The biggest problem with the senate from where I am standing is that the job is far too lucrative. Too much power, too much influence, too much job security, too high pay(though I can argue for making pay higher too, it's weird), too much other money, too much potential for future money.
If all senators could be Ted Kennedy, I might feel differently, but as it is, I agree with OP that the senate is the worst. Le puke.
I've always though that government jobs should all pay the same. Soldier, postman, senator. Pay them the same.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I think it would make things a little less greed based.
It's a pretty terrible idea, really.
A soldier and a postman don't do nearly the same jobs, and their jobs don't come with nearly the same risk.
For example.
As well, paying Senators less than we do now only further incentivizes taking lobbyist money and cutting sweetheart deals.
So penalize them for accepting lobbyist money. There's only 100 of these guys, audit their taxes every fucking year.
And their families' taxes.
And their businesses' taxes.
And
I mean, it's a start, but it's a bigger problem than just 100 people.
And they don't receive these things while they're in office, generally, anyway. They get them for campaigns and they get golden parachutes.
Again, Lobbyists give politicians money to get reelected according to what passes for our election laws. This is legal and barring slapping the Supreme Court around will remain so.
If they are buying pools with Lobbyist money they are already committing giant legal violations. It has been ages since we've seen that kind of thing, in part because their taxes are publicly disclosed every year.
If somebody wants to make a case for bribery being an actual problem in the Senate that's one thing, but lobbyists it ain't.
Bork's views were also totally retrograde and didn't belong anywhere near SCOTUS. It'd be like if Obama said fuck it and nominated like... Noam Chomsky.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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SerukoFerocious Kittenof The Farthest NorthRegistered Userregular
Ok so why does the revolving door exist then? Why are lobbyists paying if they don't get anything for it? (Besides some 75 year old man who doesn't want to work as you say)
The revolving door exists quite plainly, in the house not the senate.
Lobbyists finance senatorial campaigns for the purpose of influencing legislation, you know we call it Lobbying.
If that is a problem that needed to be fixed, one would fix campaign finance laws.
Seruko on
"How are you going to play Dota if your fingers and bitten off? You can't. That's how" -> Carnarvon
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes
Ok so why does the revolving door exist then? Why are lobbyists paying if they don't get anything for it? (Besides some 75 year old man who doesn't want to work as you say)
Lobbyists are typically recruiting Senators who lose reelection bids, not those who retire. (Retirement from the Senate is not very common unless you are very old. Losing while you still have a desire to work is more likely.) Congressman are more likely to drop out for lobbyist paydays.
Edit: It's worth noting that Senators do not typically need any kind of salary in their personal lives. They're all rich as hell anyway.
The problem with the Senate is not the Senate. It's the money.
Elaborate?
Watering down bills is a great thing when you disagree with them.
I would like the Senate to be a little bit more willing to act, mostly in the manner of judicial nominations, but I would also like the parties to both stop treating the federal bench like the main strategy in their culture war long game.
Other than that: it's not a bug, it's a feature.
Watering down bills is a great way to use legislative chokepoints to benefit narrow interests at the expense of everyone else. It makes for bloated, inefficient government, and it makes for a lot of crony capitalism. It ruins the government and it ruins markets.
What do you mean "not a bug, it's a feature"? Elaborate?
The problem isn't with the structure, it's with the incentives of the politicians to represent narrow special interests and deliver pork, and in the case of judicial nominations with the poisonously adversarial nature of the nomination process since, oh probably since Robert Bork.
Your 'efficient' is my 'run roughshod over'. I don't necessarily see efficiency in the legislative process as useful or desirable. I'd prefer things be slow and full of stumbling blocks that only can be cleared rapidly by a broad and near-unanimous majority. Otherwise, time and deliberation aren't inherently bad. This will delay or derail things I'd like to see happen, in the future, but I'm OK with this. We're going to get a pretty good immigration bill because it took a decade to get support for one that will be palatable to a broad coalition. A more 'efficient' Senate would have passed a shittier bill with no chance in the House, one good only as a wedge to further increase partisanship on both sides.
Except "time and deliberation" actually just mean "narrow special interest groups stalling legislation, sometimes in return for kickbacks" and "undermining the feedback loop between action and election that is what makes democracy function". With a healthy does of "complete inability to act when needed" like we've seen with the current economic situation in the US.
There is no gain to an inefficient government. It just leads to shitty legislation and undermines the democratic process.
The Senate exists to give a small "wise" minority a say in the legislative process. With emphasis on focusing on state interests. The problem is it's very good at this. And that "wise" minority is composed of the people in the Beltway Bubble and the lobbyists that feed and inform them and "state interest" has always just meant "kickbacks".
Ok so why does the revolving door exist then? Why are lobbyists paying if they don't get anything for it? (Besides some 75 year old man who doesn't want to work as you say)
Lobbyists are typically recruiting Senators who lose reelection bids, not those who retire. (Retirement from the Senate is not very common unless you are very old. Losing while you still have a desire to work is more likely.) Congressman are more likely to drop out for lobbyist paydays.
Edit: It's worth noting that Senators do not typically need any kind of salary in their personal lives. They're all rich as hell anyway.
If they don't need money why are they beholden to campaign contributions (while also not caring about their personal wealth as Seruko claims)?
Similarly if Senators are being recruited because they still want to work why are their salaries so high? A former Senator can lobby on their own, which if they're just in it for power and influence and their pet agenda we would see them tend to do rather than join a firm and receive a salary.
Note that lobbyists recruiting Senators who lose reelection does not negate the theory.
Everybody always points out that the senate's designed function was to slow the process of turning the popular will into policy, but fails to ever explain why this is actually something that is desirable.
