to Reagan Airport. There are none, for example, to Reagan from San Diego, Tucson, Albuquerque, El Paso or San Antonio. People in those cities, all of which have populations in excess of half a million people, have to fly to Dulles, or have a stopover in some intermediate city. 

 This makes no difference to me. I don't fly to any place I can reach by car. But other people seem to like flying places. And as a Republican (a real Republican, not one of those Libertarian lunatics at the fringe of the party) I think that the question of which flights can go to which airport ought to be determined by market forces, unsullied by official favouritism, which is a form of corruption. 

 So. Changes to gate allocations at Reagan involve Congress, so there's really no chance the resolution to this manufactured controversy will be fair or logical or even sensible. Both sides are investing some money in advertising, presuming that someone will be persuaded to pressure their congressman to support one side or another. Which brings me to the point of this blog post.

 One side -- I presume it's the side trying to avoid change, but I could be wrong; I don't actually read the ads -- is claiming in its advertisement headlines (the only part that I do read) that Reagan National Airport is already at capacity and can't handle additional flights. I see that ad usually once or twice a week on a news update I get each weekday morning. And I thought, I wonder if that's really true; so I thought I'd check.

 Now, I don't know how many flights in and out Reagan Airport can handle, so I started with the assumption that it's no more than they actually handle now. So I looked at the airport's website yesterday, and found that there were 50 flights arriving, and 58 flights departing, in the two-hour span between 5pm and 7pm. So the airport's capacity is at least 52 flights per hour. 

 Then I looked at the flights between 10pm and Midnight. In that two-hour window, there were only 25 arrivals and 23 departures. (I also happened to notice that there were only two flights arriving between 9pm and 10pm, though there were still 27 flights departing in that hour.)

 So clearly, Reagan Airport is not at capacity.

I Was More Right Than I'd've Thought

Memphis, home of the worst drivers

 A couple of months ago, I wrote in a post about our trip to Williamsburg, Virginia that "there are only three people in Tennessee who know how to drive on the freeway." 

 I thought I was just exaggerating for humourous effect.

 But today I read a read a report on TheHill.com entitled "Here's Where America's Worst Drivers Are Found: Study," and it said that:

Tennessee had the most cities appear among the top 20 at four, including the worst-ranked city. In fact, Tennessee had 34 deadly crashes per 100,000 people in 2021, which is a significant increase compared to the national average of 12 deadly crashes per 100,000 people.

Topping out the list was Memphis. According to ConsumerAffairs, the majority of deadly crashes in Memphis are caused by bad driving, causing 203 deadly crashes in 2021 — more than any other city.

Tennessee’s three other cities on the list were Knoxville (12), Clarksville (17), and Chattanooga (19).

 

Don't I feel vindicated. And prescient!
 

A New Wander: Last Installment

 

  This is the final post in a series. You really should read them in order. You'll find Part One here, and here's a link to the photo album for this trip. 

 Last night, at the restaurant where we had dinner, the TV was silently playing the weather channel. It was all about some storms affecting New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina at that moment. But in between what appeared to be tediously repetitive reports that rain was falling and wind was blowing, they briefly showed a map of Oklahoma and Arkansas, all swathed in bright, scary colours, with the legend "Travel weather dangers." No idea what they were saying, but it looked ominous. 

 We had no TV in our room, because a storm the previous night had taken out the satellite dish for the hotel. So we never saw another local weather report. (Yes, I could have gotten one on my phone if I wasn't a Baby Boomer and was accustomed to such things. As it is, the idea never occurred to me.)

 This morning dawned bright and clear. Our first planned stop, about 30 minutes away, didn't open until 10AM, so we were in no rush. I walked over to a truck stop a quarter-mile up the street for some coffee, then later we decided to have breakfast at a place downtown called Big Cuppa. An excellent choice; a nice small-town coffee shop owned by a young couple who roast their own beans and bake their own pastries and basically do everything themselves. Then we went to a bank to get some cash (even paying the $4 ATM fee, because there's not a Chase within 40 miles of where I was, and nowhere along the route, and I was down to like $5); and then we headed out.

Petit Jean's grave

 Along the way, as we drove to the top of Petit Jean Mountain, we saw a sign for "Petit Jean Grave and Overlook." So what the hey, let's go see what that is. Turns out it's the grave of the woman for whom Petit Jean Mountain (and the Petit Jean River and Petit Jean Valley and a number of other places) is named. Her real name was Adrienne Something, but when her lover came to explore the area she disguised herself and came over as a cabin boy on his ship. According to the legend, the idiot didn't recognise her until she fell deathly ill and they discovered, then, that she wasn't a boy at all. Stop me if you've heard this one. Yada yada yada she died and they buried her up on top of this mountain for some reason.

 Anyway, a pretty place, with views across the Arkansas River. A little less smoke in the air today, but still the visibility is reduced. 

 A short distance down the road is the Museum of Automobiles. You can tell from the building and its expansive grounds that there's some money behind this collection. Some guy named Rockefeller, apparently, lives in the area, and he helped set the thing up and contributed several of the cars. The facility only has room to display about 50 vehicles at a time, but they do a pretty good job. I'm at the point in my car-museum-going that I pretty much skip over the Model Ts and Model As and '64 Mustangs and '57 Chevies; I've seen so many of them already, and I have places to go and things -- new things -- to see. 

 Well, okay, not new; we are talking antique cars here. But novel things.

 So I went through the museum looking mainly at cars I don't see often or ever. They display a number of makes that I've almost never heard of, like a Star station wagon and a Metz runabout, and models that I don't often encounter in museums, like the 1952 VW, the 1954 Chevy Bel Air or the De Soto Airflow. The cars are well-lit and, for the most part, positioned so that I can get some good pictures of the fronts and sides, but as is common with car museums, the back ends, facing away, are out of sight and can't be photographed in some cases. The only way to solve that problem is to place the cars where visitors can walk all the way around them, but that would mean fewer cars can be displayed. It's a trade-off.

 After the museum, the plan was to drive up the scenic route past Hardy Falls and the Petit Jean Valley overlook, then down to the Talihena Scenic Route in Oklahoma. At that point, we were going to head home. But there were no falls that we could see at Hardy Falls (and no place to pull over on a winding mountain road), and at the Petit Jean Valley overlook the weather was so threatening, with rain starting and lightning all around, that I decided not to get out of the car on the highest point in central Arkansas. I put the top up and we headed on down the road. (Plus, the view was mostly obscured by rain in the valley.) We stopped in Paris, Arkansas for lunch at a bar and grill -- the rain had eased enough that we could get from the car to the door without getting soaked -- and then I decided it was just time to head home. I plugged in a route, calculated that we could make Dallas today, and we went off to do that. We started another audio book, the second in the Junior Bender series. I think we should finish it around Austin or San Marcos tomorrow (unless Dallas has resolved the issues concerning rush hour on Central Expressway) (which I doubt).