What does that have to do with civil vs. common law? There isn't anything inherent in rule of law based on cases and precedent that should restrict infrastructure projects.
Why doesn't California actually do something productive with all its economic power? It now has the fourth largest economy in the world in terms of GDP. Why not experiment a little bit by providing public healthcare to California citizens free at the point of delivery/service? Or constructing high-speed rail to connect SoCal to the Bay Area?
Not sure if this was intended as sly humor or not. Between Covered CA and Medi-Cal health care is already relatively cheap or even free to those with the lowest incomes. And contrary to what critics claim, progress is being made with the high speed rail link both in the Central Valley and close to both San Francisco and Los Angeles.
> VOGEL: It's such a large market so that anything which California acquires for its own product sold in its state is going to resonate among national and global companies. If you don't want to have to make separate products for California and the rest of the country, you might as well just make them according to California's standards.
1. California is trying to construct rail. The project is the most expensive rail that has ever been built and basically no track has been laid. The company that was initially trying to do the build left to go build rail in Africa because it was less dysfunctional.
2. California has dramatic experiments in cheap/free healthcare and is facing a giant budget shortfall due to it. Right now it is asking the Fed to backstop it's healthcare spending but that seems extremely unlikely.
So even California can't run free healthcare it seems, and it has been unable to build any train track due to extreme bureaucratic paralysis.
Why not? Honest question. I assumed it was his attitude toward his southern neighbor that sealed his downfall, both politically and in the court of public opinion.
On the one hand, capitalists and business owners want people to have more children in order to keep the economy functioning. On the other hand, they want to make work as inconvenient as possible and want work to encompass the life of the employee.
It's becoming increasingly clear that there is a trade-off and an inverse relationship between career growth and family formation.
> To get a detailed lay of the land, Frachetti and Maksudov equipped a drone with remote-sensing technology called lidar (light detection and ranging). Drones are tightly regulated in Uzbekistan, but the researchers managed to get the necessary permits to fly one at the site. A lidar scanner uses laser pulses to map the features of land below. The technology has been increasingly used in archaeology—in the past few years it has helped uncover a lost Maya city sprawling beneath the rainforest canopy in Guatemala.
> This method has its limitations, Silvia says—namely, it often turns up false positives. It’s also impossible to confirm which features come from which time period without more excavation.
Despite the limitations, it's still great that this technology is making inroads in archaeology. Would be interested to see this put to work in the Sahara and other mostly unexplored/unexcavated areas. Seems to be a low-cost but potentially high-reward project.
It's only low cost by comparison to excavation, which is extraordinarily expensive. Good lidars would consume a considerable portion of the equipment budget for a field team. Back when I did this stuff, my budgets for a field season were less than a week's worth of my tech job salary.
One time I dragged a fixed wing out to the middle of Central Asia to do some aerial surveys. It went up, caught in some wind, and immediately dropped into a river never to be seen again. That one hurt.
There needs to be public funding of elections. That would go a long way.
If we really want reform, the system should be changed from a first-past-the-post presidential system to a parliamentary system with party-list proportional representation. Neither system is perfect, but the latter captures a wider range of views within society.
Germany is a stable constitutional federal republic with proportional representation and power vested in the Bundestag. No reason why the US can't have the same.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has been systematically attacking all attempts to limit private campaign finance, including public funding.
In 2011, in Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett, they ruled that a program that Arizona established which would give campaigns that opted out of private financing public financing matching their competitors financing infringed on the First Amendment speech rights of the privately financed campaign.
That's right, matching private campaign spending with public funding violates the free speech of the privately funded campaign, because it removes their advantage.
The solution to campaign finance needs to start and end with court reform, or it's DOA.
Exactly what reforms do you want? If you want first amendment restrictions you can look into passing another amendment. That's really how that's supposed to work. The logic behind the ruling is fine if you actually dig into it - funding is speech, government funding of some candidates and not others dilutes the speech of some citizens and effectively compels speech from other citizens through the government. A better approach would be restricting all political advertising to some government provided platform. This would avoid the wasteful government matching.
That line of logic is utterly insane even at a glance because it argues that citizens cannot be taxed for something they don’t support.
Shall we ask the DEA when they’ll be issuing refunds?
“Diluting” speech is equally incoherent. The presidents state of the nation address drags people away from my Twitter feed, so the government is diluting my speech. If the argument is just that the government can’t do anything that would make a citizen less heard, the government ceases to function because practically everything they do is more consequential than any citizens opinion.
The First Amendment doesn’t even say anything about being heard. It is a right to speak, not a right to be heard. Funding a candidate does not remove the right or ability for other candidates to speak.
> A better approach would be restricting all political advertising to some government provided platform.
This is not even close to passing even a cursory First Amendment analysis. Telling people they can’t advertise on Facebook/Google/etc is absolutely a First Amendment issue. It is literal speech, and the right to express it is abridged by location. This will never happen without an amendment.
The main flaw with the funding match is that campaign spending is already very wasteful and we shouldn't be trying to match that waste with tax dollars.
But you could go read Davis and the other case history about the undue restrictions and how a candidates own speech is constrained by matching schemes.
You didn’t, but I would also presume that reason dictates solutions be practical. Modifying the First Amendment is so far out of the Overton Window that I struggle to even call it a potential solution.
> But you could go read Davis and the other case history about the undue restrictions and how a candidates own speech is constrained by matching schemes.
That is not what Davis says; I would encourage you to re-read it or perhaps read it for the first time. Davis doesn’t even have to do with matching schemes, it has to do with differing contribution limits from third parties depending on a candidates own spending.
It’s still profoundly dumb, to the point where I feel worse off for having read it. Apparently a candidate being wealthy enough to bankroll orders of magnitude more funding than an opponent does not create “an appearance of corruption”, despite magnitudes of evidence on how effective advertising is. Alito was either an idiot or corrupt; probably the latter given his rank.
"Modifying the First Amendment is so far out of the Overton Window that I struggle to even call it a potential solution."
