American politics 2016: Lawyers, Guns, and D-Money

frankly i don't think congress is capable of writing good laws right now. the long-term non-participation of the republican party in the democratic process (specifically compromise for the common good) has severely damaged the competency of the institution. so, you know, either you start passing bad laws or you go home and don't come back, y'know? and i'm wondering if that's what's driving the democratic sit-in, the growing fear that if they go home we won't let them come back.

Correction: Expanded background checks are indeed a measure Democrats are currently demanding a vote on.

assault weapons ban too!

I think the focus on the no-fly/no-buy measure is unfortunate - it's clearly the *least* effective of the proposals on the table, as well as the most constitutionally questionable, but because it's the most attention-getting *and* the one GOP lawmakers marginally support it's becoming the rhetorical focus.

I would be super-happy w the expanded background checks + assault weapons ban, but there won't be any GOP votes supporting those.

weird how there's zero coverage of this on NYT

because it's the most attention-getting *and* the one GOP lawmakers marginally support it's becoming the rhetorical focus

cf. that old thing about politics being the art of the possible

no politician is seriously challenging the no-fly list, right? so what's the point :(

Patrick Murphy's credentials:

A CBS4 News investigation into Murphy’s history as both a CPA and a self-described small business owner, however, shows Murphy has in some cases exaggerated his experience and in other instances made claims that were misleading or outright false.

For instance, he has never worked a day in his life as a Certified Public Accountant.

And he was never a small business owner

so what's the point

I'm guessing that any representative or senator who voted to restrict gun purchases by those named on the no-fly list would ruin their 100% rating from the NRA. The argument would be that flying is not a constitutional right, but gun purchasing is and must be protected from all attempts at restriction, based on the 'slippery slope' argument.

Hudson is handling the night shift with his usual aplomb:

http://gawker.com/republican-congressman-interrupts-sit-in-to-shriek-rad-1782470235

heh:

According to The Chicago Tribune, congresswoman and Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth even secreted her smartphone inside her prosthetic leg to prevent it from being taken away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/us/politics/senate-gun-control.html?_r=0

The standoff, which began with a Democratic sit-in on the House floor just before noon on Wednesday, did not end until about 3 a.m. Thursday when Mr. Ryan — barreling over Democrats’ objections — took the rare and provocative step of calling a vote on a major appropriations bill in the wee hours and without any debate. He then adjourned the House, although a small group of Democrats remained on the floor Thursday morning. No legislative votes are scheduled until July 5.

Mr. Ryan was scheduled to give a news conference at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday.

The House approved the bill, which includes $1.1 billion in emergency financing to fight the mosquito-borne Zika virus — and more than $80 billion in other government spending — by a vote of 239 to 171 shortly after 3 a.m.

Republicans dashed from the chamber into the sticky heat gripping Washington and were met by protesters who jeered, with some shouting, “Do your job!”

Earlier, as Democrats fought for control of the floor, they pressed against the speaker’s dais, waving signs with the names of gun victims and chanting “No bill! No break!” as Mr. Ryan repeatedly banged his gavel in an attempt to restore order.

Mr. Ryan was scheduled to give a news conference at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday.

this oughta be entertaining

Tammy Duckworth even secreted her smartphone

uh

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/06/22/bipartisan-talks-on-zika-virus-break-down-ahead-of-july-4-recess/?wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1

The House voted in the wee hours of Thursday morning to approve a $1.1 billion package to fight the Zika virus.

But the measure was the product of a deal between House and Senate Republicans and Democrats do not support it, meaning lawmakers are once again headed home without a tool aimed at fighting the Zika virus at the height of mosquito season.

Democrats abandoned negotiations on Wednesday in part because Republicans insisted that funding for the Zika measure be partially paid for by cuts to the Affordable Care Act and by shifting more than $100 million from the Ebola emergency fund, according to Democratic aides.

idgi is that not going to pass the Senate or something

I guess the House bill is a product of language crafting between House Republicans and Senate Republicans; but there is also a Senate passed bill that was crafted by Senate majority Republicans with some portions due to Democrat proposals

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-neo-nazi-stabbed-20160626-snap-htmlstory.html

video is O_o

https://twitter.com/ABC10Frances/status/747150303762382849

watch Heimbach's little nationalist front membership go up after this

my guess is this is all in service of finessing their "we are under attack" message

idgi is that not going to pass the Senate or something

Oh, the Republican Senate may pass the flawed Republican House Zika bill with its poison pill provisions and less than the White House wanted funding, but Dems will vote against it, and Obama could veto it

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/us/politics/senate-to-take-up-house-bill-on-zika-funding-barbs-and-all.html?module=WatchingPortal®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=9&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F06%2F28%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fsenate-to-take-up-house-bill-on-zika-funding-barbs-and-all.html&eventName=Watching-article-click

watch Heimbach's little nationalist front membership go up after this

this stuff needs a "thanks, Donald!" meme

for real

cruz hearing witness accuses keith ellison and andre carson of being in the muslim brotherhood

