from the when-times-are-forced-to-change dept.
When trying to understand the two bad choices we have now, it can help to look into the past at where they came from. In this article, Matt Stoller at The Atlantic provides a deep dive into a transformation the Democratic party underwent in the late 1960s onward. In it we see how the Democrats morphed the anti-big-business politics that had powered it for over a century into the big-government politics that define the political conversation today.
Modern liberals tend to confuse a broad social-welfare state and redistribution of resources in the form of tax-and-spend policies with the New Deal. In fact, the central tenet of New Deal competition policy was not big or small government; it was distrust of concentrations of power and conflicts of interest in the economy. The New Deal divided power, pitting faction against other faction, a classic Jefferson-Madison approach to controlling power (think Federalist Paper No. 10). Competition policy meant preserving democracy within the commercial sphere, by keeping markets open. Again, for New Deal populists like Brandeis and Patman [ed: links mine], it was democracy or concentrated wealth—but not both.
[...] The story of why the Watergate Babies spurned populism is its own intellectual journey. It started with a generation of politicians who cut their teeth on college-campus politics. In their youth, they saw, up close, not the perils of robber barons, but the failure of the New Deal state, most profoundly through the war in Vietnam. "We were the '60s generation that didn't drop out," Bob Edgar, a U.S. representative from the class of 1975, told me. The war in Vietnam shaped their generation in two profound ways. First, it disillusioned them toward the New Deal. It was, after all, many New Dealers, including union insiders, who nominated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and who supported a war that killed millions, including 50,000 Americans their age. And second, higher education—the province of the affluent—exempted one from military service, which was an explicit distinction among classes.
[...] By quietly cutting back the influence of unions, [Democratic strategist Fred] Dutton sought to eject the white working class from the Democratic Party, which he saw as "a major redoubt of traditional Americanism and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote." The future, he argued, lay in a coalition of African Americans, feminists, and affluent, young, college-educated whites.
[...] By 2008, the ideas that took hold in the 1970s had been Democratic orthodoxy for two generations. "Left-wing" meant opposing war, supporting social tolerance, advocating environmentalism, and accepting corporatism and big finance while also seeking redistribution via taxes.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @01:51PM
When trying to understand the two bad choices we have now, it can help to look into the past at where they came from.
They came from a political system that inevitably devolves into a two party system.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:07PM
That much is apparent. It doesn't take much thought or insight to see that naked fact.
Got any ideas on how it might be fixed? It's pretty obvious that the so-called two party system doesn't work so well. Soon, you have collusion between those two parties to exclude other parties. The two power sharing parties feast, while the beggars outside are allowed to eat a few crumbs that fall from the table. We desperately need a fix.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:28PM
It's actually mathematically provable - this was done a few years ago - that our electoral system will result in a two-party oligopoly. It is a literal inevitability.
The first and most important solution, now that we know this is a reality and not just unfortunate chance, is to break the system that creates and sustains it. By this I mean the electoral college must go, along with single-candidate voting. Every vote should be counted, and we should either have several votes or ranked voting of 3-5 candidates. Personally I also think Great Britain has it right in banning any reporting on the election or polls until all votes have been cast; this is particularly problematic with a "media" that amounts to a propaganda machine for a particular candidate.
We can discuss about the best changes to be made, but there is no discussion at all about if these changes are necessary. They are.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Marand on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:23PM
By this I mean the electoral college must go, along with single-candidate voting. Every vote should be counted, and we should either have several votes or ranked voting of 3-5 candidates.
Single-candidate voting specifically need to go. When you can only vote for one candidate people get caught in the trap of feeling like they need to vote for one of the big-two candidates, not because they like them, but because they feel obligated to vote defensively to stop the candidate they dislike. Being able to rank the candidates you want would let you vote for who you want while also allowing you to still vote defensively as well. I doubt it would result in an immediate, drastic change the voting landscape, but it would lead to a shift over time as people see that the non R/D candidates have some support and aren't just a joke.
We can discuss about the best changes to be made, but there is no discussion at all about if these changes are necessary. They are.
Completely agreed. Of course, the two parties that are in complete control of the US government are also the ones with nothing to gain from improving the system, so good luck getting any meaningful change there. They'd rather tell everyone that only the D|R candidates are valid and any other vote is "wasted". In fact, I haven't seen it myself but I've encountered a few people posting images of, or talking about receiving, this flyer [tumblr.com] (different picture [twimg.com]). I've heard news people parroting similar rubbish as well.
This is probably the best election in a long time for third party candidates to get attention, and we're getting damage control instead of any talk of improving the system.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday November 04 2016, @12:11AM
In fact, I haven't seen it myself but I've encountered a few people posting images of, or talking about receiving, this flyer (different picture).
What's funny is that they will often change their tune about you voting third party if you tell them you're going to vote for the major party candidate they hate the most if you don't vote third party. They have no principles and are only actually opposed to voting third party when they believe that someone not doing so could aid their favorite corrupt scumbag; they don't care one bit about "wasted" votes.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by el_oscuro on Saturday November 05 2016, @03:15AM
Single-candidate voting specifically need to go. When you can only vote for one candidate people get caught in the trap of feeling like they need to vote for one of the big-two candidates, not because they like them, but because they feel obligated to vote defensively to stop the candidate they dislike. Being able to rank the candidates you want would let you vote for who you want while also allowing you to still vote defensively as well. I doubt it would result in an immediate, drastic change the voting landscape, but it would lead to a shift over time as people see that the non R/D candidates have some support and aren't just a joke.
It is actually possible for this to happen now. All it takes is one state. According to the Constitution, each state is awarded one elector for each house representative, plus 2 for each senator. How the states implement this is up to them. Most take the "Winner takes all" of the popular vote, but Maine and Nebraska break it down by district. Why couldn't a state allocate electors based on ranked vote?
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:30PM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @11:59PM
Step 1 will need to be a federal judge ruling that the Commission on Presidential Debates is an illegal anti-competitive anti-democracy monopoly and that their rules (which get more elastic as 3rd parties meet their already-ridiculous thresholds) are unconstitutional.
I don't think that anyone should hold his breath waiting for that to happen.
Some kind of recognition that the public airwaves are in fact PUBLIC and that those should be available to varying political opinions--and not at commercial rates (gratis??)--would be Step 2.
Again, don't hold your breath on Lamestream Media being returned to a pre-Reagan condition.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:27PM
Actually, no. the Electoral College is a genius hack. it is no more or less "democratic" than Congress.
If it needs a change, then perhaps a Constitutional amendment that coerces the States to only allow proportionate Electoral College 'votes'.
But that will not happen. Too many states derive their sense of ego from their historical place in things, "states rights", or Just Because.
3rd parties have come, and gone. There have been several that have achieved prominence in the past (Whig, No-Nothing party, etc). Both of the major parties today are in many ways mirror opposites from what they were when they began. And both have certainly changed more or less over the last 50 years, as well.
There's no need to fuck with it any further than the main parties do already, by fucking around with(in) themselves and each other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:22AM
I don't even see the point of the electors. Give each state 100 (for example) "points", and then give each candidate a percentage of those points depending how what percentage of voters voted for them. There's no need to waste money hiring actual people to be electors.
There's no need to fuck with it any further than the main parties do already
Yes there is, because I want a representative republic where representatives are democratically elected, which we do not currently have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @11:47PM
It's actually mathematically provable - this was done a few years ago - that our electoral system will result in a two-party oligopoly. It is a literal inevitability.
The first and most important solution, now that we know this is a reality and not just unfortunate chance, is to break the system that creates and sustains it. By this I mean the electoral college must go, along with single-candidate voting. Every vote should be counted, and we should either have several votes or ranked voting of 3-5 candidates. Personally I also think Great Britain has it right in banning any reporting on the election or polls until all votes have been cast; this is particularly problematic with a "media" that amounts to a propaganda machine for a particular candidate.
We can discuss about the best changes to be made, but there is no discussion at all about if these changes are necessary. They are.
Your ideas sound plausible, but then I see things which are just wrong which make me question it all.
An electoral college is not what drives a 2 party system. Electoral college arguably disenfranchises people (arguable), but there it does not dissuade a 3rd party from. The thing which drives having at most 2 parties is the "winner take all" aspect of elections. This means that the best way to advance your cause is within, not from without.
For example, imagine all of Bernie Sanders voters thought Clinton was too conservative and wanted to vote for Jill Stein. All this would do would be to split the progressive vote, and cause Trump to win. (Likewise for Libertarians and Trump, causing Clinton to win.) The more aligned you are with a group, the more you advancing your separate cause hurts the mainstream representative, and thus weakens your side.
In places where there is less "winner take all," you see more 3rd party candidates being elected... for example, Congress vs the President. Or the UK as compared to the US. Or Germany as compared to the UK.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:26AM
All this would do would be to split the progressive vote, and cause Trump to win.
You claim that that's "all" it would do, but I believe that's wrong. Causing Trump to win could change the democratic party by causing them to be more like the Greens in order to win some more votes. But people are too shortsighted and apparently want the immediate gratification of having "their" candidate (who is a corrupt authoritarian scumbag) win; they don't think about the long-term damage that results from mindlessly voting for evil. Yes, some bad candidates will have to win, but it's a long-term strategy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @03:32AM
An electoral college is not what drives a 2 party system.
You're partly right, but the electoral college as currently implemented is heavily linked to the current voting system, and there's not an obvious way to make it work well under a reasonable voting system, such as approval or range/score voting.
Assuming the purpose the electoral college serves is still deemed desirable, the best way to implement it in a voting-system independent way is to simply weight ballots accordingly: I live in a state with a third the population of yours, so my vote counts for 120% of a vote, yours only counts for 105% of a vote. Of course, when you spell it out like that, a bunch of people will get all upset about "one person, one vote", but it is the most elegant and straightforward embodiment of the concept.
(The electoral college may or may not have been originally intended as a damper on popular stupidity, but they no longer serve any function except balancing power, per-capita vs. per-state.)
The thing which drives having at most 2 parties is the "winner take all" aspect of elections.
No. That is a thing that drives a 2-party system, but it is not the thing. Another important part of the problem (and IMO almost certainly a bigger part) is the voting method itself. Since this apparently isn't obvious to you, I hope an example will help.
