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thanks
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Jul 27, 2015 23:38
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There are a lot of veto points in the system (A bill can die in committees, fail to pass in one of the houses, get filibustered in the Senate, or ultimately get vetoed by the President), meaning that it is really easy to kill legislation and the legislature is generally slow moving and unresponsive by design so as to prevent 'mob rule.' Like, it's purposefully structured to be run by and make decisions in favor of elites and this was much more clear when Senators were literally appointed by state governments. Congress is also structured as it is because of the compromise made between small and large states back when the Constitution was being written. The sovereignty of states isn't important anymore and population distribution has totally changed but we're still using the same system. Ideally, we'd get rid of the two houses and replace it with a legislative body that distributes seats based on Mixed Member Proportional representation and also modernized our voting methods. That would massively improve how Congress functions without even getting into the problem of money in politics.
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Jul 27, 2015 23:49
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Proposition Joe posted:Ideally, we'd get rid of the two houses and replace it with a legislative body that distributes seats based on Mixed Member Proportional representation I'm down with all the rest of what you posted but I dunno about this. I'm not necessarily against it but it's not something I've heard arguments for before. (Plus focusing on this will make this thread about elections and therefore appropriate for this RSF  )Is it just because you say sovereignty of states isn't a big deal anymore? I think it is, just not nearly as much as pre-14th amendment, but states still have their own economies and unique environmental challenges.
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Jul 28, 2015 00:30
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Ralp posted:I'm down with all the rest of what you posted but I dunno about this. I'm not necessarily against it but it's not something I've heard arguments for before. (Plus focusing on this will make this thread about elections and therefore appropriate for this RSF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2012 quote:Although Democratic candidates received a nationwide plurality of more than 1.4 million votes (1.2%) in all House elections, the Republican Party won a 33-seat advantage in the state-apportioned totals, thus retaining its House majority by 17 seats. This disparity – common in close elections involving single-member district voting – has on occasion been attributed to gerrymandering in the congressional redistricting process following the 2010 United States Census. However, some analysts have argued that Republicans would have won the House even without taking into account the impact of gerrymandering. An alternative explanation was that the large number of Democratic votes in urban centers led to "unintentional gerrymandering," as compact districts naturally led to "wasted votes" in districts that easily elected Democratic candidates. Because of how House seats are drawn up, the Republicans continue to control the House despite the Democrats getting more votes. Mixed Member Proportional representation fixes this: the Democrats get the majority of the votes, they get the majority of the seats, simple. The reverse is also true. fade5 has issued a correction as of 01:46 on Jul 28, 2015 |
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Jul 28, 2015 01:21
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its filled with cynical assholes who get their money and future lucrative positions from some of the worst organizations on the planet, op
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Jul 28, 2015 01:26
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It's because america is a bad country
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Jul 28, 2015 02:50
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This except insert congress in the place of  
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Jul 28, 2015 03:06
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1) Shameless, ruthless gerrymandering, unintentionally aided by Americans self-sorting themselves into like-minded communities. 2) The geometric progression of fanaticism in the Republican Party, driven by a surprisingly efficient propaganda machine that was developed during the Reagan years, and is now irretrievably spinning off into bottomless insanity, like an astronaut without a tether given a gentle push away from a space station. 2a) The growing, panicky paranoia of the GOP's base, as it stares down the barrel of inevitable demographic-minority status. 3) Legalized corruption, in which buckets of cash grease the wheels of power, making reform virtually impossible, and the legislature increasingly unresponsive to the actual needs and desires of the citizenry.
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Jul 28, 2015 03:09
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Is it even possible to get rid of gerrymandering and lobbyists in American politics? Im legitimately curious. Your political system is extremely unique in the world and as an outsider it quickly gets confusing and leaves me wondering just how it has managed to not only survive but thrive even to this day.
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Jul 28, 2015 04:31
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Furnaceface posted:Is it even possible to get rid of gerrymandering and lobbyists in American politics? Im legitimately curious. Your political system is extremely unique in the world and as an outsider it quickly gets confusing and leaves me wondering just how it has managed to not only survive but thrive even to this day. Couldn't be easier 
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Jul 28, 2015 04:33
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Furnaceface posted:Is it even possible to get rid of gerrymandering and lobbyists in American politics? Im legitimately curious. Your political system is extremely unique in the world and as an outsider it quickly gets confusing and leaves me wondering just how it has managed to not only survive but thrive even to this day. the roman senate lasted almost a thousand years, we arent even a quarter through it and we arent calling the executive imperator yet
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Jul 28, 2015 04:37
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Because in the American mind-set, anything that concentrates wealth or power is a good thing.