So too with the court reform suggestion.
"Davis doesn’t even have to do with matching schemes,"
No, but it is the case law that the appeals court felt compelled to follow with respect to matching schemes and later upheld in the combined appeal.
"Apparently a candidate being wealthy enough to bankroll orders of magnitude more funding than an opponent does not create “an appearance of corruption”, despite magnitudes of evidence on how effective advertising is."
If it's that effective and leading to poor outcomes, then regulate it like tobacco ads instead of forcing additional funding to a broken system. The majority of the political ads are intentionally deceptive anyways. We shouldn't be figuring how we can equitably fund the continuation of this shit, but how to reduce it overall.
The better solution is to continue respecting the First Amendment and not trying to restrict in any way, political speech, and instead reforming the electoral system so that the volume of speech one is able to output through the expenditure of financial resources does not have an impact on election outcomes.
The right as it is defined now, yes. The ability to restrict or redefine that right is still an option. See tobacco advertising and other harmful advertising that has been restricted.
Again, what are those electoral changes you believe will fix the issue?
So what I propose is completely different than what you're proposing, which is that you're proposing massively restricting the right to engage in political speech as we define it now.
That was a good decision, because the rule creates a negative responsiveness paradox. Spending money to support your preferred candidate should not make opposing candidates stronger.
That was the effect of Arizona's rule: money spent to promote a candidate was matched by free public money, which the opposing candidate did not have exert any effort to obtain.
Good voting systems minimize this effect. The US first-past-the-post system is not a good voting system, but that's no excuse for making it worse.
Yard signs, phone calls, websites, GOTV operations, consultants, debates, mailers, all of these things cost money. The current system requires you to appeal to donors with a winning message to get contributions to pay for these.
Who decides which candidates get limited public funds? Are you just going to split it equally between whoever runs? Why should the public pay for fringe campaigns that won't get any votes?
The Supreme Court is defending the First Amendment, and "court reform" is a euphemism for eliminating the independence of the judiciary in order to dismantle those First Amendment protections.
Supreme Court justices are taking bribes to deliver outcomes their cronies want, and "court reform" is a euphemism for holding justices selling our country accountable.
Harlan Crow just loves to sprinkle robust black men in gowns with money, six star vacations, and RV's as much as he loves painting by Adolf Hitler and Nazi memorabilia.
We shouldn't kink shame or say that he expects any quo to his quids.
> those who want to destroy the independence of the judiciary.
Bit late to whine about that fait accompli.
It'll take decades to wind back Mitch McConnell's two decade deep tainting of the US justice system with Federalist Society stooges.
He might love to shower his friends with gifts, and might find friendship with exactly the kind of minds that are bright enough to become Supreme Court justices.
>It'll take decades to wind back Mitch McConnell's two decade deep tainting of the US justice system with Federalist Society stooges.
Appointing justices when a space opens up is the standard way of doing it, and federalist judges adhere to the Constitution, so outside of a certain ideological camp, there is nothing wrong with appointing them.
The lifetime tenure gives the Supreme Court justices a degree of independence that would vanish should every congress and president be able to totally capture the court in a single four year cycle by adding any arbitrary number of new justices to out vote the sitting justices.
I think even the most conservative of conservatives couldn't really argue our Supreme Court is defending the First Amendment. There's no speech restriction here - rather it's an attempt to further enrich the establishment by ensuring only career politicians and the ultra-rich can campaign. If anything, this is a speech restriction, because I do not have the ability to have my own campaign speech.
There is a very obvious argument that restricting the right to pay for political advertisements violates the First Amendment. You can read the argument here:
Yes, there is an argument, that doesn't mean I agree with the argument or that's it's even reasonable. You can make an argument for anything, certainly we've made arguments for eugenics in the past.
In my opinion, corporations are fundamentally different than individuals and only the naivest reading of the constitution would extend such rights to them.
In addition, even if you can argue it, you still have to face the reality that this is harmful. Just because you're able to play an "erm, akchually!" game doesn't mean you can ignore consequences. There are many things which are technically correct but in practice are awful.
Exhibit A: you could argue the second amendment extends to fully automatic miniature machine guns. And we allowed those for a long time. In practice, there's virtually no benevolent use for such weapons and outlawing them is a no-brainer. Outlawing such weapons was a large factor in dismantling the American mafias of the past. Now nobody really cares, and we've all moved on - obviously, it was not such an important right in the first place.
You haven't actually contended with the legal reasoning provided for this position — that corporations are entitled First Amendment protections — by the courts. So you're just assuming they're wrong, without any kind of substantiation. Your reaction is entirely politically motivated as opposed to motivated by careful and objective study of the law.
My response it motivated by outcomes, your response is motivated by an extreme devotion to far-right ideology.
We both understand that such rulings undermine democracy and are detrimental to our country as a whole. However, that is what you want, because you are an extremist. You merely pretend to use law as a cover, when in reality you're jumping at any and all opportunities to undermine democracy.
There exists not a single reasonable person who believes giving large, powerful corporations the power to influence elections is a good thing. You know, and understand, that is a bad thing.
I do not care if the "law", as you understand it, promotes bad things. They are still bad.
In addition, before this ruling and others the opposite has been argued. You, too, are not participating in "careful and objective study of the law". We have many, many years of legal precedent being overturned here. Why, then, does that precedent not matter?
Please, drop the facade of objectivity because I don't care. Either say what you intend to say or do all of us a favor and stay silent. I grow tired of those so ashamed of their own beliefs they dare not speak them.
>My response it motivated by outcomes, your response is motivated by an extreme devotion to far-right ideology.
>We both understand that such rulings undermine democracy and are detrimental to our country as a whole
You're displaying an unearned sense of moral superiority, built on the assumption that you fully understand my motivations and intentions. You're convinced that my viewpoint must stem from some sort of malicious intent and/or ideological blindness, rather than from genuine differences in opinion.
