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Topic: OT-Politics Thread: please TRY to keep it civil, you damned dirty apes
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medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #37520 on:** September 30, 2024, 12:06:52 PM »

On Friday @SFBadger96 posted a long political post and I wanted to respond but needed some time because this was a long post.

First, IIRC, his wife is in some localish political position, right @SFBadger96 ?

I'm pretty deeply involved in local politics as well so I have some similar insights.

His first point was that most (75-80%) involved are there because they want to make a change for the better while the others just want to be important. I'd more-or-less agree with this. The people that legitimately want to make a change for the better are good people even if I disagree with them on nearly everything. Conversely, the people who just want to be important aren't good people even if I agree with them on nearly everything because, realistically I'm not agreeing with them, they have little in the way of actual thoughts they just stick their finger in the wind and try to go along with the majority.

Later in his post he used Gavin Newsome as an example and I thought it was spot on. Specifically, he said that gays in his area just love Newsome because he went to bat for them on gay marriage back in 2004 but then pointed out that doing so appeared to him to be a smart political calculation. I agree. He just strikes me as the kind of guy who would have been refusing to grant gay marriage licenses after the Supreme Court mandated it if he was a bible-belt mayor.

@SFBadger96 and I *COULD* be wrong about Newsome specifically but there definitely are politicians like what we see in him. For them it isn't about gay marriage (or anything else). They aren't out there fighting for/against gay marriage because the issue is deeply important to them, they are doing it for the politics. They are fighting for it because they run in a district where it is popular or fighting against it because they run in a district where it is unpopular.

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #37521 on:** September 30, 2024, 12:21:54 PM »

The site ate this next part so I am trying to re-type what I had previously typed.

@SFBadger96 's second was ego and he is right. You can't be in this business if you don't believe in yourself. There is sometimes a fine line there between being confident and being egotistical.

His third was about voter choices. The reality is that very few people actually follow local politics closely enough to know who is/is not doing a good job. As a practical matter would you know even if you did? For example, an attorney like @MaximumSam probably knows if his Clerk of Court is doing a good job, a Civil Engineer like @847badgerfan probably knows if his County Engineer is doing a good job. A title agent probably knows if their County Recorder is doing a good job.

That said, Max and the title agent likely have no idea what kind of just the County Engineer is doing. Badge and Max probably have no idea what kind of job the Recorder is doing. Badge and the title agent likely have no idea what kind of job the Clerk of Court is doing.

Consequently most of us just vote for the R/D depending on which party we favor nationally but that is silly because there really isn't a Republican or a Democratic way to design a bridge.

A Local Government Law professor once said to me that there really isn't a Republican or a Democratic way to buy a Garbage Truck and there isn't.

Locally, the R/D thing isn't nearly as big of a deal as one would think for at least two reasons:

As mentioned, there really isn't a R or a D way to buy Garbage Trucks or design bridges, and
In most localities there isn't much realistic R/D competition anyway. It sounds like @SFBadger96 lives in a district where R's get maybe 30% of the vote. Here in my town D's get 35-40% of the vote. There isn't much R/D competition because D's always win there and R's always win here.

What tends to happen instead is that locally you end up with shifting alliances based a lot more on personality than on ideology. Typically you get a mayor who starts thinking they are above everybody then you get push-back and effectively end up with "team mayor" and "team anti-mayor".

There is an old saying that if two people always agree one of them isn't thinking and if two people never agree, neither of them are thinking. I've seen plenty of examples of both types.

For an example, lets say that @SFBadger96 wants to buy Mack Garbage Trucks because he says they'll last longer and get better fuel efficiency and I propose that we buy Peterbilt Garbage Trucks instead because we already own Peterbilts and it is cheaper to maintain a homogenous fleet. So far we are doing our jobs and the locality is better off for it. He makes his case, I make my case, and a decision is made. Unfortunately what I've seen a lot of is either:

Mayor proposes Macks so "team mayor" all agree without thinking, or
Mayor proposes Macks so "team anti-mayor" all want Peterbilts without thinking.

