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Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

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Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#71

Post by darksaints »

brightball wrote: post #57
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

Five Constitutional amendments we need: 1. Strike pardon power; 2. First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”; 3. Abolish the electoral college; 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; and 5. Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. (President still names and Senate still confirms appointments. But they can be in…

You can’t abolish the electoral college without standardized voting across all states. A single state or even county allowing frivolous or unverified voting can swing the entire election. The EC provides a failsafe by capping the max impact of a single state in the event of an anomaly. In other words, you can’t talk about abolishing the EC without a national voter ID law.

Voter ID laws would not be a problem if said IDs were free. They’re not, and nobody that ever proposes such laws ever proposes a way to make IDs free, because they aren’t actually caring about election integrity, they only care about the practical disenfranchisement that would result from it.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#72

Post by cogman10 »

brightball wrote: post #57
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

Five Constitutional amendments we need: 1. Strike pardon power; 2. First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”; 3. Abolish the electoral college; 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; and 5. Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. (President still names and Senate still confirms appointments. But they can be in…

You can’t abolish the electoral college without standardized voting across all states. A single state or even county allowing frivolous or unverified voting can swing the entire election. The EC provides a failsafe by capping the max impact of a single state in the event of an anomaly. In other words, you can’t talk about abolishing the EC without a national voter ID law.

Not an issue.

Voter fraud has been prosecuted, measured, and accounted for across the US. It basically never has any sort of impact on any election. There are 10s of instances of it each year. Far too few to swing any election.

That said, I'd be willing to accept voter ID with a few caveats

1. A national ID has to be provided to all voters. Charging people to vote shouldn't happen.

2. We need reform to polling location laws, it should be a violation of the law if it takes more than 10 minutes to get to a polling location in a district.

3. We need reform to location capacity, more than a 10 minute wait to vote should be against the law.

I'm fine if we want to require in person voting or whatever. I'm fine with paper ballots counted by machines. That said, there should be accommodations made for the old or disabled.

You could even make the problem of fraud moot if you have mandatory voting (or opting out of voting) so that every person is accounted for regardless. It'd make it much harder for anyone to "cheat" as there'd be pretty obvious statistical anomalies.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#73

Post by moduspol »

pasc1878 wrote: post #49
moduspol wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were easy to change, there would be no purpose to having a Constitution.

There is a great difference between immutable and difficult to change. Do you want to be in a US without the Fourteenth Amendment? Actually it strictly immutable without any of the Amendments, no 1st, 2nd etc.

I think ratification by 2/3 of states fairly meets the definition of "difficult to change, but not immutable."

That it's been done numerous times in the past suggests it is quite far from immutable.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#74

Post by delecti »

bufbupa wrote: post #11
superxpro12 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throw something in there about gerrymandering. Maybe even ranked choice voting?

if we're making a wish list, I also want: - term limits for congress - voter day national holiday - if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election - repeal citizens united (maybe covered by op) - and change all fines/tickets to paid in human hours of community service rather than money

> term limits for congress

Then the most knowledgeable and experienced people in the room are lobbyists. And at its root, lobbying is just "asking congress for things".

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#75

Post by darksaints »

paulddraper wrote: post #44
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

Five Constitutional amendments we need: 1. Strike pardon power; 2. First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”; 3. Abolish the electoral college; 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; and 5. Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. (President still names and Senate still confirms appointments. But they can be in…

> 3. Abolish the electoral college; Many people think the EC is somehow a distinctly idiosyncrasy of the United States, but the Presidential election of the European Union is similar. The difference is that somewhere along the way, the member states of the USA lost most of their power. That hasn't yet happened to the members states of the EU. But perhaps it will?

The president of the European Commission is practically an inconsequential figurehead because of how the EU is structured. The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the US because of how the US is structured. It might be fine for them to have an electoral college like system for that but it absolutely is a disgrace that our most powerful person is elected by a handful of swing states.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#76

Post by AnimalMuppet »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24
KaiserPro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean yes, but the bigger issue is that the 14th amendment only survived by one fucking vote. The supreme court is one vote away from not upholding the constitution.

> the bigger issue is that the 14th amendment only survived by one fucking vote We have two corrupt justices. Until a President has the balls to enforce the law, this won’t be a problem solved by changing text on paper.

Um, which laws are you referring to here, that you claim the president is not enforcing?

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#77

Post by apparent »

russdill wrote: post #42
apparent wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No chance 3 ever passes, and a wealth tax would require an amendment unless it is "apportioned among the states" or some such thing (and it can't be because wealthy people are concentrated in a handful of states). Editing to add: It would also be a bad idea to abolish the EC because then candidates would only ever campaign in cities. They would completely ignore rural areas, which are financially and culturally diffe…

The irony here is (3) is by far the closest to actually occurring as in practice, it doesn't require amending the constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta... Of course, the SC could easily declare it unconstitutional....interpret any amendments as they see fit anyway. The decision on the 14th very nearly went the other way.

> The decision on the 14th very nearly went the other way.

Really? How do you know?

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#78

Post by moduspol »

comfydragon wrote: post #56
moduspol wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Campaigns already have strong limits. They get around it by giving money to PACs, which can spend money opposing other candidates or talking about issues in particular. Should there be limits on spending on messaging opposing a certain candidate? Or supporting / opposing a specific policy? It's going to be pretty tough to draw a line there that doesn't sound a lot like solidifying and entrenching the powers that alre…

> Campaigns already have strong limits. The SC decided today that political parties can spend as much money as they want in coordination with candidates.

Do you expect this to result in much substantive change relative to before the ruling was made?

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#79

Post by apparent »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #66
nickff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capital gains are permissible because of the 16th amendment; the 16A does not permit the congress to tax assets. It seems like quite a stretch to apply Moore to cash holdings.

We already have taxes on assets. They're called property taxes.

The state govts can do things that the federal govt is forbidden to do.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#80

Post by delecti »

knappe wrote: post #39
bufbupa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if we're making a wish list, I also want: - term limits for congress - voter day national holiday - if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election - repeal citizens united (maybe covered by op) - and change all fines/tickets to paid in human hours of community service rather than money

- if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election Ask Colorado how TABOR[0] is going. The answer is a 1.5 BILLION[1] deficit because TABOR restricts how money is collected and spent by the state. A balanced budget isn't actually all it is cracked up to be. The deficit spending at the federal level we have now is bonkers, but a balanced budget every year is just unrealistic. Learn from…

> What I'd like to see is Congress be entirely unable to draw a paycheck while the government is shutdown

Rich congresspeople already don't need their paycheck. I want more people in congress who need their paycheck, not more who don't.

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