The state system makes sense, we've just depowered it to the point of uselessness in today's 'murica.
I think what we should do is get together and actually delineate what is a "state issue" and a "federal issue". I don't know how that would work outside of a constitutional amendment but it's something I think our constitutional law desperately needs.
I think the state system is a relic of 18th century politics. If we want to be a collection of states, dissolve the union and let the chips fall where they may. If we want to be a nation, be a nation and get rid of the 50 competing little "states." Right now, we're pretending to be both and failing.
Well, the thing is all countries have smaller subdivisions. Canada has provinces, the UK has counties. The thing that's getting in the way now is that Republicans oppose everything on the basis that STATES RIGHTS GOT DANG IT should be applicable in every situation. We need a clear delineation between federal and state responsibilities. And, once we have that, we need to empower both the feds and the states to actually take control of those areas.
Well, the thing is all countries have smaller subdivisions. Canada has provinces, the UK has counties. The thing that's getting in the way now is that Republicans oppose everything on the basis that STATES RIGHTS GOT DANG IT should be applicable in every situation. We need a clear delineation between federal and state responsibilities. And, once we have that, we need to empower both the feds and the states to actually take control of those areas.
All nations have smaller subdivisions, but it is understood that they are arms of the national government. That's the standard federal division.
What we have is a fiction that the states are actually sovereign entities. And it is a fiction, we just rely on the federal court system to police and control the states instead of the national government.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Well, the thing is all countries have smaller subdivisions. Canada has provinces, the UK has counties. The thing that's getting in the way now is that Republicans oppose everything on the basis that STATES RIGHTS GOT DANG IT should be applicable in every situation. We need a clear delineation between federal and state responsibilities. And, once we have that, we need to empower both the feds and the states to actually take control of those areas.
All nations have smaller subdivisions, but it is understood that they are arms of the national government. That's the standard federal division.
What we have is a fiction that the states are actually sovereign entities. And it is a fiction, we just rely on the federal court system to police and control the states instead of the national government.
You do realize that the court system is an arm of the national government, yes?
Only the GOP seems to think that the states are actual sovereign entities. Most people understand that they are secondary to the national governments. Even the issues states have sovereignty over are overseen by the federal government.
All nations have smaller subdivisions, but it is understood that they are arms of the national government. That's the standard federal division.
What we have is a fiction that the states are actually sovereign entities. And it is a fiction, we just rely on the federal court system to police and control the states instead of the national government.
You do realize that the court system is an arm of the national government, yes?
Only the GOP seems to think that the states are actual sovereign entities. Most people understand that they are secondary to the national governments. Even the issues states have sovereignty over are overseen by the federal government.
I think you missed my point. The federal government controls the states primarily through the federal court system. That's where the "slapping down" happens.
And I don't think it matters what "most people think." The states exist and have power - their own laws, court systems, school systems, unemployment rolls, etc. - so the reality is pretty set that the states control most of the government services immediately important to the majority of citizens. The states even control the federal highway systems.
Most Americans have very little connection to the federal government. If they didn't have Social Security, the federal government would be the distant force that runs the military. The GOP exploits this to make the case that the state government is the legitimate power and the federal government is some sort of occupying force.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
All nations have smaller subdivisions, but it is understood that they are arms of the national government. That's the standard federal division.
What we have is a fiction that the states are actually sovereign entities. And it is a fiction, we just rely on the federal court system to police and control the states instead of the national government.
You do realize that the court system is an arm of the national government, yes?
Only the GOP seems to think that the states are actual sovereign entities. Most people understand that they are secondary to the national governments. Even the issues states have sovereignty over are overseen by the federal government.
I think you missed my point. The federal government controls the states primarily through the federal court system. That's where the "slapping down" happens.
And I don't think it matters what "most people think." The states exist and have power - their own laws, court systems, school systems, unemployment rolls, etc. - so the reality is pretty set that the states control most of the government services immediately important to the majority of citizens. The states even control the federal highway systems.
Most Americans have very little connection to the federal government. If they didn't have Social Security, the federal government would be the distant force that runs the military. The GOP exploits this to make the case that the state government is the legitimate power and the federal government is some sort of occupying force.
The federal government would always need local authorities to administer power. What you're suggesting is we just paint over STATE OF VIRGINIA with UNITED STATES. It'd be the same exact infrastructure and the same people in charge.
I don't think outside of Texas that anyone really cares about state sovereignty.
The states actually are sovereign entities and their ability to influence politics, whilst much lower than previously, is still significant - most prominently in the Senate.
If the more conservative Justices have their way, a large part of said decline in state power might reverse itself too.
I think that, unless this is addressed, is going to be a major fracture point in American politics. There's only so long that the national politics can be hijacked by the minority of the nation - the GOP is more gaming the electoral map and voting laws than actually gaining support these days - before the entire system starts to look illegitimate.
You do realize that neither party actually holds the majority of registerd voters, and that in the 2010 elections the majority of people who went to the polls voted Republican, right?
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
I think that, unless this is addressed, is going to be a major fracture point in American politics. There's only so long that the national politics can be hijacked by the minority of the nation - the GOP is more gaming the electoral map and voting laws than actually gaining support these days - before the entire system starts to look illegitimate.
You do realize that neither party actually holds the majority of registerd voters, and that in the 2010 elections the majority of people who went to the polls voted Republican, right?
It's a midterm election.
Polling the views of your average american gets you a very different political outlook then polling voters (let alone your midterm voters).