At that point we aren't doing our jobs and the locality isn't better off.

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #37522 on:** September 30, 2024, 12:24:37 PM »

@SFBadger96 's fourth point was about loyalty which is important but I'm going to disagree a bit because I don't think endorsements are worth much. I've seen VERY popular Mayors endorse candidates who got clobbered. Most voters will vote for a candidate they like but will not actually vote for other candidates that person tells them to vote for.

Side note on endorsements, they are a disaster for the office-holders giving them.  The reason goes back to ego. Lets say that @SFBadger96 and @betarhoalphadelta are running against each other and I'm a sitting politician and both of them ask for my endorsement. The problem for me is that both of them think they are OBVIOUSLY the best candidate. Consequently, whichever one I endorse doesn't think I did them a favor, they just think that I endorsed the OBVIOUSLY best candidate. So the candidate I endorsed doesn't really think they owe me anything. Conversely, however, the candidate that I do NOT endorse thinks (and they honestly believe this) that I endorsed a CLEARLY inferior candidate and they now hate me. The bottom line here is that by making an endorsement I've made an enemy out of the candidate I didn't endorse but I haven't really made a friend out of the candidate that I did endorse.

Local elections:
How this works differs radically depending on exactly how local you mean. My town has a little under 30k so the City-wide races have a district population of ~30k. City Council has three elected city-wide and four elected to wards which are roughly 1/4 of the City. In Ohio local elections are in odd-years so turnout is VERY low because there are no National/State/County elections at the same time. Typically we get ~8k City-wide. The four wards have varying turnout. Three typically get a little over 2k and the other one barely gets 1k.

So in my area, hierarchically:

~1k low-turnout ward race
~2k high-turnout ward race
~8k City-wide race

Then you move up to County/State elections which are in even numbered years. Even there, however, turnout varies dramatically between Presidential years like this one and non-Presidential years like 2022 and 2026. My County has around 180k people so, continuing the hierarchy:

~40k State Rep, non-Presidential years
~60k County race, non-Presidential years
~70k State Rep, Presidential years
~100k County race, Presidential years
~120k State Senate, non-Presidential years
~210k State Senate, Presidential years
~300k Congress, non-Presidential years
~400k Congress, Presidential years
~4M State-wide races, non-Presidential years
~6M State-wide races, Presidential years

How elections actually work:
When you get down to the ward races with 1-2k voters it is really all about family/friends. If you have a big family that is a huge BOOST. Groups you are part of matter too. What church you attend. What schools your kids attend, are you part of the baseball association, are you etc, etc.  Not just because they'll vote for you but because their friends will think "well, I know so-and-so and his brother/sister/father/son is running for Council so I'll vote for them". Having gone to the local HS is a huge boost because it means that there are a bunch of people who will look at the ballot and say "hey, I remember having algebra with that guy" or whatever.

When you get up to the 8k level (City-wide for my city) it is a little different. Nobody has four thousand cousins so you can't possibly win based on family and friends alone but this is still small enough that you can actually walk neighborhoods and talk to the vast majority of the voters. Money does start to become a factor but it CAN be overcome because the personal touch is more powerful. Actually knocking on someone's door and saying "Hi, I'm @medinabuckeye1 and I want to be your City Dogcatcher" then proceeding to tell them all about your dog-catching prowess and experience is more persuasive than spending a pile of cash to send them mailers and put ads on their YouTube feed.

Note also that for my area (Ohio) the above local races are non-partisan so you don't have an "R" or a "D" after your name on the ballot. Candidates can and sometimes do send out "I'm an R" mailers but that can backfire because all but the most deeply partisan voters would actually prefer a more non-partisan approach to things like Garbage Truck purchases.

Below, once you get past the local races you get into partisan races so things are different because now you have an "R" or a "D" next to your name on the ballot.