Let's say, for convenience of math, that the current election is as close to 50% Trump, 50% Hillary as possible (i.e. equal chance the final count goes either way, but we know it's by a tiny margin). Let's further posit a mythic 3rd-party candidate A, who 40% of Trump voters prefer to Trump (and the remainder are T>A>H), and 40% of Hillary voters prefer to Hillary (and the remainder are H>A>T). I hope there's no argument that, if such a candidate could be found, the optimal outcome is for candidate A to win -- 40% of people would choose him as their first pick, vs. 30% for Trump or Hillary; and he's everyone else's second choice.
But in our current election, how will an A>H>T voter vote? (Keep in mind that the same arguments will hold for the corresponding A>T>H voter.) The only way you can express your preference for A is to not express your H>T preference -- and if you do that, suppose your corresponding A>T>H voter doesn't? Why, then Trump wins -- and that's your least favorable option. So you have to vote strategically, i.e for Hillary, in hopes of keeping the wrong lizard from winning.
Basically, it's the prisoners' dilemma: (x represents a "tie", really a toss-up)
| A | H
--+---+---
A | A | H
T | T | x
You start out neutral, absent cooperation; if you cooperate, but your "opponent" doesn't, you lose big. You only win if you both cooperate.
(You might start thinking of iterated prisoners' dilemma, and the tit-for-tat strategy. But AIUI that only works with two players -- here there's millions of players on each side. When half the other team cooperates, and half doesn't, what do you do?)
But if we use approval voting, the A>H>T voter can vote for both A and Hillary. If the A>T>H voters follow the same approach, A probably (see below) wins, and everyone's happy -- but if they vote for Trump only, then Hillary "ties" Trump (reality, 50% chance it goes either way) -- and you're no worse off for trying. Suddenly you both have an incentive to vote honestly, and the election actually chooses the favorite.
| A | H
--+---+---
A | A | x
T | x | x
(What about H>A>T (or T>A>H) voters? With these particular numbers, we need just 17% to vote for Hillary and A; the rest can vote for Hillary. If the Hillary (and Trump) camp keep iron control of all their voters, and persuade over 83% (of both camps combined) to vote strategically, they can keep the race a Trump/Hillary lock -- but in reality, most people would prefer to both a. vote honestly, and b. hedge against a Trump (or Hillary) win, so the 17% we need is incredibly likely.)
Note that this election is still winner-takes-all, yet the third party actually wins; this proves that winner-takes-all is not "the" reason third parties can't make it. All we had to do was eliminated the "spoiler effect" of voting for a third party, which is the principal means of 2-party lock-in, and is entirely a consequence of bad voting systems. (In fairness, the numbers I picked are not infeasible this year, because both parties did a horrible job selecting candidates this year -- it really would be easy for a baggage-free politician of almost any sort to swoop in and make off with the election, except for the voting system. In most years, without this artificially lowered bar of viability, third parties don't have a viable candidate to put forward, because a good candidate should have served some incubation period in congress or such -- this is where proportional representation would help immensely.)
For example, imagine all of Bernie Sanders voters thought Clinton was too conservative and wanted to vote for Jill Stein. All this would do would be to split the progressive vote, and cause Trump to win. (Likewise for Libertarians and Trump, causing Clinton to win.)
But that's not a consequence of winner-take-all. That's a consequence of a bad voting system. Again, go with approval voting for contrast: If you prefer J>C>T, vote for Jill and Hillary -- if you prefer G>T>H, vote for Gary and Trump. The spoiler effect only exists because our current voting system forces you to disavow all other candidates in order to express any preference for one candidate. Real people have opinions more complex than "that guy rocks, everyone else sucks", and real voting systems should allow them to express those opinions in a way that counts. (In truth, I prefer score/range voting -- I've been discussing approval voting because the same principles apply, and it's simpler to talk about.)
Now, to the extent that a 1-dimensional political spectrum is valid, and looks like J-H-T-G, neither J nor G can possibly win -- you don't win by going away from the middle. (Of course the 1d model is not right, but it's a common conception, and is not completely wrong, either.) The point is, a fair winner-takes-all system is likely to elect someone near the middle of the political space (however many dimensions it has), while a fair proportional representation system would be more likely to choose a few extremists from both (or more) directions. But even in winner-take-all elections, voting for an extreme candidate doesn't have to (and shouldn't!) throw the election to the farther of the mainstream candidates.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @05:57AM
So you have to vote strategically, i.e for Hillary, in hopes of keeping the wrong lizard from winning.
That's not strategic voting; that's mindless, short-sighted voting. Sure, you might help defeat your most hated major party bogeyman and delude yourself into believing you've prevented the end of the world, but you're only reducing (not eliminating) the amount of harm done in the short-term; in the long-term (assuming you keep voting this way), you've helped perpetuate a corrupt and authoritarian two-party system which does an astronomical amount of damage over long periods of time. Maybe some Really Bad Guys will have to win before we can beat the two parties into shape by using their fear of the spoiler effect as a weapon to guide them into adopting third party policies. We're not giving the two parties any incentives to change if people vote for them every single time, and this is indisputable. The real "disastrous possible" is our two-party system, not any individual bad candidate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:07AM
It's actually mathematically provable - this was done a few years ago - that our electoral system will result in a two-party oligopoly. It is a literal inevitability.
That is only partially related to mathematics, and is definitely not a mathematical certainty. It's more about how humans make decisions, and it's possible for people to make all the decisions necessary to create more than two parties, but it is simply extremely unlikely.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 04 2016, @04:08AM
We have/had that in Canada. It's hard when your nation crosses multiple time zones. We always had the problem of American media leaking over the border but with the internet it is pretty well impossible to stop the reporting.
It still does help with the media, last election all the media was, as usual for the media, in favour of the right wing but the people wanted a change and got it. If Trump wins, it'll be in spite of the American media, who as usual are backing the right wing (in an economic sense) candidate. They're businesses and want a pro-business environment.
Some things that we have in Canada that help to have multiple parties in Parliament and the last election being a 3 way race. A non-partisan group running the elections, including fairly setting the ridings (districts), so no gerrymandering. Federal and Provincial elections are divorced, so the people can focus on one election. When I vote (excepting municipal), there is usually one choice. This allows new parties to start at the Provincial level and perhaps move to the Federal level. It also stops the straight ticket voting.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by art guerrilla on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:31PM
why, yes, there are a number of measures which would go far to institute an actual, functioning, small-dee democracy...
which is precisely why it will not happen under the current version of Empire...
1. repeal superior personhood of fictitious legal entities...
2. have Big Media give free air time for candidates (thus eliminating the 'need' for zillions in campaign funding), they are OUR airwaves, have them work for us, for a change...
3. instant runoff/ranked choice voting methods have the potential to give us REAL choices, third+ parties, and break the one Korporate Money Party's stranglehold... (in case you did not know, we only have the one Korporate Money Party, with the smiley face (dem'rats ), and frowny face (rethugs) being the two faces of the same borg...
4. i would dump the existing computer-based PROPRIETARY vote-rigging systems, as well...
5. um, i realize this is NOW apostasy, but when i was a tiny little civics student, there was this evil apotheosis to small-dee democracy called gerrymandering, which was supposed to be ipso facto UNdemocratic... now that we are the smartestest, most bravestest, totally modern nekkid apes, apparently gerrymandering is a good thing...
there is more, but we will NEVER be able to enact even modest reforms like the above, while Empire is in the saddle...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:03PM
I'm rather in favor of a combination cage match, cook off & talent show. They can make it a big weekend and we could start voting as soon as it was done.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:24PM
Read an interesting article a few days ago that says people make gerrymandering worse by moving out of "bad" neighborhoods and concentrating in "good", like-minded ones. And it seems Democrats are worse about this than Republicans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:08AM
So, the claim is that "White flight" is less about the party that switched sides of the political divide to what -had- been called "The Party of Lincoln" after those folks were already calling themselves "Dixiecrats".
...and is instead more about the party that passed The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Interesting hypothesis.
Seems counterintuitive.
Oh, look who posted that: (bzipitidoo, the Reactionary consumer of Fox so-called News).
Of course, it could be that there are simply fewer declared Republicans (21 percent compared to 29 percent declared Democrats).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @03:48AM
Missing the point.
Do some googling about "The Big Sort". You'll find references to Bill Bishop, who illustrated how like-minded people cluster together; essentially self-gerrymandering.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @04:13AM
1. repeal superior personhood of fictitious legal entities...
Yeah, no duh.
2. have Big Media give free air time for candidates (thus eliminating the 'need' for zillions in campaign funding), they are OUR airwaves, have them work for us, for a change...
They're OUR airwaves, but not OUR transmitters -- and getting bogged down in arguments about who subsidized what when, or whether they could have succeeded without using the state to exempt corporations from the normal rules, or... That's ALL a losing game.
The first step is recognizing the radio spectrum as a commons, which you've done (or close enough); the second step is managing that commons in some sane fashion, renting rather than selling chunks of it off permanently, that sort of thing. Then you've got a bulletproof basis to demand, as part of the rent, that they use a certain amount of time on their transmitters to display state-controlled content, including candidate airtime.
That said, I distrust state propaganda, even (or especially!) when it's supposedly neutral; how do I know that candidates aren't being told what they can and can't say on their free airtime, etc.? Good thing I have internet and don't watch/listen to anything on the airwaves anyhow -- because I trust Google so much more than the state! AAAAAaaaaarrrrggghhhh! (I really don't have a good answer.)
3. instant runoff/ranked choice voting methods have the potential to give us REAL choices, third+ parties, and break the one Korporate Money Party's stranglehold...
No, No, No! IRV is EVIL -- it has the same 2-party lock-in tendency as plurality.
And ranked choice ballots in general suffer pathological behavior compared to scored choice ballots (range/approval voting).
We now have an unresolvable cycle; any voting system that manages to make sense of that is a monstrosity that makes sense out of nonsense. (Most ranking systems would call that a 3-way tie, BUT if there's other voters, most systems will combine PART of our three ballots with the other ones, and quite possibly return a completely different result than if we three had not voted at all.
A simple, elegant voting system can actually add those up (A=14,B=12,C=18) and say who won.
C won because you mostly favored it, he completely favored it, whereas B failed because I rated it very low -- this time, we put more information in, and it can actually be solved. And, if other people voted? Our votes mostly canceled each other out, but not entirely -- so we'll have just the right proportionately small net effect. These voting systems not only let voters express honest preferences, they are mathematically well-behaved.
