US Politics: Is Obama Yossarian

[L.T.'s Sexual Healing]

You just have to make the average Joe feel like they're the ones being targeted. That they could be the victim.

[TrackerNeil]

The prison industrial complex will fight tooth and nail. Any politician who signs on to such efforts will be smeared as soft on crime, and get Willie Hortoned to hell and back.

I don't know...even Republicans are starting to talk about eliminating mandatory minimums and such. I think public policy is finally--finally!--following the trend of reduced violent crime.

[The Notorious]

I'd rather see if you have something specific in mind to ask.

Property theft and/or financial fraud. Cyber crimes and extortion also.

[TrackerNeil]

Property theft and/or financial fraud. Cyber crimes and extortion also.

Depending on the magnitude of the fraud, sure. Bernie Madoff goes to prison, but the guy who kites a check for $100 probably doesn't. What I'm aiming for is a policy that reserves hard prison time for people who have caused a lot of damage, and not those who have committed relatively minor crimes like using marijuana, possessing/using drugs, shoplifting, that kind of thing.

[The Undead Martyr]

DG,

The case is in line with the Court's position that you don't have a right unless you positively assert it. In other words, it's crap. The position that you don't have a 5th amendment right to remain silent unless you are under arrest is incredibly stupid. How many people would risk a beating by getting up and walking out of a police interrogation, formally arrested or not?

That's in direct contradiction to the 9th Amendment, and possibly the tenth as well, is it not? How do these judges call themselves conservative or reactionary?

The funny thing is that the Bill of Rights were only approved because of public outcry. The more I read about early American history the more it looks like a coup from the top 1%, with subsequent history basically being them fighting to maintain their control over the government and economy and everyone else trying to break that control.

[DanteGabriel]

The funny thing is that the Bill of Rights were only approved because of public outcry. The more I read about early American history the more it looks like a coup from the top 1%, with subsequent history basically being them fighting to maintain their control over the government and economy and everyone else trying to break that control.

Yes. There is a reason the American system of government is engineered to make change very difficult -- the Constitution protects the status quo. It's a simplification of sorts, but the revolution came about because rich guys thought they were paying too much in taxes. Sound like a familiar complaint?

[L.T.'s Sexual Healing]

That's in direct contradiction to the 9th Amendment, and possibly the tenth as well, is it not? How do these judges call themselves conservative or reactionary?

The funny thing is that the Bill of Rights were only approved because of public outcry. The more I read about early American history the more it looks like a coup from the top 1%, with subsequent history basically being them fighting to maintain their control over the government and economy and everyone else trying to break that control.

It really was a coup.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TUM,

You should read some of the anti-federalist works. They prediticed federal overreach and said rhe Constitution would make that overreach legal.

[James Arryn]

If you guys are gonna insist on talking like a bunch of Reds, I'm gonna take my Freedom Fries to another table.

[L.T.'s Sexual Healing]

TUM,

You should read some of the anti-federalist works. They prediticed federal overreach and said rhe Constitution would make that overreach legal.

But they were generally wrong across the board. Their definition of over reach is simplistic, as they didn't believe the federal government should have any real power over the states. So anything, in their eyes, was an over reach. They would and did argue that abolishing slavery was a massive over reach by the federal government. Their logic was faulty and self serving.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

LT,

I'm not saying they were right on principle. I'm saying they were correct in predicting that State power would be supplanted by the Federal Government.

[DanteGabriel]

LT,

I'm not saying they were right on principle. I'm saying they were correct in predicting that State power would be supplanted by the Federal Government.

Well, that was kind of the point of the Constitution replacing the Articles of Confederation. I don't know that allowing Virginia full control over my life as opposed to the federal government is any improvement, especially in light of the stuff from that Eleven Nations book.

[Seli]

Nice thing I did not realize, but makes a lot of sense. Contemporary translations of the US constitution exist, which can shed some light at the then current interpretation of the same. Translations were useful due to the presence of German and Dutch speakers in some states.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/08/27/what-do-we-learn-from-the-founding-era-translations-of-the-constitution/

[The Undead Martyr]

TUM,

You should read some of the anti-federalist works. They prediticed federal overreach and said rhe Constitution would make that overreach legal.

I have a copy at home, along with the federalist papers. I'll get around to reading them, eventually. :P

As to the rest, Charles Beard was probably the one who convinced me. Reading about e.g. the slaveowners' post-Revolution influence, and the fact that the colonists were hellbent on expanding west while Britain was stopping them from doing so, has reinforced this opinion.

[L.T.'s Sexual Healing]

LT,

I'm not saying they were right on principle. I'm saying they were correct in predicting that State power would be supplanted by the Federal Government.

They were right because that was the intention of the Constitution.

Well, that was kind of the point of the Constitution replacing the Articles of Confederation. I don't know that allowing Virginia full control over my life as opposed to the federal government is any improvement, especially in light of the stuff from that Eleven Nations book.

In a perfect world, the closer your representation is to you, the greater impact you can have on it, and it in turn, will be more reactive to the immediate needs of the people. However, it also gives majorities near impunity to discriminate against unpopular minorities. I can see why people in the 1700s would want Virginia's laws to supersede federal laws, but that makes no sense today.