Once you get to the 40-70k voters in State Rep and non-Presidential year County races things like family size, what church you go to, and knocking on doors has only a barely (if at all) discernable impact. Beyond that, you'd never notice it. At that point it is simply money and team-building.

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #37523 on:** September 30, 2024, 12:25:17 PM »

Moving on to @SFBadger96 comments on money:

I want to divert for a minute to throw out two ideas that are counter-intuitive but might actually help lessen the impact of Money on politics:

The first would be to dramatically expand the number of Congressional Districts. Above I mentioned that the grass-roots politics simply becomes ineffective at a certain level because there are too many people. I have a friend who is a BIG proponent of expanding Congress to at least 10x the current size. Currently you have around 300-400K voters in a Congressional election. At that size it is all about money but if you had 10x the districts you'd have 30-40k voters and money wouldn't be the end-all, be-all. In a district that size you could actually make an impact through grass-roots campaigning. Also, individuals could actually call their congressperson and get a response from the actual office-holder rather than some staff lackey. I'm not 100% convinced but I do think this is an idea that at least has some merit.

The second would be to dramatically increase Congressional pay. According to Google, Senators and Representatives make $174k/year. That might sound like a lot but in truth it isn't. Remember that they have to maintain two residences and travel back and forth frequently. There are 435 Representatives and 100 Senators so pay for them at $174k/yr is less than $100 Million. That might sound like a lot of money and it is but on the scale of the US Budget it is less than a rounding error. If we doubled (or tripled) it and the Representatives made 0.01% better decisions it would be a net positive.

My view is that Representatives would be harder to "buy" if they were paid more commensurate with their responsibilities.

betarhoalphadelta · « **Reply #37524 on:** September 30, 2024, 01:00:24 PM »

Quote from: medinabuckeye1 on September 30, 2024, 12:25:17 PM

The first would be to dramatically expand the number of Congressional Districts. Above I mentioned that the grass-roots politics simply becomes ineffective at a certain level because there are too many people. I have a friend who is a BIG proponent of expanding Congress to at least 10x the current size. Currently you have around 300-400K voters in a Congressional election. At that size it is all about money but if you had 10x the districts you'd have 30-40k voters and money wouldn't be the end-all, be-all. In a district that size you could actually make an impact through grass-roots campaigning. Also, individuals could actually call their congressperson and get a response from the actual office-holder rather than some staff lackey. I'm not 100% convinced but I do think this is an idea that at least has some merit.

I'm not sure that I see this being helpful. It might reduce the money in politics, but it would IMHO increase the degree to which the candidate him/herself doesn't matter, only what letter follows their name. But it might not even reduce the money in politics--it'll just spread it out.

If you have a HoR with 4,000 members, do you honestly think there will be any difference to the coalitions and what happens in Congress? Some backbencher will have to always vote party line to ever ascend into any power, the same way they do now. I think it might just make the parties stronger--which is hard to even type because of how powerful they already are.

Quote

The second would be to dramatically increase Congressional pay. According to Google, Senators and Representatives make $174k/year. That might sound like a lot but in truth it isn't. Remember that they have to maintain two residences and travel back and forth frequently. There are 435 Representatives and 100 Senators so pay for them at $174k/yr is less than $100 Million. That might sound like a lot of money and it is but on the scale of the US Budget it is less than a rounding error. If we doubled (or tripled) it and the Representatives made 0.01% better decisions it would be a net positive.

My view is that Representatives would be harder to "buy" if they were paid more commensurate with their responsibilities.

I am not opposed to this. $174K isn't a lot of money in and around DC. And as you state, the two residences & travel thing probably adds up quickly. There are periodically articles about freshmen congressmen who effectively split an apartment 4+ ways that's pretty much a flophouse to save money.

However I'm not entirely sure this will have any effect on the money in politics. Congress still needs LOTS more money to run a campaign than any Representative/Senator earns in their official income, and it's not like they're using that income for their own campaigns anyway. I think even if you made it $500K annually they'd still be just as easily "bought" by donors as they are now.

