US Politics: The Day After The Political Earthquake

[TrackerNeil]

I very much don't want the length of copyright increased any further but don't care much about its being reduced from what it is now. And I very much like the aspect of the present law which makes sure copyright extends at least through the life of the creator. I think people should have the right to be compensated for the use of their creative work until their deaths. I would support a big limitation on the ability of people to sell their copyrights to someone else.

Copyright lasts way too long; IMO, it should cover the life of the creator, period. The best way to ensure a creative work survives is to put it in the public domain and let other people have at it.

Some of those other proposals sound decent, but by the time they got through a Republican Congress they'd almost certainly be so objectionable that no Democratic president would sign them. I don't think the current GOP has any real interest in governing anyway; they'll likely pass a bunch of bills designed to force Obama use his veto when he'd rather not, then focus on 2016.

[davos]

6 bills the GOP should pass

I'm with others that all but # 5 are really great ideas, and would make great legislation if the bills enacting them were well-written. If there was a chance that the GOP might actually get behind any of these I would have a different opinion of them than I do.

[emberling]

The idea of the party of big business getting behind meaningful copyright reform breaks my brain.

[TerraPrime]

I'm flabbergasted that anyone would suggest the GOP to pass bills on legalizing pot and lowering drinking age and selling BC pills over the counter.

Seriously?

I suppose "should" is right, in the sense that those are good things to happen. But "should" as in that these things align with the GOP base' expectations? Or the elected officials agendas? Whut? Clearly, the author had already partaken both pot and alcohol during the writing of this article.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Why? Popular vote is actually quite advantageous for Republican party. No need to worry about losing Hispanic vote in some important swing states.

Popular vote in a situation where popular vote actually matters would revolutionise US elections. You would see a much more determined effort in the case of either party to get out their base - which would probably help the Democrats, since the Republican base turns out anyway. Here you would see a massive effort into getting people in, say, New York City or Los Angeles voting, because their votes would actually help decide elections.

[lokisnow]

Copyright lasts way too long; IMO, it should cover the life of the creator, period. The best way to ensure a creative work survives is to put it in the public domain and let other people have at it.

I'm pretty much against the Mickey Mouse copyright laws we currently have (congress extends the life of copyright everytime Mickey Mouse is about to become public domain due to fierce lobbying by the Disney corp). But since I read the autobiography of Mark Twain (vol. 2), I finally understand some of the odd older history of copyright in america.

Twain had only daughters and he still lived in the gilded age era of rentier gentry. Twain had become fabulously wealthy by marrying a woman who had income from her property and then eventually he had quite a bit of income from the royalties on his books. Twain was a fierce lobbyist for copyright to be extended in order to protect the rents from his books for the sake of his daughters because he knew heirs of fellow authors who were living in poverty now that their parents had died and they no longer received royalty rents on their parents books, which were still in copyright and returning enormous profits to the publishers.

Twain had a lot of scorn for people who wouldn't work, but he was practical enough to know that the gentry upbringing made it nearly impossible for them to learn how to work after suffering that upbringing, and he was sexist enough to believe that women could not work to earn a living at all. he was delightfully scathing in his take on the immorality of taking away the royalty rents from heirs when the law allowed copyright to expire with the author.

[Spring Bass]

6 bills the GOP should pass

I'm in favor of the first two, although I think it's unlikely the GOP would pass them. They've got way more old people who hate drugs/think they're immoral period and won't countenance them being legalized, versus libertarians.

The third needs more nuance, since the DMCA also sets up the "safe harbor" law preventing sites from being sued just because someone uploaded a pirated video there without telling them. Ideally we'd keep the Safe Harbor law, ban special patent/copyright courts, and raise the threshold on passing copyright extensions. The ideal would be a non-renewable copyright that lasts the length of the artist's life or 50 years (whichever is longer), but that's not in the cards.

Strongly agreed with #4, since it's long past time the Pill was available OTC without a prescription.

Disagreed on #5, although you have to know some history. Kennedy and friends eventually allowed public sector unions because there was already pressure from below for them, and because without unions there was a lot of shitty stuff happening to federal employees - and a lot of potential for corruption and political firing/hiring. I do think they should be more constrained in what they can bargain over.

I like #6 viscerally, especially since I'd like our national bureaucracy to become more professionalized and less dominated by the spoils system and the "contracting out" of everything. The latter is one of the reasons why so many government projects are so damn expensive.

[karaddin]

Yeah the safe harbour provisions of the DMCA were one the ones I was concerned about if you are repealing that. You still need those protections.

[Larry of the Lawn]

The only one of those six I could see the GOP passing would be the elimination of unions for public employees; maybe some version if the copyright one although I don't feel I know enough about the special interests that would be.lingering around that issue to say.

Can't see them passing any of the others. Wouldn't mind at all if all 6 happened, provided the concerns.mentioned by others were addressed, would be kind of ironic to see that much get done with this legislature and Whitehouse.

