Sorry to burst your bubble, but it isn't just Republicans who resort to... creative executive strategies that are worth criticizing.
The expansion of executive powers us usually makes sense to the party in power, and doesn’t make sense to the minority party. But there was always an understanding that everyone was a rational actor with these powers. No one ever stopped and asked what would happen if someone a little more irrational now had these expanded powers.
No, the judicial and legislative branches have ceded it. The whole point of checks and balances is the tacit understanding that each branch will naturally grow as much power as it can and it is the responsibility of the other branches to check it.
Blaming the executive branch for growing its power is like blaming the seller for high prices in a free market — the system is designed presuming competition and selfish behavior.
This is one of the really brilliant things the GOP has done. They've led us all to believe that it's just McConnell and a couple of other shitbags but that the rest of the Republicans are mostly OK.
That's a deliberate smokescreen. Notice that the "handful of Republicans" always happen to be in red strongholds? McConnell volunteers to be the public face of the GOP's bad policies because they know his seat is secure. Meanwhile, all the other GOP Congresspeople who support those same awful policies but might risk losing an election can stay out of the news and pretend it's not their doing.
McConnell was voted into his seat by a majority of the GOP Senators. They all know what they're doing.
Well, it is the executive branch that chooses the supreme court... For every John Marshall there has been on the court, there is likely a Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr with his famous quote “If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It’s my job.”.
Obama just put on a nice face and was eloquent while he expanded the surveillance engine, the drone wars, the arms shipments to unstable third world countries, bailouts for billionaires, etc. Trump is brazen and up front about it, but the end result is still the same bullshit! Cops sending agent provocateurs in to justify kettling protestors happened under Obama too. That doesn't justify it in the Trump era either though!
So tired of hearing this trite and cliched response anytime someone brings up that the corruption permeates the entirety of the policy elite establishment. The DNC and RNC (both corporations, never mentioned in the constitution) would rather work together in collusion than allow any real change to happen (as they did in the early 90s to control the debates), and until people wake up to the fact they won't be able to understand why nothing is changing. It just becomes a pendulum swing back and forth every few years while the inverted totalitarian kleptocratic oligarchic corporatists retain power in the shadows.
Lets just spit some real facts here. Blackmail operations such as Epstein was at the front of, are a core part of how this has happened. He is a great example of how the corruption knows no party lines, but that's also why he was taken out, the story buried and convoluted, and half-assed coverup stories like netflix's latest doc are put out. The greatest thing the oligarchy fears is a united people... and the ol party lines and any other divide they can drum up is good at keeping us at each others throats instead of theirs.
It's time to wake up and break out of the cycle. Or not. If not, we are Rome headed for a mighty and bloody collapse of epic proportions.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Top down compromise of a centralized system becomes increasingly trivial the further the compromise progresses.
And the Senate that confirms the nominees.
Frankly, I think we should be impressed. It's a borderline miracle that it's survived as well as it has.
Even so, D and R are both beholden to the American aristocratic wealth class for support, legitimacy, and power, so there is effectively no difference beyond a few, token, mild progressives in D who don't hold sway over the majority of neoliberals.
Actually they did. The Federalist papers contained some strong warnings that we must strive to prevent factions / parties from taking over. They were painfully aware it was a potential failure mode in the system they were designing.
[0] https://thefulcrum.us/worst-gerrymandering-districts-example...
[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-hate-gerrymanderinge...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/28/how-m...
[3] https://www.heritage.org/homeland-security/commentary/hypocr...
[4] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senate-nuclear-filibuster-ru...
[5] https://time.com/3701079/obama-filibuster/
If we don’t wanna go there that’s fine I suppose, I just want to know where we’re gonna draw the line between “deflection” and having a substantive discussion on the gamesmanship going on inside the beltway without devolving into the usual brutish “my side good, your side bad”.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm warming up to the idea of the Democrats passing court-packing legislation for the Supreme and Appellate courts the next time they control both houses of Congress and the presidency. Especially if they can somehow establish a very strong super-majority requirement for all future judicial branch nominations that would be immune to stealth court-packing tactics like the Senate Republicans have been using.