4. i would dump the existing computer-based PROPRIETARY vote-rigging systems, as well...
Yeah, no duh.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:31PM
The list of ways to fix the systemic issues(with some proven success at getting the desired results in other countries) are numerous:
*Smaller electoral districts increasing the ability of small groups of dedicated people to swing an election
*Proportionate party voting ballots: give power to ideals, not people, and in proportion to the people who believe in those ideas. It would, for example, utterly divorce the libertarian side of the repubican party from the racist, nationalist fuckwit side, and put some actual socialists in congress.
*Automatic runoff/ranked voting: more for executive elections than representative: make it so that people voting 3rd party never feel like they're throwing away their vote and can vote their conscience first, their pragmatism second.
Any of those reforms would alleviate so much bullshit from this country's political process, and it pains me that none of them will ever happen.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:06PM
You and art guerilla are right that they'll never happen under the current "Empire." That doesn't mean we shouldn't compose them into the American Constitution 2.0, to be adopted after the avatars of Empire are torn to bloody shreds. It helps to have a plan, lest everything devolve to strong-man rule.
I would second what you both have listed, especially on scrapping the artificial personhood of corporations. I'd also add that we need measures to exclude psychopaths/sociopaths from public office, and to short-circuit oligarchy. For the latter, we need to absolutely shut down the revolving door between industry and the federal government. We cannot allow industries to write their own regulations.
Lastly, and this is personal preference, we should scrap Washington, DC, and move the capital West, perhaps to Denver. The cultural mindset of the Northeast is toxic to democracy. I say, if we're gonna make a clean break, let's make a clean break.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:19PM
The northeast US is fucking fine.
The physical infrastructure of the national government is fine.
The current constitution is pretty(but not perfectly) well equipped to prevent strong-men, and that was one of the most important design elements to how it was originally written. It just needs some updating to address the tribalism that maybe the founding fathers weren't perfectly aware of.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:32PM
yeah, but...
the superficial form is still there, but it has been hollowed out to the point it is NOT functioning as intended, AND the checks and balances supposedly to keep the ship of state from listing are not functioning (which is precisely as the puppetmasters like it)...
for example, anyone recall any dusty old, musty old -i don't know- 'tradition' of kongress 'declaring war' ? ? ?
um, just how many undeclared non-war wars are we in right now ?
minor shit like that, murdering hundreds of thousands for Empire on the say-so of one Emperor...
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:50PM
Sadly, congress has "approved" of the use of force without using the word "war" in each of these cases: Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and "The war on terror".
What we have are a bunch of losers afraid to use sincere words to describe what they're doing. And, sadly, I have to blame Harry Truman for starting that tend with renaming our department of war to department of defense, when there has been zero defensive activities since that renaming.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:17PM
It's not, though. And it's mainly the tribalism you cite that I'm thinking of. People here go 'down the shore' and 'summer in the hamptons' and 'out to the cape.' They think it's normal to have supper clubs. Endlessly dividing themselves by ethnicity. There's a little bit of that in a couple other places outside the northeast, like Chicago, but it's completely pegged to one end of the spectrum here. The culture of entitlement, the very thing we're talking about that drives the elites, is so deeply rooted here.
I do like other things about the northeast, but the northeast super-elites are very closely responsible for what's wrong with America and you can see that very plainly if you live in New York. I grew up in the West, went to college and grad school in Chicago, and spent a lot of summers in Texas and the South, and the northeast is an anachronism. It can't host the capital of a new America.
Again, that's my personal perspective, and may seem outlandish to some. But there it is.
I agree that the first Constitution is pretty strong. When I said it's good to have a plan for what happens after a historic dislocation, I meant that without an alternative the breakdown of established orders so often means rule-by-warlords. I don't think it's going too far out on a limb to assert that nobody wants that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:25PM
Let's remember that the Kennedy clan are from New England. They turned out a couple decent people, and they turned out some real scuzzy sons of bitches as well. And, New Englanders kept reelecting one of the Kennedy clan's worst scuzzbags, Chappaquidick Ted.
Yes, Northeasterners love their elites.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:22PM
There is so very much about US Code that is simply WRONG today. I believe it started with re-interpretations of the Interstate Commerce Act. Between ever-growing power put in place by the feds, and the fed's ability to tighten purse strings to coerce compliance, they bully the states into anything and everything. The states are beginning to grow some balls, in regards to the "war on drugs" - they need to find their spine and stand up to other issues as well.
The senate - supposed to be composed of two people from each state, appointed by the state's governor/government? When that was changed, the states were screwed again.
Basically, the feds have been doing end runs around the constitution ever since the Civil War, gutting state's rights. And, that has a major affect on our lives today.
More on topic - the same people who have engineered the fed's ability to bully the states are the people who have reworked federal funding for parties, and prevented any serious challenge from third parties.
I really don't like where we are today, and I really despise our "leadership". What's worse, I'm afraid of any constitutional convention, because things CAN get much worse, if the wrong people attend that convention!!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday November 04 2016, @02:48AM
Direct election of senators was instituted because the appointment of senators was turning into a government office available for sale to the highest bidder. There was also a problem with some state governments being more dysfunctional than the feds are now. Also, it wouldn't have gone through had the state governments and the (appointed) senate not approved the constitutional amendment that made it a reality. So I'm not seeing the signs of federal overreach on this one - yes, it diminished the power of state governments, but not without the state governments' approval.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by darkfeline on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:17PM
I found this series enlightening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo&list=PL7679C7ACE93A5638 [youtube.com]
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday November 04 2016, @09:40AM
MMP was completely new to me and I don't see how it fails to have any of the desirable properties listed in Arrow's Theorem (that no voting system has all these desirable properties) - do you know how it fails?
After learning about the principles behind MMP, I'm convinced that it's the standout (family of) voting system(s). I've not delved into the variants enough to be sure I have a single favourite. The rest seem to have either inferior results or more complexity, or both!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0, Redundant) by fritsd on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:27PM
I do enjoy pontificating about US politics. Even though (or maybe because?) I don't actually know much about it. OK here goes:
Well, one of the most important principles is, that the voting has to be *understood* to be fair, by most voters (i.e. also with an IQ under 100).
So nothing fancy like advanced Condorcet voting. Stick to the basics: one person one vote proportional representation, with political parties to summarize and simplify the myriad options.
(I know you don't need political parties, but they make things easier for the voter.)
Red pencil and paper. If you don't understand the argument for voting on paper ballots, educate yourself. The percentage of people that is blind or disabled will just have to mandate a friend or family member to vote for them. It's harsh, but it simplifies things a great deal and makes fraud lots more difficult than anything at all with voting computers. Every voter V is allowed to vote for themselves, *and* they are allowed to accept the mandate of one (1) person B voting in absentia, whereby that second person B(lind) fills in and signs a paper form that they mandate V to cast the vote for them on that day.
Every person that has a legal residence, gets written in in the voting station closest to that legal residence. (Of course there are forms to fill in if you want to change your preferred voting station). I don't know what to do about homeless people who want to vote. Maybe give them one of those forms half a year before.
Every voter that approaches the voting booths, shows ID to the volunteers, and then in the (paper!) voting book the field next to their name is crossed out, and if it was already crossed out there will be trouble. After that they are given a ballot envelope.
Get rid of the Electoral College (do more than half of the voters understand what it's for? No? Then get rid of it.)
One person one vote immediately gets rid of your crazy "gerrymandering" in one fell swoop. Now, suddenly all votes count no matter where you live. This is good for democracy!!
Do the federal government election and the state election on the same day, a sunday every 4 years; do the typically American local dog-catcher and judge elections on the other (4*365.25-1) days, so the pensioners have something else to do besides Bingo.
Nobody else elects their judges and dog-catchers, guys. Do more than half of your voters understand they should vote for judges and dog-catchers as well as president and parliament? Does anyone bother?
Make it a federal crime to refuse your employees free time off to do their voting. Them voting is more important than your company's production schedule!
Now despite my big mouth I've never actually even visited the USA (let alone live there, God forbid!) so I'm sure I've bulldozed over nuances and details. Maybe the Cherokee and other Indians get guaranteed representation at the federal level, for example. I don't know if Washington DC is a state or not (it is drawn with a different colour on maps). I have no clue about Puerto Rico, either.
Maybe vest the power in the House of Representatives, with all laws subject to veto by the President and amendment and/or sending back by the Senate. Or is it that way already.
House of Representatives can sack the President if they win a motion of no confidence [wikipedia.org]. (That's actually a very well functioning mechanism).
The people elect the parties (which form the parliament); the parliament is sovereign, the president can go spin on it.
Have a low threshold of 3% of the vote; if a political party gets above that threshold, they get a proportional slice of the pie of *taxpayer-based* advertising money. Have prime-time TV slots pre-bought by this advertising money and distributed proportionately amongst the parties with > 3% votes. Any other sources of money to a political party with more than 3% votes means: go directly to jail, do not pass start.
The joke "America: the best government money can buy", is actually a bit shameful, don't you think? How much are the volunteers paid, by the way? Probably not as much as the lobbyists..
Whew.. did I miss anything? What I probably haven't articulated is, that if you have a proportionate voting system, the type of politics changes: political parties *know* they have to compromise and form coalitions sometimes, so the type of debate becomes much less adversarial, and more aimed at the actual issues. Imagine each political party as a Rorschach blotch on a 2-dimension Political Compass map. They overlap. The combined blob(s) which represents most of the voters, should govern. I for one welcome our new blobby overlords!
Observe the enormous difference in meaning between purple coalition (in the Netherlands) vs. the "red-vs-blue" states in the USA [wikipedia.org]. The people benefit if coalitions are somehow found that represent their wishes, not when it's guaranteed that 50% of the electorate gets shafted!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:49PM
Your prescriptions miss a few details.
The separation of powers is actually pretty important in the US. Making the president beholden to the House actively destroys that. This is a bad idea.
Unalloyed democracy turns into a tyranny of the majority, and the US of A is quite a diverse country. Telling the people of Wyoming, by default, to just suck it if the people of Wisconsin don't agree with them, is not exactly good for coherence. So, doing away with the electoral college or states' rights in general? Bad idea.
And yes, people do vote for other electoral offices.