The problem is the senate. The problem is exacerbated by the reality of campaign finance, but it was a problem long before mass media created the current cost of campaigns.
Because the popular will is how we get shit like California Proposition 13.
Popular will is terrible, except when it isn't.
When a mass shooting happens, and 90% of people want some new gun control measure, it's the will of the people, and it's the mean old Senate keeping it from happening. When it's been a few years since one, and that drops to about 50%, it's still the will of the people. And if it sits at 45%? Well, it's still common sense regulation that we need to be a better society, will of the people be damned.
When a majority support something like DOMA, it's tyrrany of the majority. When that popular opinion turns, suddenly we have to listen to the will of the people.
The people often want terrible things. Whether you're conservative or liberal, because the people are basically idiots who are easily led from point to point. Popular will is exactly how we get shit like DOMA, and the Iraq War for that matter. Of course, the Senate didn't stop those. So that makes me wonder, what has the Senate done in favor of liberals? Like, what were Democrats filibustering back during the Bush administration? I know they used it less, blah blah blah, but sure they must have blocked some dumb shit other than judicial nominations? What was it?
You are confusing what the Constitution and Judicial Review are for with what the Senate is for/does.
If they don't need money why are they beholden to campaign contributions (while also not caring about their personal wealth as Seruko claims)?
Similarly if Senators are being recruited because they still want to work why are their salaries so high? A former Senator can lobby on their own, which if they're just in it for power and influence and their pet agenda we would see them tend to do rather than join a firm and receive a salary.
Note that lobbyists recruiting Senators who lose reelection does not negate the theory.
It is, afaik, pretty rare for the bulk of a campaign's funding to come from a candidate's own pocket. The party provides some, but the majority typically comes from fundraising, and is technically considered "campaign funds," and not "buy $45k watches and fur coats" funds.
Ok so why does the revolving door exist then? Why are lobbyists paying if they don't get anything for it? (Besides some 75 year old man who doesn't want to work as you say)
Lobbyists are typically recruiting Senators who lose reelection bids, not those who retire. (Retirement from the Senate is not very common unless you are very old. Losing while you still have a desire to work is more likely.) Congressman are more likely to drop out for lobbyist paydays.
Edit: It's worth noting that Senators do not typically need any kind of salary in their personal lives. They're all rich as hell anyway.
If they don't need money why are they beholden to campaign contributions (while also not caring about their personal wealth as Seruko claims)?
Because while a Senator only really needs one solid platinum yacht, Senate campaigns cost enough to buy seven.
Similarly if Senators are being recruited because they still want to work why are their salaries so high?
Pride, mostly, I suspect. Politics is rarely an wholly-rational market.
while the senate is never going to be confused with the poorhouse, it doesn't read like a forbes' list either. I don't really have a problem with the idea that senators should draw a healthy salary (especially considering how underpaid they are compared to their influence.) Most leave the senate well off, but not so well off they can immediately retire to wherever.
The discussion of popular will is getting somewhere though. Obviously the popular will can sometimes be wrong, and the public can make bad decisions (all one has to do is look at any state with citizen ballot measures for evidence of this.) But the senate isn't really a great solution to this issue, and in lots of ways it makes it worse.
Government is hardly ever 'ahead' of the popular will on any issue of significance, and institutions like the senate ensure that it changes much more slowly. California's gay marriage ban was unfortunate but appears likely to be repealed before long; on the other hand if we waited for Congress to repeal DOMA we'd probably wait another 20 years (mostly because of the senate.) This is even more noticeable in the case of issues like public health care, which has been popular for half a century and has been in the platform of every serious presidential candidate on both sides since truman, but which is only now being haltingly adopted.
Countries without systemic bulwarks like the senate still elect governments; sometimes those governments suck, and they get replaced in a couple years with something people like better. The senate sucks just as much, but without the ease of replacement.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Everybody always points out that the senate's designed function was to slow the process of turning the popular will into policy, but fails to ever explain why this is actually something that is desirable.
The problem is the senate. The problem is exacerbated by the reality of campaign finance, but it was a problem long before mass media created the current cost of campaigns.
Because the popular will is how we get shit like California Proposition 13.
Popular will is terrible, except when it isn't.
When a mass shooting happens, and 90% of people want some new gun control measure, it's the will of the people, and it's the mean old Senate keeping it from happening. When it's been a few years since one, and that drops to about 50%, it's still the will of the people. And if it sits at 45%? Well, it's still common sense regulation that we need to be a better society, will of the people be damned.
When a majority support something like DOMA, it's tyrrany of the majority. When that popular opinion turns, suddenly we have to listen to the will of the people.
The people often want terrible things. Whether you're conservative or liberal, because the people are basically idiots who are easily led from point to point. Popular will is exactly how we get shit like DOMA, and the Iraq War for that matter. Of course, the Senate didn't stop those. So that makes me wonder, what has the Senate done in favor of liberals? Like, what were Democrats filibustering back during the Bush administration? I know they used it less, blah blah blah, but sure they must have blocked some dumb shit other than judicial nominations? What was it?
You are confusing what the Constitution and Judicial Review are for with what the Senate is for/does.
No, in at least one case it's not necessarily a constitutional issue I was even mentioning.
I'm pointing out that what the majority wants isn't always that great, so the Senate being nonrepresentative isn't necessarily a problem.
Same for the failure of the senate, or congress, to enact legislation that majorities, even cast majorities, want at this moment.
Because a majority of Americans are often terrible.
Are you guys trying to have a more abstract conversation about how well U.S. electoral institutions reflect the Will of the Public?
