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November 15

Would the United States congress be able to expell states or validate a state request to leave?

Simple question : my understanding about the secession war is that states can't secede unilaterally... But what about a simple congress vote even if the state doesn't want to leave the Union? A motivation would be to get the required quorum to repeal an amendment to the constitution or for a state to escape authoritarian rule... 82.66.26.199 (talk) 12:12, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that it's kind of implied by Article IV, which says that Congress doesn't have power to unilaterally redefine a state: "...no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress"... -- AnonMoos (talk) 15:29, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That says the opposite of what OP asked? For example, it says that Northern California can't split off into a separate state, not that Congress can't kick out a state. Phil Ochs once proposed something like the latter but as far as I know, it didn't get any traction. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 23:48, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What I was understanding is joining like Texas is a simple vote. And I looked at the post civil war jurisprudence that ruled why secession was illegal. 2A01:E0A:401:A7C0:417A:1147:400C:C498 (talk) 11:05, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As you see at Reserved powers, the US Constitution specifies in the 10th Amendment that the powers not granted to the federal government are reserved to the states, unless prohibited to the states. Since the Constitution does not talk about expelling a state, it follows that the federal government does not have that power. (Unless, of course, someone convinces the Supreme Court that something in the Constitution implies such power.) --142.112.149.206 (talk) 16:48, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That stuff contradicts the post civil war supreme court ruling because that would imply on the reverse that states have the power to seceede by themselves. And that doesn t tell about a state asking Congress to leave. 2A01:E0A:401:A7C0:417A:1147:400C:C498 (talk) 11:08, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

think literally, the way a state leaves is the same as how a state is created because leaving is the same as creating a new state; It would take congressional approval and that states legislatures approval. They would be creating a new state, but the sovereignty of that new state would be equal with the United States, not subordinate as what we think of as a state traditionally is. 208.121.35.65 (talk) 20:56, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

yes, I m thinking leaving can be done the same way a state is created. 2A01:E0A:401:A7C0:64A1:A0FD:CDDA:2E99 (talk) 10:58, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can't even do it by constitutional amendment. Article V says no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

I suppose theoretically you could pass an amendment that says "OK, California gets to send two senators because we can't do anything about that, but for all other purposes it is no longer a state of the United States".

Could you do this last by statute, without an amendment? I sincerely doubt it. But I suppose the question would have to be tested in court. --Trovatore (talk) 21:25, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That means that every state has the same number of senators, unless for some inexplicable reason a state wanted only one senator. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:27, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Which implies that you can't expel a state, unless you let it have the same number of senators as the states you don't expel. --Trovatore (talk) 00:16, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you expel a state, they're no longer part of the USA, so their senators would be irrelevant. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:13, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bugs. Come on, you're smarter than that. If you expel the state and don't let it keep its senators, then you are depriving of it of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. You can't do it, period, not even with an amendment. It's an entrenched clause, the only one remaining in our constitution that can have any actual effect. (Theoretically, you also can't prohibit the importation of slaves before 1808, but....) --Trovatore (talk) 03:28, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If a state has been expelled, it's no longer in the union. The former state could have as many senators as they want, but they won't be sitting in the U.S. Senate, so it doesn't matter. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:08, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, that doesn't work. The state cannot be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate, so its senators have to be allowed to vote. If you argue that senators from a non-state can't vote, then you're forced to the conclusion that you can't expel the state in the first place. There's nothing subtle here. --Trovatore (talk) 07:11, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(I think this really is the most natural conclusion: Article V is an absolute and permanent bar to ever expelling a state without its consent under any circumstances whatsoever, and this cannot be changed by amendment or any sequence of amendments. As long as the Constitution itself is not entirely overthrown, states cannot be expelled and must be allowed to keep their equal vote in the Senate. My workaround about expelling the state but still letting it vote in the Senate was mostly a quibble. Whether you could first de-entrench the clause with one amendment, then disfranchise a state in a second one, is a more difficult question, but I would tend to think the answer is no.) --Trovatore (talk) 07:16, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If they've been expelled, then they are no longer a state. Their only recourse would be to take it to the Supreme Court. For that, we have the post-Civil War precedent, where states had essentially expelled themselves, and had to earn their way back into the Union. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:19, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bugs. YOU CAN'T DEPRIVE THEM OF THEIR VOTE IN THE SENATE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT. Period. If expulsion, would have that effect, then YOU CAN'T EXPEL THEM. Again, there is no subtlety here. --Trovatore (talk) 07:25, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But I m interested also in the case of a state volountarily leaving. Without consent seems to me it means it can be done with consent. 2A01:E0A:401:A7C0:64A1:A0FD:CDDA:2E99 (talk) 11:02, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can do anything with a constitutional amendment, at that point the power resides with whoever can force their interpretation through. Even without that, I would hesitate to discount legal shenanigans. There's a long history of constitutional reinterpretation in the United States, and the current At least one US supreme court judge has previously called into question the 14th amendment the incoming government seems to want to remove. CMD (talk) 07:26, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You say "you can do anything with a constitutional amendment", but that is incorrect, by Article V, as I explain above. Why you're linking to articles about Singapore I have no idea. --Trovatore (talk) 07:28, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you can think of better examples of states that were expelled, I would be interested. CMD (talk) 12:02, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's just irrelevant to American constitutional law. Malaysia has a completely different system. No American state has ever been expelled. The ones that seceded, at the time of the American Civil War, are admittedly a complicated case, with the official legal position being that they never legally seceded at all (a side effect of Texas v. White, which really wasn't about that question), but on the other hand having to be "readmitted" under the Reconstruction Laws. --Trovatore (talk) 17:35, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This means it can be done if the state consent. 2A01:E0A:401:A7C0:64A1:A0FD:CDDA:2E99 (talk) 10:59, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Peau de soie