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/congress-muslim-brotherhood_us_5772b615e4b0352fed3e0372?c040i2h8iu8ilik9

oh how noble of him

GOP fuckups fuck up some more

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/28/republicans-may-have-just-forfeited-half-their-senate-pickup-chances/

You're hiking through the woods when you suddenly encounter an enraged bear, and you're like holy shit it's an enraged bear and it's totally terrifying. Numerous dreadful scenarios flash through your mind because you know that this is a situation that often ends in tragedy. But then you notice that the bear has had its legs and all of its teeth removed. It's still a pretty scary sight, as it whips its shaggy torso about and roars racist epithets at you, but you recognize that there are limits to its menace and that the pitiable thing is clearly in its death throes. You walk calmly away as the bear's guttural harangue about political correctness gone mad fades into silence, and you're surprised four years later to see that same bear outside of your local post office, passing out flyers next your town's Lyndon LaRouche supporter.

http://fancydresscostumes.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Monty-Python-black-Knight-Film-Quotes.jpeg

The Green Party candidate for Arizona House District 26 (in Tempe) is Cara Nicole Trujillo, indie comic publisher and cosplayer.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/state-house-candidate-and-az-powergirl-cara-nicole-trujillo-brings-politics-to-phoenix-comicon-2016-8338950

https://azpowergirl4u.com/

https://azpowergirl4u.com/issues/

What stood out to me is a mention in her personal stances:

AZ Powergirl presents herself as an outsider who may vote with Democrats or Republicans but won't feel beholden to either party. Environmental issues are important to the Green Party candidate — she's a big believer in reusing gray water, for example. She describes herself as "very pro-limited government." Her father is a gunsmith, she says, and she's pro-gun rights for the most part.

She wants to help local businesses, decentralize government power throughout the state, reform asset-forfeiture laws, and improve education. She's not running as a Clean Elections candidate, because she thinks doling out public money to candidates is a "scam."

Which is certainly a interesting mix of positions, and I'm wondering how much of it is just a local Arizona culture thing in the language; is claiming "very pro-limited government" a tribal shibboleth one needs to get any funding or support down there? Everything she advocates sorta, y'know, requires strong regulation & enforcement. There's just this large gap between what she mentions o her issues page and what her interview quotes entail.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/06/28/zika-funding-bill-expected-to-be-blocked-in-the-senate/

Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked a $1.1 billion Zika-virus funding package drafted by congressional Republicans, citing politically motivated language aimed at Planned Parenthood and environmental regulations.

The partisan clash casts serious doubt on whether Congress will be able to heed increasingly dire warnings from public health officials and provide new funds to combat the virus before lawmakers leave Washington next month for an extended congressional recess.

Top Senate leaders appeared to be sharply at odds after the vote failed 52 to 48, with 60 votes needed to advance the legislation.

...

The package also loosens Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on pesticides and strikes a measure that would have banned the display of the Confederate battle flag at cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

On Monday, Reid called the bill “nothing more than a goodie bag for the fringes of the Republican Party.” The White House has threatened to veto the legislation, and Democrats argue the additions were politically motivated and intended to kill the entire funding package.

same old same ol'

Upon its return in the middle of next week, Congress only has about seven days in session before taking off the last two weeks of July for the national political conventions, followed by another five-week break as part of the traditional August “recess”.
“We are working less days than since I was in high school,” Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) complained Thursday at a press conference highlighting how the Senate might end up with the fewest days in session since 1956.

Early momentum for legislation that would have provided criminal sentencing reform has faded. Republicans split into two camps, one supporting the effort out of fiscal and religious duty to give prisoners a helping hand, the other taking a traditional law-and-order approach. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has decided what to do … by not deciding what to do with the issue. He’s allowing it to twist in the wind.

From Washington Post

sentencing reform was never going to happen and Im embarrassed that I thought it had a chance

District Court judge carefully rehearses the establishment and equal protection clauses, enjoins MS anti-LGBT bill from taking effect.

http://files.eqcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/35-Memo-Opinion-and-Order.pdf

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/750708639070031873

Breaking: "Fox News Host and Author Gretchen Carlson Files Sexual Harassment/Retaliation Lawsuit Against Fox Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes"

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/how-american-politics-went-insane/485570/

I don't think I saw this above - a friend's friend described it as "This is Lawful Evil aligned to the point of hilarity but brings up points well worth consideration" - which is fair enough.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/us/politics/latest-of-obamas-safety-rules-on-arctic-drilling-are-released.html?ref=politics

The Obama administration on Thursday announced new safety and environmental regulations to control offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean off the Alaskan coast.

These are the latest in a series of Obama administration rules designed to slow the extraction of fossil fuels from American public lands and waters.

The rules fell short of many environmentalists’ demands to cut off Arctic drilling entirely, but oil companies complained that the regulations would stymie new energy exploration.