When you claim it's 'obvious' I'm wrong, you’re essentially weaponizing your own beliefs to silence dissent. Rather than engaging with the substance of my argument, you’re claiming your argument is correct on the basis of the very premise that is under contention. It's circular reasoning that you're badgering me with as a bullying tactic. It's authoritarian extremism.
I don't think prioritizing democracy is more moral, but evidently you do. I am not responsible for your own shame. This has consistently been my experience with extremist conservatives: they are riddled with shame about their own beliefs they choose to have. They often lie about what they believe, excluding huge amounts of information, to try to paint what they think will be a more pleasant picture of their beliefs. It's rather sad in my opinion.
> malicious intent and/or ideological blindness, rather than from genuine differences in opinion
I'm "assuming" this because you haven't actually shared any opinion. You, and others, haven't demonstrated what good will come from allowing corporations more direct influence over elections.
Because, presumably, you understand nothing good will come of it. If you did, I would hope such a silver bullet would be the first words out of your mouth in an argument. But they are inexplicably missing.
> silence dissent
Again, there's no dissent for me to silence.
> It's authoritarian extremism
I'm a person, not an authoritarian. Perhaps if you want a more equal argumentative battlefield, you can create a multi-billion dollar corporation and steer democracy to your liking?
I have no obligation to give your arguments equal weight, particularly when you are too cowardly to even articulate your arguments. If you don't even believe yourself then obviously I don't either.
If you could articulate how giving the ultra-wealthy and ultra-powerful even greater influence over elections than they already have is somehow a good thing for democracy and voters like you or I, then I will listen. Until then there's simply nothing for me to listen to.
>I don't think prioritizing democracy is more moral, but evidently you do.
I think your constant personal attacks show an unearned sense of moral superiority.
>They often lie about what they believe,
More assumptions of bad faith showing your unearned sense of moral superiority over your political opposition.
>I'm "assuming" this because you haven't actually shared any opinion.
Me not sharing an opinion on a different topic than what we were discussing is not evidence of ignorance or malicious intent.
But your hubris and pathological belief in the moral inferiority of the political opposition blinds you to basic logic.
I will not allow you to hijack the debate and move the subject to something that we were not discussing with your baseless personal attacks and generalizations about anyone who disagrees with the political left. It's a heinous way of debating, you're basically a bully and an extremist, and I'm not going to indulge in your attempts and your bait. I've already made my point about the Supreme Court and the lack of legal basis for your arguments about their judgments, and that's all there is to debate until we've resolved that issue.
SCOTUS doesn't "attack" anything. They issue a ruling based on law. It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we like, it's fair and impartial, and any time there's a judicial ruling we don't like, it's judicial activism.
The other reply already makes it pretty clear why this Arizona's law violated 1A. If you want to make a legal argument that donating money to a political campaign isn't political speech, go for it. But right now it's considered protected political speech so this ruling makes perfect sense.
"Court reform" is a funny way of phrasing "ignoring the Constitution."
This isn't even a partisan issue. Harris has been on the ballot 4 months and her campaign has raised approximately 3x the amount of money Trump's has. Moneyed interests are absolutely on the side of Harris this time around.
The Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade 2 years ago and the Chevron doctrine recently.
Do you think these judgements were both supported by the constitution when they were made and also not supported by the same constitution when overturned? Which one was the "ruling based on law"?
If there was a straight deterministic line from the laws to the rulings the court make, we would need far less courts or lawyers or highly trained judges. The fact is there are a million laws and precedents with 100 applying to any given situation in slightly different ways with many interpretations. Laws are written vaguely to keep them somewhat future-proof and leave room for interpretation/evolution. The courts do have a lot of power here.
It was Chevron deference that was overturned and it's a very important distinction. The only thing that changed was that courts were required to give deference to the agency interpretation of a statute. Now the agency needs to prove they're not misinterpreting the statute. That seems like a good change, no? Having to prove you're right in court instead of the judge being required to just assume you're right unless they're overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
No, it seems to severely undercut the efficiency and power of regulatory agencies to me. Court cases are extremely slow & expensive and having to wait 5-10 years to act is almost as good as not being able to act. I think this might be good in a world where senate could quickly make/amend laws and courts could quickly decide on them, but that's far from where we are..
But that's besides the point, now we're arguing about which is better, but the point is neither is unambiguously correct or following/ignoring the constitution as you earlier claimed. It's simply the court using their authority to take a political stance.
The courts are not directly answerable to the public and hence should not make political decisions in a democracy, yet they made a decision that goes against what the majority [1] of the country wanted.
It seems like a good change if you're a Helen Keller impersonator. To anyone not blind and deaf, we understand the intention of that ruling is to cripple the agencies as much as possible.
That is, and has been, conservative political policy. If you're conservative and ideologically opposed to the notion of the bureaucracy in general then it's a good change, because now they are much weaker.
The fatal flaw you're making here is that courts are impartial. No, the intention of this overturning is such that rules which are obviously correct can still be challenged, delayed, and even killed by conservative courts. It takes even a cursory glance at the courts in Texas to understand this is the case.
There're two aspects to law: what it says, and how it's practiced. What it says is that overstepping agencies must now prove they are following the laws as set by Congress. In practice, this means agencies will be blocked by extremely ungenerous conservative interpretations of law such that they cannot enforce common-sense regulations, with the intention of further empowering the private sector.
Later rulings supersede previous ones because later rulings review their precedents and will correct mistakes that they identify in their precedents, so if a later ruling found those earlier rulings incorrect in their application of the law, we assume there was in fact a misjudgment in those older rulings. The justices provided legal reasoning in overturning Roe vs Wade and the Chevron doctrine, and unless you find some glaring mistake in that reasoning, the default assumption should be that the rulings to overturn these doctrines were legally sound.
This completely ignores the political motivations for rulings. In my opinion, a person who does not at least try to address the obvious partisanism of our current court is not worth listening to.
Please keep in mind some justices have gone as far as recommending revisiting rulings on same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. We cannot continue to play stupid.