The prior institutional restraints have broken down, and balance needs to be restored and new restraints implemented if the system is going to survive.
Stop punishing one party for not being perfect but striving for better, but letting the other off for the most blatantly obvious destructive practices because that is who they are.
Hang on, you think that’s what I’m doing here? I don’t think we have a thing to discuss if this is really the immediate conclusion you’re coming to, since it frames my entire position as antagonistic to anything but whatever critique you think should be made instead, and there’s no way out of that corner for me, now is there?
How am I even supposed to respond to an assertion about what I’m doing when providing numerous sources for my position only to get boxed in as “letting the other off for the most blatantly obvious destructive practices”?
I’m no partisan hack, Gerrymandering and Senate Procedure are probably the best examples of how both parties engage in pure unabated gamesmanship to get what they want while launching strikes against the other side for doing the exact same thing. Either argue the impact and convince me why the rules are inconsistently applied (as I’ve shown clearly was the case with Harry Reid changing Senate confirmation rules) or don’t, but leave the straw manning at the door.’
BOTH parties deserve a wag of the finger and a volume of criticism for their behavior where warranted. This should not be excused by anyone who pretends to give a damn about the country.
It also robs the US of a signalling mechanism: there's no way for the Republicans or Democrats to see that they didn't get primary vote share and only recovered it after specific-issue or more focused parties dropped out.
The US desperately needs preferential voting and mandatory voting. The default supposition of the US has to be that there must be exceptional circumstances as to why any individual did not vote.
IIRC, the old special prosecutor law (passed after Watergate) did not allow the president to fire them, but it was allowed to expire after Ken Starr.
You want to feel superior to both parties, that you're above it, fine, but at least know you aren't being an honest broker when you do so.
For a substantive discussion on gamesmanship, we need to ask "Which side is most likely to work to end partisan gerrymandering (perhaps with a change to a more proportional voting system[1])?"
[0] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/republicans-ger...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2018_Maine_Question_1
Sorry, were you looking for a complete and exhaustive list of every problem I have with the Democrats and the Republicans? I’m happy to provide that, but so far I have a 6-0 lead on providing sources for my complaints. You’ve given nothing to the conversation so far. Would you like to? Floor’s yours.
You want to feel superior to both parties, that you're above it, fine, but at least know you aren't being an honest broker when you do so.
Again with the strawmen. Those were not words I typed, it is not a sentiment I hold. I’m directly calling out the problems with acting like any critique on both Democrats and Republicans when those critiques are deserved amounts to “deflecting”.
Take care friend, I don’t know whatever debate you think we’re having here but it doesn’t exist.
It's still a two-party system, but then there are also single-issue or hardline minor parties who often have the ability to hold the government hostage on their demands.
If Democrat mayors and governors would just send in their own police to control the situation, there wouldn't be all this hand wringing.
It’s just seems to me the problem many have when this type of conversation emerges isn’t with the behavior, it’s the actor and that doesn’t quite square with me.
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game”. If gerrymandering is a “threat to democracy”[0], seems to me we should be critiquing anyone who plays that game instead of waiting for our team’s turn to ratfuck the country the country by the same measure. That signals either the rules were a problem to begin with and we should have changed them long ago, or we kept them in place knowing they were being taken advantage of and just waiting for our team to get the ball back-does it not?
But that’s just merely one example, it’s not representative of the totality of Capitol Hill politicking. Arguably one party is focused and pushing a message of progress and righting social ills but I’m not going to let them off when they play stupid games either, nor should anyone IMO.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2018/10/23/659745042/gerrymandering-is-a...