[The Undead Martyr]

But they were generally wrong across the board. Their definition of over reach is simplistic, as they didn't believe the federal government should have any real power over the states. So anything, in their eyes, was an over reach. They would and did argue that abolishing slavery was a massive over reach by the federal government. Their logic was faulty and self serving.

Yes. "states rights" by itself is a vague concept. If anything the south was opposed to states' rights during secession- IIRC their constitution forbid states from outlawing slavery. And their beef was that the northern states weren't enforcing the Federal slave fugitive act or whatever it was called, and also that they (the plantation owners) were losing their monopoly in the federal government...

Well, that was kind of the point of the Constitution replacing the Articles of Confederation. I don't know that allowing Virginia full control over my life as opposed to the federal government is any improvement, especially in light of the stuff from that Eleven Nations book.

The idea (or so it goes) that state governments would be more responsive. Not sure if that still holds in our 21st century world, but I would argue that, for example, the HoR is set up in a way that is too regional/polarized thanks to gerrymandering.

[DanteGabriel]

In a perfect world, the closer your representation is to you, the greater impact you can have on it, and it in turn, will be more reactive to the immediate needs of the people. However, it also gives majorities near impunity to discriminate against unpopular minorities. I can see why people in the 1700s would want Virginia's laws to supersede federal laws, but that makes no sense today.

It's a fine theory, but given the sad realities of off-year election turnout what it seems is that all sorts of morons and twits and extremists can get elected to state offices in low-turnout elections, with the support of highly motivated interest groups.

Another reason I have a reflexive negative reaction against state power is the old states-rights arguments advanced by right wingers.

As an aside, I'm going to start sounding like a shill for this author soon, but there's a book I read about the disparate founding cultures of the colonies and the later developments of other US regions, and it has affected the way I think about the US, its history, its cultures, and where we are going.

[Fez]

In a perfect world, the closer your representation is to you, the greater impact you can have on it, and it in turn, will be more reactive to the immediate needs of the people. However, it also gives majorities near impunity to discriminate against unpopular minorities. I can see why people in the 1700s would want Virginia's laws to supersede federal laws, but that makes no sense today.

The flip side is, the more localized a government is, the easier it is to for an interest group to capture it completely; be it the local largest business, the super powerful union (not too many of those anymore though), etc. At the federal level the pond is too big for any one entity to completely dominate. The Koch brothers are trying their hardest, but they'd never get everything they wanted, even if the GOP has total control after 2016, there's just too many different business interests, various levels of libertarians, etc. They'd get a lot of what they want of course, but not. Compare this to a place like North Carolina, where Art Pope quite literally bought the state government in 2012. He even got himself appointed state budget director so that he could have unimpeded control over the budget process.

[L.T.'s Sexual Healing]

The flip side is, the more localized a government is, the easier it is to for an interest group to capture it completely; be it the local largest business, the super powerful union (not too many of those anymore though), etc. At the federal level the pond is too big for any one entity to completely dominate. The Koch brothers are trying their hardest, but they'd never get everything they wanted, even if the GOP has total control after 2016, there's just too many different business interests, various levels of libertarians, etc. They'd get a lot of what they want of course, but not. Compare this to a place like North Carolina, where Art Pope quite literally bought the state government in 2012. He even got himself appointed state budget director so that he could have unimpeded control over the budget process.

First, Fuck Art Pope!

Now that I got that out of my system, yes that is a problem. You see it in small communities left and right, especially in rural agriculture rich areas.

[DanteGabriel]

The ACA and bending the Medicare curve:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/upshot/medicare-not-such-a-budget-buster-anymore.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0

That graph is just beautiful and this is another big win for the ACA.

And accordingly, the GOP has stopped banging the repeal drum so hard, except for... well, Ted Cruz.

But since the heady days of cancelled policies and a balky website, the political viability of absolutist repeal has been on a downward spiral. It was probably a decline made inevitable when President Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012, which ensured that repeal would at least be vetoed for another four years. But that decline has been slow enough that it can be difficult to detect.

Even though Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who fancies himself to be a thought leader in the party, still tweets #FullRepeal with regularity, he's become an increasingly lonely voice. The use of Obamacare as an effective Republican attack looks almost at its end. It's been a long time coming.

"It really is extraordinary in a lot of ways. Republicans were absolutely convinced that the antipathy toward the ACA would be the ticket to victory," Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told TPM. "Now they still may have a ticket to victory, but it's not going to be that."

Ornstein called the GOP's singular focus on attacking Obamacare -- and inability to foresee that it would eventually collapse on them -- "a textbook case of mass psychology."

"They basically worked themselves up into a frenzy over the notion that this was a government takeover of health care and socialism," he said. "I think they convinced themselves that this was so awful, that they denied any objective reality."

The evidence that Obamacare has lost its salience as a political attack has been mounting in recent months, as the 2014 elections kick into gear. The latest clue is a Wednesday report from the New York Times that analyzed official releases from congressional offices. This summer compared to last, the number of releases related to Obamacare fell from 530 to 138.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gop-obamacare-2014-elections-no-mas