I think that, unless this is addressed, is going to be a major fracture point in American politics. There's only so long that the national politics can be hijacked by the minority of the nation - the GOP is more gaming the electoral map and voting laws than actually gaining support these days - before the entire system starts to look illegitimate.
You do realize that neither party actually holds the majority of registerd voters, and that in the 2010 elections the majority of people who went to the polls voted Republican, right?
It's a midterm election.
Polling the views of your average american gets you a very different political outlook then polling voters (let alone your midterm voters).
There are 72 million registered Democrats and 55 million registered Republicans. Another 44 million are independents.
The Republicans win because of the way we divide votes and legislative power regionally. In a straight vote, we would not have a GOP-dominated federal government.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I think that, unless this is addressed, is going to be a major fracture point in American politics. There's only so long that the national politics can be hijacked by the minority of the nation - the GOP is more gaming the electoral map and voting laws than actually gaining support these days - before the entire system starts to look illegitimate.
You do realize that neither party actually holds the majority of registerd voters, and that in the 2010 elections the majority of people who went to the polls voted Republican, right?
It's a midterm election.
Polling the views of your average american gets you a very different political outlook then polling voters (let alone your midterm voters).
There are 72 million registered Democrats and 55 million registered Republicans. Another 44 million are independents.
The Republicans win because of the way we divide votes and legislative power regionally. In a straight vote, we would not have a GOP-dominated federal government.
Assuming that everyone votes party line all the time and independents only vote Democrat, yes.
Those aren't things you can take for granted though.
AManFromEarth is right, what we really need to do is delineate state and federal powers. I'm going to argue that when the founding fathers first set up the country they didn't realize how important some things were or they knew certain things should be federal powers but felt threaten by the idea of the federal government doing a good job with those powers. Education is probably the best example here, either the founding fathers failed to grasp that letting the states control the matter is idiotic or they felt threatened by the idea of a well run education system for the masses making the rabble critical thinkers instead of docile sheep. I suspect it was a mix of both, some of our founding fathers weren't as insightful as we make them out to be and others weren't as noble as we'd like to believe. Anyways, the founding father worship, coupled with GOP bullshit has prevented this country from going down that path.
Honestly, I'm not sure if we should redo how representatives are assigned. I'm fine with each state still getting two senators but I'm wondering if we would be better served by dropping the state lines from the equation for House seats. Sure it'll suck for states that don't have a large enough population to have one representative devoted solely to their needs but it could go a long way to fixing some issues because I do agree that rural areas probably have more influence then they deserve and this would create a mean to attack gerrymandering. We're going to need an independent board for it because some of those congress districts are going to span more than one state and we'd probably agree that one of the parameters should be to avoid cutting up states when ever possible.
I'm fine with leaving states as an intermediary between federal and local. One of the things that I don't think people realize is the state can serve the important function of quickly righting things in a locality that the feds simply cannot do. As I understand it from my state politics class, localities exist at the whip of the state and can be remove if they deem it necessary. So if a locality ends up like Wisconsin, a recall isn't really needed because the state can step in and say the local government isn't acting in good, so it's going to run things until competent leaders are find to once again run it. The feds can't really do that, when a state goes Wisconsin's route your pretty much stuck waiting for elections to happy if the majority of leadership is corrupt or incompetent but not to the point where you can justify immediately removing them.
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
IIRC, education wasn't a thing until the 1800s, I think shortly before or after the Civil War. It was literally no where near the founder's minds. Kids who were well off went to school or business and the poors toiled about till they died.
Hell, we're only two or three generations removed from a k-12 education being bog standard (my grandma never finished HS for example).
The state system makes sense, we've just depowered it to the point of uselessness in today's 'murica.
I think what we should do is get together and actually delineate what is a "state issue" and a "federal issue". I don't know how that would work outside of a constitutional amendment but it's something I think our constitutional law desperately needs.
I think the state system is a relic of 18th century politics. If we want to be a collection of states, dissolve the union and let the chips fall where they may. If we want to be a nation, be a nation and get rid of the 50 competing little "states." Right now, we're pretending to be both and failing.
Yeah the current system doesn't work. By having fifty states you have fifty entities. This assumes that each entity should be entitled to an equal amount of say in government which is just not true.
Assuming that everyone votes party line all the time and independents only vote Democrat, yes.
Those aren't things you can take for granted though.
Democrats almost always pull more votes in the polls. It's just that the GOP wins overall because of the way we draw up and divide the electoral map. That's what people mean when they complain about how a few thousand voters in Montana have the same power as a few million voters from New York.
It's also worth noting that 2004 was the only election since the 1988 where the GOP won the popular vote. Even then, the vote in '04 was within three million votes and even that, post-election polling, was because a significant number of senior citizens voted based on the idea that it was wrong to switch presidents during "wartime" and not a desire to support the GOP.
There were also a lot of shenanigans in the electoral process in '04, including the oddness in Ohio. That was an incredibly sketchy election year, overall.
That's not the portrait of a nation that is embracing GOP rule. Modern America has a rotten borough problem.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
The state system makes sense, we've just depowered it to the point of uselessness in today's 'murica.
I think what we should do is get together and actually delineate what is a "state issue" and a "federal issue". I don't know how that would work outside of a constitutional amendment but it's something I think our constitutional law desperately needs.
I think the state system is a relic of 18th century politics. If we want to be a collection of states, dissolve the union and let the chips fall where they may. If we want to be a nation, be a nation and get rid of the 50 competing little "states." Right now, we're pretending to be both and failing.
