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House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
231–240 of 382 posts
Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Manchin has made it clear he will happily (and literally) burn the entire planet down for $5M/year. If lobbying is legal, than bribes should be too. I'd chip into the "Pay Manchin a ransom of $50M to not do $50T of damage to the planet" fund.
Suppose you did pay each legislator $50M to work for the good of the whole country. Do you think this would prevent Manchin from being influenced by a $5M lagniappe? It's an extra 10%! And a certain well-known politician infamously took care to fleece the secret service for overpriced golf cart and hotel room rentals, despite getting hundreds of millions per year in emoluments revenues. Some people are really motivat…
Who's version of whats good?
Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
#233Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor famous for fighting for sane copyright law) does a great presentation on the root cause of Americas problems. He also ran for president in 2016. It can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates…
I'm sure its not an original idea but I always thought a more "fair" system would be all 18+ citizens would automatically be entered in a lottery every year that would fill 1/5 of the seats of a unicameral legislature of 500 seats. The winners would be given something insane, like $1 billion dollars for each member, at the end of 5 years of service with a yearly stipend of $1 million a year during their service. This…
This general idea is known as "sortition", and actually has quite a long history. In the United States, and many countries, sortition still has a role–people are randomly selected for jury duty.
However, in ancient Athens, one could become a magistrate (~a small-town mayor in modern times) through random selection. There was a term limit of one year, and you were only allowed to serve once in a lifetime. You also had to go through a basic examination called the dokimasia to be deemed competent.
Several other civilizations have used this method over history, typically with the intention of preventing corruption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
#234Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor famous for fighting for sane copyright law) does a great presentation on the root cause of Americas problems. He also ran for president in 2016. It can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates…
I like the idea of "blind" or anonymous congressional voting. It feels counterintuitive, but donors might be less willing to "buy" votes if they can't confirm that they're getting what they pay for. And a representative who has accepted lots of corporate money might feel safer "betraying" those donors. I think representatives would still feel pressure to vote in line with the interests of their constituents and get r…
How will voters know whether their reps are voting for the right things though
Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like the idea of "blind" or anonymous congressional voting. It feels counterintuitive, but donors might be less willing to "buy" votes if they can't confirm that they're getting what they pay for. And a representative who has accepted lots of corporate money might feel safer "betraying" those donors. I think representatives would still feel pressure to vote in line with the interests of their constituents and get r…
Not sure quite what you mean. It sounds like list voting, is that it?
I don't know how exactly it would work, I just mean a system where only the final vote tallies are made public -- not WHO voted for what.
Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting money out of politics would be a great reform (removing lobbyists, campaign finance reform, etc.). It also strikes me as almost impossible to implement. It's like getting the president of a company to switch to system whereby leadership is elected by the workers. It's all risk and low reward for them . However, another political reform I've toyed with in my head is secret voting in the House and the Senate. W…
That only solves for explicit quid pro quos. It does nothing for the case where corporate sponsors donate to candidates who honestly signal during campaigning that they are the kind of candidate who cares about those sponsors' interests. I think explicit quid pro quo is far less impactful/prevalent then pro-corporate donors simply looking at the pool of campaigners and putting weight behind candidates that look like…
This is how things actually work.
Also, small dollar donors are driving polarization of US politics, so I'm not sure big donors are really the problem.
Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fix for this was in the founding documents. We just jacked it up over the years. Congress passes laws. They aren't supposed to pass a vague law and then hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies. The House is the people's house. Each Representative represents some relatively equal number of constituents. The Senate is the States' house. The state legislatures sends senators. The Senat…
Trying to get clarification, as a layman here I think I'm missing your point. My understanding is that laws are by their nature kind of vague because the world is full of edge cases and they always require interpretation as they encounter new cases. > hand over the actual rule-making to unelected government bureaucracies. Are you referring to the judicial branch? Isn't that the system laid out in the founding docs? >…
Edge cases, often left to law enforcement to selectively enforce... lets see how that works out
Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
#238Hear me out... few people want to run for federal office already. The pay isn't great and it's hard work. If the US was a company, there'd be no question that we'd need to pay our leadership much better to attract top talent. We pay senators $170k a year to manage our country with a $20 trillion economy. So what we end up with is activists who crave power and elites from rich families for whom $170k a year is a round…
Why preclude people who may genuinely want to change things for the better? In your opinion there only seem to be power hungry people (wealthy or not) and career politicians.
Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you mean to reply to me here? I was trying to clear up your confusion that staff (and other expenses) were paid out of a congresspersons $150,000 salary (which is also a bit higher than that btw).
I am not particularly confused about the salary though I see how my comment point to that. I am trying to assert that political machines require money. Taxpayer money is one avenue the stock market is another. I am also saying that the money allocated, by taxpayer money, may not be enough. One way to alleviate this tension is investing in the stock market. If I am not mistaken, if this ban passes, would they not also…
> I am also saying that the money allocated, by taxpayer money, may not be enough
What is this hunch based on, given that you didn't know they had another $1,000,000+ to spend?
Re: House Democrats to propose ban on lawmaker stock trading – report
#240Lawrence Lessig (Harvard law professor famous for fighting for sane copyright law) does a great presentation on the root cause of Americas problems. He also ran for president in 2016. It can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE The short version is that to win primaries you need money. Money mainly comes from corporations and rich people. Taking money from corporations and rich people creates…
Getting money out of politics would be a great reform (removing lobbyists, campaign finance reform, etc.). It also strikes me as almost impossible to implement. It's like getting the president of a company to switch to system whereby leadership is elected by the workers. It's all risk and low reward for them . However, another political reform I've toyed with in my head is secret voting in the House and the Senate. W…
In the US, wouldn't that require a constitutional amendment? I thought Citizens United declared money to be free speech (paraphrasing) .