There is no obvious political motivation. You're simply assuming that a ruling that is favored by the political camp you identify with could only be overruled due to political motivations, which is not sound reasoning, and only reveals your own political motivations.
No, I'm reasoning based on the history of these judges and the extreme conservative stances that they are, in fact, politically motivated. Not to mention they're not anywhere close to consistent in their views. On one hand, they're extremely textualist and will routinely shut down power for other branches of government. On the other, when it comes time to save Trump, of course they then declare former presidents have absolute immunity.
Once again, if you're not able to at least begin to acknowledge the obvious political biases of our current court, you're not worth talking to. There's no point in arguing with dishonest people, because they can just lie when they feel like they're losing. As a side note, playing stupid is also a form of dishonesty. I don't really care if you "know nothing", if that's the case then don't bother speaking.
Being "extremely conservative" in their rulings has no relevance to the likelihood of them being politically motivated. It's entirely possible that the Constitution itself is "extremely conservative", given the well known commitment of the framers of the Constitution to limiting the power of the federal government through Constitutional restraints, and the 130 years of judicial history during which the SCOTUS consistently ruled the way the current SCOTUS is ruling on cases.
> Being "extremely conservative" in their rulings has no relevance to the likelihood of them being politically motivated
> It's entirely possible that the Constitution itself is "extremely conservative"
No, because they aren't actually textualists. Only when it can be used to propagate a republican agenda. Then, suddenly, they're not textualists otherwise.
I'm saying their lack of consistency in constitutional interpretation, combined with their extreme consistency with ruling that help current republican and conservatives' agendas, demonstrates they are politically motivated.
You would have to be both blind and deaf to legitimately believe this court is interpreting the constitution in good faith. Expanding the powers of the president to such an unprecedented and downright monarchic degree? Really? Let's not play stupid.
>No, because they aren't actually textualists. Only when it can be used to propagate a republican agenda. Then, suddenly, they're not textualists otherwise.
Throwing out accusations of judicial corruption without evidence is reckless and, frankly, undermines the integrity of any meaningful critique you may hope to offer. These are not trivial charges; alleging that the highest court is driven by pure partisanship demands a comprehensive in-depth analysis to back it up. To fling out these accusations without doing that is irresponsible. It reeks of partisan hackery.
If you want to be taken seriously on a subject as critical as judicial bias, then do the work and come prepared with more than superficial evidence.
If you're arguing that the judiciary happens to perfectly align with republican politics by sheer coincidence, then I think you're stupid.
The reality is there is zero evidence for this, because the right is not stupid. Of course, whatever they find can be supported by the constitution in some way.
But when abortion, gay marriage, interracial marriage, presidential immunity, and more are on the table and so perfectly align with what the right desires, it should be obvious.
It also doesn't help that Trump has outright admitted to this multiple times. Unfortunately, he has a big mouth. He is very clear about his intention to use the court to further propagate an increasingly extreme republican agenda. When the department of education is disbanded and everyone must take conservative exams to work in government, perhaps your opinions will change.
As time goes on, the republicans veer dangerously close to fascism. The legitimacy of this government is not their concern - winning is. If that includes coups, military force, and illegitimate courts, then so be it from their perspective.
I mean, the only reason Trump can even run right now is because his court granted him complete immunity. When he is president, it would be trivial for his to employ the military on this country. Not to mention, perfectly legal.
Yes, it's entirely possible that one party believes in the Constitution and another one does not. I don't see why you're ruling that out as a possibility. Moreover, I haven't seen evidence that the Supreme Court aligns perfectly with the Republican Party's platform. The person who needs to bring evidence here is the one who's claiming that the rulings of the Supreme Court are not supported by the Constitution, and that the Constitution is some vague document that you can find justification for any position in. That's basically saying there is no Constitution, and that the Court is corrupt. And if you're going to make those claims, the onus is on you to provide evidence, which you have not done.
This is again assuming that there is a binary right or wrong in how the law is applied. This is an ideal of the law, where there is precisely one law that applies to any given situation, describing exactly what is legal or not, with no ambiguity or contradiction. Speak to any lawyer or read about it, and you will find this is not true.
Here's a random article i came across today speaking about the ambiguity in the law applied to a particular case - https://archive.is/Z6V2Q . Just something I came across randomly, this is not uncommon. A quote:
> “I know it seems kind of strange that there isn’t a definitive answer to this, but that’s because the rule is based on a principle that can be applied in lots of different contexts, and it just happens that it hasn’t often been applied in this context before,” she said.
Here is a quote directly from the ruling overturning Chevron:
> Finally, the view that interpretation of ambiguous statutory provi-
sions amounts to policymaking suited for political actors rather than
courts is especially mistaken because it rests on a profound misconcep-
tion of the judicial role. Resolution of statutory ambiguities involves
legal interpretation, and that task does not suddenly become policy-
making just because a court has an “agency to fall back on.” Kisor, 588
U. S., at 575. Courts interpret statutes, no matter the context, based
on the traditional tools of statutory construction, not individual policy
preferences.
In other words, the court directly saying that it is their job to resolve legal ambiguities.
The logic you provide to uphold the overturning of Roe vs. Wade should apply just as well to the original Roe vs. Wade too. There was not any "glaring mistake" in the reasoning, there's just a lot of room for subjectivity.
The assumption of judicial law is that there is an objective correct answer and that later rulings are more likely to arrive at it than their precedents.
The passage you quote does not contradict this. Note it states that court interpretation is
"based on the traditional tools of statutory construction, not individual policy preferences"
The ambiguity means that the correctness is a matter of probability, which implies that the probability of making a correct ruling increases with the amount of precedent a ruling has to fall back on.
The whole point of winning presidencies is to appoint justices when one retires or passes away.
Packing the court, i.e. expanding the court to obviate the need to wait for a justice to retire or die in order to appoint a new one, on the other hand, effectively eliminates the independence of the judiciary, by nullifying the independence that Supreme Court justices obtain as a result of their lifetime tenure.
> It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we like, it's fair and impartial, and any time there's a judicial ruling we don't like, it's judicial activism.