Yeah the current system doesn't work. By having fifty states you have fifty entities. This assumes that each entity should be entitled to an equal amount of say in government which is just not true.
That's... that's not how that works.
The states as entities don't get a say on how the national government works. The people who live in states do, on the basis of reps in the house and senate. Which wouldn't change by removing the states. You also need a second level of government to administer areas so we'll have the same problem with a different name.
States are supposed to have sovereignty over specific areas but in modern America those lines are a bit fuzzy and fuzzed up even more by politicians claiming that every thing under the sun should be a state issue.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
The states actually are sovereign entities and their ability to influence politics, whilst much lower than previously, is still significant - most prominently in the Senate.
This is true, although they still tend to lose out to the feds when it comes down to forcing a point. I don't know if any state at this point could survive the cessation of grants from the federal government, so any time congress wants to force a point vis a vie speed limits, the drinking age, or what not, they can. This seems pant-on-head to me, but c'est la vie.
Of course, that is not to downplay the fact that they are, as you say, sovereign, and they still do have significant self-governance. It's just not as complete as their formal powers might lead one to believe: they have the nominal right to control things which they de facto lack--things like speed limits and the drinking age.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Assuming that everyone votes party line all the time and independents only vote Democrat, yes.
Those aren't things you can take for granted though.
Democrats almost always pull more votes in the polls. It's just that the GOP wins overall because of the way we draw up and divide the electoral map. That's what people mean when they complain about how a few thousand voters in Montana have the same power as a few million voters from New York.
It's also worth noting that 2004 was the only election since the 1988 where the GOP won the popular vote. Even then, the vote in '04 was within three million votes and even that, post-election polling, was because a significant number of senior citizens voted based on the idea that it was wrong to switch presidents during "wartime" and not a desire to support the GOP.
There were also a lot of shenanigans in the electoral process in '04, including the oddness in Ohio. That was an incredibly sketchy election year, overall.
That's not the portrait of a nation that is embracing GOP rule. Modern America has a rotten borough problem.
It's also worth noting that between 1988 and 2004 there was only one election where a Republican won the presidency where they didn't win the popular vote.
Also worth noting is the constant swapping of control of the houses of Congress in states.
District lines are drawn to protect incumbents regardless of whether they're GOP or DNC.
The state system makes sense, we've just depowered it to the point of uselessness in today's 'murica.
I think what we should do is get together and actually delineate what is a "state issue" and a "federal issue". I don't know how that would work outside of a constitutional amendment but it's something I think our constitutional law desperately needs.
I think the state system is a relic of 18th century politics. If we want to be a collection of states, dissolve the union and let the chips fall where they may. If we want to be a nation, be a nation and get rid of the 50 competing little "states." Right now, we're pretending to be both and failing.
Yeah the current system doesn't work. By having fifty states you have fifty entities. This assumes that each entity should be entitled to an equal amount of say in government which is just not true.
That's... that's not how that works.
The states as entities don't get a say on how the national government works. The people who live in states do, on the basis of reps in the house and senate. Which wouldn't change by removing the states. You also need a second level of government to administer areas so we'll have the same problem with a different name.
States are supposed to have sovereignty over specific areas but in modern America those lines are a bit fuzzy and fuzzed up even more by politicians claiming that every thing under the sun should be a state issue.
Except the senate makes Massachusetts equal to California in deciding how the national government work. Thus making them two equal entities despite massive differences in population.
The states as entities don't get a say on how the national government works. The people who live in states do, on the basis of reps in the house and senate. Which wouldn't change by removing the states. You also need a second level of government to administer areas so we'll have the same problem with a different name.
States are supposed to have sovereignty over specific areas but in modern America those lines are a bit fuzzy and fuzzed up even more by politicians claiming that every thing under the sun should be a state issue.
That is the rationale behind the Senate. The Senate only makes sense structurally if you assume that, on some level, each state is an equal. It's a relic of the days when the nation was a collection of independent colonies, and it started going wonky pretty much at the exact moment when we started adding states to the 13 colonies.
In some ways, I think the U.S. would have been better served if they continued with the practice of drawing the map of each state out to the Pacific. The only reason that stopped was, though, was because the New England states figured out that they couldn't go any further without invading Canada while the slave states had an open field to the Pacific.
Except the senate makes Massachusetts equal to California in deciding how the national government work. Thus making them two equal entities despite massive differences in population.
The artificial restriction to the size of the House also contributes to this. If we followed the metric in the Constitution (topping out at 1 per 30,000 ), there would be several thousand Reps. That might be unwieldy, but you'd have a better ratio to rep per voter.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
The states as entities don't get a say on how the national government works. The people who live in states do, on the basis of reps in the house and senate. Which wouldn't change by removing the states. You also need a second level of government to administer areas so we'll have the same problem with a different name.
States are supposed to have sovereignty over specific areas but in modern America those lines are a bit fuzzy and fuzzed up even more by politicians claiming that every thing under the sun should be a state issue.
That is the rationale behind the Senate. The Senate only makes sense structurally if you assume that, on some level, each state is an equal. It's a relic of the days when the nation was a collection of independent colonies, and it started going wonky pretty much at the exact moment when we started adding states to the 13 colonies.
In some ways, I think the U.S. would have been better served if they continued with the practice of drawing the map of each state out to the Pacific. The only reason that stopped was, though, was because the New England states figured out that they couldn't go any further without invading Canada while the slave states had an open field to the Pacific.
None of that is correct. Just, none of it.