Paul Ryan...

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/paul-ryan-says-we-are-all-outraged

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/opinion/all-the-nominees-enablers.html?ref=opinion

The D is for douchebag

Ryan reiterated that "every Republican and every Democrat wants to see less gun violence," a statement that comes after a decision was made to indefinitely postpone a vote on gun legislation seeking to keep guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists.

We just need to wish for it super, super hard.

All that's required in accomplishing a task is to want it. Duh.

Regarding the Atlantic article, it factually points out that party machinery has broken down to the point where there are few or no mechanisms to enforce party discipline any more. Rauch's nostalgia for smoke-filled rooms, machine politics and party bosses seems amazingly backward-looking and useless to me. We aren't going to regress in that direction.

Some salient points he doesn't examine are: why having two and only two viable parties is supposed to be A Good Thing, and what good or bad results would happen if the many built-in privileges of the two major parties were removed from state election laws and Congress's traditional rules, so that parties broke apart into smaller, more closely knit affinity groups (which seems to be happening in all aspects of society these days). It might result in even worse chaos, or it might force the emergence of new organizing principles for coalition building. But he seems uninterested in the future.

he might just feel like 2 parties in a first past the post system is a given and so without significant changes to our system are likely to persist

Yep, that article's nostalgia for the old days seems simplistic, not fully accurate and not really relevant to today.

Regarding the current House and Paul Ryan:

When the tea party types objected to the lack of due process in the Republican gun proposal that was going to be voted upon (or at least professed that this was their reason), and Dems were against it too (for different reasons), Ryan just decided not to bring anything up for vote instead of encouraging or developing another bill on the subject.

On other issues he won't alter his take either (as has been discussed here, and as Krugman brought up again):

A couple of weeks ago Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, sort of laid out both a health care plan and a tax plan. I say sort of, because there weren’t enough details in either case to do any kind of quantitative analysis. But it was clear that Mr. Ryan’s latest proposals had the same general shape as every other proposal he’s released: huge tax cuts for the wealthy combined with savage but smaller cuts in aid to the poor, and the claim that all of this would somehow reduce the budget deficit thanks to unspecified additional measures.

first past the post system is a given

it only is until it isn't. if people understood how other systems could be used instead, they might decide those systems would work better than what we have now. redesign at the state level would not take as much money or effort as national changes, but would lay the groundwork.

Regarding the Atlantic article, it factually points out that party machinery has broken down to the point where there are few or no mechanisms to enforce party discipline any more. Rauch's nostalgia for smoke-filled rooms, machine politics and party bosses seems amazingly backward-looking and useless to me. We aren't going to regress in that direction.

Regarding the Atlantic article, it factually points out that party machinery has broken down to the point where there are few or no mechanisms to enforce party discipline any more. Rauch's nostalgia for smoke-filled rooms, machine politics and party bosses seems amazingly backward-looking and useless to me. We aren't going to regress in that direction.

Some salient points he doesn't examine are: why having two and only two viable parties is supposed to be A Good Thing, and what good or bad results would happen if the many built-in privileges of the two major parties were removed from state election laws and Congress's traditional rules, so that parties broke apart into smaller, more closely knit affinity groups (which seems to be happening in all aspects of society these days). It might result in even worse chaos, or it might force the emergence of new organizing principles for coalition building. But he seems uninterested in the future.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless)

so rauch wants the least disruptive means of restoring function. sure it's disgusting that things are so bad that ward bosses now look like the "good old days", but can we blame rauch for that?

if you want to remove the two-party system, i'd argue that you'd have to do something more than just restructure "traditional rules". as for state election laws, they haven't resulted in a two-party system, but, in most cases, a one-party system! as much as the founders talked smack about a party system, they designed a system which makes a national two-party system inevitable.

the problem with proposing the removal of two-party system rule is that you're implicitly proposing a parliamentary democracy. in 2016, it's very difficult to make the argument that european-style parliamentary democracy is a cure for the ills of two-party democracy- because it is suffering the same ills. we should replace a winner-take-all system with a system run by a republican-trump coalition government?

you're interested in the future? your only option is to start telling us how you're going to destroy the village in order to save it.

it's very difficult to make the argument that european-style parliamentary democracy is a cure for the ills of two-party democracy

You seem to have missed the part where I said that revising or replacing the two-party system "might result in even worse chaos".

To repeat my point, Rauch had nothing to say about the future other than the current dynamic was 'likely to get worse before it gets better'. He gives no pointers on what would or could ever make it get better, so as a thesis, the second part of that assertion is pretty groundless.

you're interested in the future?

yes. aren't you?

I threw the Atlantic article across the room when it got teary-eyed over Prescott Bush's appointment to the SEate.

Senate

idk, Senate appointment by state legislatures, and the return of political bosses and ward heelers seems to be what rushomacy is advocating as "the least disruptive means of restoring function."