Where I think it might improve is to attract people who otherwise wouldn't be attracted to the job, who aren't independently wealthy. How many talented doctors, lawyers, and engineers are out there for whom taking a job in Congress would be a sizable pay cut? If you want to attract good people, you have to offer them compensation that isn't a step down from what they're doing now.

Gigem · « **Reply #37525 on:** September 30, 2024, 01:09:41 PM »

Quote from: medinabuckeye1 on September 30, 2024, 12:25:17 PM

Moving on to @SFBadger96 comments on money:

I want to divert for a minute to throw out two ideas that are counter-intuitive but might actually help lessen the impact of Money on politics:

The first would be to dramatically expand the number of Congressional Districts. Above I mentioned that the grass-roots politics simply becomes ineffective at a certain level because there are too many people. I have a friend who is a BIG proponent of expanding Congress to at least 10x the current size. Currently you have around 300-400K voters in a Congressional election. At that size it is all about money but if you had 10x the districts you'd have 30-40k voters and money wouldn't be the end-all, be-all. In a district that size you could actually make an impact through grass-roots campaigning. Also, individuals could actually call their congressperson and get a response from the actual office-holder rather than some staff lackey. I'm not 100% convinced but I do think this is an idea that at least has some merit.

The second would be to dramatically increase Congressional pay. According to Google, Senators and Representatives make $174k/year. That might sound like a lot but in truth it isn't. Remember that they have to maintain two residences and travel back and forth frequently. There are 435 Representatives and 100 Senators so pay for them at $174k/yr is less than $100 Million. That might sound like a lot of money and it is but on the scale of the US Budget it is less than a rounding error. If we doubled (or tripled) it and the Representatives made 0.01% better decisions it would be a net positive.

My view is that Representatives would be harder to "buy" if they were paid more commensurate with their responsibilities.

Actually, $175K a year sounds incredibly low to me. I will admit that when I was younger I thought it was a lot. I've never really understood their pay either. Do they get any sort of housing allowance? Do they get money for staffers? From what I've seen, most congressmen (congress people?) have a whole staff of people working for them. Are they volunteers? Do they get paid, and if so, how much? I think about $300-350k a year would be more than adequate in pay given their position relative to their duty.
I've seen it mentioned before in this forum about increasing the number of congressional seats and I'm warming up to it. But then I think, how much harder would it be to get anything done? My experience is that whenever you have more people involved in something, you get less done. Already things get buried in committee, endless bickering over the smallest things, and all sorts of problems.
Plus, with more people, you're likely to get more people on the extreme sides of politics. Think MTG or AOC. And it seems like I heard once upon a time that they limited the number in congress way back when because the capitol was already at capacity or something.
And, if you really did increase the size of congress, most of the seats would be concentrated in the cities I would think. Maybe it would not be that big of a deal as it seems since a lot of the "Red" suburbs are grouped in with the "Blue" inner cities already. It could be a neutral effect in regards to numbers of R vs D.

SFBadger96 · « **Reply #37526 on:** September 30, 2024, 03:16:57 PM »

Medina, thanks for your thoughts. Since we largely agree, I love them. :-) And on the endorsements point, I know exactly what you're talking about, but I've also seen the power of certain endorsements. I'm sure they are differnent where you are, but for our neck of the woods, if you have the Sierra Club and the local trades, that goes a long way--it does not go all the way, and I think sometimes people running for office think it replaces the need to knock on doors and all the other things that make for a successful campaign; it does not. Aside from the key players, a bunch more of the endorsements are rather team oriented. Because we, too, are not a competitive red vs. blue district, our blue gets broken into teams: family political dynasty vs. anti-family political dynasty is the way I would describe it. There is a second layer of pragmatic liberals vs. progressive liberals, but that's still subordinate to the first, higher-level clash. The anti-family political dynasty is actually the more powerful group, as of now, but only because the leader of that group was wildly successful as a politician for the last 40 years--and both groups are alive and well.