Edit: This mental trick of calling a person who throws a brick through a store window or sets fire to a cop car, a "protester", is so similar to the way people unbelievably attribute a "legal" status to someone who has crossed the southern border by bypassing a port of entry.
Its like saying that a person who doesn't tolerate someone else's world view is anti-fascist, because a fascist is someone who tries to impose their own worldview on others.
They will conveniently forget that were the tables turned, Republicans would not do the same.
Exactly. I can remember when Obama was using procedural rules to force things though. The response was "if you do it, you can't complain when the other party does it when they are in power".
I'm going to be honest - attitudes like yours are the reason why politics is so nasty in the US.
Rather than take the perspective that everyone wants the best for the country, there are just disagreements on what best looks like and how to get there, you're just taking the perspective that the other side is broken, immoral and, in your words, destructive.
I'm on the conservative side of things and I don't think Democrats are evil. They just want the US to look different than I do. That's their right.
I shudder to think what we'd look like if disenfranchising voters were a more viable strategy.
https://sirota.substack.com/p/10-things-dems-could-do-right-...
When we ended a government of enumerated powers and everything could be done at the federal level without an amendment - great things like the drug war.
Maybe, and maybe that means that the Japanese internment was worse then anything the federal government did to the Native Americans.
I mean, it's not like native Americans were forcibly relocated from their homes into federally designated lands for a handful of years like the Japanese... oh, wait...
And no offense to you, I'm sure you believe that you have a consistent idea of what it means to be conservative, but I have no clue what being conservative means anymore.
It didn't happen then, but that doesn't mean it can't happen now. For several decades, the Republicans have played political hardball to pack the courts in their own way [1]; I doubt that was a factor nearly a century ago.
[1] bitter obstructionism to maintain vacancies until they have the power to fill them with their own picks, selected primarily for ideological reliability.
Some time in the past, certainly at FDR’s time, dems were confident about stacking the court. What changed to defang them? The dem’s actions while Merrick Garland was denied hearings infuriate me until today: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/04/senate-obst...
The problem is not that people don't want to vote, it is that people can't vote: voter suppression (e.g. voter roll manipulation, ID requirements abused to specifically target PoC) or people working two/more jobs combined with the fact the US unlike almost all other countries do not vote on a Sunday or have it a national holiday are quite powerful.
To add to that mix, mail-in voting is not accessible by default for everyone, and extreme gerrymandering (local/state elections) and the "electoral college" system (presidential elections) make it effectively moot to vote in states that are either hard blue or hard red.
As you say, the US constitution was one of the first attempts at a constitution in the modern period. The people who wrote it were not experts on writing constitutions, and could not benefit from the experience of previous constitutions. It should not be at all surprising that it isn't very good.
People take less notice of transgressions when their party is in power. As much as we might like to think there’s universal recognition of the current administration’s misuse of power there’s a lot of people who support it - “to get things done”. People just hate it when it’s not the things they want.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-poised-to-lim...
It is true that the Democrats opened this can of worms, but the Republicans then taking advantage of it instead of setting a better example does not exonerate them. They're all bad actors now.
the feds vs states thing seems like a distinction without meaning, tbh, the federal government certainly intended the states to deal with natives as they did, and there is absolutely no shortage of crimes done by the federal government itself (treaties broken, allies backstabbed, lands taken, literal genocide, fucking DAPL)
Eh, if the definition of "court packing" is so narrow that it only covers things nearly exactly like FDR's proposal, then I don't consider it a very useful term.
If it makes you more comfortable, feel free to replace "court packing" in my comment with a term that's general enough to encompass FDR's proposal and the Republicans' recent tactics.
> People take less notice of transgressions when their party is in power....
I used to fault the Democrats for that (and used to consider myself more of a conservative), but on reflection I think the Republican's obdurate obstructionism is the more important fact. That's clear now that the Republican's priority now seems to be to ram through nominees when they have the power to do so (as shown by their last session, nominations over caronavirus response), and they've done such a shit job at checks and balances when it's needed now more than ever.
