Friday, October 12, 2018

Proposed XXVIIIth Amendment to Recall the President of the United States

Enough is enough. The political process in this country is broken and it is time for us, the People, to take back our country. The first thing we must do is to pass an amendment to the Constitution allowing us to recall a President. We cannot wait for another 4 years when a President is pursuing a policy that (1) the majority of the People believe is wrong; (2) the majority in Congress believe is wrong, yet the President mulishly insists on pursuing, e.g. America's long wars.

Here is a first draft based on Article II, sections 13-19 of the California Constitution. Please comment, revise, criticize, add, delete, etc. 

[Proposed] XXVIIIth Amendment to Recall the 
President of the United States 

SEC 1. All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require.

SEC. 2. Recall is the power of the electors to remove the President of the United States from office.

SEC. 3. (a) Recall of a President is initiated by the xxxx delivering to the Federal Elections Commission (?) a petition alleging reason for recall. Sufficiency of reason is not reviewable. Proponents have xxx days to file signed petitions. 

(b) A petition to recall the President of the United States must be signed by electors equal in number to 12 percent of the last vote for the office, with signatures from each of 50 states equal in number to 1 percent of the last vote for the office in that state. Signatures to recall the President must equal in number 20 percent of the last vote for the office. 

(c) The Secretary of State for each state shall maintain a continuous count of the signatures certified to that office.

SEC. 4. (a) An election to determine whether to recall the Presidentand, if appropriate, to elect a successor shall be called by thexxxx and held not less than xx days nor more than xx days from the date of certification of sufficient signatures. 

(b) A recall election may be conducted within 180 days from the date of certification of sufficient signatures in order that the election may be consolidated with the next regularly scheduled election, or upon a special election for the sole purpose of selecting the successor.

(c) If the majority vote on the question is to recall, the officer is removed and, if there is a candidate, the candidate who receives a plurality is the successor. 

SEC. 5. The Congress shall provide for circulation, filing, and certification of petitions, nomination of candidates, and the recall election.

Friday, August 24, 2018

Militarized Police are More Often Deployed in Poor Communities

Must Read

Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation
Jonathan Mummoloa,b,1
aDepartment of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; and bWoodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
Edited by John Hagan, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, and approved July 2, 2018 (received for review March 24, 2018)

The increasingly visible presence of heavily armed police units in American communities has stoked widespread concern over the militarization of local law enforcement. Advocates claim milita- rized policing protects officers and deters violent crime, while critics allege these tactics are targeted at racial minorities and erode trust in law enforcement. Using a rare geocoded census of SWAT team deployments from Maryland, I show that militarized police units are more often deployed in communities with large shares of African American residents, even after control- ling for local crime rates. Further, using nationwide panel data on local police militarization, I demonstrate that militarized policing fails to enhance officer safety or reduce local crime. Finally, using survey experiments—one of which includes a large oversample of African American respondents—I show that seeing militarized police in news reports may diminish police reputation in the mass public. In the case of militarized policing, the results suggest that the often-cited trade-off between public safety and civil liberties is a false choice.
police militarization public safety crime race and policing |bureaucratic reputation


http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/08/14/1805161115