The Senate was a compromise between large states and small states because smaller states didn't want to be over powered in the legislature and larger states didn't want the fact that they did indeed have a larger population mean nothing. That's like lesson three in 7th grade history class (after the friendly Indians who don't at all mind that we took their stuff and those fun lovin' puritans and their search for religious freedom).
We never drew our state lines all the way to the pacific. England drew the colonies all the way to the Mississippi, but we quite quickly started carving up things like Kentucky and Tennessee and Ohio. There was never a point where the states just spread out to the Pacific and it was always the understanding that states would be carved out of the territories as they reached population levels.
Except the senate makes Massachusetts equal to California in deciding how the national government work. Thus making them two equal entities despite massive differences in population.
The artificial restriction to the size of the House also contributes to this. If we followed the metric in the Constitution (topping out at 1 per 30,000 ), there would be several thousand Reps. That might be unwieldy, but you'd have a better ratio to rep per voter.
I don't see that as influential. The house is, at least, proportional. I'd personally not be bothered by raising the cap but it's nowhere near my top complaints regarding congress.
The Senate was a compromise between large states and small states because smaller states didn't want to be over powered in the legislature and larger states didn't want the fact that they did indeed have a larger population mean nothing. That's like lesson three in 7th grade history class (after the friendly Indians who don't at all mind that we took their stuff and those fun lovin' puritans and their search for religious freedom).
We never drew our state lines all the way to the pacific. England drew the colonies all the way to the Mississippi, but we quite quickly started carving up things like Kentucky and Tennessee and Ohio. There was never a point where the states just spread out to the Pacific and it was always the understanding that states would be carved out of the territories as they reached population levels.
The idea that the states felt they had the right to expand indefinitely is well documented. This is the situation before the compromise, with the idea that each of these states would keep going West as the U.S. acquired the other European colonies. You are giving the 7th grade history version of the story, true, but that does not actually address all of the issues involved.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
The Senate was a compromise between large states and small states because smaller states didn't want to be over powered in the legislature and larger states didn't want the fact that they did indeed have a larger population mean nothing. That's like lesson three in 7th grade history class (after the friendly Indians who don't at all mind that we took their stuff and those fun lovin' puritans and their search for religious freedom).
We never drew our state lines all the way to the pacific. England drew the colonies all the way to the Mississippi, but we quite quickly started carving up things like Kentucky and Tennessee and Ohio. There was never a point where the states just spread out to the Pacific and it was always the understanding that states would be carved out of the territories as they reached population levels.
The idea that the states felt they had the right to expand indefinitely is well documented. This is the state before the compromise. You are giving the 7th grade history version of the story, true, but that's not actually all of the issues involved.
You'll notice those dates being in the formative years of union, yes? And ending at the Mississippi, not the Pacific? And that the premise of carving up the west then being established here? Or are you just ignoring that part cause it doesn't fit your narrative.
The point is that we need a level at the local above city or county. That will always be the case, always has been. Every large empire/country has always had them. There would be nothing solved by junking the state system and introducing this new one that clear delineate of powers wouldn't solve.
States are supposed to have sovereignty over specific areas but in modern America those lines are a bit fuzzy and fuzzed up even more by politicians claiming that every thing under the sun should be a state issue.
I thought the US federal gov. was the entity with specific areas of powers defined, and the States "picked up the scraps"?
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
You'll notice those dates being in the formative years of union, yes? And ending at the Mississippi, not the Pacific? And that the premise of carving up the west then being established here? Or are you just ignoring that part cause it doesn't fit your narrative.
I have no "narrative." I am simply stating U.S. history. The issues involved with why the New England and Southern states balked, compromised and argued about the Constitution were more complex than you got in elementary school.
And the U.S. government always intended to roll over the Spanish and French and expand past the Mississippi. The original idea was that the states would just keep expanding until they got to the Pacific, but the political compromises resulting from the states turning into the Union involved compromising away this idea and creating new states out of the westward territory of the colonies. This was a key issue in ratifying the Constitution, and it was done within the first few decades of the Republic.
This is basic U.S. history. I'm not sure why you are having an issue with it.
States are supposed to have sovereignty over specific areas but in modern America those lines are a bit fuzzy and fuzzed up even more by politicians claiming that every thing under the sun should be a state issue.
I thought the US federal gov. was the entity with specific areas of powers defined, and the States "picked up the scraps"?
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Bingo. That's why the conservatives are always on about The Constitution. They believe that the federal government has overstepped its constitutionally limited role (it has) and think this is a horrible thing (it isn't).
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
You'll notice those dates being in the formative years of union, yes? And ending at the Mississippi, not the Pacific? And that the premise of carving up the west then being established here? Or are you just ignoring that part cause it doesn't fit your narrative.
I have no "narrative." I am simply stating U.S. history. The issues involved with why the New England and Southern states balked, compromised and argued about the Constitution were more complex than you got in elementary school.
And the U.S. government always intended to roll over the Spanish and French and expand past the Mississippi. The original idea was that the states would just keep expanding until they got to the Pacific, but the political compromises resulting from the states turning into the Union involved compromising away this idea and creating new states out of the westward territory of the colonies. This was a key issue in ratifying the Constitution.
This is basic U.S. history. I'm not sure why you are having an issue with it.
I don't understand why you're arguing for my points here...
Of course they were more complex, I never said they weren't and you haven't proved that with the data provided.
States are supposed to have sovereignty over specific areas but in modern America those lines are a bit fuzzy and fuzzed up even more by politicians claiming that every thing under the sun should be a state issue.