It is funny, but at the same time I absolutely believe that in many cases it's possible to distinguish between judgments of the activist kind and those that aren't.
Critics of SCOTUS should keep in mind that they agree unanimously more often than one might think. In fact, it's the modal outcome over all terms, with roughly third of all cases decided unanimously. IIRC 7-2 or more one-sided rulings (meaning more concurrence between all justices) occur roughly four-fifths of the time.
I was thinking more recent stuff, like fed income tax and then "giving" that money back with strings resulting in the current "we'll fund your state level EPA and DOT agencies but only if they goose step in line with us" status quo. Said status quo means that every stupid nitpick of federal law winds up getting fought tooth and nail over.
It wasn't even slavery that caused the war, but secession. (I am not arguing that slavery didn't cause secession -- it did -- but that wasn't what created support in the north for fighting a war over it.)
That states' rights were used to fight for the right to maintain slavery does not mean that the concept of states' rights is wrong. It is slavery that is wrong.
I'm inherently mistrustful of arguments for "state's rights" that don't explicitly state what rights are being advocated for, that the existence of a Federal government is standing in the way of.
It's usually something gross and regressive, like wanting to mandate Christian doctrine as law, or to reintroduce racial segregation or to send all the gays to conversion therapy. Otherwise it would be something normal they could just, you know, pass a law about. Because states do have rights, they just don't have absolute sovereignty.
> Because states do have rights, they just don't have absolute sovereignty.
This would be more meaningful if the federal government wasn't involved in everyone's lives to the degree that most people's idea of state sovereignty ends at issuing driver's licenses and license plates.
In general, a call for "states' rights" is a call for the federal government to act in line with the supreme law of the land that is the Constitution and restore the concept of "laboratories of democracy" that states ought to be. Instead, what we have is a federal government that supposedly has the legal authority to regulate activity that crossed no state boundaries and harmed no one[0].
> wanting to mandate Christian doctrine as law, or to reintroduce racial segregation or to send all the gays to conversion therapy
I'm not aware of any recent efforts at the state level, at least more seriously than someone trying to make the papers in a primary election, to achieve such goals. Do you have any examples?
And on the flip side states rights is what let half the country not have slavery from the get go, certain states grant women suffrage, basically every singular "good thing" you could come up with started in one state. My state had great public healthcare before the federal mandate.
The current state of weed legalization, and research into medical psychedelic use would probably be a ton better off without the feds sticking their dick places it doesn't belong, to name but one example.
But the unintended consequence is that we were forced to weaken states' rights, so that we could abolish slavery. We could not have federally abolished slavery if we did not first give the federal government the power to do that. Unfortunately, the union had to take that power by force.
Right, but once you fight a war over it, the SCOTUS is forced to make choices to legitimize the actions of the remaining USA, and state's rights were... de-valued.
There's one big reason the US can't have the same: the ruling class don't want it.
This isn't some gordian knot. We could have it tomorrow if the ruling class had their feet held to the fire. The fact that we don't is a result of the system working exactly as intended.
The richest person in the world is out in broad daylight shoveling bribes to voters as fast as he can transfer the money, and not only is he not getting arrested, he never will be. It's a dark subsection of a very dark chapter.
A person who can't even legally own a gun due to his status as a felon is about to become commander and chief of the military. "Dark subsection" is pretty mild.
The commander-in-chief isn't leading a charge at the front lines, so whether or not he can legally own a gun has no bearing; otherwise, we'd have to demand that every elected official has direct, hands-on experience in everything that they legislate, regulate, or judge. Well, perhaps that wouldn't be so horrible, after all...
I personally find the way he came to be a felon to be a darker subsection, but your mileage may vary, of course.
I assume your point is that a felony conviction is evidence of an unsound mind that justifies prohibiting someone from owning a firearm, and that this translates to leading our military.
The analogy falls apart if said felony conviction is unjust or otherwise has no bearing on one's ability to lead the military. By and large, American voters think so, with two-thirds of those polled thinking that what he was convicted of is a nothingburger[0].
The analogy only falls apart if you are applying a double standard.
You might say "Certain kinds of felonies don't indicate a person is unfit to wield a weapon/the military, and certain kinds do." I'm a supporter of the 2A and I'd listen to that. As long as you intend to apply that across the population.
But if you're saying "A bunch of people don't like this particular conviction against this particular person, so we should have a separate standard for him," well that not how the rule of law works.
If we're talking about the rule of law, there is no law against a convicted felon from either being elected President or being the commander-in-chief. There is only the irony (as the GP brought up) of someone who cannot legally possess a firearm being in charge of the military, but neither irony nor hypocrisy is yet illegal. So I see no problem here.
Is your point that a convicted felon should be legally barred from holding office? Then there is a straightforward legal process to achieve your goals. However, I caution you that politically motivated prosecutions have existed before Trump and will exist after, and that there's probably a better reason than mere oversight that the Constitution places so few limits on who can be voted President.
I think it would be very difficult to present an honest nonpartisan case arguing that Trump is not guilty of
1. The case he has been convicted of
2. The cases that are still in progress
3. Many things he hasn't been charged with yet.
But if you want to do so I'll try to listen. The case you listed isn't even the case he has been convicted of so far. But I don't blame you for the mixup there's so many crimes people may have trouble confusing them.
> The case you listed isn't even the case he has been convicted of so far
The source I cited refers to Trump's "hush money" convictions (over falsifying business records), which to my knowledge is the only criminal case that went through to the end of a trial and resulted in a felony conviction[0]. Is this untrue?
> an honest nonpartisan case arguing that Trump is not guilty
The argument is that the prosecution of these cases is partisan to begin with; that is, no one not named "Donald Trump" would have been prosecuted for the same matters on hand to the same degree. Obviously neither I nor anybody else can prove this claim, so you be the judge.