Because I'll stake out my claim right meow: public opinion is not a way to run a country. While things are slowly shifting in a positive direction vis-a-vis things like gay marriage and immigration, relying on the electorate to have any idea wtf is going on is doomed from the start. This is exactly why we have elites to rationalize and aggregate constituency demands: because constituents are by and large ignorant of the issues, and even when they express an opinion on an issue, there's a good chance it's based on no political content except for what they heard someone say one time. This isn't necessarily their fault -- people have shit to do -- but it is A Thing That Exists.
That said, there are certainly other, less obvious institutional factors that dilute The Will of the People. Namely, an SMD-P system that incentivizes candidates to move away from the logic of the logic of the Downsian median voter model because of the substantial impact of party ID as a heuristic device for the electorate. Coupled with direct primaries -- in which basically only the ideological base shows up -- the net effect of this is more ideologically extreme MCs who have no incentive to move to the center to capture the hypothetical median voter.
Everybody always points out that the senate's designed function was to slow the process of turning the popular will into policy, but fails to ever explain why this is actually something that is desirable.
The problem is the senate. The problem is exacerbated by the reality of campaign finance, but it was a problem long before mass media created the current cost of campaigns.
Because the popular will is how we get shit like California Proposition 13.
Popular will is terrible, except when it isn't.
When a mass shooting happens, and 90% of people want some new gun control measure, it's the will of the people, and it's the mean old Senate keeping it from happening. When it's been a few years since one, and that drops to about 50%, it's still the will of the people. And if it sits at 45%? Well, it's still common sense regulation that we need to be a better society, will of the people be damned.
When a majority support something like DOMA, it's tyrrany of the majority. When that popular opinion turns, suddenly we have to listen to the will of the people.
The people often want terrible things. Whether you're conservative or liberal, because the people are basically idiots who are easily led from point to point. Popular will is exactly how we get shit like DOMA, and the Iraq War for that matter. Of course, the Senate didn't stop those. So that makes me wonder, what has the Senate done in favor of liberals? Like, what were Democrats filibustering back during the Bush administration? I know they used it less, blah blah blah, but sure they must have blocked some dumb shit other than judicial nominations? What was it?
You are confusing what the Constitution and Judicial Review are for with what the Senate is for/does.
No, in at least one case it's not necessarily a constitutional issue I was even mentioning.
I'm pointing out that what the majority wants isn't always that great, so the Senate being nonrepresentative isn't necessarily a problem.
Same for the failure of the senate, or congress, to enact legislation that majorities, even cast majorities, want at this moment.
Because a majority of Americans are often terrible.
Yes it is because you are ignoring that not all ways of preventing tyranny of the majority are created equal.
The Senate stops the kind of "rash" actions you are talking about not because that's what it's designed to do, but merely as a consequence of it's general incompetence. Pretending like the Senate performs a valued function because part of it's stupidity ends up slowing down some bad legislation is silly.
Yes it is because you are ignoring that not all ways of preventing tyranny of the majority are created equal.
The Senate stops the kind of "rash" actions you are talking about not because that's what it's designed to do, but merely as a consequence of it's general incompetence. Pretending like the Senate performs a valued function because part of it's stupidity ends up slowing down some bad legislation is silly.
I'm not arguing that it's super-competent, but in fairness the original intent of the Senate was definitely to be a more "deliberative" (read: slow) body that could check the whims of the House. It was the same thought that went into the Electoral College and appointment (versus election) of Senators.
Yes it is because you are ignoring that not all ways of preventing tyranny of the majority are created equal.
The Senate stops the kind of "rash" actions you are talking about not because that's what it's designed to do, but merely as a consequence of it's general incompetence. Pretending like the Senate performs a valued function because part of it's stupidity ends up slowing down some bad legislation is silly.
I'm not arguing that it's super-competent, but in fairness the original intent of the Senate was definitely to be a more "deliberative" (read: slow) body that could check the whims of the House. It was the same thought that went into the Electoral College and appointment (versus election) of Senators.
In fairness to what? A conflict between intent and outcome just means there was a mistake rather than malice. Doesn't matter anyways. Mistake or malice in the beginning, the Senate is malignant now.
You're presenting an incomplete picture anyways. It wasn't all benign, noble appeals to intellectual humming and hawing. The Senate was also created to give the smaller states incentive to stick with the bigger ones when foreign powers came knocking, rather than to start stabbing them in the back as was explicitly threatened.
I really don't understand the idea that "elites" will make better decisions than the people at large. They have fundamentally different interests than the majority of the people, and act to secure their own interests, not ours. The Iraq War, mentioned above, is an especially poor example, in part because the Senate largely supported it, and in part because the pro-war feelings of the public were largely a result of a massive propaganda campaign waged by the government.
I'm not saying the masses will always or even usually make rational decisions, but the track record of elite decision-making is simply too awful to justify trusting their will over our own. If the alternative to representative, democratic decision making was an objective, logical analysis by experts, the argument might hold some merit, but in reality it just gives the bourgeoisie even more influence on the legislative process.
Yes it is because you are ignoring that not all ways of preventing tyranny of the majority are created equal.
The Senate stops the kind of "rash" actions you are talking about not because that's what it's designed to do, but merely as a consequence of it's general incompetence. Pretending like the Senate performs a valued function because part of it's stupidity ends up slowing down some bad legislation is silly.
I'm not arguing that it's super-competent, but in fairness the original intent of the Senate was definitely to be a more "deliberative" (read: slow) body that could check the whims of the House. It was the same thought that went into the Electoral College and appointment (versus election) of Senators.
In fairness to what? A conflict between intent and outcome just means there was a mistake rather than malice. Doesn't matter anyways. Mistake or malice in the beginning, the Senate is malignant now.
You're presenting an incomplete picture anyways. It wasn't all benign, noble appeals to intellectual humming and hawing. The Senate was also created to give the smaller states incentive to stick with the bigger ones when foreign powers came knocking, rather than to start stabbing them in the back as was explicitly threatened.
