収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

I concider myself fairly unpolitical, as much as I want to be up on things. With that in mind...

Do you think that Congressional Republicans, being that they are currently separating themselves from unpopular President Bush (R) so they can pass something, yet make it look like they are not on Bush's shoulders? We are seeing this with Dino Rossi in Washington. He has taken action to say he is "GOP" to remove himself from the 'republican' word since it's so unpopular.
Bush = Republic, Bush = Failure So Republican = Failure. Hence If Republican run as fast away from anything Bush says.

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llachglin.livejournal.com

I don't think this will hurt Democrats. If they'd passed it and it failed, then maybe. If things get better (highly unlikely) no one will remember. If things get worse, the Democrats can credibly blame House Republicans. Some will and some won't, but it will be a wash either way.

Politically, it is impossible for anything to get done. What we need is a populist, social democratic response to this crisis. Anything that is even slightly more socially democratic will provoke even greater Republican opposition, though.

If nothing gets done, it will take a miracle to avoid Great Depression II. Let's hope that Obama has an inner FDR because if he doesn't we're totally fucked.

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What we need is a great big toilet in the Congress right now and flush everyone and thing down it and start over. ;)

It's amazing how much mud flinging there is no matter what the result. Congressional leaders/people seem to take any situation and find the ability of blaming the OTHER person. There goes any sort of personal responsibility.

Disenchanted over here. Sorry.

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Well, yeah.

What we need is a bilateral legislative body whose members are restricted to one term, and whose members are drawn primarily from the everyday retail merchant, foodservice worker, automotive technician, web designer, etc, rather than career politicians.

I mean, when you think about it, this is exactly how we put together juries that decide the fates of individuals. Why don't we do this for the nation? Sure, there is room for colossal fail, but are we really doing that much better with the system we have?

(I'd almost suggest discarding political parties in favor of coalitions, but that may be asking too much of America...)

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kevin-standlee.livejournal.com

I think you, like the term-limits folks, over-emphasize the importance of turnover. In California we have term limits, and I think it's made things worse, as nobody has any reason to take the long view. I voted for term limits when I was younger. I'd vote to overturn them given a chance to do so.

You're right, however, that juries are the judicial equivalent of the house of representatives. But note that, in general, juries are asked to decide facts, not law, and these aren't the same things.

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But note that, in general, juries are asked to decide facts, not law, and these aren't the same things.

A good point that obviously eluded me.

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kevin-standlee.livejournal.com

I think about this distinction (law/fact) a lot in a different context: The Hugo Awards, where you have an Awards Administrator (equivalent to a judge in a trial) and the thousands of members of the World Science Fiction Convention (equivalent to the jury). The Administrator decides technical eligibility questions (when was it published; how long is it), but the members of WSFS decide matters of fact (Is the work science fiction or fantasy? If so, is is worthy of an award?)

And it's the WSFS Business Meeting, or legislature of WSFS, that makes the rules. The analogy isn't perfect, because every member of WSFS can participate in the Business Meeting, although usually only about 100-200 of the thousands eligible do so. Also, there's a high probability that the 100-200 active "legislators" are a significant subset of the 500-1000 active Hugo Award voters.

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I like the idea of term limits to curb the idea of political careers, but at the same time I feel term limits is like turn over. It takes so long to 'train' someone at most jobs, the ramp up time, the networking blah blah blah. By the time they get a hang of 'how to do it' they are out. So I feel that makes term limits a bit burdensome.

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kevin-standlee.livejournal.com

And I have some experience in this personally, as well. I spent one three-year term as one of the appointees of Santa Clara County, California to the Caltrain Citizens' Advisory Committee. It wasn't until near the end of my term that I believed that I had got the knack of how the system worked and how I could get anything accomplished. But I appointment was not renewed, probably because I'm too much of a troublemaker and they really don't want the CAC making waves. (I'd been quoted on local news being critical of Caltrain, and I know how to speak in sound-bites, so it might have been effective.)

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You know... The idea of 'laymen' going into our congress or other governmental powers is something I can get behind in a way. As long as they aren't totally dumb in a common sense way.
But then we see this total "Oh my god, they don't have experience!!" flung in anyone's face who tries to get into places of power. We saw it with Obama, and now Palin. Yet it seems like the public does want the 'layman' in instead of the politician. 'Someone we can trust' Sigh.

btw: I would love a coalition of sorts! That would be great.

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solarbird

What is a bilateral legislative body?

I think proportional representation would be a significant advance. Replace, say, the Senate with a PR body.

It'd be lovely to get rid of parties, but then there's reality where that doesn't happen. Ever. So I suggest dealing with it.