MLK Jr. was legally harangued throughout his life, with many arrests and two felony indictments. In 1960, he became the first person in Alabama to ever be charged with felony perjury over tax returns. Are we to believe that he really was the first Alabamian to cheat on taxes? Had he been convicted, would you seriously believe that justice had been served, or would you instead think of the whole thing as partisan lawfare?
Imagine this scenario: you see a line of cars on the highway all going 20 miles an hour above the speed limit, but only one gets pulled over. You have reasons to suspect that it's because the local sheriff doesn't like the driver, but you have no means of proving that. The logical counterarguments could be A) the officer happened to only see him; B) everyone was observed to be speeding and if the sheriff's department had more resources, then everyone would have been pulled over, but out of practical necessity only one car could be pulled over and it happened to be him; or C) actually, it was in fact just him who was speeding and nobody else. I don't find any of those to be persuasive in Trump's case.
> The argument is that the prosecution of these cases is partisan to begin with
Irrelevant. The criminal justice system in the US is very defendant-friendly. Blackstone's ratio is baked into our '12 people, after hearing a vigorous defense, believe the defendant committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt' requirement. "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer" is our system.
Trump did something so illegal that twelve people grabbed at random off the street are convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that the crime was committed. He had the best attorneys money could buy. The system bent over backwards for him to avoid any hint of impropriety exactly because these types of bad faith apologetics would be lobbed at it.
And the AP survey is not a good look: an outright majority believe he's unfit, and before you do a victory lap you must account for the additional 21% who simply don't know the facts well enough to have an opinion. The jury that convicted him was handpicked because they did not know enough to have an opinion, and they convicted him once they saw the facts. So it's a safe bet that all but the most extreme partisan apologists rule him out when they're aware of the facts.
> Trump did something so illegal that twelve people grabbed at random off the street are convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that the crime was committed
It seems like you're calling my point irrelevant by side-stepping it entirely. To clarify, my point is that many voters don't have confidence that had it not been Donald Trump who committed these crimes, it would have been prosecuted. That Trump was found guilty has no bearing on whether he was singled out for prosecution for political reasons, or that there are not in fact other people who commit the same crimes who are not prosecuted.
I agree with you that the US criminal justice system is very defendant-friendly, but again, that has no bearing on any issue of selective prosecution. And of course, juries aren't perfect; otherwise OJ Simpson really didn't kill that woman, and Emmett Till's lynchers really were innocent.
> these types of bad faith apologetics
> the most extreme partisan apologists
I'm willing to have a conversation with you or anyone about this, but not if you are operating under the presumption that I am an extreme partisan acting in bad faith. I'm making a reasonable argument that it's understandable for voters to not consider Trump's convictions a dealbreaker. You may also make a reasonable argument against my position. But there's no need for name-calling, or worse, the belief that anyone who rejects your argument is acting in bad faith.
I am glad we agree he's guilty of the crimes, and we're only splitting hairs about whether we have to prosecute every other crime that happened before his in order to make his prosecution "legitimate." That's the type of claim where simply stating it succinctly reveals the absurdity. I agree Trump was certainly selectively prosecuted, and I think it would be malfeasance for an elected prosecutor not to prosecute such a brazen, widely known violation of the law as Trump committed.
Too cynical and defeatist for my taste. The difference between the “ruling class” and you is that politicians know what it takes to get support from large donors. A typical Senator spends most of their day figuring that out in fact.
But at the end of the day politicians still need votes, not dollars. One way to swing the balance back would be to make support contingent on support for (and accomplishment of) popular goals.
As long as people see their chosen political party as their hometown sports team and the other political party as a bunch of demonic goblins looking to murder and imprison them and their families, that will never happen.
If you're not willing to vote for either political party to achieve your supported goals, you're part of the problem and a big part of why the country is the way it is.
Statistics on how many Americans lock into stances on who they will vote for, relatively early in the election. The "middle" is thought to be maybe 10% if that.
> There needs to be public funding of elections. That would go a long way.
I’m going to push back on this.
Not a single dollar of public money should be spent helping anyone at all acquire a seat in an office of power. This includes running primaries through State election apparatuses and laws governing primary selection processes.
I’d be okay with zeroing out contributions to individual candidates and limiting political contributions exclusively to political parties to dole out to their members as they see fit, even if that required a constitutional amendment, but not with public money. You’re effectively subsidizing the acquisition of power by interested parties with taxpayer money, while simultaneously cementing an additional incumbent advantage for those already seated and able to write the rules for the public funding of elections.
I'm going to push back on this pushback. Not a single dollar of private money should be spent on helping anyone acquire a seat of power. Dollars represent disproportional ability to influence who has power.
We already have a fair mechanism to signal - voting. Attempts to nudge candidates ability to win are antithetical to our value of egalitarianism. If we're willing to let dollars donated swing a politicians chances, we've already lost. Let's just close up shop and vote with dollars like we shop for shoes. It's a mockery of decency.
Voting is just passive a passive part of politics, but there is active part of politics, like political activism, and that is as important as voting.
People that are good at public relations and communications can directly do political activism, while people bad at that and good at something else can use money generated from what they are good at to hire or support someone to do political activism for them.
So forbidding money in political activism is just gatekeeping political activism to people good at public relations.
> Dollars represent disproportional ability to influence who has power.
People with a lot of money already possess both, which is why I am perfectly content with people who have money to spend their own money.
> Attempts to nudge candidates ability to win are antithetical to our value of egalitarianism.
In that case, would you also support prohibiting people from spending their private time or using their public speech to influence election outcomes? No more volunteers, only paid workers funded by the State?
The influence of dollars alone on the outcome of an election is already overvalued. Michael Bloomberg already engaged in the grandest experiment to prove that money really can’t buy political office and depending on your point of view here, either succeeded fantastically in that goal or failed miserably in his own goal in what was fundamentally an own goal.
It’s also utterly naïve to think that by attempting to resource constrain elections by funneling money through the State to redistribute to campaigns that you will succeed in capping the real economy around election campaigns and prevent the State from giving the ultimate incumbent advantage and using its own official functions to influence the outcome of elections. More than likely you would just be hiding most of the activity around a campaign inside the State itself.