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Jul 28, 2015 04:46
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Ralp posted:I'm down with all the rest of what you posted but I dunno about this. I'm not necessarily against it but it's not something I've heard arguments for before. (Plus focusing on this will make this thread about elections and therefore appropriate for this RSF The point of MMP is that it is a system that can pretty accurately represent people proportionally with the benefits of also retaining local representatives. Even if you switched the voting systems for every seat in Congress from FPTP to something more ideal, you would still end up with Republicans having an unfair advantage over Democrats, because Democratic voters tend to concentrate in urban areas and Republicans tend to disperse in less urban and rural areas. That Republican bias necessitates some sort of change to a proportional system so that people's votes matter equally. As for the second part, different regions do have their own challenges and needs which is why local representation is important. My problem is the particular way that is accounted for in Congress. House seats are gerrymandered by state governments and the Senate grants equal power to all states which results in a huge bias towards folks in lesser populated states, particularly the Great Plains states that lean towards the right. If a legislative body is going to stick with electing local/regional representatives from historically relevant boundaries, then it has to be mitigated somewhat in order to avoid disparities in voting power (like Californians being much less powerful than Wyoming-ans?), which is what MMP hopefully does. Furnaceface posted:Is it even possible to get rid of gerrymandering and lobbyists in American politics? Im legitimately curious. Your political system is extremely unique in the world and as an outsider it quickly gets confusing and leaves me wondering just how it has managed to not only survive but thrive even to this day. Well, gerrymandering can be mitigated by changing the structure of the legislative branch to something like MMP or something purely proportional. In cases where you need to draw boundaries independent commissions can prevent some of the issues states tend to have with partisan gerrymandering.
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Jul 28, 2015 05:02
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Of all possible schemes to change elections in America to make them "fairer," independent districting is the one with the fewest constitutional hurdles. It just requires convincing a bunch of congresspeople to possibly vote against their own individual interests.
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Jul 28, 2015 05:05
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No no no, I don't think you guys understand. The Founding Fathers(tm) never intended for us to have a government, let alone one that spends money to hold elections and give handouts to slaves/prols. It says so right there in the constitution, you goobs.
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Jul 28, 2015 12:37
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Yall are overcomplicating it Usa congress is hosed bc money in politics
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Jul 28, 2015 13:02
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1) Citizens United. Lobbyists and special interest groups hurling dump trucks full of cash at congressmen to slip in little addendums to every bill presented, occasionally in direct opposition to the main tenets of the bill. 2) A lack of term limits for congress gives them no incentive to actually do anything or care about their citizens as it is exceedingly difficult to oust an incumbent so little threat to them.
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Jul 28, 2015 13:08
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Enacting term limits wouldn't change things very much, IMO. It would get rid of the odious spectacle of gaggles of ancient, smug white guys luxuriating in their permanent elected sinecures, but they'd just be replaced by an endless line of disposable eager young'uns who would behave the same way. Term limits might actually benefit the plutocrats, since it could drive down the going rate for buying a politician. At the moment, the most attainable stepping-stones towards unfucking the USA are overturning Citizens United, and mandating non-partisan redistricting. And electing Bernie
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Jul 28, 2015 21:00
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maker posted:Yall are overcomplicating it Yeah this is true, but even if you managed to overturn/mitigate the Citizens United decision or switched over to public financing of elections Congress would still be hosed because its structure is old and bad.
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Jul 28, 2015 21:22
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OP here is the answer: 
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Jul 28, 2015 23:01
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:OP here is the answer: Who exactly is responsible for this, actually?
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Jul 28, 2015 23:19
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Friendly Tumour posted:Who exactly is responsible for this, actually? The local incumbent party
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Jul 28, 2015 23:21
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Friendly Tumour posted:Who exactly is responsible for this, actually?
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Jul 28, 2015 23:24
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I think you should do something about that.
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Jul 28, 2015 23:39
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thank you for your opinion
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Jul 28, 2015 23:45
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it wasn't mine
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Jul 28, 2015 23:46
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Crazyeyes posted:2) A lack of term limits for congress gives them no incentive to actually do anything or care about their citizens as it is exceedingly difficult to oust an incumbent so little threat to them. Term limits do little more than increase the already outsized power of lobbyists. Voters don't vote ancient assholes to congress because they've been there forever, they do it because they like having assholes in congress. All term limits do is ensure good legislators are forced out because you don't like some bad legislators who would themselves just get replaces with other bad legislators. Only now those bad legislators have no idea how to pull the levers and so they ask their good buddy the lobbyist or get guidance from ALEC. Also, since you've forced out the good legislators who knew how to pull levers to stop or at least impead the bad legislators, nothing is stopping ALEC and the lobbyists. Edit: An example of the good of no term limits is Ted Cruz in most instances. He keeps trying to just super gently caress poo poo up, but the old fucks who've been in the Senate for forever like Reid and McConnel just give him the finger and laugh while Cruz has no one to talk to but his good buddy from Utah. Gyges has issued a correction as of 00:11 on Jul 29, 2015 |
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Jul 29, 2015 00:08
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gerrymandering, which is a fancy word for cheating.
