71–80 of 176 posts
That’s pretty normal. My ex worked at congress and she said that most bills are reviewed and changed by lobbyists before they are submitted. And a lot of their changes get adopted almost verbatim. Same happens with regulations.
I’ll remind everyone of the Princeton study that proved our democracy is a sham. Policy outcomes are almost exclusively the product of the preferences of economic elites, not of the People. If you do get a legislative outcome you wanted it’s a coincidence that some big power’s agenda accidentally aligned with your own.
I’ll remind everyone of the Princeton study that proved our democracy is a sham. Policy outcomes are almost exclusively the product of the preferences of economic elites, not of the People. If you do get a legislative outcome you wanted it’s a coincidence that some big power’s agenda accidentally aligned with your own.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Princeton study actually showed that when it comes to advancing policies, it was pretty much a wash. Their difference came in when looking at getting policies blocked . If a policy was unpopular with economic elites, they were effective at getting it shut down. It’s an important distinction, because there’s a clear way to see what causes this behavior. There are a myriad of ways that our systems make it easy to b…
I was totally with you until the last sentence. please go on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it’s really about identifying rules that are anti majoritarian. You say this as if anti majoritarian is a bug. It's not. It's a feature. The US system is supposed to prevent tyranny of the majority. That's why there are checks and balances in it. That's why the Constitution limits the powers of the branches of government, and why further limits were put in place in the Bill of Rights. The US system is not supposed…
The original founders didn’t design the current iteration of senate and house rules. You didn’t need 60 votes in the senate to pass anything in 1795. But in a way you’re right. “The founders” created a government that protected aristocratic interests explicitly. Most states had property requirements to vote when the constitution was ratified, and even higher property requirements to hold office. So you can definitely…
Laws are written in the US by the people who have time to write them: interns or lobbyists. Being a legislator is a crappy job where you have little time between fundraising and voting to read the laws you vote on, let alone write them. If you want to make a change, show up and meet in person with state and federal legislators. And if you think, "there outght to be a law" get one written with the help of a few lawyer…
I’ll remind everyone of the Princeton study that proved our democracy is a sham. Policy outcomes are almost exclusively the product of the preferences of economic elites, not of the People. If you do get a legislative outcome you wanted it’s a coincidence that some big power’s agenda accidentally aligned with your own.
If you're casting a populist distinction between "economic elites" and "the People" you've already fallen for an oversimplified, cynical, inflammatory framing of the issue that has always been used by demagogues throughout history.
I mean we have no problem looking at historical society and drawing a distinction between nobility and the masses. Why does that logic fall apart in modern day societies
I’ll remind everyone of the Princeton study that proved our democracy is a sham. Policy outcomes are almost exclusively the product of the preferences of economic elites, not of the People. If you do get a legislative outcome you wanted it’s a coincidence that some big power’s agenda accidentally aligned with your own.
So, just in the premise the study, by needing to throw away almost all the survey responses where everyone agrees and get the policies what they want, actually goes a far way to debunking the populist premise that "economic elites" and "the People" are opposing factions with inherently different political opinions.
Further, the study considered the group as "disagreeing" if the margin in survey answers was at least 10%. So if 90% of one group wanted something and 80% of the other, that was considered as them disagreeing.
When a follow-up study further filtered responses to questions where more that margin spans the 5% mark, i.e. most people in each group disagree, then the effect completely disappears and it's more or less a coin toss which way policy goes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing about what I wrote had anything to do with what congress is authorized to do. It was about the internal rules of the house and senate, and the process by which they are made. None of that is prescribed by the constitution.
> None of that is prescribed by the constitution. It would help to be a bit clearer. The Constitution specifies that the House and Senate make their own rules via a simple majority vote. The Senate set a rule that they would require a vote to end (previously unlimited) debate and hold a vote on an issue. Originally, this required a two thirds majority, which was lowered to 60 votes later. More recently, the Senate ch…
I do want to push back though a bit. The filibuster isn’t the only rule I was referring to, and the entirety of the constitutions specification of the rule making process is literally “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings”. So when I say rule making broadly has nothing to do with the constitution, it’s because it quite literally doesn’t.