I'm just pointing out that all of the qualities that you guys are describing now as being what's wrong with the institution are exactly as The Founders™ (Blessed be their names) intended. They wanted divisive legislation to get bogged down and eventually killed in the legislature.
And to be clear, I'm not saying I back that position. But reforming it in any meaningful way would: A) be obscenely difficult politically, both because popular opinion is anti-reform and because the reforms would have to come from the body being reformed; and might seem like a good idea when your team is in the majority in the Senate, but will probably seem like a bad idea once the majority shifts back to The Bad Guys.
I really don't understand the idea that "elites" will make better decisions than the people at large. They have fundamentally different interests than the majority of the people, and act to secure their own interests, not ours. The Iraq War, mentioned above, is an especially poor example, in part because the Senate largely supported it, and in part because the pro-war feelings of the public were largely a result of a massive propaganda campaign waged by the government.
I'm not saying the masses will always or even usually make rational decisions, but the track record of elite decision-making is simply too awful to justify trusting their will over our own. If the alternative to representative, democratic decision making was an objective, logical analysis by experts, the argument might hold some merit, but in reality it just gives the bourgeoisie even more influence on the legislative process.
I'll break it down into very concrete terms: you know how a lot of people -- especially the arrogant jerks on this forum, myself included -- think a lot of our elected officials don't have a basic grasp of economics, or foreign policy, or science? Imagine that ignorance, but orders of magnitude worse. That is the American electorate. It sounds mean and dismissive, and I obviously don't want it to be that way, but time and time again the American electorate has shown that it just doesn't know about the issues. As I've said before, it's not necessarily their fault either. People have full-time jobs and families to worry about; our public education system is a joke; and Americans have had a historical distaste for politics and politicians. But the end result is the same: public opinion on a given issue is usually erratic and uninformed.
So if we can't rely on the public, all we're left with is the elites' opinions on things. Given that both elected officials and party activists tend to be higher SES and also more ideological, this results in politics being dominated by their preferences. Mancur Olson did a lot of work documenting the impact of interest-based democracy. His basic premise was that given how relatively unengaged the public is from politics, that the people with the most at stake -- the producer/capitalist class -- will inevitably come to dominate politics because they're better organized than consumers (ie. the lower and middle classes).
So I guess it comes down to whether or not the elites are interested in good governance, or just in lining their own pockets. Looking back on my post, I made it seem like elite-based politics is the way to go. I'm not making a normative statement to that effect, and I apologize if my posts have come across as such. What I am saying is that the classic democratic theory notion of the Will of the People isn't all it's cracked up to be.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Yes it is because you are ignoring that not all ways of preventing tyranny of the majority are created equal.
The Senate stops the kind of "rash" actions you are talking about not because that's what it's designed to do, but merely as a consequence of it's general incompetence. Pretending like the Senate performs a valued function because part of it's stupidity ends up slowing down some bad legislation is silly.
I'm not arguing that it's super-competent, but in fairness the original intent of the Senate was definitely to be a more "deliberative" (read: slow) body that could check the whims of the House. It was the same thought that went into the Electoral College and appointment (versus election) of Senators.
In fairness to what? A conflict between intent and outcome just means there was a mistake rather than malice. Doesn't matter anyways. Mistake or malice in the beginning, the Senate is malignant now.
You're presenting an incomplete picture anyways. It wasn't all benign, noble appeals to intellectual humming and hawing. The Senate was also created to give the smaller states incentive to stick with the bigger ones when foreign powers came knocking, rather than to start stabbing them in the back as was explicitly threatened.
I'm just pointing out that all of the qualities that you guys are describing now as being what's wrong with the institution are exactly as The Founders™ (Blessed be their names) intended. They wanted divisive legislation to get bogged down and eventually killed in the legislature.
And to be clear, I'm not saying I back that position. But reforming it in any meaningful way would: A) be obscenely difficult politically, both because popular opinion is anti-reform and because the reforms would have to come from the body being reformed; and might seem like a good idea when your team is in the majority in the Senate, but will probably seem like a bad idea once the majority shifts back to The Bad Guys.
I would much rather the Senate 1) be able to do things, even if they're things I don't like sometimes, and 2) work the way people think it works. For all intents and purposes, the Democrats do not control the Senate, but people think they do. I would rather give both parties the ability to pass legislation and the credit/blame for doing so. If the Bad Guys want to do something awful, at least let them have to stand up and fight for it in public, rather than doing it quietly with the help of the filibuster.
I'll break it down into very concrete terms: you know how a lot of people -- especially the arrogant jerks on this forum, myself included -- think a lot of our elected officials don't have a basic grasp of economics, or foreign policy, or science? Imagine that ignorance, but orders of magnitude worse. That is the American electorate. It sounds mean and dismissive, and I obviously don't want it to be that way, but time and time again the American electorate has shown that it just doesn't know about the issues. As I've said before, it's not necessarily their fault either. People have full-time jobs and families to worry about; our public education system is a joke; and Americans have had a historical distaste for politics and politicians. But the end result is the same: public opinion on a given issue is usually erratic and uninformed.
So if we can't rely on the public, all we're left with is the elites' opinions on things. Given that both elected officials and party activists tend to be higher SES and also more ideological, this results in politics being dominated by their preferences. Mancur Olson did a lot of work documenting the impact of interest-based democracy. His basic premise was that given how relatively unengaged the public is from politics, that the people with the most at stake -- the producer/capitalist class -- will inevitably come to dominate politics because they're better organized than consumers (ie. the lower and middle classes).