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Jul 29, 2015 00:27
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Friendly Tumour posted:Who exactly is responsible for this, actually? The states.... Republicans gain power at the state level, then rig poo poo so republicans will get elected to national positions. but it's all cool because some democrat did poo poo like that in Chicago back before any of us were born.
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Jul 29, 2015 00:29
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To be fair a lot of the time gerrymandering ends up being a bipartisan affair, because politicians don't like getting voted out of office so two solid blue and two solid red seats are better than four swing seats. (Which is also why "perfect representation" from that chart is super undemocratic.)
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Jul 29, 2015 01:18
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Type in your favorite congressman and see how much money's been poo poo out all over them You have to go deeper to find the millions that get spent on commercials but that's in there too.
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Jul 29, 2015 01:19
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The problem is money in politics which results in corruption. https://represent.us/action/theproblem-4/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig According to the Princeton study, Congress' voting is uncorrelated with american public opinion. Congress' voting however is correlated heavily with corporate and elite interests. The solution is campaign finance reform. The only presidential candidate who meaningfully champions this cause is Bernie Sanders.
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Jul 29, 2015 01:32
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Could the US ever break away from the two-party system? That seems like it could at least break up some of the power bases and allow for more reforms in the future.
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Jul 29, 2015 01:42
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Furnaceface posted:Could the US ever break away from the two-party system? That seems like it could at least break up some of the power bases and allow for more reforms in the future. electoral reform would have to occur for this to be at all functional due to the nature of how elections are organized and how rules in congress work
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Jul 29, 2015 01:44
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Looks like they are making a move to boot Boehner. http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/28/politics/john-boehner-speakership-mark-meadows/index.html Apparently it's a new fund raising tool.
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Jul 29, 2015 01:45
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Furnaceface posted:Could the US ever break away from the two-party system? That seems like it could at least break up some of the power bases and allow for more reforms in the future. Not with the current system for selecting government officials, no. So since you need to reform the system to do away with two parties anyway, it's not a very good intermediate goal so much as it is a possible side effect of what you'll want to do anyway.
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Jul 29, 2015 01:46
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Proposition Joe posted:There are a lot of veto points in the system (A bill can die in committees, fail to pass in one of the houses, get filibustered in the Senate, or ultimately get vetoed by the President), meaning that it is really easy to kill legislation and the legislature is generally slow moving and unresponsive by design so as to prevent 'mob rule.' Like, it's purposefully structured to be run by and make decisions in favor of elites and this was much more clear when Senators were literally appointed by state governments. For the OP – and anyone, really – I highly recommend It's Even Worse than it Looks. reignonyourparade posted:To be fair a lot of the time gerrymandering ends up being a bipartisan affair, because politicians don't like getting voted out of office so two solid blue and two solid red seats are better than four swing seats. (Which is also why "perfect representation" from that chart is super undemocratic.)
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Jul 29, 2015 19:11
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Yeah admittedly the teamup gerrymandering is more at the state level because the US house and senate don't have the ability to district their own seats the way state level ones do.
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Jul 29, 2015 20:24
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ITT: Congress is objectively the worst legislative body in the world:
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Jul 30, 2015 00:54
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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:So, these are some very good reasons that Congress is hosed up from a structural standpoint, but in terms of our latter-day gridlock, these issues only aggravate the core political cause: asymmetric partisan polarization. I would argue that polarization exists because of structural deficiencies. A competent Constitution is supposed to safeguard against, or at least mitigate, worst case scenarios. This polarization is mostly due to the lack of campaign finance regulations, Congress Members and Senators have to vote the party long if they want campaign funds. If you pass common sense campaign finance reform (or switch to public financing of elections) and Congress had a modern structure and members were elected using modern voting methods, then this sort of gridlock would not be possible. If the US had a multiparty system then voters could switch to a like-minded or amenable party when their party of choice behaves poorly. In the current system, the Democrats and Republicans can act however they want without any repercussions because they can point to the literal only other option and demagogue themselves votes that they wouldn't earn in a functioning system.
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Jul 30, 2015 01:12
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