[TrackerNeil]

I'm flabbergasted that anyone would suggest the GOP to pass bills on legalizing pot and lowering drinking age and selling BC pills over the counter.

Seriously?

I suppose "should" is right, in the sense that those are good things to happen. But "should" as in that these things align with the GOP base' expectations? Or the elected officials agendas? Whut? Clearly, the author had already partaken both pot and alcohol during the writing of this article.

Sure, it's all a flight of fancy, really. The GOP isn't interested in good policy that might attract Democratic support. However, if we're dreaming, we might as well dream big.

[aceluby]

Their losses in electoral college were even bigger (the exception being 2000). EC system was favorable to Dems in last 3 presidential elections.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/as-nation-and-parties-change-republicans-are-at-an-electoral-college-disadvantage/

Um... what? Two elections where the dems won both the electoral and popular, one election where the GOP did, and one election where the GOP won the EC, but lost the popular. The amount by which they win is pretty meaningless. It seems that in the recent past that the GOP has benefitted a whole hell of a lot more than Dems regarding the EC.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Republicans Got Only 52 Percent of the Vote in House Races

As the final Election Day votes are being counted, national attention has focused on the Republicans' near-sweep of close elections for Senate and governor. But elections for the other congressional branch deserve more scrutiny. Given that Republicans will only win about 52 percent of votes in House races, how are they ending up with 57 percent of seats? Why did Democrats concede control of the House months ago, even when congressional approval is so low?

The reason is bracing to believers in accountable and representative government. The House is shockingly skewed toward the Republican Party. It's always hard to oust incumbents—some 96 percent just won re-election—but now it extends to control of the chamber. In 2012, Republicans won a lopsided majority of seats despite securing only 48 percent of the vote, about the same vote share as Democrats this year. To keep the House in 2014, Republican needed only 45 percent of votes. Putting it another way: control of the House comes from winning 218 races or more. The 218th biggest Republican margin was fully 14 percentage points.

Looking forward, it's even worse for Democrats. FairVote's Monopoly Politics projection model was, as usual, highly accurate in this election—of 368 projections made a year ago, only two were wrong. We've already released our projections for 2016—that's two years away, folks—and picked sure winners in 373 districts, leaving only 14 percent of the House even potentially in play. To win a majority of 218 House seats, we project that Democratic candidates would need to win ten million more votes than Republicans.

[The Marquis de Leech]

But to undo the rampant gerrymandering, the first step is to win the Governorships. Democrats aren't exactly covering themselves with glory there.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

The article goes on to make the case that it isn't just gerrymandering, but a sharpening rural vs urban divide (which also affects state legislatures) and the only way to solve it is to implement a form of proportional representation. Probably even less a chance of that happening, sadly.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OAR,

I'd like to see Proportional Rep. but I doubt we will in my lifetime.

[Commodore]

if it were purely proportional rep, the states would never have confederated to begin with

[TrackerNeil]

if it were purely proportional rep, the states would never have confederated to begin with

But that doesn't address Ser Scot's point. He's stating his current preference, not expressing his desire to alter the timeline.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

if it were purely proportional rep, the states would never have confederated to begin with

Probably not. But the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution was a significant shift towards proportional representation, going from a unicameral one vote per state Congress to a bicameral Congress with one chamber meant to allocate representation proportionally.

[Commodore]

Probably not. But the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution was a significant shift towards proportional representation, going from a unicameral one vote per state Congress to a bicameral Congress with one chamber meant to allocate representation proportionally.

Right, but if a dense populace thousands of miles away is governing my life, why would I voluntarily choose to enter into such a confederation? Like if we had a world government and the billions of Chinese outvoted everyone on everything.

The point of the Senate/Electoral College was to ensure geographic representation (and also that the state legislatures would have representation).

[lokisnow]

The article goes on to make the case that it isn't just gerrymandering, but a sharpening rural vs urban divide (which also affects state legislatures) and the only way to solve it is to implement a form of proportional representation. Probably even less a chance of that happening, sadly.

Or the correct response is a Democrat skewed gerrymander that makes it hard for republicans to win districts. This is perfectly possible if dems bother to vote in 2020. But it's unlikely since dems gave up all state houses in 2010 and all the state district boundaries have been even more viciously gerrymandering to make it impossible for dems to win those legislatures ever again. The only possible way to make it not bad is to win governors. But most of the governors are up for election in 2018 not 2020 so dems won't bother to vote then either and the gerrymanders will remain mostly in place for 2022. Dems might have a chance to win back the house as soon as 2042, but not before.

All this is moot because all those republican controlled states are going to switch to a Maine Nebraska electoral model before 2016 so the max evs dems can win in Ohio and Pennsylvania is three or four each. That will make it impossible for dems to win the presidency as well.