The game doesn’t change just because you’re spending public or private money: your goal is to get people to fill out their ballots and submit them in your favor. What changes is whether it is private individuals, from small dollar donors to billionaires deciding how to spend their money (as is their right in all areas of life!) or the State deciding how they are going to spend other peoples money for them, which you know, speaking of, that is a mockery of decency.
> Let's just close up shop and vote with dollars like we shop for shoes.
So let’s not and say we didn’t. The cost of converting dollars into real votes is high and plateaus. The actual spending is an entire economy supporting the salaries of campaign staff and paying contractors and advertising firms which I am okay with. I’m even okay with putting additional constraints on who can raise money and in the case of local elections, Senate and House seats, from where locking out foreigners and interstate donations entirely changing the shape of that entire economy (provided an appropriate Constitutional amendment is agreed upon and passed), but not one red cent should be coming from a local, State or the Federal Treasury. That’s money to support the functions of the State and the excess should go back to its rightful owners instead.
Outsiders like Donald Trump in 2016 and Bernie Sanders on multiple occasions also shouldn’t be able to come in an effectively (in the case of Trump) or nearly take over an existing political machine and transform it in their image at the low low cost of changing their party registration on a form with their home state.
You can do it too! In the State of California where yours truly is domiciled, changing your party registration is easier than changing your underwear so if there’s a particular party whose primary you want to vote in for whatever reason, that’s a thing you can just do with absolutely no cost to you whatsoever. You don’t need any buy-in. If political parties are going to be a thing, and we’ve accepted that they’re just going to be a thing for over 200 years and counting, then there needs to be some buy-in for people running under their banner and proportionate institutional influence from the leaders and rank-and-file of the organization flying that banner. Given freedom of association is a thing, parties are not going to go away no matter what you try and do to constrain them, so I’m okay with them also being a focal point around which people qualify for the ballot and secure donations and staffed time to run for office since that is what they are there for.
Real party turnover used to be higher. Parties would either fall out of favor and die and be replaced, or they would face credible risks from smaller parties and work to absorb them into their ranks by taking in the issues that energized them. Right now they’re functionally just an identity group, and that makes them both fragile and dangerous since their name still means something to voters, but their party functions do not command the premium they used to.
I don't care about what the organizations decide to do, that's their private business. The states shouldn't be offering them the ability to put up a candidate using a separate mechanism.
So for instance, in that scenario, the backup strategy is for there to be several candidates aligned with the organization that seek ballot access, and then the organization can endorse one of them to try to concentrate votes. Versus the situation now where the organization can name their candidate later in the process and ensure that votes are concentrated.
This would of course make things worse for 2024 Harris, but probably not to the extent that they would have for 2016 Trump.
Just so I understand because I think I might be misunderstanding you, are you against the States executing primaries on behalf of the parties, or are you against the parties gating candidates from also being on the general ticket under their name, or both?
Ah, no, I get it now and I get the sentiment but I think this is better a case where we actually lean into the party system that has developed rather than running away from it, in no small part because it isn’t going away. I still don’t think the States should be executing party primaries or running the party registration process, but I do live in a a locality with numerous officially non-partisan offices with elections that are exactly what you describe and it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I would describe it as basically a charade.
I don't see how non partisan offices relate to what I'm saying.
I don't care if candidates are endorsed by parties, claim to lead parties, whatever, I think that it is not a net benefit that established organizations play by rules that consolidate their power, that it's worth the mess for the system to not work in that direction.
Okay, well candidates already have to qualify for the ballot on their own. Being the party nominee doesn't except you from all the paperwork and petitioning that is required in pretty any jurisdiction I know of in America. Even Presidential candidates already have to qualify on a per State basis, but they have large campaigns, campaign staff in volunteers in each State that are willing to go to bat for them and dot the necessary i's and cross the necessary t's. Party machinery helps with this, but is insufficient on its own.
The main reason you don't see more people running as candidates outside their Party is because of Party discipline and the sheer cost of running national campaign. Third parties can tread water qualifying for each ballot as they come up in some States, but they have no real media presence because they're not effective at creating a real presence for themselves (and it is often off-putting in the years they can, yeah, parties can get worse).
People running outside their party as independents would be putting their political careers on the line by doing so, and not because of any kind of benefit or privilege in the law that favors parties specifically; it's because by doing so they are actively sabotaging their party's chances of winning that seat and parties don't want to keep people like that in their ranks. Add on top of that that it is expensive to even try, and it's just not worth it, although candidates that can raise more money on their own can shrug some of that party discipline off when it's a case of the party needs them more than they need the party, it's still not the norm.
As far as partisan vs non-partisan offices go, the only distinction to a voter reading their ballot is whether or not the candidate's party affiliation is listed in the text box. There is no other functional difference that matters. That's why I call it a charade.
> You’re effectively subsidizing the acquisition of power by interested parties with taxpayer money, while simultaneously cementing an additional incumbent advantage for those already seated and able to write the rules for the public funding of elections.
This is a very good point. And if we can generalize: it's very difficult to regulate something in a way that does not eventually advantage those already inside over those on the outside looking to come in; industry regulations, rent control, minimum wage, etc.
> Germany is a stable constitutional federal republic with proportional representation and power vested in the Bundestag. No reason why the US can't have the same.
The government of the United States is both far older than Germany's Bundestag and has been far more stable over that time.
I'm not explicitly arguing one way or the other here, just calling out that I think it is a little early to say that Germany's Bundestag is a stable republic when it is so young.
We have public funding of presidential elections in the US.[1] The last year in which a major candidate accepted it was 2008, because it comes with limits on fund-raising.
Proportional representation is prone to a grid lock and fragmentation. A ranked choice looks like a good option in the situation when you don't like both major candidates (or parties) and would like to vote for 3rd one but with first-past-the-post you vote will be wasted unless you will vote for one of two the most popular candidates.
Most of the issue with PR is when your assembly has to select an executive.