I agree with your thoughts on Congress. And BRAD's point is a good one, but to his point:

The key to my views on Congress are related to something else you said: knocking on doors is the best, and most meaningful way to win votes, but you can't knock on 400,000 doors. More than a couple thousand is pretty difficult for any one person (and a couple thousand is a lot of walking). I think our experience is you can do about 5-7 houses per hour of actual engagement (meaning you talk to the person who answers the door).

You may get more extreme people, but you will also--I think--get a lot more middle of the road people. The impact of national politics on local races right now is extreme (as Medina said: red or blue), but if you make the districts manageable for walking and talking, you'll get a lot less focus on how someone approaches the (name your hot-button issue), and a lot more focus on what people actually want from their government--which tends to be more middle of the road.

A couple more thoughts: one limiting factor in our democracy is the public process, as Medina points out. The decision about whether you want a road, a train, a dike, a power plant...(name your infrastructure project that our government spends a lot of money on) is a good decision to make democratically. How you build a road, train, dike, or power plant (basically, anything that requires engineering) is not something that the public should have a lot of input in. We see this all the time in designs that are changed to appease a public that knows nothing about how these things actually work. That results in a lot of mediocre improvements that could have been really good. My example is that we wouldn't give the public the right to change the engineering that supports a high rise; why do we give them the opportunity to engineer roads? Of course, the solution to this is to give the administrative agencies more power, which is not something our body politic seems especially inclined to.

We do not pay our elected representatives enough to attract the best and the brightest. Sometimes we get them anyway, but it's not because of the comp.

And--finally (for now)--elected officials are extremely important to our system of government, it is a really stressful job, and we really do need good ones. So if you have a good one--even at the most local of local levels, take a moment to express some gratitude (even if just to yourself).

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #37527 on:** September 30, 2024, 03:23:29 PM »

Quote from: betarhoalphadelta on September 30, 2024, 01:00:24 PM

I'm not sure that I see this being helpful. It might reduce the money in politics, but it would IMHO increase the degree to which the candidate him/herself doesn't matter, only what letter follows their name. But it might not even reduce the money in politics--it'll just spread it out.

If you have a HoR with 4,000 members, do you honestly think there will be any difference to the coalitions and what happens in Congress? Some backbencher will have to always vote party line to ever ascend into any power, the same way they do now. I think it might just make the parties stronger--which is hard to even type because of how powerful they already are.

This is exactly why I'm not convinced either. I mentioned when I introduced this that:

Quote from: medinabuckeye1 on September 30, 2024, 12:25:17 PM

I have a friend who is a BIG proponent of expanding Congress to at least 10x the current size.

Then I said that:

Quote from: medinabuckeye1 on September 30, 2024, 12:25:17 PM

I'm not 100% convinced but I do think this is an idea that at least has some merit.

Your objections are exactly why I'm not 100% convinced.

I guess my working theory is that Congress should be maybe something like doubled in size. I look at in this way:
The average Congressional District is now at almost 800k. I feel like 800k is "too big" but I say that admitting that "too big" is not a very concrete concept. Considering it, my County has a population of almost 200k and I "know" my County officials. Congress, not so much. I've "met" my congressman but at the type of events they hold to "meet" people. I've interacted with his staff on projects but always staff because . . . well because the districts are too big so they don't have time to interact with everybody.

With Congressional districts at ~800k, my 200k county is around 1/4 of a Congressional District. With twice as many Districts my ~200k County would be half and that "feels" like it would be more what I am looking for in terms of Congressional relation to the district.

To clarify, and this is WAY more important that most people realize, I'd expand the size of Congress WITHOUT expanding the staffing. The existing staff is more than large enough and I'd just share them among twice as many members. I don't know if this would actually be practical but that is @medinabuckeye1 's theory.