I thought the US federal gov. was the entity with specific areas of powers defined, and the States "picked up the scraps"?
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Yes, and that is where the problem comes from. Politicians claim everything that isn't explicitly stated in the text doesn't count because the GOP isn't familiar with the concept of implied powers. Probably poor phrasing in that particular quote but what I mean is that the powers of the states need to be defined because picking up the scraps isn't really a good description of powers.
That's how you get people like Ron Paul who think that the state governments have every right to be despotic power mad crazy houses.
I don't understand why you're arguing for my points here...
Of course they were more complex, I never said they weren't and you haven't proved that with the data provided.
At this point, I'm not even following your objection. Outline exactly where you think I'm making things up, and I'll track down the citations. Nothing I'm saying is in any way out there. It's very basic U.S. history, and I'm mostly caught off guard by your reaction to it.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I don't understand why you're arguing for my points here...
Of course they were more complex, I never said they weren't and you haven't proved that with the data provided.
At this point, I'm not even following your objection. Outline exactly where you think I'm making things up, and I'll track down the citations. Nothing I'm saying is in any way out there. It's very basic U.S. history.
You aren't making things up, what I meant is that at this point we're basically saying the same things but that graphic doesn't prove your point. I didn't realize you wanted a massive term paper on why the states were organized, I was giving the quick and dirty version. My original objection was for your statement that the best thing to do was to have states go all the way to the pacific but oops, lol canada got in the way.
The map you posted shows that the idea of breaking up the territories into smaller states was set up in the early days of the union, after the compromise I brought up. I don't understand how that argues that I was wrong.
You aren't making things up, what I meant is that at this point we're basically saying the same things but that graphic doesn't prove your point. I didn't realize you wanted a massive term paper on why the states were organized, I was giving the quick and dirty version. My original objection was for your statement that the best thing to do was to have states go all the way to the pacific but oops, lol canada got in the way.
The map you posted shows that the idea of breaking up the territories into smaller states was set up in the early days of the union, after the compromise I brought up. I don't understand how that argues that I was wrong.
The New England states were concerned about proportional representation because A) they were smaller the states below them had declared intentions to keep expanding to the other edge of the continent. Since Canada blocked their westward expansion, they feared that a pure democracy would quickly end with them dwarfed into irrelevance by their expanding fellow states, so they supported a Senate and leveraged out an agreement in principle that the states would cede their western territories which would eventually become new states.
LOL Canada is what happened. Why is that so out there to you?
And my larger point was that maybe 13 large administrative bodies with Senators might be better than 50 smaller bodies with Senators. That's especially true when some of those administrative bodies have smaller populations than the second and third largest cities in the more populous states.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
You aren't making things up, what I meant is that at this point we're basically saying the same things but that graphic doesn't prove your point. I didn't realize you wanted a massive term paper on why the states were organized, I was giving the quick and dirty version. My original objection was for your statement that the best thing to do was to have states go all the way to the pacific but oops, lol canada got in the way.
The map you posted shows that the idea of breaking up the territories into smaller states was set up in the early days of the union, after the compromise I brought up. I don't understand how that argues that I was wrong.
The New England states were concerned about proportional representation because A) they were smaller the states below them had declared intentions to keep expanding to the other edge of the continent. Since Canada blocked their westward expansion, they feared that a pure democracy would quickly end with them dwarfed into irrelevance by their expanding fellow states, so they supported a Senate and leveraged out an agreement in principle that the states would cede their western territories which would eventually become new states.
LOL Canada is what happened. Why is that so out there to you?
And my larger point was that maybe 13 large administrative bodies with Senators might be better than 50 smaller bodies with Senators. That's especially true when some of those administrative bodies have smaller populations than the second and third largest cities in the more populous states.
Well, maybe that would work. But how would we balance out regional interests under that system? It'd much more complex than just population levels and I'd be hesitant to try to carve up the states. I could see maybe a California, Pacific Coast, Great Plains, Southwest, Texas, Great Lakes, New England, MidAtlantic, Southern, Florida division. But I think they'd still have the same problems as the current set up.
What the founders were concerned with was limiting federal power, what we need know is a definition of state power. Even if we changed to a different regional make up we'd have that problem.
The states as entities don't get a say on how the national government works. The people who live in states do, on the basis of reps in the house and senate. Which wouldn't change by removing the states. You also need a second level of government to administer areas so we'll have the same problem with a different name.
States are supposed to have sovereignty over specific areas but in modern America those lines are a bit fuzzy and fuzzed up even more by politicians claiming that every thing under the sun should be a state issue.
That is the rationale behind the Senate. The Senate only makes sense structurally if you assume that, on some level, each state is an equal. It's a relic of the days when the nation was a collection of independent colonies, and it started going wonky pretty much at the exact moment when we started adding states to the 13 colonies.
In some ways, I think the U.S. would have been better served if they continued with the practice of drawing the map of each state out to the Pacific. The only reason that stopped was, though, was because the New England states figured out that they couldn't go any further without invading Canada while the slave states had an open field to the Pacific.
None of that is correct. Just, none of it.
The Senate was a compromise between large states and small states because smaller states didn't want to be over powered in the legislature and larger states didn't want the fact that they did indeed have a larger population mean nothing.
Right, the smaller states wanted to be equal to the larger states.
The Senate exists to give all states equal power, regardless of size.
I think that, unless this is addressed, is going to be a major fracture point in American politics. There's only so long that the national politics can be hijacked by the minority of the nation - the GOP is more gaming the electoral map and voting laws than actually gaining support these days - before the entire system starts to look illegitimate.
