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

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."

if I were Roscoe Conkling.

Some right wingers regularly hate on direct election of Senators as one of the causes of the nation's impending downfall. Not because elected Senators are more democratic, but because anti-federal Tenth-Amendment fetishists believe that Senators should advocate for the state itself, as opposed to voters. The emphasis is, I guess, on each state being a more or less sovereign entity that has provisionally decided to join in a marriage of convenience, temporarily if need be, with 49 other such entities.

you're interested in the future?

yes. aren't you?

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless)

yes, but not, like. in a criswell sense or anything. mostly just the part about robots with bombs. really looking forward to that.

(Quite tangentially I recall hearing someone on a public radio program describe herself as a "future thinker." If you're a future thinker, what are you doing now?)

is that a David Brooks quote

<-- future gibbon

srsly, though, you want to know what i'd say? i'd say congress needs a defined failure state. congress should not be able to get to the point where the economy is about to collapse because they can't manage to pay interest on their loans- not because they don't have the money, but because they can't effectively conduct the standard procedural business of the body. at some point in the past twenty years there should have been something that would allow the united states to dissolve the congress, send everybody home, and not let them come back. then elect an entirely new congress.

An entirely new congress? In the sense of not one member having served in the Congress during the dissolved prior session? Seems like a recipe for replacing pig-headed obstinacy with ignorance-fueled chaos, where the only institutional stability is provided by paid lobbyists and re-hired staff.

An entirely new congress? In the sense of not one member having served in the Congress during the dissolved prior session? Seems like a recipe for replacing pig-headed obstinacy with ignorance-fueled chaos, where the only institutional stability is provided by paid lobbyists and re-hired staff.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless)

the goal is not to actually replace the congress but to provide some performance standards beyond "the will of the people".

And maybe some checks and balances on lobbies that dictate the 'will of the people' with $$$.

even if you could bully congress into doing their jobs the senate can still obstruct away and is by design untouchable

In a way it's kind of a shame that by tradition the US constitution is so seldom amended. We muddled along for a couple centuries by letting the SCOTUS reinterpret it according to emerging needs, but that mechanism has broken down considerably in the past two decades, too.

There was a time when it was common to refer to the USA as a 'great experiment in democracy', but that spirit of experimentation and adaptability has waned to a nub of its former self and we have 'originalists' like Clarence Thomas trying to tear down most of the adaptations we've forged.

Here is the problem with asking "How do we fix the problems with Congress?" The practical answer is "We don't." Any attempt to change the structure of the institution, whether those changes be minor or major in nature, will be seen as revolution, and be crushed. It seems likely- honestly, unavoidable- that the US Congress will wind up going the way of its inspiration, the Roman Senate: unable to meaningfully reform its functioning, it will instead continue to exist in its current form, but without any real power to either effect or obstruct law or policy, which will be determined by a unitary executive.

Lotta predictions in this thread

Better than prediction is analysis of current problems and proposals of means and methods for solving them. But, as I read this thread there aren't so many confident predictions as just ruminations about the future of the republic.

In good news, the transphobic ballot initiative in WA didn't collect enough signatures to make the ballot.

Better than prediction is analysis of current problems and proposals of means and methods for solving them. But, as I read this thread there aren't so many confident predictions as just ruminations about the future of the republic.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless)

a little bit disappointed tbh, we've had seven months here and we haven't fixed _any_ of the fundamental problems with the american political system :( i propose we adjourn and go looking for dumpster fires.

in my experience, the people who have thought about larger societal problems and have shared their thoughts with others who also think about the same problems, are better prepared to face those problems and may even be in a position to coalesce others around reasonable solutions in the future. just because ilxors "haven't fixed _any_ of the fundamental problems with the american political system" doesn't mean discussion of such problems is purposeless or will inevitably come to nothing in the end.

as they" say, luck favors the well prepared.

Paul Ryan's doing a town hall on CNN tomorrow. That's so weird--don't remember a House Speaker ever doing something like that before, least of all in the middle of an election.

Is Ryan 100% about running against Clinton in 2020, or are there other things behind his behaviour the past few months?

I think it all boils down to him trying to salvage his role as party standard-bearer after the inevitable Trumphole collapse

Which would then, I assume, point to him looking to be anointed in 2020 as the nominee--except, based on this year, such an idea seems doomed forever. Maybe a landslide loss will resurrect it.

right. surviving four years as speaker also not a foregone conclusion.

everyone's favorite blue dog democrat gonna run for his old senate seat http://www.wsj.com/articles/former-indiana-democratic-sen-evan-bayh-to-run-for-open-senate-seat-1468252401

ugh that's really the best IN Democrats could do?