Liberal Democrats

So, the latest parliamentary elections in the UK are over, and the fallout continues. The Liberal Democrats (heirs of the Whigs) became the last girl standing at closing time, as neither Labour nor Conservative could form a majority government without them. It appears that the Conservative party gets to take the Lib Dems home, having bought their affections with the LD drug of choice ever since the Liberals fell from grace early in the 20th century.

Not only will promising this to the Lib Dems get them in your car, the thought of it makes their underwear spontaneously fall off, and they'll let you have a 6 way with their grandparents. The reason they'll abandon all standards is because they expect to be able to kill you in your drunken post-coital stupor with the unthinking promises you made to them in order to get laid.

What's the promise? As they put it, "electoral reform". As others might put it, "election rejiggering". Having been lucky to manage 10% of parliament and other government offices, their idee fixe has been to change the rules so that they can win more elections. Well, why not? That's the typical goal of people without power - trying to get more power. If you can't get enough people to vote for you to win, the best move is to change the rules so that you can win more with the same # of votes.

IIRC, the stats say that they get about 25% of the votes, but only about 10% of the seats. They want proportionality, i.e., more seats without more votes. Once they have more power, then they can throw a wrench into the works by demanding legislation on all the issues that only get them 25% of the vote.

So, by having alleyway sex with the Lib Dems to build a coalition, the Conservatives have likely laid the groundwork to make future coalitions 1) Harder to build, and 2) More schizophrenic.

Whenever I hear the whine that there should be proportionality, and that whatever percentage of any group exists in the population should be represented in the government, I consider that the National Institute of Mental Health stats say that 26.2% of Americans 18 and older suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. Should 26.2% of congress be mentally ill? I know, I know, they may already be that way (ha ha) but is that what you want? Perhaps the mentally ill would be better served by representatives who are informed on mental illness, sympathetic to the mentally ill, but closer to sane themselves.

How about this one. In 2009, there were 18,573 known homicides, so in 2009, 0.0088% of Americans were murderers (assuming negligible multiple murderers). The average life expectancy is about 80 years, and again, assuming only one homicide per murderer, 0.704% of Americans will kill someone in their lifetime. That means there should be three killers in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Or, in 2009, there were 1.8 million emergency department visits for assault. To be generous, let's allow the average assaulter 5 ER victims in their lifetime. That means that at some point in their life, 9.6% of Americans will attack AND hurt someone badly enough to send them to the hospital. Should 42 current representatives, 9 current senators, and 4 past/current presidents have sent someone to the hospital?

How about this one: 10.6% of surveyed adult women and 2.1% of surveyed men had experienced forced sex at some point in their lives. In addition, 25.5% of female and 41% of male victims were raped before they were 12 years old. You do the #s on how many kiddie rapists should be in government. Yes, they have been there, and they are there, but should they be entitled to be there as representatives of their group? (Actually, proportional representation may actually take their numbers down. Something worth checking into.)

Of course I'm exaggerating some things, and my calculations are certainly flawed to a degree, but I hope I make a point, and my point is:

Just about any group can claim enough members for proportional representation, but if you can't get anyone else to agree with you, you should still lose.