SFBadger96 · « **Reply #37528 on:** September 30, 2024, 03:33:05 PM »

Ok, another thing about running for office that we were surprised by. Whichever team you are on, people will instantly judge you for it--even people you thought were your friends. This isn't universal, but one example I can give: a family that lived around the corner from us who we used to have over for cookouts, and vice versa; our kids pet-sat for their pets. Then SFIrish ran for office, and based on one policy position that family literally stopped talking to us. And it's not a policy position that you would think would have been associated with them in any way, or would lead to that kind of a response. There were some other friends who, upon learning about her position on certain hot-button national political topics (that have nothing to do with what local politicians do), refused to support her and turned a little colder, although those weren't as extreme as the first example I gave. It is remarkable that people you know--you break bread with--turn on you so fast.

Which actually reminds me of something that Medina's post gets to as well: no two people agree on everything. I think I may have said something like this before, but basically, the closer you are to someone, the less your disagreements matter. Effectively you have enough trust in that person's good faith, that you are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they disagree with you. But the less you know someone, the less faith you have in their judgment. That's a problem for democracy because we are electing people to make decisions for us. My newfound view (in the last decade) is that character matters a lot more than policy positions. My ability to trust the elected official to make decisions for the right reasons--even if their decisions are different than what I think should happen--is more important than any one policy position. Because it is safer to point out people that fall into my own camp that I would struggle to vote for: I'm talking about people like Bill Clinton. I'm much more inclined to vote for someone I have more disagreements with, but whom I trust to make thoughtful decisions. If I were to cast my presidential ballot for 1992 again (that was my first election as a voter), I would vote for Bush. Not that he was perfect--none of them are--but I think he was more trustworthy, and more likely to make decisions based on the national good, vs. for his own benefit. And to be clear, I can happily defend the Clinton Administration's record (not that I want to do that here), but on a character level, GHWBush wins hands down.

And this kind of goes back to the knocking on doors point: if we talk and I know that you are approaching a problem in good faith and intelligently, that goes a long way.

SFBadger96 · « **Reply #37529 on:** September 30, 2024, 03:37:12 PM »

Quote from: medinabuckeye1 on September 30, 2024, 03:23:29 PM

This is exactly why I'm not convinced either. I mentioned when I introduced this that:Then I said that:Your objections are exactly why I'm not 100% convinced.

I guess my working theory is that Congress should be maybe something like doubled in size. I look at in this way:
The average Congressional District is now at almost 800k. I feel like 800k is "too big" but I say that admitting that "too big" is not a very concrete concept. Considering it, my County has a population of almost 200k and I "know" my County officials. Congress, not so much. I've "met" my congressman but at the type of events they hold to "meet" people. I've interacted with his staff on projects but always staff because . . . well because the districts are too big so they don't have time to interact with everybody.

With Congressional districts at ~800k, my 200k county is around 1/4 of a Congressional District. With twice as many Districts my ~200k County would be half and that "feels" like it would be more what I am looking for in terms of Congressional relation to the district.

To clarify, and this is WAY more important that most people realize, I'd expand the size of Congress WITHOUT expanding the staffing. The existing staff is more than large enough and I'd just share them among twice as many members. I don't know if this would actually be practical but that is @medinabuckeye1 's theory.

I'm not sure what the right number is--maybe 200K would work, and certainly the original size of around 33K is unnecessarily small--but I feel pretty strongly that the current size of congressional districts is too big.

SFBadger96 · « **Reply #37530 on:** September 30, 2024, 03:46:00 PM »

And the Mack vs. Peterbilt discussion is a great way to frame the things that local politicians deal with all the time. At least here--and I suspect in most places--they also get pretty extensive packets prepared by administrative staff that outline a lot of various potential impacts (all of which are public documents). The members of the public who comment--and especially those who complain--rarely take the time to consider all of the information that the elected office holder has (and some of the elected rarely consider it, too).