And as for coalition governments? We'll ask Belgium how well that's worked for them first, I think.
What might make more sense is change representatives to public servants, who are not elected. Instead people vote for issues, and the representatives are banned (backed by stiff legal penalties) from voting to pass any law that violates the stated preferences of their constituency, with automatic standing for any constituent to lay a claim against their representative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:43AM
Stick to the basics: one person one vote
That's garbage; there should be a ranked voting system. Anything else encourages voting for the 'lesser' evil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @02:22PM
{They came from a political system that inevitably devolves into an oligarchy masquerading as a two party system.
FTFY
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:11PM
Both parties have betrayed their supposed principles:
- The Democrats are bought and paid for by big business, (and to a lesser extent, big unions). That's where the money is at, and money is power.
- The Republicans are supposed to be conservative, but they no longer "conserve" anything. They are all for big government, paid for by big business. That's where the money is at, and money is power.
The elite of both parties are in on the take. Money, lobbiests, revolving doors with industry. The Podesta emails make it abundantly clear that the rest of us are held in contempt, sheep to be sheared and kept ignorant. The Democrats and Republicans are, collectively, the "elite". Two sides of the same coin, the same corrupt system.
Surprisingly, people seems to be waking up. Bernie Sanders only failed to defeat Hillary Clinton, because of the "Superdelegate" rules. Trump did defeat Jeb "it's your turn now" Bush, and seems entirely likely to defeat Hillary. If momentum continues growing, change could really happen. The danger is that change may well be accompanied by some serious civil unrest. For example, if the Democrats are no longer in a position to hand out spoils to the FSA [urbandictionary.com], expect some inner cities to burn.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:29PM
There is wisdom in what you say. However it is a depressing thought that when throwing off the shackles of the status quo and bucking the rigged system, that best alternative the people can come up with is a repugnant, ignorant, dishonest, bigoted, corrupt demagogue like Donald Trump. We see the same thing here in the UK: People are fed up with not being heard, not being represented and what do they do? Fall in line behind Rupert Fucking Murdoch to vote for Brexit, which will hugely impoverish them and irreparably harm the country.
Terrifyingly, it's almost as if our autocratic puppetmasters really do know what's best for us. Or maybe fostering that belief is the conspiracy within the conspiracy, who knows?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:58PM
What's more, if his history is any guide, Trump's brush with populism will prove superficial and he will hand over the reins to the usual advisers and technocrats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:34AM
Pence == Cheney II
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:26PM
Yes, that feeling is shared. It is what it is, though. We can see how well the Establishment screened out other possibilities. Trump got through because he had enough money and access to not be scared of the Establishment, and because he had enough experience via his RealityTV career to understand where people are emotionally and tap into that. A portion of his supporters are credulous and are really, really looking forward to that wall on the southern border. A greater portion understand him for what he is, a chance to strike back at the elites who have been waging war on them for at least two generations.
It's interesting that you see Brexit as a plot by the elites, when the view from this side of the pond has been rather that Brexit was born of the same trends that are carrying Trump.
Me, I don't think that Trump will fix a darn thing. He doesn't know how. But a victory for him would knock the Establishment off balance and give something else a chance to develop.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by purple_cobra on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:15PM
Absolutely and while I'm sure I've written here previously that I'd like to see Murdoch swing for treason, it was also the Daily Fail and, to a lesser extent, the Torygraph which were also responsible for parroting the utter bullshit the Leave campaign came out with and adding some fresh bullshit of their own. It's a shame that bloody bus didn't slip its handbrake and squash Farage flat, along with that buffoon Johnson and Michael "tired of hearing from experts" Gove.
Whether today's High Court ruling on Article 50 does any good or not is anyone's guess but it's thrown an already flummoxed government into further disarray. As has been stated by other people, the original Tory plan (for a referendum, amongst other stupid ideas) was predicated on them being on-top in a coalition, but as they won a slim majority they then had to follow-through on their stupid ideas because "they were in the manifesto" and of course, no party can just up and say "actually, now we look at it with fresh eyes, it's a stupid idea and we're not going to do it" because we've been continually fed the idea that changing your mind on anything, especially for government, is weakness and must be avoided at all costs, regardless of the evidence for doing so. With that in mind, I don't foresee any kind of meaningful recovery for this country inside of at least 20 years as we're completely enmeshed in what I've heard called post-truth politics. The echo chambers of social media have only helped people become more partisan and less willing/able to apply critical thinking to the words and pictures in front of their eyes.
A recent personal tragedy has left me with a some serious questions to answer, including whether I want to stay in the UK or not. Given the above, the answer may be more obvious than I thought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:13PM
We need decentralized social media, like NOW!
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Friday November 04 2016, @12:35AM
When you look at the origin of regulation of just about anything that is regulated, you will find that there is a reason it is there. Businesses were taking advantage of the little people or little people screwing other little people. People need government. So, yes, it does seem like maybe greedy assholes and people who can't afford health care but drive a nice car and buy every new iSomething that hits the shelves do need the government to play mommy and daddy and do what is best for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:23PM
Kinda.
Both parties play up social issues while only differing by degree on economic policy. No sense in killing the golden goose.
And the populace, goaded by the media, eats it up while economic issues take a back seat (Occupy Wall Street being a prime example).
This works because the country is relatively wealthy, so the system can support tons of graft and corruption and still lumber along.
The FSA also includes millions of government employees
http://www.industryweek.com/workforce/who-are-worlds-biggest-employers [industryweek.com]
who are an overlooked aspect advocating for their own benefit. If you include the entire Federal government, they are the largest employer by far, which should give everyone pause.
My cynical side thinks the problems of government are unlikely to be solved by even more government. But the economic engine can only tolerate so much before it completely collapses.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:53PM
Bernie Sanders only failed to defeat Hillary Clinton, because of the "Superdelegate" rules.
Why do people like you keep repeating this lie?
Bernie lost the popular vote, period. The superdelegates had nothing to do with it. Bernie did not have enough votes for the SDs to even be a factor.
You can allege the vote was rigged somehow, but that's a separate argument. You can allege that the DNC was biased against him and this affected the voting, and I would not disagree. You can allege that the media was complicit by constantly assuming the SDs would all vote for Hillary, and this might have affected the voting, and I would not disagree. However, according to the official counts, Bernie simply lost. The ultimate fault here is the voters themselves: they physically showed up and placed more votes for Hillary than they did for Bernie. They may have been influenced, but that's no excuse; they had the power to vote for Bernie, and did not.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:04PM
And second, it meant that Clinton secured the bribe donations right away. There's a group of donors who hold out until they know who will win, then they donate to the winner. By having all those superdelegates on her side, she was able to acquire funds from these donors earlier than normal. That would have made a big impact in advertising on the later stages of the nomination process, and boy did she need that.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:19PM
First, it created an impression of victory for Clinton that would have influenced how people vote (eg, why bother voting for Sanders when Clinton is going to win, right?).
Wrong.
I've heard this argument before, and it makes zero sense to me.
If you're some slightly on-the-fence voter but you prefer Bernie, but all you hear is about how Hillary is a shoe-in, why would you feel compelled to switch your vote to Hillary? It's not like Trump is going to win; this is the DNC primary election we're talking about, where you have a choice between Bernie, Hillary, and maybe those other 3 guys (depending on which state you were in, relative to when they dropped out). If Hillary is such a sure thing, then why would you spend your time and energy going to the polls to vote for her if you really preferred Bernie? It makes no sense.
We have the same thing going on these days, and it has some people on the left worried Trump will win: people think that Hillary is a sure thing, so they're not going to bother showing up at the polls to vote for her, whereas Trump's supporters are far more enthusiastic and will certainly show up to vote.
You can't have it both ways. If people think Hillary is a sure thing in the general election and aren't going to show up, then they aren't going to magically think differently in the primary election and go to the trouble of showing up to vote for her when they don't even prefer her.
Maybe you're trying to allege that many Sanders voters didn't bother showing up? Perhaps, but that still doesn't quite make sense, because just like with Trump, it's the enthusiastic underdog-supporters who are more likely to expend the effort necessary to get their vote in, knowing that even if the odds are against them, not bothering to even try will simply make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the Hillary voters thought she was a sure thing, it's they who would have been more likely to not bother showing up to vote, thinking it wouldn't make a difference.
And yes, donor funding and advertising is a factor, but advertising does not win an election. The only thing that wins an election (barring outright fraud) is voters going to the voting booths and casting ballots for that candidate. Advertising may influence them, but that's on them. They bear the ultimate responsibility for their choices in the voting booth, no one else.
In the end, it was the Democratic voters who elected Hillary. There's no really good evidence that there was enough foul play to affect the results; the People did this all by themselves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:20PM
If Hillary is such a sure thing, then why would you spend your time and energy going to the polls to vote for her if you really preferred Bernie?
There's a third choice: not bother to vote at all. Then you don't have to spend the time and energy on a perceived lost cause. That probably was a serious problem with Sanders followers.
Maybe you're trying to allege that many Sanders voters didn't bother showing up?
Yes.
And yes, donor funding and advertising is a factor, but advertising does not win an election. The only thing that wins an election (barring outright fraud) is voters going to the voting booths and casting ballots for that candidate. Advertising may influence them, but that's on them. They bear the ultimate responsibility for their choices in the voting booth, no one else.
So it is a factor and the race outside of the superdelegates was close.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:46PM
This still doesn't make sense, when compared to Trump supporters. Despite the media constantly telling them it's a "lost cause", they're extremely enthusiastic, they attend his rallies by the tens of thousands, and there's every expectation they're going to show up to vote, even though the media is constantly telling us that there's no way he can win. In fact, now the media has changed its tune and is warning us that he very well could win. I don't really see how Bernie voters, who were also extremely enthusiastic and attended his rallies in huge numbers, are somehow much easier to dissuade from voting. The only factor that I can see is different is that Bernie voters tended to be young, and they're infamous for not showing up for various reasons; perhaps they screwed up and missed the registration deadline, perhaps they were too busy with school, whereas older retired voters have all the time in the world and are very experienced in getting registered and voting.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:36PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @05:11AM
Sanders voters were all about being 'right kind of liberal' and that involves not being aggressive.
Trump voters are all about being liberal kind of right, and that involves being aggressive.