Hello. I read the following sentence in a translation EN→FR of Herbert Lieberman's Necropolis (Paris, France loisirs, 1983, p.135): « (…) à côté de lui, une femme brune, très petite, vêtue d'une longue peau de soie [in italics in the text] en dentelle, belle plutôt que jolie, regard intense et attachant.»

The wording "a long peau de soie in lace" makes me think that peau de soie is the name of a clothing but I can't find which one on the web - unless use these terms to designate only a type of silk (incidentally ignored on fr.WP).

But maybe the French translation is bad... Does anyone have the English version of this novel? Or does anyone know the meaning of peau de soie as clothing?

Could you enlighten me? Thanks already, Égoïté (talk) 17:00, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's an entry for this term on Wiktionary: en:wikt:peau de soie. Also see paduasoy. --Amble (talk) 17:12, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is wel there: the sentence in French indicates that the woman is dressed, therefore wearing a garment. We would not say in French that she is dressed in a long wool or a long silk.

In addition, the Wiktionary says: "heavy closely-woven silk fabric, faced with satin on both sides" and the text of the novel speaks of lace. The lace could be silk but not tightly woven covered with satin on both sides! (And, by the way, satin is not a material but a way of weaving.) Égoïté (talk) 18:08, 15 November 2024 (UTC) (sorry for my English)[reply]

Lieberman's original on Google Books: "...beside him, a dark, diminutive woman in long peau de soie lace, more handsome than pretty, with a strikingly arresting gaze." It's a normal construction in English: "he was in tweed", "she was in black silk", and so on. --Antiquary (talk) 20:53, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ok thank you very much Antiquary ! So I translate "à côté de lui, une femme brune, petite, vêtue de longues dentelles en peau de soie, plus belle que jolie..." Thank you !Égoïté (talk) 21:54, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that "From French xx " always means the term given is to be used in French like from the English sentence (vitrinelinguistique). The safest path it seems would be to find a fashion account, in French, reporting about the Wedding of Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, in July 2020 : dress is made from ivory peau de soie taffeta and is trimmed with ivory duchess satin. --Askedonty (talk) 00:59, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Detroit Branch

Why do they have to call it a branch of Chicago?? Why can't they simply call it the "Federal Reserve Bank of Detroit"?? Or even the "Federal Reserve Bank 7th District Detroit Branch" as distinguished from the main Chicago branch?? (Please answer with something that is valid regardless of what federal reserve bank branch I'm asking this question about.) Georgia guy (talk) 18:56, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's not a separate legal entity from the "Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago", and as such it wouldn't make sense to call it the "Federal Reserve Bank of Detroit". In theory the branch could have been called "Federal Reserve Bank 7th District Detroit Branch", however as "Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago" is the recognized name for the organization, using 7th District in the name of the branch office would just introduce confusion. Amstrad00 (talk) 19:50, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Federal Reserve Act specifies what the Federal Reserve Banks are, how many there should be (at least 8 but not than 12), how they are governed, how they may establish branches, and what the banks and districts are to be named. So a valid answer to your question is "because it's the law". The authors of the law could have chosen a different system, but I don't see why they would have wanted to; these names make pretty good sense to me. Note that each Federal Reserve Bank is owned by its shareholders, the individual banks that are members of that Federal Reserve Bank. A different Federal Reserve Bank would have its own shares, its own member banks, and its own governance. A branch does not. You could ask your congressional representatives to sponsor a bill replacing the current system with something else. --Amble (talk) 20:30, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussed at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 October 17#Letters for US Federal Reserve branches. 2A00:23D0:50D:E501:51FF:910C:BEC9:3E2F (talk) 14:41, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Polygon

