The Government Shutdown Countdown Lowdown MEGATHREAD

[KRonn]

Article on the Tea Party and how the US came to the shut down. There may be more of the same coming, unless some of the underlying dynamics change.

On the dynamics of the tea-party's levers over the GOP:

We argued in many ways that anger comes from alarm on the part of these older conservatives that they're losing their country — that's what they say. That they're the true Americans, and they're losing control of American politics. So that's the grass-roots component.

Now there is a somewhat new development at the top. There's no sense in which the grass-roots protests are a fake, or a creation of big money forces. But we have seen the unleashing of billionaire-backed, highly ideological groups that are outside the Republican apparatus, itself symbolized by people like Dick Armey. And much more recently, by Jim DeMint giving up a Senate position to move to Heritage, and turn Heritage into a much more hard-edged political machine. These guys are calling the shots about what happens in Congress. And that's why we saw the amazing thing of Heritage Action, under DeMint, indicating that it would score a vote for the leaders' proposals negatively — within 20 minutes, [Republican leaders] switched. And that's because they fear now the aroused grass-roots activists, the people who paid attention and vote in Republican primaries. And equally, they fear money coming to challenge them as ideologically impure if they vote the wrong way on key legislation.

What drives the anger:

But I don't really think it's helpful to announce that the entire Tea Party base is racist.  I don't think it's that simple. For one thing, they're just as riled up about immigration as they are about blacks. There's certainly a worry about a change in the social composition of America. But we found in our research that they also resent young people — including in their own families.

They think young people are not measuring up. That the grandsons and daughters and nieces and nephews expect to get free college loans, and don't get a job, and hold ideas that are not very American in their view — like Obama. Obama symbolizes all of this.

The rest here: http://www.salon.com/2013/10/17/tea_partiers_grave_fear_why_they_disdain_young_people_even_their_own/

Yeah, this fighting over spending is a never ending item now. Both sides are far apart.  That's going to continue to be a sticking point, whether Tea Party Repubs or non-TP Repubs. Dems want to keep spending as is, Repubs want to cut back. They haven't been able to get a budget for five years, the Dems couldn't even get a yearly budget passed when they had control of the House and Senate. So this fighting over debt limits and spending is going to continue. That is probably the main reason that Sequestration was put in place. A select committee of Repubs and Dems was supposed to come to agreement, else Sequestration would kick in, which it did obviously.

I think the Tea Party is more about their view of responsible spending in government, smaller govt. I just don't get that the Tea Party is some racist club. They may be annoyed over the mess of immigration but there's a lot there to be riled up about. Cries of racism, black, hispanic, whatever, is trotted out to condemn those who disagree with policy, and it just poisons the debate, IMO.

[KRonn]

I think the President's term should be six years. That way he/she can have enough time to get something done before the possibility of ouster after four years.  We don't go through the mess of a second term election, where a President becomes a lame duck for most of the second term. With six years a President could still be pushing for his/her policies and probably not become a lame duck so easily.

[merithyn]

I've read there are only 7 states (6 GOP controlled and 1 Dem controlled) that go nuts with the gerrymandering.  I've never lived in any of them so I can't say with any certainty, but my guess is that Joe Sixpack doesn't give it a second thought. 

Some of our posters are Texas residents, maybe they could tell you.

I believe that I live in the 1 Dem-controlled state. It's not that we don't give it a second thought. It's more - what can we do about it? That's one of those decisions that we can't really do much about when 95% of the elected (and those running for office) believe that it's good policy.

[Cecil]

I think the President's term should be six years. That way he/she can have enough time to get something done before the possibility of ouster after four years.  We don't go through the mess of a second term election, where a President becomes a lame duck for most of the second term. With six years a President could still be pushing for his/her policies and probably not become a lame duck so easily.

Wasnt that in the wings sometime around 1900? I´m not really well versed in early american 20th century history but I seem to recall it was more than just a suggestion.

[Berkut]

I think the President's term should be six years. That way he/she can have enough time to get something done before the possibility of ouster after four years.  We don't go through the mess of a second term election, where a President becomes a lame duck for most of the second term. With six years a President could still be pushing for his/her policies and probably not become a lame duck so easily.

I think two 4 year terms works fine.

Since the sitting President has a pretty large tactical advantage in getting re-elected, this pretty much amounts to an eight year term with the chance for the voting public to push the EJECT button if necessary.

[frunk]

I think chopping the election season down would help immeasurably.  About a full year of presidential election nonsense is way too much, during which hardly anything useful is done by any politician. 

Have the first primary in the first week of July, with the three smallest non-adjacent states by population (screw the Iowa/New Hampshire automatic right to be first).  Two weeks later do the next 10 smallest, followed two weeks later by the next 20 smallest, then two weeks later by the final 17.  Primaries will be done by mid-August leaving time for the party conventions and the debates.

[Berkut]

Yeah, I think there is a LOT of reform needed in how elections are run and financed. That would solve most of the problems people looking for term limits really want to solve.