Also, I find it funny that the so called conservatives are trying their best to usurp the system, while the so called liberals are trying their best to keep it going by voting hilariously corrupt Clinton. But then, America has perfected tribalism, with every single idea being termed as part of a group.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday November 04 2016, @04:17PM
You must have not been attention to all his rallies, plus how his supporters showed up at the convention and caused a scene and were thrown out.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 05 2016, @02:19PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:02PM
Except when they didn't have the power to vote for Bernie, because somebody had messed with their voter registration, which happened thousands of times.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:35PM
> Except when they didn't have the power to vote for Bernie, because somebody had messed with their voter registration, which happened thousands of times.
Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 4 million.
Anything that happened thousands of times doesn't even register.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:10PM
Even if 0.1% were tampered with. It's a huge concern. Think about an organization that is doing illegal things to get a specific person elected president. That organization should be rooted out and destroyed. If the person to be elected is part of that organization then they should be removed from eligibility.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:41PM
Its like some people just want to blame everyone BUT the people responsible... Voter fraud seems to be a non-issue, it is definitely a sign when the general population just shrugs their shoulders like "It isn't surprising and what could we even do about it?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:42PM
> Even if 0.1% were tampered with. It's a huge concern.
Its a problem to be dealt with. But it in no way invalidates the results.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:48PM
The problem is your second sentence is followed but not the first.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:10PM
The problem is that you think the first is relevant to this thread.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 11 2016, @09:56PM
That's not true if you account for greater number of election day voters that each caucus voter represents over each primary voter.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:56PM
You are missing the point.
The past eight years or so, there has been a major shift in American politics.
The Republican party is now the party of Nationalism, protectionism, populism.
The Democratic party is now the party of classic liberalism (meaning, free-market capitalism, individual liberty, progressive social policy).
This is the major shift in party politics. It only happened twice in the 20th Century (during FDR when the Republicans stopped being the progressive party and later under Nixon when the nationalists left the old Dixie-Southern Democrats for the Republican party) where the parties had a fundamental shift in what they represented. People are too entrenched in making sure their "team" wins, that they are unable to see how the parties have swapped around the axis and re-defined what they stand for.
What the parties /traditionally/ stood for is no longer relevant. This is the new standard. There is now a Nationalist party, and there is a Classic Liberalism party in the US. Forget the traditional party designations. This is what 2016 finally revealed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:48PM
I would add "traditional Christian" to the Rep list, because that's not a negligible "never vote democrat" factor.
Interestingly, the small-business-minded Christian Latinos should be voting in droves on the R side, helping counter the old-white negative demographics, but the obsession with indiscriminate anti-immigration policies is killing that opportunity.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:59PM
> The Republican party is now the party of Nationalism, protectionism, populism.
Right now the republican party doesn't know what the hell it is. It's an uncomfortable mish-mash of contradictory ideologies and economic ideas and it is in crisis as a result. After this election I'm looking forward to watching the infighting get *really* nasty. The GoP really needs to split into at least two - probably more like 3 or 4 - different parties but it is resisting that as hard as it can because it knows that is not going to work well in a two-party system.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:41PM
Don't say that... it's already not fun anymore, for outsiders to watch. If you need an example from history about how *really* nasty "post-truth" politics can get, read about the Night of the Long Knives [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:06PM
I have major issues with your characterization of the Democratic party.
Individual liberty - like how they want to ban your right to defend yourself, the most important and fundamental right? Doesn't hold water.
Free-market capitalism - like how HRC and Obama handed billions upon billions in TARP money to too-big-too-exist financial institutions? Or how they supported the telecom/content mergers? Yeah, doesn't hold water either.
Progressive policy - like how you publicly say whatever focus groups told you, while holding "those people" in contempt? Straight from HRC, folks. Gotta have a public and private policy. Source: the Goldman Sachs speeches.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:00PM
Gotta have a public and private policy.
Yes, as does basically everyone that holds a job more important than burger-flipping. Hell, even a burger-flipper would get in trouble for telling every customer in line his private thoughts on the quality of McDonald's beef.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:44PM
Hahahahaha NO!
Politicians represent the people and should be honest. When the country is told one thing, but it actually does another, well I call that treason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @10:51PM
Is there any elaboration of that sound-bite that would change your conclusion?
Or is it one of those things that just confirms your beliefs, it doesn't actually inform them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:57AM
Is there any elaboration of that sound-bite that would change your conclusion?
Since I read the entire quote itself, your elaborations would probably be nothing more than a desperate attempt to defend the indefensible. I don't care how many politicians do the same thing; it's wrong. Jill Stein it is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @11:15PM
Individual liberty - like how they want to ban your right to defend yourself, the most important and fundamental right? Doesn't hold water.
This is an outlier. The new Democrats are stronger on gun-rights than traditional Democrats were. There is a non-insignificant block of OIF/OEF Vets running for public office under the Democratic Party now. Look no further than Missouri, where both the Democratic candidate for Senate and Governor have been endorsed by the NRA over their Republican rivals.
Free-market capitalism - like how HRC and Obama handed billions upon billions in TARP money to too-big-too-exist financial institutions? Or how they supported the telecom/content mergers? Yeah, doesn't hold water either.
Yeah, it is a complete 180 from where the Democratic party was sixteen years ago. Thanks for proving my point. In 2000, the Democratic party broke up Microsoft for anti-trust violations. In 2001, the new Republican president swooped in at the last minute and stopped the forced break-up because free-market capitalism. In 2016, the Republican candidate for President wants to break up the Time Waner/ATT merger because "save American jobs" and "conspiracy against Republicans." It is the modern Democratic party that wants to allow this merger to happen.
Progressive policy - like how you publicly say whatever focus groups told you, while holding "those people" in contempt? Straight from HRC, folks. Gotta have a public and private policy. Source: the Goldman Sachs speeches.
Yes, much more progressive than "Obama stole your guns to create ISIS," "global warming was a conspiracy created by the Chinese to take your blue collar jobs away" and the other reactionary fear-mongering that comes from the other side of the aisle. One side is moving the discussion (and society as a whole) forward. The other side is dragging their feet out of fear from change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @01:37AM
In 2000, the Democratic party broke up Microsoft for anti-trust violations
Wow! Could you possibly be more wrong?
1) It was the courts that decided the case.
(Courts are supposed to be non-partisan.)
2) Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson was a Reagan appointee.
-He- was the presiding judge and the one who wanted to break MSFT into little impotent pieces.
3) He shot his mouth off to the press and was removed from the case before the penalty phase.
4) MSFT was never reorganized by gov't mandate.
They got a consent decree, which they abused repeatedly and which, as a result, was extended repeatedly--until it didn't matter any more.
IOW, M$ won.
The reasons that Redmond is increasingly insignificant are
a) Ballmer
b) their abusive business model
c) LoseME, Visduh, Visduh 8, Visduh 10
d) The price of a pre-installed OS can't be noticeable in the price of the (increasingly cheaper) hardware
d) They missed the boat on mobile
e) Free Software can do what payware does for most folks; on servers, FOSS is clearly superior
You need to brush up on your History.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @04:58AM
Free Software can do what payware does for most folks; on servers, FOSS is clearly superior
I think you are missing the $$$/server enterprise licensed Linux offerings that actually make most of the FOSS actually feasible as OSS. Without commercial backing, you'd have barely a BSD-level OS, which sadly cannot compete with Microsoft Server software.
Thousands and thousands of people work on FOSS as part of their job, because lots of FOSS *is* "payware".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @07:26AM
I'm not sure I'm getting your point.
I will say that when I mean "gratis", I use that word.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:12PM
"The Democratic party is now the party of classic liberalism (meaning, free-market capitalism, individual liberty, progressive social policy)."
Are you smoking crack?
No? LSD, maybe?
They are the party (arguably) of progressivism (although wishy-washy) but there's no hint that they give a good goddamn about civil liberties whatsoever. They love to boost the anti-first-amendment scolds and nannies, they love to boost the anti-second-amendment gungrabbers (all for the passionate argument of safer inner cities), they fight in favour of groups like police unions (to follow that money) and teachers' unions against citizens' drives in favour of choice. They love the surveillance society. They don't like free-market anything, and have yet to see an industry they didn't want to regulate.
The democrats are SO anti-liberty that they actually make the republicans look like the party of liberty, at this point.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:15PM
That's not really true of the republican party at this time. It might become true if Trump wins and is able to re-write the DNA of the party. At the moment the republican establishment and democratic establishment are both the party of liberalism, with minor quibbles bout social issues.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:41PM
The Democratic party is now the party of classic liberalism (meaning, free-market capitalism, individual liberty, progressive social policy).
No, I don't even see how you get that claim. The signature legislation of the past eight years was Obamacare. Not free market there though it did have some modest, heavily regulated market mechanisms. And Obama's shoddy treatment of the petroleum industry is definitely not free market.
And as noted elsewhere, individual liberty somehow doesn't extend to ownership of fire arms. And really, with the interest in hate speech law, they don't have that much of a claim to defending free speech either.
As to progressive social policy, I guess they do kind of have a lock on that. One out of three.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @11:27PM
The signature legislation of the past eight years was Obamacare.
Which even major players in the Libertarian Party favored because:
Namely, it frees more Americans to take better jobs without worrying about losing the health care plan they had in their old jobs. Worker mobility is one of the things that reliably fuels free enterprise, and workers will be more mobile under Obamacare than they would be under Romney’s semi-dismantled version of it.
And as noted elsewhere, individual liberty somehow doesn't extend to ownership of fire arms.
Its telling that Bernie Sanders was stronger at protecting gun rights than the Republican nominee for President.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @04:00AM
This is pretty revisionist.
Some people in the libertarians like some aspects of Obamacare. To declare that they liked the whole thing is simple fabrication.
Libertarians want insurance to be optional, not mandatory. They want it to be offered in good faith, sure, and generally could agree on some regulation of risk pooling (insofar it is relevant to acting in good faith) but whole segments of the law were completely unpalatable from the libertarian perspective.
Moreover, the law itself violated many of the general libertarian precepts on lawmaking. It's huge, complex, leaves vast fields open to regulatory rule-making (rather than being clear at the time of passage), and generally violates the idea that the average person should have a clear idea of what the law actually says.
It also added all sorts of taxes on things like medical equipment that were in no way supported by libertarian approaches, and its attempts to dictate to the states were not libertarian hot topics.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 04 2016, @04:18AM
Which even major players in the Libertarian Party favored because
Bullshit. Can't you at least work some porn into your fantasies, if you're going to do this?