So I guess it comes down to whether or not the elites are interested in good governance, or just in lining their own pockets. Looking back on my post, I made it seem like elite-based politics is the way to go. I'm not making a normative statement to that effect, and I apologize if my posts have come across as such. What I am saying is that the classic democratic theory notion of the Will of the People isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I understand that the majority of people are woefully uninformed and that many are prone to irrationality. But as you said, "it comes down to whether or not the elites are interested in good governance, or just in lining their own pockets." I firmly believe the latter is true (and this goes for both parties), and I feel that the historical record supports that conclusion. So while I do not trust the masses to understand issues well enough to make good decisions, I put even less trust in elites whose interests are fundamentally opposed to those of the majority. It's an intractable problem, which is part of why I think a nation-state (especially one of this scale) is inherently impossible to run well, and why I advocate for self governing communities as opposed to the hierarchical bureaucracy of nations. But I guess that's a broader issue than the dysfunctional Senate, and one probably better suited to a different thread.
edit- It also doesn't help that the corporate media, which is the primary source of information on policy issues for many people, is deliberately misleading and uninformative.
The Senate is meant to slow things down, but it isnt meant to have a fillibuster in the form it does now. The current fillibuster was created and continues to be supported by Senators that want more influence for individual Senators.
Ok, I'm starting to get annoyed with the national level stories on Baucus' announcement, because of how fucking clueless they are.
Details? I enjoy good Hedgie rage, especially directed at two of my least favorite assholes.
Also, elites have driven this country into the ground and can go fuck themselves, Hamurabi. Frankly, the country as a whole is smarter than you give it credit.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Ok, I'm starting to get annoyed with the national level stories on Baucus' announcement, because of how fucking clueless they are.
Details? I enjoy good Hedgie rage, especially directed at two of my least favorite assholes.
Also, elites have driven this country into the ground and can go fuck themselves, Hamurabi. Frankly, the country as a whole is smarter than you give it credit.
A lot of elite families have been good for the country though. This country was formed because a bunch of elite landowners and merchants didn't want to pay the British Crown taxes and wanted to compete against Crown monopolies, after all.
We have elites on our side like the Roosevelts, the Kennedies, Warren Buffet, etc.
Its just we also have the Southern slave owning elites in the past and people like the Koch brothers in the present opposing them.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Yes it is because you are ignoring that not all ways of preventing tyranny of the majority are created equal.
The Senate stops the kind of "rash" actions you are talking about not because that's what it's designed to do, but merely as a consequence of it's general incompetence. Pretending like the Senate performs a valued function because part of it's stupidity ends up slowing down some bad legislation is silly.
I'm not arguing that it's super-competent, but in fairness the original intent of the Senate was definitely to be a more "deliberative" (read: slow) body that could check the whims of the House. It was the same thought that went into the Electoral College and appointment (versus election) of Senators.
In fairness to what? A conflict between intent and outcome just means there was a mistake rather than malice. Doesn't matter anyways. Mistake or malice in the beginning, the Senate is malignant now.
You're presenting an incomplete picture anyways. It wasn't all benign, noble appeals to intellectual humming and hawing. The Senate was also created to give the smaller states incentive to stick with the bigger ones when foreign powers came knocking, rather than to start stabbing them in the back as was explicitly threatened.
I'm just pointing out that all of the qualities that you guys are describing now as being what's wrong with the institution are exactly as The Founders™ (Blessed be their names) intended. They wanted divisive legislation to get bogged down and eventually killed in the legislature.
And to be clear, I'm not saying I back that position. But reforming it in any meaningful way would: A) be obscenely difficult politically, both because popular opinion is anti-reform and because the reforms would have to come from the body being reformed; and might seem like a good idea when your team is in the majority in the Senate, but will probably seem like a bad idea once the majority shifts back to The Bad Guys.
I would much rather the Senate 1) be able to do things, even if they're things I don't like sometimes, and 2) work the way people think it works. For all intents and purposes, the Democrats do not control the Senate, but people think they do.
The majority controls all the committees. It controls the structure and limits of debate. It controls the number of amendments, and which party will be allowed to offer them. It defines the procedural rules by which the body will operate. How does the majority not control the Senate? Because of that fact that 41 members can sometimes join together and threaten to grind the proceedings to a halt for a couple of days if the majority won't compromise?
The majority party does control the Senate. Your problem is that your majority didn't crush its enemies as thoroughly as you'd have preferred. Your problem is that it isn't partisan enough!
Yes it is because you are ignoring that not all ways of preventing tyranny of the majority are created equal.
The Senate stops the kind of "rash" actions you are talking about not because that's what it's designed to do, but merely as a consequence of it's general incompetence. Pretending like the Senate performs a valued function because part of it's stupidity ends up slowing down some bad legislation is silly.
I'm not arguing that it's super-competent, but in fairness the original intent of the Senate was definitely to be a more "deliberative" (read: slow) body that could check the whims of the House. It was the same thought that went into the Electoral College and appointment (versus election) of Senators.
In fairness to what? A conflict between intent and outcome just means there was a mistake rather than malice. Doesn't matter anyways. Mistake or malice in the beginning, the Senate is malignant now.
You're presenting an incomplete picture anyways. It wasn't all benign, noble appeals to intellectual humming and hawing. The Senate was also created to give the smaller states incentive to stick with the bigger ones when foreign powers came knocking, rather than to start stabbing them in the back as was explicitly threatened.
I'm just pointing out that all of the qualities that you guys are describing now as being what's wrong with the institution are exactly as The Founders™ (Blessed be their names) intended. They wanted divisive legislation to get bogged down and eventually killed in the legislature.