I don't think so. The idea is to force compromise by putting the threshold so far out of reach to eliminate fantasies that after the next election one party or other will be in the position not to have to compromise. That's the issue now.
The idea that a minority would try to literally destroy another branch of government for some reason seems so remote and so extreme that I'm not sure if it's worth considering. What would the political calculus be for trying to block the workings of the court system?
An example from Minneapolis, from a City Council member:
https://twitter.com/MplsWard3/status/1267891878801915904
> Politicians who cross the MPD find slowdowns in their wards. After the first time I cut money from the proposed police budget, I had an uptick in calls taking forever to get a response, and MPD officers telling business owners to call their councilman about why it took so long.
Haven't you seen the videos of police arresting, sitting, beating and otherwise mistreating the media?
It's a done deal. Our only hope is to vote trump or and hope he goes.
"If Trump were inclined to overstay his term, the levers of power work in favor of removal. Because the president immediately and automatically loses his constitutional authority upon expiration of his term or after removal through impeachment, he would lack the power to direct the U.S. Secret Service or other federal agents to protect him. He would likewise lose his power, as the commander in chief of the armed forces, to order a military response to defend him. In fact, the newly minted president would possess those presidential powers. If necessary, the successor could direct federal agents to forcibly remove Trump from the White House. Now a private citizen, Trump would no longer be immune from criminal prosecution, and could be arrested and charged with trespassing in the White House. While even former presidents enjoy Secret Service protection, agents presumably would not follow an illegal order to protect one from removal from office."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/what-if-he...
I applaud the effort and I think we need to go further and get rid of the fillibuster rules entirely.
Actually, that is specifically the reason some supermajority rules were lifted [1]. Do you recall Merrick Garland?
The filibuster is abused similarly [2].
[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/04/senate-obst...
[2]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2013/11/21/char...
Actually, it was to appoint Gorsuch (who replaced Scalia's vacant seat). Kavanaugh was appointed to replace Kennedy.
I have never, ever believed this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/graph/png/Filibust...
We're in a pretty bad place and I'm not sure how we get out of it.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gop-and-police-unions-a-lo...
> When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker cracked down on collective bargaining rights of public-sector unions, he exempted cops and fire fighters. He feared the police might go on strike and join the protestors. Videos of that pairing could have doomed Walker’s entire effort. “It’s a decision by politicians not to bite off more than they can chew,” explains James Sherk, a labor policy expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Their impunity to civilian oversight should be concerning to both parties. You're not hearing much concern from the Republicans on this right now.
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
Edit: So, rights have to be enumerated by a country's founding documents, and then protected by that country's government. Ultimately, though, the people are responsible to establish their own freedom when no freedom exists.
Black people don't have the exclusive claim of persecution by police in the US. In fact, they suffer far fewer death by cop than white people. [1] Why do they feel they are singled out? Could it be a victim-stance mentality?
1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
Now that's just deeply wrong. People have been complaining about this my entire life. I was 12 when the PATRIOT act came into being and I remember people pointing out all the deeply unamerican ways it could be used, and then later all the ways that it was in fact being abused. I've been complaining about consolidation of power in the executive branch my entire politically conscious life. And right now on HN there are people constantly complaining about the overreaches of surveillance under the belief that they will all be abused one day. This isn't a surprise.
Instead the federal government can do anything it wants. It's why we have the drug war, DEA, huge national debt, broken medical system.
Also if you are from the US I'm sure you are happy to go back to be ruled by the UK, considering that the US was founded on violent protest (note if you're from somewhere else I am very likely to find a similar example in your countries history), or are you saying it is ok to protest violently if you believe you are taxed to high (or not represented enough) but not if you are being shot disproportionally?
Frame your argument using whatever numbers you like. I prefer absolute numbers, regardless of you calling me disingenuous.