You do realize that neither party actually holds the majority of registerd voters, and that in the 2010 elections the majority of people who went to the polls voted Republican, right?
It's a midterm election.
Polling the views of your average american gets you a very different political outlook then polling voters (let alone your midterm voters).
There are 72 million registered Democrats and 55 million registered Republicans. Another 44 million are independents.
The Republicans win because of the way we divide votes and legislative power regionally. In a straight vote, we would not have a GOP-dominated federal government.
First off, I wouldn't call a government in which the Democrats hold the executive and half the legislative brances to be GOP-dominated. Second, the popular votes from the past 10 presidential elections consist of, five Republican majorities, two Democratic majorities and three Democratic pluralities (including 2000), so the idea that Republicans cannot win a straight vote is uninformed hogwash.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
- John Stuart Mill
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
The states as entities don't get a say on how the national government works. The people who live in states do, on the basis of reps in the house and senate. Which wouldn't change by removing the states. You also need a second level of government to administer areas so we'll have the same problem with a different name.
States are supposed to have sovereignty over specific areas but in modern America those lines are a bit fuzzy and fuzzed up even more by politicians claiming that every thing under the sun should be a state issue.
That is the rationale behind the Senate. The Senate only makes sense structurally if you assume that, on some level, each state is an equal. It's a relic of the days when the nation was a collection of independent colonies, and it started going wonky pretty much at the exact moment when we started adding states to the 13 colonies.
In some ways, I think the U.S. would have been better served if they continued with the practice of drawing the map of each state out to the Pacific. The only reason that stopped was, though, was because the New England states figured out that they couldn't go any further without invading Canada while the slave states had an open field to the Pacific.
None of that is correct. Just, none of it.
The Senate was a compromise between large states and small states because smaller states didn't want to be over powered in the legislature and larger states didn't want the fact that they did indeed have a larger population mean nothing.
Right, the smaller states wanted to be equal to the larger states.
The Senate exists to give all states equal power, regardless of size.
But it's for the people of those states, not the state governments. Congress has nothing to do with the powers of the states anymore, not since the direct election of Senators was implemented.
Right, the smaller states wanted to be equal to the larger states.
The Senate exists to give all states equal power, regardless of size.
Yeah, my question - and it's not one that I have a firm answer on - is whether that's still an appropriate goal in the 21st century. The UK had similar issues when their parliamentary lines became corrupted as population shifts left some districts with small populations and easily corrupted representatives.
This isn't a new problem in democracies. Sometimes legislative districts need to be redrawn and rethough, and the present idea that states are a sovereign body immutable in and of themselves gets in the way of this. I'm not sure that this is a solvable issue, although it looks the federal government is compensating for the problem by devolving power to the executive.
First off, I wouldn't call a government in which the Democrats hold the executive and half the legislative brances to be GOP-dominated. Second, the popular votes from the past 10 presidential elections consist of, five Republican majorities, two Democratic majorities and three Democratic pluralities (including 2000), so the idea that Republicans cannot win a straight vote is uninformed hogwash.
Once you go back to George Bush I, we're talking about an entirely different Republican Party. The modern GOP, as currently represented, has major problems winning majorities. The reason this is an issue at all is that they compensate for this by declaring mandates whenever they squeak in.
That's the story of the GOP in the 21st century. Their base is eroding and their time in power is represented by fierce advocacy of ideas that represent a minority of the nation. It's becoming corrosive to the nation as a whole, so its worth examining just where that "mandate" is coming from.
And has nothing to do with, as the fact stands, all states having equal say in the national government despite not being equal.
They don't; all states do have an equal say in the Senate, but that completely ignores the existance of the House.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
- John Stuart Mill
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
the best thing that massachusetts has going for it is that it's basically a city-state of greater boston. a lot of the really toxic rural/suburban/urban divide in politics that you see in places like texas, NY, claim colorado and virginia is far less pronounced in MA.
i personally would like to see a national political system subscribe to the jane jacobs model of civilization, since i think there's a lot of essential truth to how people organize themselves. it's just kind of hard to institute something like this after already having established state governments
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Well, the thing is all countries have smaller subdivisions. Canada has provinces, the UK has counties. The thing that's getting in the way now is that Republicans oppose everything on the basis that STATES RIGHTS GOT DANG IT should be applicable in every situation. We need a clear delineation between federal and state responsibilities. And, once we have that, we need to empower both the feds and the states to actually take control of those areas.
All nations have smaller subdivisions, but it is understood that they are arms of the national government. That's the standard federal division.
What we have is a fiction that the states are actually sovereign entities. And it is a fiction, we just rely on the federal court system to police and control the states instead of the national government.
You do realize that the court system is an arm of the national government, yes?
Only the GOP seems to think that the states are actual sovereign entities. Most people understand that they are secondary to the national governments. Even the issues states have sovereignty over are overseen by the federal government.
I think you missed my point. The federal government controls the states primarily through the federal court system. That's where the "slapping down" happens.
And I don't think it matters what "most people think." The states exist and have power - their own laws, court systems, school systems, unemployment rolls, etc. - so the reality is pretty set that the states control most of the government services immediately important to the majority of citizens. The states even control the federal highway systems.
Most Americans have very little connection to the federal government. If they didn't have Social Security, the federal government would be the distant force that runs the military. The GOP exploits this to make the case that the state government is the legitimate power and the federal government is some sort of occupying force.
