Good evening,
It's a quiet day in Minnesota politics.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen continues to attract attention for his criticism of COVID-19 vaccines. [ Read more from the Minnesota Reformer's Ricardo Lopez]
The Southwest Light Rail faces more cost overruns and delays related to one specific half-mile segment of its 15-mile path: a tunnel through the so-called Kenilworth Corridor. Construction there is "stuck in a sloppy mess of water and boulders," with the project's supporters arguing whether this was avoidable or not. The line connecting downtown Minneapolis to the southwest suburbs was originally supposed to open in 2023, and most of the line is close to meeting that target — but the Kenilworth tunnel could delay matters until 2024 or 2025. [ Read more from MinnPost's Adam Platt]
The long, tortuous negotiations over a federal infrastructure bill continue to be long and tortuous. [Read more from Politico's Marianne Levine and Burgess Everett]
Canada will finally let vaccinated United States citizens cross its border on Aug. 9. (Just too late for my weekend camping trip to Voyageurs!) [ Read more from the Associated Press]
Should the U.S. break up its biggest states? Noah Millman suggests that the huge size of California, Texas, New York and Florida, among others, isn't just problematic because it skews representation in the U.S. Senate. It also, he argues, gives these big states de facto national influence, citing California's auto emissions rules and Texas' school textbook purchasing power as two examples. [Read more from Noah Millman in the New York Times]
Understand more: Breaking up states doesn't require a constitutional amendment — just the consent of Congress and the state in question. Early on in the Republic, Virginia ceded some of its territory to form Kentucky; North Carolina did the same for Tennessee, and Massachusetts released Maine.
In a fun, odd video examining what it might be like if the U.S. and Canada switched political systems, YouTuber J.J. McCullough offered up the below map showing what the U.S. Senate might look like if seats were distributed like the Canadian Senate: | |
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The math here is somewhat odd. Overall it's somewhat more proportional than the current U.S. Senate, where seats range from one senator per 289,000 people in Wyoming to one per 19.8 million in California, a 68:1 gap. The Canadian model drops a lot of states down to one senator, creating a range from one senator per 543,000 in Montana to one per 13 million in Pennsylvania, a "mere" 24:1 ratio.
So what's going on here? In Canada, the country is divided into four historically significant groups of provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Western Canada and the Maritime provinces. Each group gets 24 seats, divided roughly proportionally among their senators. Then a further nine seats are allocated to provinces and territories that weren't in the picture when this system was developed: six seats to Newfoundland and Labrador and one each to the three Canadian territories. Along those lines, McCullough split the U.S. into the land of the original colonies (including the seceded West Virginia and Maine), the non-original states east of the Mississippi, the old Louisiana Purchase and the West. Texas, Alaska and Hawaii get add-on seats.
The upshot is that the original Colonies get hurt, going from 32 percent of current Senate seats and 30 percent of the population 23 percent of Canada-style seats. Californians get much better representation. The non-original eastern states get a little bump. And the Louisiana Purchase states lots a bunch of their current representation, but also remain dramatically overrepresented relative to their population, with one senator per 1.8 million people, compared to one per 2.8 million in the West, one per 3.7 million in the eastern states and one per 4.2 million in the original Colonies.
Of course, this is just a fun game, because there's zero percent chance a system like this would ever get adopted. (If the Senate were to be overhauled, it would be more likely to be abolished outright or dramatically expanded through new states than a complicated, irrational system like Canada's.) As everyone knows, proportionality to population was never a goal of the U.S. Senate, which was designed to represent states, though (as Millman pointed out in the article above), the Senate has become much less proportional over time. So why spend an hour of my time on an exercise like this? Because I think comparing our system of government to other systems, aside from being intrinsically interesting, is also an invaluable tool to truly understand our own government. [Watch the video]
Something completely different: I started my run on this newsletter with my take on "WandaVision," so I think I'm bound now to share my thoughts on the latest MCU series, "Loki," after finishing it last night. Without getting into any spoilers, it was my favorite by far of the three MCU series so far and the only one of the three to stick the landing with a solid final episode. (This is despite the fact that it was basically just a well-done rip-off of a The Master arc from "Doctor Who.")
A lot of that credit has to go to Tom Hiddleston as the titular Loki — not just his physical performance, which was great, but also his deep understanding of what makes the character tick. That kept a series that could have easily flown off the rails relatively grounded in character — in many ways more so than the magic-free, earthbound "The Falon and the Winter Soldier."
"Loki" was also better than the earlier two series at tying together theme and plot — key character decisions were rooted in, and served to resolve, the ideas the show was exploring, like freedom vs. power and trust and betrayal.
Listen: Another thing that helped make "Loki" standout? By far my favorite score of the three shows (though "WandaVision" and its use of period pop songs deserves mention). The "Loki" score, by Natalie Holt, was better than many actual MCU movies. [Listen] | |
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