Namely, it frees more Americans to take better jobs without worrying about losing the health care plan they had in their old jobs. Worker mobility is one of the things that reliably fuels free enterprise, and workers will be more mobile under Obamacare than they would be under Romney’s semi-dismantled version of it.
There's so much unconstitutional baggage attached. No way libertarians would support the law with mandatory fines to workers for not having health insurance or employers for not providing it.
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:29PM
You must have missed the Ron Paul revolution and the tea party movement. If Romney didn’t rig the 2012 GOP nomination we would have had a President Paul.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday November 04 2016, @01:04AM
The Democratic party is now the party of classic liberalism (meaning, free-market capitalism, individual liberty, progressive social policy).
So it opposes the NSA's unconstitutional democracy-destroying mass surveillance, the drug war (not just the war on marijuana, but the entire drug war), the TSA, DUI checkpoints, warrantless surveillance in general, draconian copyright laws, censorship in the name of the children, censorship to stop so-called hate speech, etc.? If this is not true in general, then they are not for individual liberty at all.
(Score: 1) by charon on Thursday November 03 2016, @10:35PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:18PM
aka neoliberalism.
or aka See how good it pays to be the corp's bitch.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:23PM
In fact, the central tenet of New Deal competition policy was not big or small government; it was distrust of concentrations of power and conflicts of interest in the economy. . The New Deal divided power, pitting faction against other faction, a classic Jefferson-Madison approach to controlling power (think Federalist Paper No. 10).
The obvious rebuttal is the National Industrial Recovery Act [wikipedia.org] (NIRA) of 1933 which created a large number of business cartels in addition to starting the well-known concentrating of labor union power. And of course, it was ineptly administered by the federal government which remains to this day a huge concentration of power and conflict of interest in the economy. The New Deal people didn't have any problems concentrating power as long as they were the ones in charge (which remains a problem of this flavor of political fix-it, they never seem to think Trumps and other undesirables can get into power to abuse what they create).
So no, it wasn't a classic Jefferson-Madison approach, but rather a classic top-down idealistic approach that ultimately failed when the Supreme Court completely voided this law.
Reading the article, I see this:
The result today is a paradox. At the same time that the nation has achieved perhaps the most tolerant culture in U.S. history, the destruction of the anti-monopoly and anti-bank tradition in the Democratic Party has also cleared the way for the greatest concentration of economic power in a century. This is not what the Watergate Babies intended when they dethroned Patman as chairman of the Banking Committee. But it helped lead them down that path. The story of Patman’s ousting is part of the larger story of how the Democratic Party helped to create today’s shockingly disillusioned and sullen public, a large chunk of whom is now marching for Donald Trump.
No word of labor competition with the developing world? The most important development of the past half century, and the key reason that said concentration of economic power happened, and it's just talk about near useless banking regulation?
From telecommunications to media to oil to banking to trade, Clinton administration officials—believing that technology and market forces alone would disrupt monopolies—ended up massively concentrating power in the corporate sector. They did this through active policy, repealing Glass-Steagall, expanding trade through NAFTA, and welcoming China’s entrance into the global-trading order via the World Trade Organization. But corporate concentration also occurred in less-examined ways, like through the Supreme Court and defense procurement. Clinton Library papers, for example, reveal that the lone Senate objection to the Supreme Court nominations of both Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg was from a lurking populist Ohio Democrat, Howard Metzenbaum, who opposed the future justices’ general agreement with Bork on competition policy. And in response to the end of the Cold War, the administration restructured the defense industry, shrinking the number of prime defense contractors from 107 to five. The new defense-industrial base, now concentrated in the hands of a few executives, stopped subsidizing key industries. The electronics industry was soon offshored.
Finally, this most important US economic trend of the past half century gets obliquely mentioned via the WTO and NAFTA. Somehow those trade agreements supposedly results in a concentration of corporate power even though these agreements introduced many new competitors to the US. The delusion is strong here.
I think the source of the problem here is the simplistic idea that regulation fixes stuff. But corporate concentration of power is actually driven by that very regulation. When you look at the massive amount of regulation that exists today, which grows faster than one can read it, it strongly favors large businesses over small ones. There is a huge economy of scale to dealing with it. It's not much more onerous to handle regulation for 100k employees as it is 100 employees.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by meustrus on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:29PM
I was taught that the New Deal was a bunch of "throw it on the wall and see what sticks" legislation. NIRA was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935, so obviously it didn't stick. Not every law in the New Deal was ideologically consistent, but when you look at only the laws that stuck around through near-future Congresses and the Supreme Court, the "classic Jefferson-Madison approach" won out.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:44PM
That is absolutely correct about FDR's general approach. The key factor was that (a) the economic situation was quite desperate, and (b) the received economic wisdom of the time had been exactly what Herbert Hoover had done. Which famously didn't work.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:51PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:22PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:36PM
That's because it is not a big issue. Only about 15% of the jobs lost are to overseas competition. Most of the rest is due to automation. You may want to split hairs and argue that the robots are working overseas, but the fact is that the jobs aren't being taken by foreign people. Trump supporters shouldn't be mad at immigrants taking their jobs, they should be mad at automation taking their jobs, but big walls aren't going to keep robots away from their jobs.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:48PM
Only about 15% of the jobs lost are to overseas competition. Most of the rest is due to automation.
Sure.
The problem with such assertions is that billions of jobs, many of the sort of job that supposedly got replaced by automation, were created throughout the developing world.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:10PM
> The problem with such assertions is that billions of jobs, many of the sort of job that supposedly got replaced by automation, were created throughout the developing world.
So what is your point? It sounds like you think the US has some claim on jobs that never previously existed. Like the MAFIAA claiming that every pirate download is a sale they would have made otherwise.
The simple truth is that US manufacturing output is up ~60% since NAFTA to the highest it has every been [stlouisfed.org] even while employment is down and that's because of automation. Employee efficiency increased 2.5x during that same time. That's your job killer and its only going to get worse.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:02PM
So what is your point? It sounds like you think the US has some claim on jobs that never previously existed.
Let's review the thread. I quoted a paragraph where the author blames the decline of labor power on Democrats replacing a committee chair. That doesn't even make a little sense since the decline of labor power would only trivially be affected by such a change. But competition with developing world labor which works for a small fraction of the price? Bingo. Then some AC wag claims that only 15% of all US jobs "lost" (whatever that means since no context was given) were due to foreign competition and the rest was somehow determined to be due to automation. I merely noted that there's been a vast amount of job creation including much of those jobs which supposedly were lost due to automation.
My point is that there is a huge amount of clueless blame shifting here. US business CEOs didn't suddenly discover greed in 1970. Labor unions didn't lose power over decades because some political ally got kicked out of his posh chairman position. There was a huge shift in power once labor competition from the developing world set in. This was manageable in the 1950s and 1960s when it was only Europe and Taiwan. Japan's ascent upset the balance of power in the US between labor and business.
The simple truth is that US manufacturing output is up ~60% since NAFTA to the highest it has every been even while employment is down and that's because of automation. Employee efficiency increased 2.5x during that same time. That's your job killer and its only going to get worse.
The obvious rebuttal is why aren't they hiring more employees, if they're so valuable? Answer: because it's even more valuable than that in places like China.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @11:02PM
> Let's review the thread. I quoted a paragraph where the author blames the decline of labor power on Democrats replacing a committee chair.
Oh look, callow only reads to find something to make non-sensical arguments about, not to understand. If you think the story was about a committee chair then you completely missed the point.
> The obvious rebuttal is why aren't they hiring more employees, if they're so valuable?
Lol, you are such fucking dumbass. Who said they are valuable? Why don't you buy 3 rolls royces, they are valuable aren't they? So what's your problem?
The only thing obvious is that whenever you open your mouth you don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about. Your understanding of the world is a joke. I mean come on, you cite the NIRA as major shaper of the current market when it was outright killed by the scotus within 2 years of enactment. Your entire worldview is defined by taking outliers and assuming they are the common case. You have zero sense of perspective or scale.
How many times does reality have you to slap you upside the head with your own idiocy before you realize your self-confidence is completely misplaced?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 04 2016, @04:13AM
How many times does reality have you to slap you upside the head with your own idiocy before you realize your self-confidence is completely misplaced?
Ok, what does reality have to do with your post?
I mean come on, you cite the NIRA as major shaper of the current market when it was outright killed by the scotus within 2 years of enactment.
Did I? I seem to recall citing it as an example of the absence of Jefferson-Madison qualities to New Deal strategy. And I pointed out the law got reversed. It's an example not a complete explanation of what's wrong for the past 80+ years. I find the accusation particularly bizarre, because I spoke of labor competition instead.
Your entire worldview is defined by taking outliers and assuming they are the common case.
You don't seem to get the point of an example. And for an "outlier", if the Supreme Court hadn't reversed it, we might still be living with the law today and a bunch of other stuff like it. FDR changed his strategy thereafter because he got effectively blocked by the Supreme Court (he even tried and failed to pack the court) not because the law was an "outlier".
There seems to be an unfortunate pattern to these AC accusations. Blatantly misrepresentations of what I wrote followed by clueless, low content commentary. But it's all "reality" so it must be good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:32PM
for the US economy. That's why Obama's ACA and Dodd-Frank [wikipedia.org] didn't take aim and try to dismantle it. Obama, Reid and Pelosi wouldn't have gotten anywhere if they had tried that.
It wasn't because they had read Lester Thurow or Robert Reich or JK Galbraith. Even if they had, a lifetime of experience intervened. Real life trumps theory when it comes to economics, political science, and the practices of government and management.
I happen to agree that horizontal mergers between big banks, telecom companies, or other utilities, are almost always detrimental to both consumers and American workers. What they do is eliminate a major rival so the industry can raise prices and earn more profits, while (not incidentally) giving their CEO an 8-figure USD compensation package.
Obama has been more active in blocking mergers than Bush, who (as usually when their is a Republican in the WH) basically said that any big business merger was fine with him. It's true that Obama has not proactively tried to break apart existing big businesses the way the two Roosevelts did.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:33PM
The cause of the Democrats losing its populist working-class side has everything to do with the last few decades of the Democratic Party, and little to do with what was going on in the 1970's.