The federal government would always need local authorities to administer power. What you're suggesting is we just paint over STATE OF VIRGINIA with UNITED STATES. It'd be the same exact infrastructure and the same people in charge.
I don't think outside of Texas that anyone really cares about state sovereignty.
If the more conservative Justices have their way, a large part of said decline in state power might reverse itself too.
You do realize that neither party actually holds the majority of registerd voters, and that in the 2010 elections the majority of people who went to the polls voted Republican, right?
- John Stuart Mill
It's a midterm election.
Polling the views of your average american gets you a very different political outlook then polling voters (let alone your midterm voters).
There are 72 million registered Democrats and 55 million registered Republicans. Another 44 million are independents.
The Republicans win because of the way we divide votes and legislative power regionally. In a straight vote, we would not have a GOP-dominated federal government.
Assuming that everyone votes party line all the time and independents only vote Democrat, yes.
Those aren't things you can take for granted though.
Honestly, I'm not sure if we should redo how representatives are assigned. I'm fine with each state still getting two senators but I'm wondering if we would be better served by dropping the state lines from the equation for House seats. Sure it'll suck for states that don't have a large enough population to have one representative devoted solely to their needs but it could go a long way to fixing some issues because I do agree that rural areas probably have more influence then they deserve and this would create a mean to attack gerrymandering. We're going to need an independent board for it because some of those congress districts are going to span more than one state and we'd probably agree that one of the parameters should be to avoid cutting up states when ever possible.
I'm fine with leaving states as an intermediary between federal and local. One of the things that I don't think people realize is the state can serve the important function of quickly righting things in a locality that the feds simply cannot do. As I understand it from my state politics class, localities exist at the whip of the state and can be remove if they deem it necessary. So if a locality ends up like Wisconsin, a recall isn't really needed because the state can step in and say the local government isn't acting in good, so it's going to run things until competent leaders are find to once again run it. The feds can't really do that, when a state goes Wisconsin's route your pretty much stuck waiting for elections to happy if the majority of leadership is corrupt or incompetent but not to the point where you can justify immediately removing them.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Hell, we're only two or three generations removed from a k-12 education being bog standard (my grandma never finished HS for example).
Yeah the current system doesn't work. By having fifty states you have fifty entities. This assumes that each entity should be entitled to an equal amount of say in government which is just not true.
Democrats almost always pull more votes in the polls. It's just that the GOP wins overall because of the way we draw up and divide the electoral map. That's what people mean when they complain about how a few thousand voters in Montana have the same power as a few million voters from New York.
It's also worth noting that 2004 was the only election since the 1988 where the GOP won the popular vote. Even then, the vote in '04 was within three million votes and even that, post-election polling, was because a significant number of senior citizens voted based on the idea that it was wrong to switch presidents during "wartime" and not a desire to support the GOP.
There were also a lot of shenanigans in the electoral process in '04, including the oddness in Ohio. That was an incredibly sketchy election year, overall.
That's not the portrait of a nation that is embracing GOP rule. Modern America has a rotten borough problem.
That's... that's not how that works.
The states as entities don't get a say on how the national government works. The people who live in states do, on the basis of reps in the house and senate. Which wouldn't change by removing the states. You also need a second level of government to administer areas so we'll have the same problem with a different name.
States are supposed to have sovereignty over specific areas but in modern America those lines are a bit fuzzy and fuzzed up even more by politicians claiming that every thing under the sun should be a state issue.
This is true, although they still tend to lose out to the feds when it comes down to forcing a point. I don't know if any state at this point could survive the cessation of grants from the federal government, so any time congress wants to force a point vis a vie speed limits, the drinking age, or what not, they can. This seems pant-on-head to me, but c'est la vie.
Of course, that is not to downplay the fact that they are, as you say, sovereign, and they still do have significant self-governance. It's just not as complete as their formal powers might lead one to believe: they have the nominal right to control things which they de facto lack--things like speed limits and the drinking age.
It's also worth noting that between 1988 and 2004 there was only one election where a Republican won the presidency where they didn't win the popular vote.
Also worth noting is the constant swapping of control of the houses of Congress in states.
District lines are drawn to protect incumbents regardless of whether they're GOP or DNC.
Except the senate makes Massachusetts equal to California in deciding how the national government work. Thus making them two equal entities despite massive differences in population.
That is the rationale behind the Senate. The Senate only makes sense structurally if you assume that, on some level, each state is an equal. It's a relic of the days when the nation was a collection of independent colonies, and it started going wonky pretty much at the exact moment when we started adding states to the 13 colonies.
In some ways, I think the U.S. would have been better served if they continued with the practice of drawing the map of each state out to the Pacific. The only reason that stopped was, though, was because the New England states figured out that they couldn't go any further without invading Canada while the slave states had an open field to the Pacific.
The artificial restriction to the size of the House also contributes to this. If we followed the metric in the Constitution (topping out at 1 per 30,000 ), there would be several thousand Reps. That might be unwieldy, but you'd have a better ratio to rep per voter.
None of that is correct. Just, none of it.
The Senate was a compromise between large states and small states because smaller states didn't want to be over powered in the legislature and larger states didn't want the fact that they did indeed have a larger population mean nothing. That's like lesson three in 7th grade history class (after the friendly Indians who don't at all mind that we took their stuff and those fun lovin' puritans and their search for religious freedom).
We never drew our state lines all the way to the pacific. England drew the colonies all the way to the Mississippi, but we quite quickly started carving up things like Kentucky and Tennessee and Ohio. There was never a point where the states just spread out to the Pacific and it was always the understanding that states would be carved out of the territories as they reached population levels.