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #37531 on:** September 30, 2024, 03:56:11 PM »

Quote from: betarhoalphadelta on September 30, 2024, 01:00:24 PM

Where I think it might improve is to attract people who otherwise wouldn't be attracted to the job, who aren't independently wealthy. How many talented doctors, lawyers, and engineers are out there for whom taking a job in Congress would be a sizable pay cut? If you want to attract good people, you have to offer them compensation that isn't a step down from what they're doing now.

This, I think, is the key to the pay issue.

I also think that underpayment is somewhat responsible for some of the corruption that we see. People who steal pretty universally rationalize their theft. The number of people who willfully accept their own evilness is vanishingly small. Instead, most thieves (and corrupt politicians) rationalize their actions. Underpaying them gives them a way to rationalize.

I'll say before anyone else does that it might not make any difference. Maybe they'd just switch to a different rationalization.

Jon Stewart had a segment a while back where he listed the investment returns of a slew of both Democratic and Republican members of Congress. It is clear that a LOT of them are conducting what would be criminal insider trading if you or I did it and it is actually legal for them. I think it is a safe bet that most of them think "I can't actually live on $174k, what do the people expect?".

The final thing here that I want to agree with you on is the "independently wealthy" comment. You are exactly correct. When pay is low, politics becomes a vanity project for the independently wealthy. As @SFBadger96 said in his initial post, some of the people in politics "really want to be important" and then he said that "these people are awful". He is right and when you tie these two realities together you realize that limiting office-holding to wealthy people who are doing it as a vanity project is effectively limiting your office-holders to people who are awful.

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #37532 on:** September 30, 2024, 04:27:05 PM »

Quote from: SFBadger96 on September 30, 2024, 03:46:00 PM

And the Mack vs. Peterbilt discussion is a great way to frame the things that local politicians deal with all the time. At least here--and I suspect in most places--they also get pretty extensive packets prepared by administrative staff that outline a lot of various potential impacts (all of which are public documents). The members of the public who comment--and especially those who complain--rarely take the time to consider all of the information that the elected office holder has (and some of the elected rarely consider it, too).

And a lot of it is things that you wouldn't initially think of like:

We already have Peterbilts so our mechanics already attend Peterbilt trainings. If we add Macks, we'll have to send mechanics to another school, that costs money.
The Mack dealer is closer so every time we need to drive there for a part we'll save $$$$.
We already have Peterbilts so we already stock Peterbilt parts. If we buy a different brand we'll need to stock another group of replacement parts. That costs money both for the parts and having a place to keep them.
The County (or some other government that we cooperate with) has Macks so if we had Macks we could share parts/mechanics.

My point is that there is a lot of random minutiae that goes into these decisions that has literally NOTHING to do with the typical R vs D political divide. It is a political decision but it isn't a partisan decision. It isn't like Peterbilt is Pro-Choice and Mack is Pro-Life. We aren't talking about THAT kind of politics but this can still end up as a messy political fight because you can end up with "team Mayor" vs "team anti-mayor" (my example) or "family political dynasty" vs "anti family political dynasty" ( @SFBadger96 's example) fighting over it and a LOT of times they aren't even fighting because there is a serious disagreement they are just fighting to fight, LoL.

SFBadger96 · « **Reply #37533 on:** September 30, 2024, 04:35:03 PM »

And they are fighting because their reflexive reaction is that if team A wants it, it must be bad; and if Team B wants it, it must be good. Nevermind the details.

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Topic: OT-Politics Thread: please TRY to keep it civil, you damned dirty apes

medinabuckeye1

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

medinabuckeye1

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

medinabuckeye1

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

medinabuckeye1

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

betarhoalphadelta

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

Gigem

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

SFBadger96

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

medinabuckeye1

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

SFBadger96

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

SFBadger96

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

SFBadger96

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

medinabuckeye1

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

medinabuckeye1

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out

SFBadger96

Re: OT-Catch all thread - Personal attacks will result in a time out