The problem was that Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, and later Michael Dukakis were all butchered in the 1980's. A group of Democratic politicians decided that the problem was that the Democrats were backing policies that were too economically left-wing, and formed an organization called the "Democratic Leadership Council". They concluded that, among other things, the unions had been busted and were thus too economically weak to provide enough cash to win, so they needed to seek out corporate backing. They thus abandoned their support of pro-labor policies in order to please their new set of donors.
In 1990, Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, became chair of the DLC, turned it into a fundraising powerhouse, then went and ran for president in 1992. Many of the policies that became law under Bill Clinton, that the Democrats generally claimed were done reluctantly to pacify Newt Gingrich, were things the DLC had been advocating all along, like welfare cuts and loosening regulations on Wall Street.
Bill Clinton has been the model for the Democratic Party since: They'll push for social liberalism (e.g. gay marriage, affirmative action, and abortion rights), but never for economic liberalism (e.g. higher minimum wage, fair trade rather than free trade, or free college education). They'll claim that they never implement the economic liberal agenda because those Evil Republicans stopped them, but that is in fact the big lie of the Democratic Party these days. A good example of the Democrats demonstrating that it isn't true happened in 2009: There was a brief period where the Democrats had a majority in the House, 58 votes in the Senate plus 2 friendly independents (enough to stop a filibuster), and Obama in the White House, so they could have done anything they wanted to. But instead, they hemmed and hawed and basically did nothing, until the Republicans were able to gain back a majority in both houses of Congress and all of a sudden they became raging economic populists again on the stump.
The Republicans have some whoppers too: They claim to help the poor working class rural folks stand up to the man that's taking all their stuff, but actually spend most of their time trading big donations from big corporations for policies that help those big corporations take all their stuff.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @02:49PM
The Dems under Obama never had a supermajority in Congress. Major legislation had to be negotiated relentlessly with not only the three New England Republicans (who of course were derided as RINOs) but also the "blue dog Democrats" in their own party.
BTW this is the way Congress was designed to work, by the authors of the US Constitution. It was heavily influenced by separation of powers in England, and the writings of the conservative English political theorist Edmund Burke.
Labor unions have done a lot of good, but they also tend to be led by Mafia types who resort to thuggery to harass and intimidate non-union shops. They still have a stranglehold over many state governments; you'll notice that voters in many blue states elect Republican governors, and that's as a counterweight to the power of these unions and legislatures dominated by one party.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:18PM
Yes they did: Between September 2009 and February, 2010. They started out in January 2009 with a 55-vote majority, and had 2 friendly independents (Lieberman and Sanders), and a disputed seat from Minnesota. Between January and September, Arlen Specter switched from Republican to Democrat, Al Franken was seated, Robert Byrd was in and out of the hospital, Ted Kennedy died, and Massachusetts sent Democrat Paul Kirk to replace him. That gave the Democrats a 60-vote majority once Kirk was seated, with Byrd's vote.
During that time, they managed to pass only 4 major laws:
- Defense spending
- Expanding the definitions of hate crime to include acts targeting GLBT and disabled people.
- Extending unemployment benefits for a few more months
- A federal budget
That's it. They had a 4-month window of opportunity, and did basically nothing with it. What they could have done, and would have done had they really wanted to pass their stated agenda, is have dozens of laws waiting in the wings to do the things they said they wanted to do, and as soon as Kirk was seated just start passing things and signing things as quickly as possible (dragging Robert Byrd in if necessary). Had they done so, those few months might have become legendary in the way FDR's first 100 days did.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:28PM
That's it. They had a 4-month window of opportunity, and did basically nothing with it. What they could have done, and would have done had they really wanted to pass their stated agenda, is have dozens of laws waiting in the wings to do the things they said they wanted to do, and as soon as Kirk was seated just start passing things and signing things as quickly as possible (dragging Robert Byrd in if necessary). Had they done so, those few months might have become legendary in the way FDR's first 100 days did.
It's worth noting that they might even been able to break the Republican Party's unity with this. The occasional bribed Republicans would both serve to stir conflict in the other side and pad the numbers so that Democrat holdouts would have less bargaining power.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:33PM
That's a good point. It does rather indicate that neither party has much interest in doing what they actually campaign on.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:32PM
Kirk was a placeholder until Massachusetts held the special election to replace Kennedy - which of course would be another Democrat, right?
Wrong. Martha Coakley ran an incompetent campaign, and Republican Scott Brown was elected to fill the vacancy for the remainder of Kennedy's term.
Not much can get done in a tight time window in the US Senate. The rules are set up so that legislation and other matters can be tabled almost indefinitely. Ask Merrick Garland.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:06PM
The rules are set up so that legislation and other matters can be tabled almost indefinitely.
Not if you have 60 votes. They did at one point and they failed to use it effectively.
(Score: 4, Informative) by number11 on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:29PM
True. Obama badly wanted to be the one who brought everyone together, so he kept trying to negotiate with the Republicans instead of stomping them. Though in truth, there weren't 60 reliable votes, a few Dems (and people like Lieberman) were effectively Republicans.
This turned out to be a mistake. The Republicans were not going to negotiate in good faith with any sort of unity. Their extreme right had effective veto power. The only way they could unify was to be obstructionist.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:21PM
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:03PM
Yes, as we all know passing a budget is so easy the government has never shut down over it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:20PM
It doesn't take a supermajority to get a bill passed - just simple majority. The state of Texas has demonstrated that in recent years. Wait for the house to recess for Christmas, or whatever, then call an "emergency assembly" for which your own party has been warned. You end up with a super-super majority, because the opposition has already made other commitments.
But, it's doubtful that the dems would have had to resort to any such tricks. If they wanted a fifteen dollar minimum wage, they would have had it. If they wanted a real "pathway to citizenship", they would have had it.
Bottom line, neither party has any intention of "fixing" anything important, and certainly not anything that might upset their corporate masters.
We, the voters, are merely the tools and fools used to keep the parties in power.
THAT is why Trump has done so well, and also why a lot of people claim to be voting third party this time around. And, it's also why so many democrats sat out the primaries, and may well sit out the election.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:42PM
Congress was designed so that the House of Representatives is more of a populist chamber while the Senate works slowly, protecting the interests of the minority (which could be conservative, liberal, or something else depending on the issue at hand).
So in part, your complaint is about our system of government - the one that was designed 200+ years ago by the drafters of the Constitution.
As for the $15 minimum wage nationwide, that is controversial even among Democrats. Hillary, for example, doesn't support it, while Bernie does. There is evidence from the cities that have instituted it that that leads to significant loss of jobs. I think most top Democrats support the $10.10 Fed. minimum wage proposed by Obama, and many would go a bit higher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:03PM
Three states will vote on $12 by 2020, Washington on $13.50. There is no need for voters to wait if they have ballot initiatives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:22PM
But, it's doubtful that the dems would have had to resort to any such tricks. If they wanted a fifteen dollar minimum wage, they would have had it. If they wanted a real "pathway to citizenship", they would have had it.
No. They did not have the ability for an infinite wish list. They spent all their capital on obamacare. It was an enormously hard fight. The republicans have voted to repeal it something like 60 times since. I'm pretty sure that's a level of opposition unprecedented in the entire history of the US.
The fact that they had to pick and choose their battles is not proof of neglect, its proof that they didn't have unlimited power and resources. Which should be self-evident to anyone with a brain larger than a pea.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:12PM
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:35PM
That's exactly right, Runaway.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:48PM
Which is strange, because the only difference between Trump and the politicians controlled by their corporate puppetmasters is that Trump eliminates some of the middlemen. Trump, doing what's good for Trump (which is all he's ever really done) would do exactly what's good for Goldman Sachs just as assuredly as Clinton would. His biggest con in this election is convincing a large number of people that he's not a part of the political establishment, when in fact he wouldn't have been able to do most of what he's done without all sorts of political connections. Had Trump not had political connections, he probably would be in jail already for tax evasion and fraud and immigration law violations and sexually molesting minors.
Sure, he's not a politician, but the idea that he'd answer to the people is ludicrous. The only person Donald Trump has ever answered to in his entire life is Fred Trump.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:04PM
tax evasion
You mean the law William Clinton enacted and uses himself?
sexually molesting minors
You mean the forum shopping the jerry springer show made up and is doing to try to damage him? It was filed in Cal and thrown out, then in NY which will listen to the complaint (which it must do by law) then throw it out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:39PM
The only person Donald Trump has ever answered to in his entire life is Fred Trump.
And Vladimir Putin.
(Score: 5, Informative) by curunir_wolf on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:17PM
BTW this is the way Congress was designed to work, by the authors of the US Constitution.
Not exactly. There were no parties, and none were envisioned. George Washington, when he ended his first term and stepped down, warned in a speech for the representatives NOT to form strong parties, that it would be detrimental to the functioning of the new Republic. And so it has.
The checks and balances were the houses and the presidency. The wealthy senate (modeled after the house of lords) was the opposition to the house (modeled after the house of commons). The president was merely a figurehead used to interface with foreign diplomats. The Supreme Court was designed to settle disputes between states and between the states and the Federal government. That was the balance of power envisioned by the founders of the Constitution, not parties. And that balance is dysfunctional now because representatives are loyal to their party instead of their constituents and their compatriots in the various roles.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:30PM
You're already modded to the top, so I'll just say that you have perfectly characterized the Democratic Party of the last 30 years.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:20PM
We are, as an empire, in the early-to-middle stages of the final failure mode. We look like the USSR did in the 80s, and for almost precisely the same reasons. Or, for that matter, the Roman Empire. Those reasons are: economic malaise, overextension in foreign conquest and adventurism, corruption in the ruling class, massive and growing wealth inequality, and simply having made too fucking many enemies.
There are patterns that arise in every era. One of them is that the concentration of power is a self-reinforcing, accelerating feedback loop. The other is that old chestnut, "power corrupts."
Our ruling class has had the "dark enlightenment" realization: that is, they've realized that laws are not morals, that society is a collective delusion we all agree to, that most people do not and cannot think critically, and that might does indeed make, if not right, at least right-of-way. When the rulers of a nation get to this point, that nation is on its last legs. It's an example of overgeneralizing a pattern built into humanity through millions of years in the wild that has disastrous consequences when applied to nation-states.