And to be clear, I'm not saying I back that position. But reforming it in any meaningful way would: A) be obscenely difficult politically, both because popular opinion is anti-reform and because the reforms would have to come from the body being reformed; and might seem like a good idea when your team is in the majority in the Senate, but will probably seem like a bad idea once the majority shifts back to The Bad Guys.
I would much rather the Senate 1) be able to do things, even if they're things I don't like sometimes, and 2) work the way people think it works. For all intents and purposes, the Democrats do not control the Senate, but people think they do.
The majority controls all the committees. It controls the structure and limits of debate. It controls the number of amendments, and which party will be allowed to offer them. It defines the procedural rules by which the body will operate. How does the majority not control the Senate? Because of that fact that 41 members can sometimes join together and threaten to grind the proceedings to a halt for a couple of days if the majority won't compromise?
The majority party does control the Senate. Your problem is that your majority didn't crush its enemies as thoroughly as you'd have preferred. Your problem is that it isn't partisan enough!
Control means you have power sufficient to pass something. You are arguing very persuasively that the majority has powers necessary to pass a bill while missing the 10-vote difference between the two.
As the filibuster works now, it breaks the Senate. Right now the majority doesn't really control the agenda because a minority can shut everything down.
IMO, I'd argue that filibuster probably radicalizes the Senate a little. Once you have a setup where 41 Senators can guarantee nothing happens (fun fact you don't need 41 with this bullshit, since it takes 60 votes to shut down the filibuster) that they don't like. So you get this bullshit game where one side obstructs everything they don't like, while they are the minority and then they try to ram through everything they want, while they are the majority. If we didn't have the filibuster people would be willing to compromise because there is no viable option of being an obstinate, regressive asshole that pushes through god awful policies since they go down in flames once power changes hands (this can happen quicker than court rulings).
Yeah, that was about the least intellectually honest description of how the Senate operates I've ever seen.
And I'm not even a huge anti-Senate guy.
That is how the Senate works from an institutional perspective, though. There's a reason Rules is basically the most powerful committee in either chamber. They get the set the terms of debate for every piece of legislation that comes through, and the majority controls the Rules committee in the same proportion it controls the general assembly of either chamber.
That Senators are increasingly willing to use (the threat of) the filibuster is a phenomenon separate from the institutional workings of the Senate itself. The logical counterpoint to this is that the filibuster is by definition an institutional part of the Senate, but it hasn't always been a problem per se. The problem being addressed here is the new culture of obstructionism that is, to my knowledge, new to even post-1968 divided government politics.
Everybody always points out that the senate's designed function was to slow the process of turning the popular will into policy, but fails to ever explain why this is actually something that is desirable.
The problem is the senate. The problem is exacerbated by the reality of campaign finance, but it was a problem long before mass media created the current cost of campaigns.
Because the popular will is how we get shit like California Proposition 13.
Popular will is terrible, except when it isn't.
When a mass shooting happens, and 90% of people want some new gun control measure, it's the will of the people, and it's the mean old Senate keeping it from happening. When it's been a few years since one, and that drops to about 50%, it's still the will of the people. And if it sits at 45%? Well, it's still common sense regulation that we need to be a better society, will of the people be damned.
When a majority support something like DOMA, it's tyrrany of the majority. When that popular opinion turns, suddenly we have to listen to the will of the people.
The people often want terrible things. Whether you're conservative or liberal, because the people are basically idiots who are easily led from point to point. Popular will is exactly how we get shit like DOMA, and the Iraq War for that matter. Of course, the Senate didn't stop those. So that makes me wonder, what has the Senate done in favor of liberals? Like, what were Democrats filibustering back during the Bush administration? I know they used it less, blah blah blah, but sure they must have blocked some dumb shit other than judicial nominations? What was it?
You are confusing what the Constitution and Judicial Review are for with what the Senate is for/does.
No, in at least one case it's not necessarily a constitutional issue I was even mentioning.
I'm pointing out that what the majority wants isn't always that great, so the Senate being nonrepresentative isn't necessarily a problem.
Same for the failure of the senate, or congress, to enact legislation that majorities, even cast majorities, want at this moment.
Because a majority of Americans are often terrible.
You're kind of conflating the tyranny of the majority with majority rule. It's not the majority that's the problem, it's the tyranny. Empowering an arbitrary minority only means that arbitrary minority is part of the tyrannizing group when the tyrranizing happens.
In the case of the Senate that over-represented minority would be white conservative rural people.
They have a great record of not tyrannizing people.
Keep in mind also that a lot of tyrranizing takes place in the maintanance of an unjest status quo.
Maintanance of an unjust status quo is what the Senate does.
I think the Senate is actually worse since they do occasionally move quickly. It's just on terrible shit that confirms Very-Serious-People (ie - DC insiders) beliefs.
I just realized that I'm spelling tyrranizing in all kinds of different ways. And I'm on a work computer with a version of Chrome that doesn't have spellcheck.
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I would totally understand the "But the other side would get away with all manner of nutty with less roadblocks!" if the other side had ever let things like that slow them down or if my side had any ideological and moral fortitude.
I would totally understand the "But the other side would get away with all manner of nutty with less roadblocks!" if the other side had ever let things like that slow them down or if my side had any ideological and moral fortitude.
I want the other side to get away with nutty, just so long as it can be undone. As it is, the problem is that the status quo bias means nutty can very well be long-lasting even if it's unpopular.
If you have a system where you elect someone and they can do anything they want without restriction until the next election you know exactly who to blame/reward at the next election.
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And their families' taxes.
And their businesses' taxes.
And
I mean, it's a start, but it's a bigger problem than just 100 people.
And they don't receive these things while they're in office, generally, anyway. They get them for campaigns and they get golden parachutes.
If they are buying pools with Lobbyist money they are already committing giant legal violations. It has been ages since we've seen that kind of thing, in part because their taxes are publicly disclosed every year.