But the US has a very powerful executive (the President) which sidesteps the problem. The US House of Reps could be multi party PR without any big issues (well, they might need to switch to a "last year's budget is this year's budge unless we vote to change it" model).
The reason that won't work here currently is because the two party system has people currently picking the lessor of two evils. The spectrum of stances within a single party is extremely wide since all cobinations of views must fit within two parties. For example, compare a NYC Democrat candidate vs a WV Democrat candidate. Or a republican candidate from TX vs one from NJ.
"There needs to be public funding of elections. That would go a long way."
I sort of agree. Instead of all these commercials and flyers, it would be much better if every candidate gets a page on a government website where they can advertise their views and platform. It would be similar to how specimen ballots are available online today. Restrictions like that would remove much of the influence of money.
> Neither system is perfect, but the latter captures a wider range of views within society.
In the FPTP system in the US, you end up with two "big tent" parties with broadly opposing views. What makes you suggest that this model does not sufficiently capture the width of views within society?
> Germany is a stable constitutional federal republic with proportional representation and power vested in the Bundestag. No reason why the US can't have the same.
There is a lot to admire about Germany, but that vaunted stable constitutional federal republic just about committed economic suicide via an over-reliance on cheap Russian gas and zealous persecution of domestic nuclear. It now has the weakest prospects among its peer nations. Their governing model isn't a guarantee of good decisions.
It doesn't capture the width of views precisely because of the "big tent" parties. When a political party is united and effective, it functions as a weighted average of its representatives. When it's not, it loses power and makes other parties stronger.
If your opinions are outside the mainstream of any party, you will not have genuine representation in any democratic system, where political parties are allowed to form. Some outlier representative may speak in favor of policies you support, but they would be equally effective as an extra-parliamentary activist.
> Germany is a stable constitutional federal republic with proportional representation and power vested in the Bundestag. No reason why the US can't have the same.
Germany's second most popular party is labeled a "suspected extremist group", there are discussions of banning it altogether, and the entire rest of the political establishment unites to ensure they are kept out of actual power.
When you even have a second-most-popular party that can be labeled an extremist group, I'm not going to call you a "stable" country. In general, the feature of parliamentary democracies where the "wrong" election runner-up is totally shut out also makes it seem not any different in practice than the US system. It's nice that the "right" runner-ups will be a part of a governing coalition, but this is also already effectively the way the US works, as party discipline is not nearly as strong.
Democratic institutions are a problem throughout the west right now, and I would definitely not be looking at Germany as a model. Not sure who would be. People say good things about Swiss governance, but I don't know enough of the situation there.
There is public funding of elections in the U.S. You can even check a box on your tax return to have part of your tax go toward funding elections. (This affects where $3 of the tax associated with you is budgeted by the federal government; it doesn't affect your tax liability/refund.)
According to the IRS, fewer than 4% of people check this box.
Likely zero chance of implementation in USA but also surprising that the founding fathers of the the USA apparently avoided serious consideration. Seems they may have dropped the ball on this problem:
Germany affords no Freedom of Speech and makes major policy blunders, like shutting off all of its nuclear power plants. It's not a country for the US to emulate.
Lol, Germany was bought and paid for decades ago and the party with the most political power is the Hells Angels. They even got their rivals federally banned, even though they are not!
You read like a HAMC damage control bot. I am sick of being lorded over by criminals hiding in plain sight, it is why the economy sucks. They are sucking on it like leeches.
> The Japanese Fifth Generation project was a collaborative effort of the Japanese computer industry coordinated by the Japanese Government
> In a sense, Japan's ability to stay the course in pursuit of a long-term payoff-- usually considered one of the country's strongest assets-- turned into a liability.
Japan is an expert at public-private partnerships. Their entire economic development story was based on the government and private enterprises working together. They didn't take an ideological approach to development. They ignored both the neoliberal route and the socialist route.
Well, they’re certainly very good at favoritism, which is basically what the keiretsu-led model ended up being. And favoritism and picking winners only really works as long as you’re able to pick the right winners.
This model works well to supercharge initial growth if done correctly, but eventually you can’t really become richer through exports alone and have to pivot towards more consumption, which can be difficult to pull off.
> This has historically been the philosophy of English linguists, but for many languages (Spanish, French, German…) there is a central institution that does indeed decide what is officially correct. Their decisions are taken seriously and intentionally propagated anywhere where language is used in a somewhat official context (not just in public institutions).
This sounds very similar to the common law vs. civil law traditions as well. I wonder if there's a connection between linguistics and legal systems.
Higher education has become too powerful and influential due to unlimited government loan guarantees. They used that to charge insane amounts and hired bloated administrations.
Get the government out of the student loan business and take a lesson from the Germans: promote vocational and technical schooling. Not everyone needs to go to university or get a university education.
> Get the government out of the student loan business and take a lesson from the Germans: promote vocational and technical schooling. Not everyone needs to go to university or get a university education.
And while taking that lesson top with another: remove the profit motive from education, since you want to remove the government from providing loans you will need a backstop so the have-nots don't stay forever bound in the have-not enough money for education.
They don't want to end homelessness because then so many activists and organizations will be out of a job. It's a perverse incentive.
The key to tackling the housing crisis is to build more housing, particularly high-density housing. And to do that, zoning laws must be deregulated and liberalized, if not outright abolished in some instances.
But of course, the activists will never agree to that because it's a market-centered reform and because they are rich NIMBYs. More housing will mean the properties they own will decrease in value. The scarce housing supply and the continued existence of the homelessness problem is great for their own wallet.
Most people on the streets aren't capable of maintaining a house, mostly thanks to drug use, with mental illness as a smaller-but-still-significant secondary cause.
Fixing this would also put a bunch of activists out of a job, would remove a lot of cover for state-sponsored domestic terror activities, and would require harsh measures that are total non-starters.
Ergo, nothing is going to change on this front until either powerful interests want it to change, or until there is some sort of mass event that kills off a substantial fraction of the population.