How serious do people take Polygon in terms of their critical commentary? They just released a ranking of all MCU films that I find to be completely off the mark. Do people find these rankings helpful or informative? Looking closely at their lists, anything that has more drama and dialogue than action is automatically ranked lower. I can't accept that people actually think this way. Is this normal? Viriditas (talk) 22:11, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IDK aboout Polygon in particular, but I frequently see articles about movies, or even bodies of writing about particular movies, that seem completely wrong. I have often thought movie X was terrible, even though its reviews were almost entirely favorable. Sometimes vice versa too. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 11:16, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying that any review that disagrees with your personal, subjective opinion is "wrong"? How dare they write their review without consulting you first? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:25, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would expect reviewers to have a range of responses just like moviegoers do. So some of the reviewers' opinions would coincide with mine and others would not. If I think a movie is bad and all the reviewers think it is good, then yes, it makes me feel like something is wrong with the reviewing establishment. I'm not any kind of movie expert and I don't think my opinion is anything special or unique. So I'd expect my reaction to a movie to be shared with at least a few others, including a few reviewers. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 01:06, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I expect that the group of movie reviews that you or anyone typically reads will be a small sub-set of all such reviews, and what you find in your sub-set will not necessarily be representative of the full spectrum of opinions. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:44, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience, people who are more or less unfamiliar with the comics go to MCU movies specifically for the action. So I have no problem believing idea that general entertainment reviewers focus on and prioritize that aspect of the movies. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:41, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

spoiler effect

The article spoiler effect (about losing candidates affecting election outcomes) doesn't have much to say about whether the effect is a good thing or a bad thing as a question of political theory. It refers to "independence of irrelevant alternatives" but doesn't give meaningful support to that principle, and there are obvious arguments against it. Can anyone recommand any noteworthy literature on this, particularly the view favoring spoilers? Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 23:24, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know anything about their role in more complicated voting systems, but in "First Past the Post" or plurality voting inside each state of the United States, there's a prima facie plausible case to be made that spoiler candidates affected the outcome of both the 1992 and 2000 presidential elections. Of course, Ross Perot in 1992 was a lot closer to being a viable candidate than Ralph Nader in 2000. Some claim that without the 2000 Nader campaign, there wouldn't have been a 2003 Iraq war. Replacing plurality voting with another electoral system might make it possible for people to vote for minor-party candidates without fearing that this would help elevate their worst option to the presidency. This would allow some people to express a greater range of opinions with their vote, but might lessen major-party cohesion... AnonMoos (talk) 04:37, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm willing to accept as a fact that Nader spoiled the 2000 election for Gore, or (alternatively) as Nader put it, "Al Gore cost me the presidency". So the spoiler effect is real, though it could have happened the other way too (Pat Buchanan got some right wing votes in 2000 iirc). I tend to think Perot didn't change the 1992 outcome but that's harder to know. I'm wondering if there are established arguments (e.g. from game theory) that the spoiler effect in general is a good thing or a bad thing. Certainly similar effects happen throughout real life and not just elections, like in good–better–best pricing of soft drinks at the movies, Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 05:41, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Historians believe that Clinton won the 1992 election because Perot took votes away from Bush 41. It is likely that Bush 41 would have won if Perot hadn't entered the race. I personally believe this was true based on the people I knew who supported Perot; there were a lot of them. The more interesting thing is how Perot paved the way for Trump to emerge. Carville famously said, "If Trump is the Jesus of blue-collar populism, then Ross Perot was its John the Baptist." Lots of truth there. Viriditas (talk) 09:41, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there is consensus among historians about Perot being a spoiler. Perot took votes from both candidates and there is a significant (maybe not majority, idk) view that in the end, he didn't matter. I can certainly believe historians differ with each other on the question.