I don't see that as influential. The house is, at least, proportional. I'd personally not be bothered by raising the cap but it's nowhere near my top complaints regarding congress.
The idea that the states felt they had the right to expand indefinitely is well documented. This is the situation before the compromise, with the idea that each of these states would keep going West as the U.S. acquired the other European colonies. You are giving the 7th grade history version of the story, true, but that does not actually address all of the issues involved.
You'll notice those dates being in the formative years of union, yes? And ending at the Mississippi, not the Pacific? And that the premise of carving up the west then being established here? Or are you just ignoring that part cause it doesn't fit your narrative.
The point is that we need a level at the local above city or county. That will always be the case, always has been. Every large empire/country has always had them. There would be nothing solved by junking the state system and introducing this new one that clear delineate of powers wouldn't solve.
I thought the US federal gov. was the entity with specific areas of powers defined, and the States "picked up the scraps"?
I have no "narrative." I am simply stating U.S. history. The issues involved with why the New England and Southern states balked, compromised and argued about the Constitution were more complex than you got in elementary school.
And the U.S. government always intended to roll over the Spanish and French and expand past the Mississippi. The original idea was that the states would just keep expanding until they got to the Pacific, but the political compromises resulting from the states turning into the Union involved compromising away this idea and creating new states out of the westward territory of the colonies. This was a key issue in ratifying the Constitution, and it was done within the first few decades of the Republic.
This is basic U.S. history. I'm not sure why you are having an issue with it.
Bingo. That's why the conservatives are always on about The Constitution. They believe that the federal government has overstepped its constitutionally limited role (it has) and think this is a horrible thing (it isn't).
I don't understand why you're arguing for my points here...
Of course they were more complex, I never said they weren't and you haven't proved that with the data provided.
Yes, and that is where the problem comes from. Politicians claim everything that isn't explicitly stated in the text doesn't count because the GOP isn't familiar with the concept of implied powers. Probably poor phrasing in that particular quote but what I mean is that the powers of the states need to be defined because picking up the scraps isn't really a good description of powers.
That's how you get people like Ron Paul who think that the state governments have every right to be despotic power mad crazy houses.
At this point, I'm not even following your objection. Outline exactly where you think I'm making things up, and I'll track down the citations. Nothing I'm saying is in any way out there. It's very basic U.S. history, and I'm mostly caught off guard by your reaction to it.
You aren't making things up, what I meant is that at this point we're basically saying the same things but that graphic doesn't prove your point. I didn't realize you wanted a massive term paper on why the states were organized, I was giving the quick and dirty version. My original objection was for your statement that the best thing to do was to have states go all the way to the pacific but oops, lol canada got in the way.
The map you posted shows that the idea of breaking up the territories into smaller states was set up in the early days of the union, after the compromise I brought up. I don't understand how that argues that I was wrong.
The New England states were concerned about proportional representation because A) they were smaller
LOL Canada is what happened. Why is that so out there to you?
And my larger point was that maybe 13 large administrative bodies with Senators might be better than 50 smaller bodies with Senators. That's especially true when some of those administrative bodies have smaller populations than the second and third largest cities in the more populous states.
Well, maybe that would work. But how would we balance out regional interests under that system? It'd much more complex than just population levels and I'd be hesitant to try to carve up the states. I could see maybe a California, Pacific Coast, Great Plains, Southwest, Texas, Great Lakes, New England, MidAtlantic, Southern, Florida division. But I think they'd still have the same problems as the current set up.
What the founders were concerned with was limiting federal power, what we need know is a definition of state power. Even if we changed to a different regional make up we'd have that problem.
Right, the smaller states wanted to be equal to the larger states.
The Senate exists to give all states equal power, regardless of size.
First off, I wouldn't call a government in which the Democrats hold the executive and half the legislative brances to be GOP-dominated. Second, the popular votes from the past 10 presidential elections consist of, five Republican majorities, two Democratic majorities and three Democratic pluralities (including 2000), so the idea that Republicans cannot win a straight vote is uninformed hogwash.
- John Stuart Mill
But it's for the people of those states, not the state governments. Congress has nothing to do with the powers of the states anymore, not since the direct election of Senators was implemented.
Yeah, my question - and it's not one that I have a firm answer on - is whether that's still an appropriate goal in the 21st century. The UK had similar issues when their parliamentary lines became corrupted as population shifts left some districts with small populations and easily corrupted representatives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_borough
This isn't a new problem in democracies. Sometimes legislative districts need to be redrawn and rethough, and the present idea that states are a sovereign body immutable in and of themselves gets in the way of this. I'm not sure that this is a solvable issue, although it looks the federal government is compensating for the problem by devolving power to the executive.
Once you go back to George Bush I, we're talking about an entirely different Republican Party. The modern GOP, as currently represented, has major problems winning majorities. The reason this is an issue at all is that they compensate for this by declaring mandates whenever they squeak in.
That's the story of the GOP in the 21st century. Their base is eroding and their time in power is represented by fierce advocacy of ideas that represent a minority of the nation. It's becoming corrosive to the nation as a whole, so its worth examining just where that "mandate" is coming from.
They don't; all states do have an equal say in the Senate, but that completely ignores the existance of the House.
- John Stuart Mill
i personally would like to see a national political system subscribe to the jane jacobs model of civilization, since i think there's a lot of essential truth to how people organize themselves. it's just kind of hard to institute something like this after already having established state governments