The 2022 Midterm Elections Underscore The Need For An Electoral College Approach At The State Level

The debacle of the 2022 midterm elections underscores how a single city/county determines the voting outcome for at least 19 states. We have reached the point where the fear by the Founding Fathers that the large states would dominate the smaller has come to pass, albeit at the state level.

 The Electoral College

 From the Heritage Society:

     “The manner of electing the President was one of the most contentious issues at the Constitutional Convention held in 1787. The Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation, while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule. Smaller states, in particular, worried that a system that apportioned representatives based on population would underrepresent their interests in the federal structure. This concern, that either the big states, or the small states, would have too much influence over the choice of the President, was voiced by many of the delegates at the Convention. They understood the dangers that a direct democracy, with the potential for mob rule, brings to elections.

     After long and serious debate, they arrived at an intentional design for electing the President that would incorporate the will of the people, but still safeguard against faction and tyranny. That system, the Electoral College, balances the competing interests of large states with those of smaller states. By allocating electors based on a state’s cumulative representation in the House and Senate, the Electoral College system avoids purely population-based representation, while still giving larger states greater electoral weight. This design incorporates the “genius of a popular democracy organized on the federal principle,”3 and has been our electoral system that has operated successfully for over 200 years.”(https://www.heritage.org/the-essential-electoral-college/origins-the-electoral-college)

 Today we have reached the point where the voices of the rural Americans is being overwhelmed by the political machines in the large city/county states that now exist in many states. Given the Founders intent to protect the smaller from the larger, I wonder if there is a way to declare single cities/counties deciding the results for the entire state as unconstitutional based on the Founder’s rationale for establishing the electoral college?

 One remedy would be to allocate the popular vote count for statewide and Federal offices to be decided by Congressional district vote tallies vice the entire state so that the rural areas have their voices heard and not overridden by places like Philly, Detroit, NYC, etc. Maine and Nebraska already split their electoral votes for President by Congressional district, so there is precedence.

 One potential drawback to this approach is the states that have only two Congressional districts: Hawaii, Maine, Idaho, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. What happens when the districts split in their voting? For the Presidential election the EVs would be split according to the voting results in each district (e.g., candidate A gets one EV, candidate B gets one EV). For Federal and statewide offices like Senator, Representative, Governor, etc., in the event of a split in the district totals, the total popular vote would prevail. Not satisfactory, I know, but the major problem with single city/counties dominating the overall state voting totals occurs in states with more than two Congressional districts.

More Lawdog Thoughts on Nord Stream 1 & 2

Lawdog's first post drew a horde of 'experts' claiming that things just don't work the way he said. He responded with a second post providing more information about hydrate plugs (see https://thelawdogfiles.com/2022/10/nordstream-ii-electric-instapundit.html):

Even more interesting is this little tidbit, also via email. Russia was having compressor “issues” on Nord 1, enough that the whole sodding compressor station was “shut down” and a “hazardous production facility”.

Is anyone else getting the twitchies regarding the fact that at least some of the equipment that keeps the pipeline pressurised was off-line? Just me? Oh, well then. Carry on.

Moving on — multiple sources have confirmed that Nord 2 was full of natural gas; that it was full for at least months; and that said natural gas had never moved.

It. Just. Sat. There. For — allegedly — months.

During normal operations of a pipeline, you run a pig through fairly regularly. A “pig” is a bit of equipment pushed by the gas flow, and as it moves along it shoves water and hydrate slurry down to where it can be removed; and it scrapes compounds off the inside walls (hydrogen sulphide, I’m looking at you) that might be is probably eating your pipe.

Note the part above where the pigs are pushed by the gas. The gas in Nordstream 2 never moved. That means no pig ever went down the line to shove water out, move hydrate slurry, or stop H2S from corroding the steel of the pipeline. 

Again, he's not claiming that this is the only explanation:

As I said in the previous post — and I will continue to say — none of this rules out intentional Acts of War. There are idiots enough in that region that sabotage can’t be discounted.

How-some-ever … hydrate plugs. 

A lot of folks are hanging their hat on comments made months ago by Biden and Victoria Nuland that the Nord Stream pipelines would be gone. Given the incompetence of this administration Lawdog is correct--you can't rule out an intentional act of war. Having spent some time in the former Evil Empire I can confirm that maintenance is not a top priority.

See his entire post for some interesting photos illustrating what hydrate plugs can do and the alleged locations of the explosions.