In Trump-Harris 2024 of course the real spoiler was abstainers. So to really eliminate the spoiler effect we'd need mandatory voting as well as IRV or whatever. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 11:11, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the numbers. Bush lost because almost 20% of Republicans voted for Perot. I was there. I remember when it all went down. As for Trump-Harris, the spoiler was Harris, Biden, and the DNC. To wage an effective and targeted campaign, Biden needed to have announced his retirement well in advance, priming the American people that he was only a one term president. That, of course, never happened. That it got so late and so far past the point of no return, to the point where most people didn't know there was a problem until the middle of 2024 when the debate debacle occurred, that was the end. I watched it live and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Harris was not a popular candidate nor was she chosen by a primary or a convention in relation to other potential challengers, she was anointed, and she didn't have enough time to wage a serious campaign. However, if you insist on a real existential spoiler aside from the involved parties, there is an emerging consensus that the conservative media ecosystem is decades ahead of Democrats, to the point where there is virtually no liberal media except for MSNBC, and even there, it is center to center-right. Viriditas (talk) 11:35, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The flaw in much of this reasoning is in making assumptions about what people would have done if so-and-so wasn't in the race. Or, for that matter, if so-and-so was in the race. A lot of Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 didn't like Hillary so didn't bother voting. It would have been interesting to see how Trump would have done head-to-head with Sanders. But we'll never know for sure. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:22, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well we're getting away from the question of whether the possibility of spoilers is good or bad. In any specific election it obviously depends on what outcome you want. Btw at least a few Sanders supporters in 2016 ended up voting for Trump.[1] 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 18:47, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Define "good" and "bad". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:13, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. In politics, of all things, what's good for someone is bad for someone else. And you'll always be able to find sources saying that this or that circumstance, voting system, whatever is a good thing, and a bad thing. Ultimately, it's subjective, and the Ref Desk cannot decree that it's one thing or another. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:19, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does Australia have compulsory voting? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:50, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, at least at Federal and State election level. There are PSA announcements (tee-hee) on TV before elections that end with the voice-over saying "voting is compulsory". Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 09:32, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bugs, good question (good vs bad). Let's say, good = steering public policy towards where the electorate wants it to be, even when the entrenched leadership of the major parties wants it to be someplace different. I'm wondering if this question has been studied in the political or economics literature. Jack, I didn't ask for a decree from the ref desk, I asked whether there is existing published work on the issue. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 22:55, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm wondering if this question has been studied in the political or economics literature.

Yes, quite famously, in fact. See Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page 2014. For the sake of transparency, the conservative establishment pushed back quite a bit on this,[2] which is to be expected, but their response is just denial, in my opinion. They do this kind of thing a lot, often coordinating their denials as shared talking points. Gilens and Page were correct, but the staus quo won't accept it. Viriditas (talk) 23:04, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I'll look at that. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 00:57, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Viriditas, can you check the page number in that citation? The pdf starts on page 564. 2014 is the publication year. Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 01:17, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. Viriditas (talk) 02:48, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"without fearing that this would help elevate their worst option to the presidency" Define worst option. The way the two-party system worked in Greece between 1977 and 2012, the two dominant parties were New Democracy (a combination of conservatives, various shades of liberals, and reactionaries who found a new political home) and PASOK (nominal socialists with increasingly pro-business interests). Both had plenty of corruption scandals, both had close ties to business elites, and both were rather reluctant to reform chronic bureaucratic problems in the public sector. At some point many of the voters had problems in seeing any actual difference between them. My understanding of two-party systems is that the voter gets the option to choose between two political parties which are both deaf to the voter's needs. Dimadick (talk) 04:19, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Viriditas, oh I see, Benjamin I. Page was one of the authors of that article published in 2014, so you gave the name and year. I thought you were saying to look at page 2014 of the article. Ok I will read the article but a quick scan didn't seem to say anything about the spoiler effect. Dimadick, creating the possibility of electing the worst candidate is basically the definition of the spoiler effect. It's something like a doomsday device that can trigger if the lesser of two evils major-party candidate is insufficiently popular.

There are various arguments (some crazy I'm sure) for and against the intentional creation of a doomsday device. Many alternative voting systems like IRV aim to get rid of the spoiler effect. So I'm looking for the arguments for and against getting rid of it. IRV proponents seem to automatically assume that the effect is a bad thing and eliminating it is good. I would like to see a careful analysis of this assumption.

Note, I think the US two-party system, and the spoiler effect, are supposed to be emergent properties of the first past the post voting system that we use, by Duverger's law. Greek elections are different and the effects are less strong. I don't want to get soapboxy but Syriza did manage to win in Greece in 2015, only to squander its mandate through incredibly dumb errors by people who knew better but shut their eyes. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 05:39, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Viriditas, I looked at that article and I think I had heard of it before. It says basically that average citizens voting has almost no effect on policy, but nothing about the spoiler effect per se afaict. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 07:30, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You wrote: Let's say, good [equals] steering public policy towards where the electorate wants it to be, even when the entrenched leadership of the major parties wants it to be someplace different. I'm wondering if this question has been studied in the political or economics literature.. It has, that’s what the Gilens & Page paper is about. Viriditas (talk) 07:59, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The G&P paper discusses how party leaders can want different policies than what the public wants. Sure, that difference is a given. What I want to know is whether the spoiler effect, specifically, does anything to either reinforce or counteract the power of those party leaders. Like in a slightly altered and oversimplified timeline, Bush runs on a 100% evil platform and Gore runs on 99% evil, expecting to win by a 1% margin. But he ignores Nader who eats that margin, thus Gore loses. If Gore were smarter, he could have run as 90% evil instead of 99%. Then he wins by enough to outcompete Bush and Nader put together. The spoiler effect has made public policy (or at least Gore's campaign platform) 9% less evil, i.e. closer to what the public wants.

Of course that's a pretty silly analysis but I have no real knowledge in this area. So again, I'm wondering whether poli sci or economics types have had anything to say about it. I figure they are more clueful than I am. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 09:00, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]