I don't know when or even if we as a species are going to figure this out, and I resent the hell out of having figured it out myself but not being able to stop it. This election is an extended humiliation conga, and historians are going to point to 2016 as the year the US died.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jcross on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:07PM
This type of pattern may transcend human political systems, if you believe the systems theory framework called panarchy:
http://www.resalliance.org/panarchy/ [resalliance.org]
The book is interesting if a bit academic, but the basic idea is that many natural systems tend to become better at accumulating wealth over time by increasing complexity and tight coupling. Think of a large forest growing up, eventually capturing almost all the light that falls on it and retaining as much of that energy as possible. The problem is that such systems maximize efficiency at the expense of resiliency. If environmental conditions change, the tight coupling keeps the system from adapting freely (e.g. drought, fire, or beetles destroying the forest). At this point, the wealth acquired over time is dispersed (e.g. as rotting wood, smoke, or sawdust), and a new low-capital, low-efficiency, high resilience system springs up (e.g. grassland), and begins to accumulate wealth and complexity again. Nested versions of this cycle happen at all levels, like eddies in a larger current, but the big picture is usually going to follow that loop.
I think in general seeing complexity and resilience as a fundamental trade-off in most systems can be illuminating. For instance, more complex technologies tend to be less robust, for example there are more ways to render an electric can opener unusable than the kind made from a single piece of metal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:14PM
Comparing today's USA with the Roman and British Empires during their heydays. In each case, the reigning superpower saw the need to
1. Keep global trade lanes open, backed by superior military force, alliances and treaties
2. A pragmatic liberalism in terms of accepting cultures of immigrants and client states, and their contributions
OTOH the USA is not really an empire the way the Roman and British Empires were. We control 48 states, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and a few small scattered islands. We haven't shown much interest in conquest for the last 100 years or more.
I think our interest in the Middle East is declining along with our reliance on foreign oil. However, we still have an interest in preventing Russia and/or extremists from overrunning the place (see: global trade lanes)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:28PM
Oh, empire doesn't need to be tangible. We've outsourced our manufacturing--and pollution--to China, for example. We have a thriving slave labor market in the prison-industrial complex. I firmly believe Gaddaffi was killed because his ideas of a pan-African union were threatening to the US dollar as the worldwide reserve currency for oil, and that that is also what the continuous war in the Middle East is about. The US seems to think its laws apply to the entire planet, concerning the Internet. Then there's all the awful shit we did in Latin America in the early 1900s, the cynical side of the Marshall Plan post-WWII...yeah, this looks like empire to me.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:18AM
the cynical side of the Marshall Plan post-WWII
That is a masterful bit of work there. The US managed to put military bases across the world. No other country currently matches the scope of it. With 20+ aircraft carriers and lots of military bases on other countries soil.
Oh countries once and awhile make a big deal about kicking the US out. Then 5-10 years later 'hey you know what that was a terrible idea please come back but could you make it look like we still own it?'.
The whole plan was designed to control everyone through the use of loans and political access. None of the European countries that would have in the past been military powerhouses exist anymore. Notice how the whole of Europe flipped out on Trump when he said 'hey you should pay your share of NATO'. They outsourced the whole thing to the US and patted themselves on the back for being progressive. Not realizing that it puts them at the mercy of US interests. A nationalist US president scares the living hell out of them. They might have to deal with their own military issues that they created. The whole thing was designed to defang England, France, Japan, and especially Germany. It created a power vacuum in eastern Europe that the USSR stepped into. This is probably the longest time in 1500+ years that France, England, and Spain are not fighting it out somewhere over something. WARSAW was basically the same thing except for the USSR as the key country.
You just have to sit back and admire the scope of it. That it has not totally unraveled is amazing. It is probably the biggest thing that has put off WWIII.
The US seems to think its laws apply to the entire planet, concerning the Internet.
The 'internet' seems rather torn on that issue. They really would not want the control of it to be under someone like say Iran. In the end the biggest majority is going to 'control' it. It is not entirely clear that the US is the majority on that anymore.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday November 04 2016, @03:07AM
Nah, it's much simpler than that: Gaddaffi was killed shortly after his effort to demand a greater share the revenue from Libyan oil from the major multinational oil companies. That's also what the US' steadfast defence of Saudi Arabia has always been about, even though our natural ally would be more likely to be a nation with some democratic institutions like Iran. And they tried to do the same thing to Hugo Chavez, for basically the same reason they went after Gaddaffi. US foreign policy has always been about making sure that the favored major corporations got access to whatever natural resources they wanted to get their grubby hands on next, at the price they wanted to pay.
They don't give a damn whether oil is traded in dollars or euros or yuan. What they care about is the number after the currency symbol.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:21PM
Even the first sentence doesn't stand on its own:
When trying to understand the two bad choices we have now..
We could have the county's first female president. By many measures, that's true progress. The good old days may seem better to some people, especially in hindsight. But the country is now much more inclusive than it used to be, and that is positive for a large fraction of the population.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:35PM
Dammit, you don't pick someone just for the sake of "diversity hire." Maybe this sounds weird coming from the resident six-foot pissed off dyke, but it needs to be said: your genitals do not qualify or disqualify you for a job. I wanted to see Liz Warren or even, nutty as she is, Jill Stein, as our first woman president. Hillary Clinton is a woman, but she's no different inside than all of the men who have been driving this country into the ground. And why did THEY do it? Not because they're men, but because they're evil. Hell, my top pick for president was an old white man!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:18PM
Oh, please. Evil? What's the worst thing she ever did? Ran a private email server? Took money from people who have too much of it? Changed her mind about a policy because that's how the political winds were blowing? Spoke differently in public and private?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:42PM
Oh, please. Evil? What's the worst thing she's gotten caught doing? Ran a private email server? Took money from people who have too much of it? Changed her mind about a policy because that's how the political winds were blowing? Spoke differently in public and private?
FTFY
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:36AM
And maybe this too. WTF. I thought she was just shady. But this is something else.
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/794247777756860417 [twitter.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:53PM
The first female president, yeah! What an accomplishment! Who cares if this person is a lying criminal owned by Wall Street and the military-industrial complex?
Maybe next time we can nominate Jerry Sandusky and have the first pedophile president.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:04PM
Oh sure, let's bring pedophiles into the mix. How about Hitler?
Explain to me how Clinton would be in anyone's pocket as president? She would be the country's most powerful person and has $100M or so in the bank.
(Score: 2, Funny) by fritsd on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:53PM
Excuse me, but *I* was the first to Godwin [soylentnews.org] this story!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:02PM
There has been so much vitirol from both sides that I'm afraid this is no longer a Godwinnable discussion.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:04PM
Most people do not understand corruption. They think its quid pro quo. But that kind of corruption is for inartful bulls blundering about in the china shop. You can expect to see that sort of corruption from Trump (we already have, with his pay-off of the florida attorney general to stop investigating Trump-U).
The kind of corruption that happens in washington isn't "you scratch my back i'll scratch your back." Its "I don't have enough time to consider all perspectives on the issue, so I'll ask the people I know" and the people they know are the people they've been rubbing shoulders with at campaign fund-raisers, lobbyist-hosted events, etc. Clinton isn't in anyone's pocket. She's just surrounded by people with a strong interest in making sure their points of view get heard. To her credit she's a got a long history of changing her mind when she gets new information, the hard part is getting that new information to her.
And, to be frank, that's a problem with every person holding high office in the US. Campaign finance is a big part of it. the typical congressmember has to spend half of every working day raising money. That's 50% less time that could have been spent better educating themselves on the issues.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:50PM
In case you didn't RTFA, let me finish the last paragraph in the summary:
Perhaps not the most comprehensive indicator (like a few other side points in the article - looking at you, free trade deals) but yeah. There's a lot to be proud of regardless.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @11:40PM
A note to the editors and submitters of this site... be careful with these types of political articles. I won't say this is not "news for nerds," (Soylent News is people!), and I know many people are interested in talking politics. This includes myself.
However, one of the big detractions from the green site that drove lots of people to leave was the constant clickbait or "popular" news articles. People come for the technical articles and the thoughtful explanations, commentary, and debate. These types of political (and probably "just wrong") articles do drive clicks and comments, but it is no more healthy than a diet of pure sugar.
Just be sure that we don't lose track of who we want to be here and become another reddit/twitter//./etc clone. An occasional snack of candy is good, as long as it is just an occasional snack.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday November 04 2016, @10:55AM
Most articles submitted to SN and which make it to the page are technical. The infrequent political ones might be looming large at the moment because of the US presidential election. But if you do a count of what has actually crossed the home page, far more than 90% are technical.
That said, there's always room for more technical articles. Political articles tend to enter the stream when the story queue has run low on technical content. Soylentils who crave more technical stories should submit them. It's pretty easy to do, and you can throw in a couple over your morning coffee.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by prospectacle on Friday November 04 2016, @12:21PM
This is the first forum I've seen that quickly identifies the real problem and then intelligently discusses it. And I read a *lot* of discussions about this unfortunate election. Most people either blame one of the candidates or just accept that this is what democracy looks like and at least the alternatives are probably worse.
Anyway, you guys are wise and I appreciate this website. I agree it's the specific voting system that causes this kind of bitter, ugly, two-party gridlock.
My 2c is that having to vote for one and only one candiate is by far the biggest part of the problem. I don't get why this is not constantly agitated against in every article, speech, and street protest until it changes. All else pales in comparion (e.g. debates about this season's candidates and ballot-initiatives, which party is most evil, the electoral college, the different systems for counting preferential votes if you were allowed to express them).
The single non-transferrable vote is the main things that creates a two party system.
The main problem with having a two party system (in my opinion) is that each party only has one competitor, and so there is exactly as much to be gained by making one other party look a bit worse than they do now (through various tricks, many of them dirty) than by making your party look a bit better than it does now (which can be hard). So both parties have a much lower bar to jump over (than they would in a multi-party competition), and they're bothing pushing the bar downwards everytime they make the other party look a bit worse than they did before.
Over time you get a system that's failing the voters so badly for so long that people will seriously consider someone with literally no experience or qualification (in that field), whatsoever, for the top job.
It would be like making a star football player the head of surgery at a hospital, not becuase the football player has ever been to medical school or performed surgery, but because all the qualified, experienced surgeons have been killing most of their patients and the football star has been complaining about it in their after-game press conferences.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic