"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
"Robert Green" wrote:
As you've made clear, when the lines are very closely drawn, having the
numbers doesn't mean there won't be cross-overs, defections, back-door
deals
and more. I think it's sad that we've come down to arguing about "which
side has the right to ram something down the other's throat."
This has always been an interesting philosophical discussion. I
am not a fan of either the tyranny of the majority or tyranny of the
minority.
I believe the system is inherently good in that it allows for "passion" - if
someone feels they've got real heartache with a bill, they can filibuster.
However, it depends on good intentions to function correctly. When it
becomes a tool to "ratf&ck" the majority time and time again, then it's
being seriously abused. There could be new limits imposed on the frequency
of filibusters. Like a jury, you get X number of challenges and then you
have to take what you get. I don't know whether the cure is worse than the
disease, though.
In theory, the filibuster serves as a useful "check and balance" of the
system. It allows people who *really* believe their opposition to a
bill
has merit to at least delay passage of a bill. But of late, it's become
a
reflexive method to impede majority rule at nearly every turn. It's
overuse
is an anti-democratic tool and will eventually need to be addressed.
Perhaps when Congressional approval reaches minus 23%. (-: There's a
reason that their approval rating has plummeted.
Yeah, they are not only polarized, but really lousy at getting their
points across. It looks like posturing and gamesmanship instead of
deliberation.
I used to enjoy watching debates on CSpan. I don't anymore for exactly the
reasons you mention. There is very little substantive discussion about the
issues. It's just everyone issuing "position statements" and remaining deaf
to anyone's position but their own. It happens on both sides of the aisle
but I've also noticed it's the young turks who are the worst and the least
collegial.
This last budget showdown was a mockery of our form of consensus based
government. I liken it to a head of household going around the neighbor
telling all the merchants how deeply in debt he is. It's stupid and
it's
part of a dangerous trend of creating crises for hopeful political gain.
But this is a crisis that has been building literally for decades.
SS has been an unfunded pension plan since it's inception, always using
the income from currently employed to pay those who are retired. In the
80s (in a rather impressive episode of bipartisanship), they increased
taxes, put the "surplus" into non-marketable Treasury securities, and
sorta forgot to find a way to actually payback the securities. They also
tried to rewrite the laws of financial physics by disregarding what
happens when you don't get inputs from outside of a system. Oh, and t
hey took SS off budget so as to hide the effective debt, what is on the
books AND what is owed to SS, Mcare, etc.
This is like the flooding that occurs months after the snows fell in the
mountains. We got into this mess in a very bi-partisan way, day by day, and
it's not going to be solved in a partisan way overnight. That's my
complaint.
The rising debt could have been addressed in a more thoughtful manner that
didn't result in a downgrade of our credit rating. How is that a good thing
for us? A lot of special interests on boths sides of the aisle will have
to cave-in to reality if things are to improve. That's not going to happen
in only a few weeks in a divided Congress.
What it will really take is serious analysis. A top-down AND bottom-up
review of all the items in the budget. Cutting willy-nilly will only throw
more people out of work and deepen the crisis. The Feds should be HIRING
investigators, auditors and CPA's to cut fraud and to cut expenditures that
no longer serve the purpose they were intended to.
There are plenty of out-of-work people in those categories that have
tremendous experience to bring to bear. I remember a long time ago when a
large number of Humvees went missing from the National Guard inventory a
very seasoned investigator from DoDIG found them in very short order.
That's because he had seen almost every trick ever pulled by quartermasters
on HQ and could literally smell something amiss.
He was like a narcotics detective I once knew who told me that you can tell
what pocket a junkie who's just scored keeps his dope in because he will pat
that pocket upon leaving the dealer's place. Same thing about executing a
search warrant. The person being searched can't help but cast furtive
glances at the place their "stuff" is hidden. I enjoy watching Cops just
because time and time again it proves those guys right.
But I digress. (-:
Sunsetting, an idea that was popular some 30 years ago, seems to have fallen
out of favor. Instead, we have what you've aptly named "fire and forget"
legislation that has no followup or shut-down provisions. We have a
Congress that writes laws like MicroSoft writes code. Bloatedly with the
caveat "we'll fix that in the NEXT release" when a new horde of bugs will
appear to replace it.
Neither side is anywhere near blameless
But perpetuating the blame game serves both sides well because it keeps
people's eyes off the problem with the entire system. They get tricked into
believing "if only you run those *******s out of office things will be
fine!" They never are. Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
What is fascinating to me about filibusters and cloture is that changing
the
rules of the Senate requires a two-thirds majority, so once even a bad
rule
gets in play, it's not likely to soon vanish. In real terms it means
that
41 senators, whose combined states could represent as little as 13% of
the
U.S. population, can thwart the will of the majority of US citizens. It
should be noted that famed civil rights "deactivist" Strom Thurmond set
the
filibuster record in a failed attempt to block the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1957.
Actually all it takes in real life is a majority. However, since it
is possible by Senate rules to filibuster the change, you are correct in
practice.
It's a wonderful Catch-22. I just saw an interview with Joseph Heller.
He's one smart but very cynical SOB. He believes that governments will
always do more harm than good in the long run.
Interesting bit of trivia according to a friend in a Senator's
office. The rule that sets-up the rule to filibuster, could be changed
with just a majority vote. So, you could by majority vote change the
rule that allows the rule that changes in other rules can be
filibustered. The byzantine rules of the Senate would, if he is right,
allow you change the filbuster rule, once removed.
Yes, I've read that and went through the PDF from the Senate about the
subject which seemed to confirm it.
http://www.senate.gov/reference/reso...df/RL30360.pdf
(Dizzying reading, to be sure!)
However, the Senate appears in no hurry to change anything they do. As you
noted before, both sides know that their positions could switch, so they
might be hurting their future selves and they simply do nothing. I suspect
they might change if the D's or R's capture an enormous majority one day.
But we've been a fairly equally divided country for a long time now. I
don't see that happening until the Hispanic "boomlet" babies come to voting
age in another decade or two. One thing I think the Republican party
leaders *have* learned is that they are facing a great demographic shift in
the US that could beach them if they do too much immigrant bashing.
For those in AHR that like to assign causation based on temporal proximity,
the big 2008 crash came just months after a renewed crackdown on illegal
aliens. Maybe the ghosts of the Incas and the Aztecs were punishing us.
--
Bobby G.