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wrog

It'd be lovely to get rid of parties the two-party system, but then there's reality where that doesn't happen. Ever. So I suggest dealing with it.

fixed it for you

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solarbird

Astoundingly, many democratic countries actually do manage to have more than two parties. But none have zero.

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wrog

and they're all parliamentary-type systems where "party" means something a bit different than it does here (or at least "major party" does).

The ironic thing here is

hubbit talks about "discarding parties in favor of coalitions" apparently without realizing that the major parties in this country essentially are coalitions.

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we seem to be heading down the coalition road in Canada, now, too.

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well, let's see: Bloc, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, New Democrats -- makes five parties here in Canada.

But, to be fair, the Bloc act only for Quebec and keep saying they would never join a coalition government; the Greens are too small to be anything other than a source of vote leakage at this point; the Liberals are a shattered rump of an old party. Four of those parties are somewhere left of centre.

Net effect is that the unitary right (the Conservatives) tend to acquire power. So, a multi-party system isn't always great.

[and we are scared shitless of the prospect of a Conservative majority here, but that's a separate story with its own song]

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We have five! Well, five with a realistic chance of electing people to the federal level, anyway.

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ayuh, you have a fair chance of having a Green MP this time.

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Yup. And I was also wording it that way to not exclude all the provincial and local parties out there, or the minor federal ones that run candidates but don't win.

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solarbird

NEORHINO! NEORHINO! NEORHINO!

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This is why we can't ~~have nice things~~ vote. :D

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solarbird

Edited Date: 2008-09-30 06:11 pm (UTC)

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What is a bilateral legislative body?

I must apologize (now that I've been offline for two days for Rosh Hashana and could not clarify). I meant BICAMERAL, ie two halves.

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king-chiron.livejournal.com

Personally, I think the solutions from such a government would be as bad or even worse than our current system (if you can believe).

I had an interesting political textbook in college, "The Irony of Democracy". The case it presented was that the elites, those that run the political parties (both Democratic and Republican) are more committed to the essentials freedoms we value than the average American. Freedom of Speech, Religion, Right to Assemble, etc, they showed that a sizable chunk of the public has absolutely no interest in preserving any of those.

Personally I think if had a government of "common people" what we would have had after 9/11 would make the Patriot Act look like a walk in the park.

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See also: the damage Washington citizens have repeatedly done to themselves courtesy of the initiative system.

Taking that on a federal level, including access to the military and everything else, scares the hell out of me.

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solarbird

There's a full-court media press out there now to change popular opinion - and it's working, too. I expect we'll see a motion to reconsider on Thursday.

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CBC seems to think so, as of this morning.

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gfish.livejournal.com

We'll see how bad the economy gets. If things really do crash, then I don't expect much of a problem.

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kirbyk.livejournal.com

Probably not - most congresscritters in Swing Districts voted against it, regardless of party:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/swing-district-congressmen-doomed.html

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You know. I'm totally confused by this thing. I'm like.. The Republicans against this, yet the Congressional Dem's are for, yet my friends who are pretty liberal are against.

Okay- Where is Jesus?!? LOL! ;)

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I'm fairly liberal, and I was very against the failout on general principle. The financial industry, in its panic, is scrambling for the kind of emergency relief that we as individual consumers are DENIED, mostly thanks to their lobbying efforts.

Yes, a financial meltdown will suck for us all, but I will have no sympathy for the financial titans who have been taking us for a ride/riding our backs for so long. I can't wait for them to fall victim to the credit score system they foisted on us so we can all get our payments/premiums/interest rates individually decided based on who's saying what about our financial habits in areas completely unrelated to the field being decided.

That...was way too wordy. Sorry.

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solarbird

Many, many, many conservative rank-and-file are also against this. Strongly.

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llachglin.livejournal.com

This is a case where ideology and factional interests cut across party lines, plus you have each side playing politics, and opinions are clouded by socioeconomic class.

The populist urge is to just let the banks suffer, but the problem with that is that in this case if the banks fail there's no credit--and eventually no money--for anyone else. On the other hand, if the bailout is just a transfer of money to the banks with no accountability, the underlying problem remains and the government risks its own credit, and then we're in really bad trouble.

I'm not just a liberal, I'm a social democrat. You can even call me a socialist if you want. But I think knee-jerk opposition to any plan proposed by the Bush administration is a really bad idea. The risk of Depression is real. Liberals generally and Democrats specifically can't just let the Republicans block this and not come up with another plan that will actually work. Until they do, they're just as responsible as Bush and the Republicans for what happens.

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