If somebody wants to make a case for bribery being an actual problem in the Senate that's one thing, but lobbyists it ain't.
The revolving door exists quite plainly, in the house not the senate.
Lobbyists finance senatorial campaigns for the purpose of influencing legislation, you know we call it Lobbying.
If that is a problem that needed to be fixed, one would fix campaign finance laws.
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes
Lobbyists are typically recruiting Senators who lose reelection bids, not those who retire. (Retirement from the Senate is not very common unless you are very old. Losing while you still have a desire to work is more likely.) Congressman are more likely to drop out for lobbyist paydays.
Edit: It's worth noting that Senators do not typically need any kind of salary in their personal lives. They're all rich as hell anyway.
Except "time and deliberation" actually just mean "narrow special interest groups stalling legislation, sometimes in return for kickbacks" and "undermining the feedback loop between action and election that is what makes democracy function". With a healthy does of "complete inability to act when needed" like we've seen with the current economic situation in the US.
There is no gain to an inefficient government. It just leads to shitty legislation and undermines the democratic process.
The Senate exists to give a small "wise" minority a say in the legislative process. With emphasis on focusing on state interests. The problem is it's very good at this. And that "wise" minority is composed of the people in the Beltway Bubble and the lobbyists that feed and inform them and "state interest" has always just meant "kickbacks".
If they don't need money why are they beholden to campaign contributions (while also not caring about their personal wealth as Seruko claims)?
Similarly if Senators are being recruited because they still want to work why are their salaries so high? A former Senator can lobby on their own, which if they're just in it for power and influence and their pet agenda we would see them tend to do rather than join a firm and receive a salary.
Note that lobbyists recruiting Senators who lose reelection does not negate the theory.
You are confusing what the Constitution and Judicial Review are for with what the Senate is for/does.
It is, afaik, pretty rare for the bulk of a campaign's funding to come from a candidate's own pocket. The party provides some, but the majority typically comes from fundraising, and is technically considered "campaign funds," and not "buy $45k watches and fur coats" funds.
Because while a Senator only really needs one solid platinum yacht, Senate campaigns cost enough to buy seven.
Pride, mostly, I suspect. Politics is rarely an wholly-rational market.
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The discussion of popular will is getting somewhere though. Obviously the popular will can sometimes be wrong, and the public can make bad decisions (all one has to do is look at any state with citizen ballot measures for evidence of this.) But the senate isn't really a great solution to this issue, and in lots of ways it makes it worse.
Government is hardly ever 'ahead' of the popular will on any issue of significance, and institutions like the senate ensure that it changes much more slowly. California's gay marriage ban was unfortunate but appears likely to be repealed before long; on the other hand if we waited for Congress to repeal DOMA we'd probably wait another 20 years (mostly because of the senate.) This is even more noticeable in the case of issues like public health care, which has been popular for half a century and has been in the platform of every serious presidential candidate on both sides since truman, but which is only now being haltingly adopted.
Countries without systemic bulwarks like the senate still elect governments; sometimes those governments suck, and they get replaced in a couple years with something people like better. The senate sucks just as much, but without the ease of replacement.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
No, in at least one case it's not necessarily a constitutional issue I was even mentioning.
I'm pointing out that what the majority wants isn't always that great, so the Senate being nonrepresentative isn't necessarily a problem.
Same for the failure of the senate, or congress, to enact legislation that majorities, even cast majorities, want at this moment.
Because a majority of Americans are often terrible.
Because I'll stake out my claim right meow: public opinion is not a way to run a country. While things are slowly shifting in a positive direction vis-a-vis things like gay marriage and immigration, relying on the electorate to have any idea wtf is going on is doomed from the start. This is exactly why we have elites to rationalize and aggregate constituency demands: because constituents are by and large ignorant of the issues, and even when they express an opinion on an issue, there's a good chance it's based on no political content except for what they heard someone say one time. This isn't necessarily their fault -- people have shit to do -- but it is A Thing That Exists.
That said, there are certainly other, less obvious institutional factors that dilute The Will of the People. Namely, an SMD-P system that incentivizes candidates to move away from the logic of the logic of the Downsian median voter model because of the substantial impact of party ID as a heuristic device for the electorate. Coupled with direct primaries -- in which basically only the ideological base shows up -- the net effect of this is more ideologically extreme MCs who have no incentive to move to the center to capture the hypothetical median voter.
Yes it is because you are ignoring that not all ways of preventing tyranny of the majority are created equal.
The Senate stops the kind of "rash" actions you are talking about not because that's what it's designed to do, but merely as a consequence of it's general incompetence. Pretending like the Senate performs a valued function because part of it's stupidity ends up slowing down some bad legislation is silly.
I'm not arguing that it's super-competent, but in fairness the original intent of the Senate was definitely to be a more "deliberative" (read: slow) body that could check the whims of the House. It was the same thought that went into the Electoral College and appointment (versus election) of Senators.
In fairness to what? A conflict between intent and outcome just means there was a mistake rather than malice. Doesn't matter anyways. Mistake or malice in the beginning, the Senate is malignant now.
You're presenting an incomplete picture anyways. It wasn't all benign, noble appeals to intellectual humming and hawing. The Senate was also created to give the smaller states incentive to stick with the bigger ones when foreign powers came knocking, rather than to start stabbing them in the back as was explicitly threatened.
I'm not saying the masses will always or even usually make rational decisions, but the track record of elite decision-making is simply too awful to justify trusting their will over our own. If the alternative to representative, democratic decision making was an objective, logical analysis by experts, the argument might hold some merit, but in reality it just gives the bourgeoisie even more influence on the legislative process.
