People who think Democrats need to approach the center were never going to vote Democratic in the first place. No one will ever vote for a black man who supports extending health care to disabled people… oh wait… the best performance for a Democrat since 1964… twice. George McGovern is the ideal candidate. He is …
Author Archives: stidmatt
50-state strategy to victory
I’m a reliable Democratic voter, and I have benefited massively from the Affordable Care Act since I was born with cerebral palsy. If the ACA is repealed as Republicans promise, I will have to leave the country or not have health insurance. Those are the stakes of this election. I read the article in Politico …
A plan for Tacoma Link connection
Tacoma’s unfortunate geography makes transit difficult to serve. The city is fairly low-density, but zoning can fix this. It’s dense enough to support Link. Problem 1: Bad bus routes If you want to go from the St. Joseph Medical Center to the Tacoma Dome, the new transit center for the South Sound, the bus takes …
Parabola of transit station demand
Assuming good land use around a station (I live in Jersey City, which is a good assumption around here), I expect that as frequency changes, the demand for using a station at any given minute creates a parabola. Case 1: There is very frequent service, more than once every 5 minutes. People move in and …
World visa policy statistics
I downloaded data from https://visamap.co/, which is open-source, and combined it with my existing borders data set to see which countries have open visa policies versus closed visa policies. When we compare the total number of countries that offer visa-free access, a pattern appears that linear models fail to capture. The overall score is the …
The Future of Borders
We are going in the wrong direction. Biometrics are fine Most countries in the world now have biometric passports. Biometrics are limited to a digital copy of your face, and they have been used for years to move people across borders securely. Many countries, such as the EU, the UK, and Brazil, exclusively use this …
State of the World, 2024 edition
As we begin a new year, here is a basic overview of global politics. World Powers If a country is truly a world power, it must be in the top 10% for GDP, Population, and military strength. For pure power, I’m going to leave out the question of whether a country is Democratic or not. …
We all need to study ethics
In our nation’s deranged mind… How many Ukrainian lives are worth the price of gas staying down by 10 cents? How many grandparents need to die from COVID to be worth the life of one sex offender? How many girls denied a basic education, placed into forced marriage, and people dead from terrorist attacks are …
Death by a thousand forms
The 2000s were an amazing time to be alive. Flights were less expensive than ever, visa-free travel was common, and democratization expanded worldwide. Democratization has slowed down over the last decade. South America, Europe, Southern Africa, and Southeast Asia have mostly democratized. The world’s dictatorships are mostly in Northern and Central Africa and Asia. Only …
World super powers
What are the most powerful countries in the world? What would make a country powerful? This is a fairly simple and critical question if you want to understand global politics. To be a superpower a country needs to have the following characteristics: A large population A large economy measured by GDP A high average income …