So Maybe It Wasn't The US Behind The Nord Stream 1 & 2 Explosions

Lawdog has a great post regarding the Nord Stream 1 and 2 incidents (see https://thelawdogfiles.com/2022/09/nordstream.html).

I call them “incidents” for a reason. I grew up in overseas oilfields. I try to, by training, observe everything from as objectively neutral a viewpoint as possible.

In my experience when anything involving energy-industry hydrocarbons explodes … well, sabotage isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. And honestly, when it comes to a pipeline running natural gas under Russian (non)maintenance, an explosion means that it’s Tuesday. Or Friday. Or another day of the week ending in “y”.

“But, LawDog,” I hear you say, “It was multiple explosions!”

Yes, 17 hours apart. No military is going to arrange for two pipes in the same general area to be destroyed 17 hours apart. Not without some Spec Ops guy having a fit of apoplexy. One pipe goes up in a busy shipping lane, in a busy sea, and everyone takes notice. Then you wait 17 hours to do the second — with 17 hours for people to show up and catch you running dirty? Nah, not buying it.

His theory is that it was the result of faulty Russian maintenance.

Honestly, I suspect someone in the Russian government pinged Gazprom, and said, “The EU is about to have a cold winter. make sure those pipelines sodding well work, so we can sell someone natural gas at massively increased prices.”

So, Somebody In Charge started running checks — and came up with hydrate slurry in both pipelines. After the running in circles, hyperventilating, and shrieking of curse-words stopped, somebody started trying to remediate both lines. Of course they didn’t tell folks down stream — no Russian want to look weak, and besides, there’s been a nasty uptick in failed Russian oligarchs getting accidentally defenestrated — they just unilaterally tried to Fix Things.

It’s methane hydrate. Trust me, if there’s a hydrate plug, there’s more than one. With both pipes having no movement for months, if not a year, there were a metric butt-ton of hydrate plugs, slurry, and rime in both pipelines.

The Fixing of Things went bad. One went Paws Up, and they started trying to stop the other — but pressurisation (both ways) is a weeks-long process, and the second went bad, too. 

The effect is the same, though. Natural gas pipeline explosions during the Russian/Ukraine war are one more factor in Russian calculations for conflict escalation (especially if Gazprom doesn't own up to doing it--it's easier and safer to claim an outside force caused it).

Nord Stream 1 & 2 - Cui Bono?

 The recent destruction of Nord Stream natural gas pipelines 1 and 2 begs the question of cui bono - who benefits?

The most obvious beneficiary is Ukraine. It deprives Russia of a potential money stream and removes an economic sword hanging over European nations, especially Germany. Even though Gazprom had stopped natural gas shipments in September 2022, there remained the possibility (most likely a probability) that freezing European populations would force their governments to stop supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia in order to get the gas flowing again. The pipeline destruction now precludes that course of action.

While Russia was responsible for 43% of natural gas supplies to Europe, indigenous European natural gas production could have alleviated this dependence. Unfortunately, 'green' energy policies forced phasing out most of its indigenous natural gas production, resulting in over 90% of its natural gas being imported from outside sources. Many European nations have shut or are shutting down their nuclear and coal power plants, relying on wind and solar power to keep the lights and heat on. As Texas discovered during 'Snowmageddon' in February 2021 wind and solar power failed to support the Texas energy grid during winter.

Liquid natural gas (LNG) production in the United States could compensate for some of the energy lack, but would not be enough to satisfy European energy needs due to a lack of short term production and shipping capacity. (See https://memgraph.com/blog/gas-pipelines-in-europe for a description of Europe's natural gas infrastructure and capacity.)

The next obvious beneficiary is the United States. Again, it deprives Russia of a potential money stream and economic leverage over Europe regarding Ukrainian support. The downside is that it can provide Russia with even more of a casus belli to engage the US directly in war for its direct support of a wartime adversary. Given the ineptitude of the current US administration in all things foreign and domestic, I can very well imagine it would conduct operations against Russia that would result in direct combat with a nuclear armed opponent. 

The real beneficiary, though, is China. Which nation would greatly benefit from the nuclear destruction of its two main adversaries? A nuclear exchange would leave China as the only major unscathed nuclear power on the international scene. Yes, India, Pakistan, England, France, and Israel are nuclear powers, but one could argue that the UK and France would be targeted by Russia as part of an overall strike against NATO for their support of Ukraine and the US. I doubt that India would take part in a nuclear exchange as it would see itself as the new counterbalance to China.

So,  is China influencing the current administration to provoke war with Russia, thus removing the two main competitors for world leadership/domination? The question is what would the United States be doing differently if it weren't.