And I wish the SC would recognize that freedom of speech cannot trump freedom of having your vote actually matter.


The idea that "freedom of speech" is threatened by the super-wealthy NOT being able to buy incredible influence through the campaign process is rather dumbfounding to me.

[DGuller]

Yeah, I think there is a LOT of reform needed in how elections are run and financed. That would solve most of the problems people looking for term limits really want to solve.

Why do you hate free speech?

[Berkut]

Yeah, I think there is a LOT of reform needed in how elections are run and financed. That would solve most of the problems people looking for term limits really want to solve.

Why do you hate free speech?

Exactly.

Sometimes the SC just cannot see the forest for the trees.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, I think there is a LOT of reform needed in how elections are run and financed. That would solve most of the problems people looking for term limits really want to solve.

Why do you hate free speech?

Exactly.

Sometimes the SC just cannot see the forest for the trees.

That is one of the weaknesses of a consutitional system of absolute rights.  How do you rank absolute rights in priority to themselves?

I have been involved in few cases challenging legislation limiting election spending in this country.  The test is, as you will already know from the other thread, different.  Here there is no question that spending limits breach the right to freedom of speech.  But that is only the beginning of the analysis.  The cases always turn on whether the restriction of the right is demonstrably justified in a free and democratic country.  That question becomes whether the evidence demonstrates the government's concern regarding the nature of the harm (your arguments in a nutshell) and whether the government can demonstrating that the nature of the restriction is the minimum required to address the identified harm (ie that the limit selected appropriately balances all the interests involved).

In that way the Court gets to throughly examine both the forest and the trees.

[grumbler]

Yeah, I think there is a LOT of reform needed in how elections are run and financed. That would solve most of the problems people looking for term limits really want to solve.


And I wish the SC would recognize that freedom of speech cannot trump freedom of having your vote actually matter.


The idea that "freedom of speech" is threatened by the super-wealthy NOT being able to buy incredible influence through the campaign process is rather dumbfounding to me.

I'd argue you are barking up the wrong tree.  It isn't that the super-wealthy are able to buy incredible influence (like Sheldon Adelson did by bankrolling Newt Gingrich into the White House), the problem is that businesses are able to buy congressmen for the purpose of suporting businesses big enough to buy congressmen.

The donation rules should be simple:  neither the parties nor the candidates should be eligible to take money from anyone unable to vote for them (except that candidates can take money from the party they belong to, and give money to the party), and other than that rule, there are no rules.  Anyone can spend as much money as they want to on any candidate, but non-citizens and non-human persons can give nothing.

[Grey Fox]

This part in the previously linked Salon article is pretty telling on the Why of all this.

Business interests and hospitals and doctors are grudgingly accepting this vast expansion of resources in their sector, and the disconnect in public opinion is so extreme. If you ask them about the particular provisions in the law, almost all of them are very popular, including with majorities of Republicans. So once this thing is actually carried through — and it's obviously not going to be easy, and it's not clear that the Obama administration is entirely up to it — this law is here to stay. It's not going anywhere. By 2016, it will not be reversible. And by about five years after that, people will be wondering what all the fuss was about.

[grumbler]

That is one of the weaknesses of a consutitional system of absolute rights.  How do you rank absolute rights in priority to themselves?

That's probably why no one has a constitutional system of absolute rights.

[derspiess]

This part in the previously linked Salon article is pretty telling on the Why of all this.

If you're pre-disposed to accept the leftist tripe published by Salon, I guess.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, I think there is a LOT of reform needed in how elections are run and financed. That would solve most of the problems people looking for term limits really want to solve.


And I wish the SC would recognize that freedom of speech cannot trump freedom of having your vote actually matter.


The idea that "freedom of speech" is threatened by the super-wealthy NOT being able to buy incredible influence through the campaign process is rather dumbfounding to me.

I'd argue you are barking up the wrong tree.  It isn't that the super-wealthy are able to buy incredible influence (like Sheldon Adelson did by bankrolling Newt Gingrich into the White House), the problem is that businesses are able to buy congressmen for the purpose of suporting businesses big enough to buy congressmen.

The donation rules should be simple:  neither the parties nor the candidates should be eligible to take money from anyone unable to vote for them (except that candidates can take money from the party they belong to, and give money to the party), and other than that rule, there are no rules.  Anyone can spend as much money as they want to on any candidate, but non-citizens and non-human persons can give nothing.

I agree with your rule on donations for sure, particularly for Senate and House elections. It's crazy how most of those are now heavily financed by out-of-state interests. I'd like the "if you can't vote for this guy for Senator/Rep, then you can't donate to his campaign."

When you distinguish between spending/donation though, are you saying you want the "can you vote for this guy" test to apply to donations, but there to be unlimited spending on say, political ads? So if I was CEO of Exxon, I couldn't donate to a Senate race in Oregon, but I could spend $50m running TV ads in Oregon on my own or my company's dime?