I'm just pointing out that all of the qualities that you guys are describing now as being what's wrong with the institution are exactly as The Founders™ (Blessed be their names) intended. They wanted divisive legislation to get bogged down and eventually killed in the legislature.
And to be clear, I'm not saying I back that position. But reforming it in any meaningful way would: A) be obscenely difficult politically, both because popular opinion is anti-reform and because the reforms would have to come from the body being reformed; and
I'll break it down into very concrete terms: you know how a lot of people -- especially the arrogant jerks on this forum, myself included -- think a lot of our elected officials don't have a basic grasp of economics, or foreign policy, or science? Imagine that ignorance, but orders of magnitude worse. That is the American electorate. It sounds mean and dismissive, and I obviously don't want it to be that way, but time and time again the American electorate has shown that it just doesn't know about the issues. As I've said before, it's not necessarily their fault either. People have full-time jobs and families to worry about; our public education system is a joke; and Americans have had a historical distaste for politics and politicians. But the end result is the same: public opinion on a given issue is usually erratic and uninformed.
So if we can't rely on the public, all we're left with is the elites' opinions on things. Given that both elected officials and party activists tend to be higher SES and also more ideological, this results in politics being dominated by their preferences. Mancur Olson did a lot of work documenting the impact of interest-based democracy. His basic premise was that given how relatively unengaged the public is from politics, that the people with the most at stake -- the producer/capitalist class -- will inevitably come to dominate politics because they're better organized than consumers (ie. the lower and middle classes).
So I guess it comes down to whether or not the elites are interested in good governance, or just in lining their own pockets. Looking back on my post, I made it seem like elite-based politics is the way to go. I'm not making a normative statement to that effect, and I apologize if my posts have come across as such. What I am saying is that the classic democratic theory notion of the Will of the People isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I would much rather the Senate 1) be able to do things, even if they're things I don't like sometimes, and 2) work the way people think it works. For all intents and purposes, the Democrats do not control the Senate, but people think they do. I would rather give both parties the ability to pass legislation and the credit/blame for doing so. If the Bad Guys want to do something awful, at least let them have to stand up and fight for it in public, rather than doing it quietly with the help of the filibuster.
edit- It also doesn't help that the corporate media, which is the primary source of information on policy issues for many people, is deliberately misleading and uninformative.
MWO: Adamski
Details? I enjoy good Hedgie rage, especially directed at two of my least favorite assholes.
Also, elites have driven this country into the ground and can go fuck themselves, Hamurabi. Frankly, the country as a whole is smarter than you give it credit.
A lot of elite families have been good for the country though. This country was formed because a bunch of elite landowners and merchants didn't want to pay the British Crown taxes and wanted to compete against Crown monopolies, after all.
We have elites on our side like the Roosevelts, the Kennedies, Warren Buffet, etc.
Its just we also have the Southern slave owning elites in the past and people like the Koch brothers in the present opposing them.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
In other Senate news, Michigan Athletic Director and former Domino's CEO is weighing a bid for Levin's seat, apparently. As a Republican obviously.
I hope he runs and loses, so he loses his current job. I haaaaaaaaaaate him.
The majority controls all the committees. It controls the structure and limits of debate. It controls the number of amendments, and which party will be allowed to offer them. It defines the procedural rules by which the body will operate. How does the majority not control the Senate? Because of that fact that 41 members can sometimes join together and threaten to grind the proceedings to a halt for a couple of days if the majority won't compromise?
The majority party does control the Senate. Your problem is that your majority didn't crush its enemies as thoroughly as you'd have preferred. Your problem is that it isn't partisan enough!
Other than that, it's peachy keen.
And I'm not even a huge anti-Senate guy.
Control means you have power sufficient to pass something. You are arguing very persuasively that the majority has powers necessary to pass a bill while missing the 10-vote difference between the two.
IMO, I'd argue that filibuster probably radicalizes the Senate a little. Once you have a setup where 41 Senators can guarantee nothing happens (fun fact you don't need 41 with this bullshit, since it takes 60 votes to shut down the filibuster) that they don't like. So you get this bullshit game where one side obstructs everything they don't like, while they are the minority and then they try to ram through everything they want, while they are the majority. If we didn't have the filibuster people would be willing to compromise because there is no viable option of being an obstinate, regressive asshole that pushes through god awful policies since they go down in flames once power changes hands (this can happen quicker than court rulings).
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
That is how the Senate works from an institutional perspective, though. There's a reason Rules is basically the most powerful committee in either chamber. They get the set the terms of debate for every piece of legislation that comes through, and the majority controls the Rules committee in the same proportion it controls the general assembly of either chamber.
That Senators are increasingly willing to use (the threat of) the filibuster is a phenomenon separate from the institutional workings of the Senate itself. The logical counterpoint to this is that the filibuster is by definition an institutional part of the Senate, but it hasn't always been a problem per se. The problem being addressed here is the new culture of obstructionism that is, to my knowledge, new to even post-1968 divided government politics.
You're kind of conflating the tyranny of the majority with majority rule. It's not the majority that's the problem, it's the tyranny. Empowering an arbitrary minority only means that arbitrary minority is part of the tyrannizing group when the tyrranizing happens.
In the case of the Senate that over-represented minority would be white conservative rural people.
They have a great record of not tyrannizing people.
Maintanance of an unjust status quo is what the Senate does.
I think the Senate is actually worse since they do occasionally move quickly. It's just on terrible shit that confirms Very-Serious-People (ie - DC insiders) beliefs.
I want the other side to get away with nutty, just so long as it can be undone. As it is, the problem is that the status quo bias means nutty can very well be long-lasting even if it's unpopular.
If you have a system where you elect someone and they can do anything they want without restriction until the next election you know exactly who to blame/reward at the next election.