US Politics: A Game of Chicken (with Constituents lives)

[DMC]

It's true that the endemic institutional issues unique to the US aren't only due to having a presidential vs. parliamentary system.  Other than the electoral college (and I suppose the courts), however, the remainder of the problems almost solely have to do with the anti-majoritarian features of the Senate, from its representation to the filibuster/reconciliation/parliamentarian mishegoss. 

Of course, one of the main problems right now is the obstinance of Manchema, and the ability or lack thereof of the majority party to unite all their MCs is not really an institutional problem. 

 

[Kalbear]

Oh yeah! The courts having massive power and no term limits is ANOTHER thing that isn't particularly shared by most democracies. 

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Kaligator said:

The courts having massive power and no term limits is ANOTHER thing that isn't particularly shared by most democracies. 

To be clear, I don't think the power of judicial review is necessarily a "problem."  The institutional problems there lie in the rules that lead to its composition (only 9 members of SCOTUS, no term limits, etc.).

[Winterfell is Burning]

To my knowledge, there is not a single country that doesn't have either term limits or mandatory retirement age for SC judges. Some have both.

[Kalbear]

Also, states having more power, states being illiberal themselves, ballot measures vs other systems...the US has a lot of really fucked up programs to restrict functioning government. 

And that's ignoring that until 50 years ago the US routinely stopped 10% of the population from having voting rights at all. 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Kaligator said:

Also, states having more power, states being illiberal themselves, ballot measures vs other systems...the US has a lot of really fucked up programs to restrict functioning government. 

Meh, I don't think federalism is fundamentally a problem - nor is it unique to the US.  Or at least, inasmuch as it threatened the centralization of the national government in order to function properly, the federalists lost that war a long time ago.  As for "ballot measures," I'm not really sure what you mean.  Direct democracy?  It can be annoying, yeah, but pretty low on the list.

[Gorn]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Other sites might coincidently be having issues, but it is FB and the sites it owns that are specifically fucked. Those domains straight up don't exist right now (nor do any of FB's internal systems like building security apparently) because the DNS A records are gone. They're trying to physically reset everything...

but there are a lot of challenges to that. And if it turns out this was malicious instead of an accident, who know's what that malicious actor might be up to while everything is down.

So the solution was to turn it off and turn it on again? I knew it.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Gorn said:

So the solution was to turn it off and turn it on again? I knew it.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

FB appears to be back up but a six hour outage is huge for FB.  I wonder if we will ever get a real explanation?

[Jace, Extat]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

FB appears to be back up but a six hour outage is huge for FB.  I wonder if we will ever get a real explanation?

Make them a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and they'll have to tell us!

[Winterfell is Burning]

36 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

Make them a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and they'll have to tell us!

Mark Zuckerberg with veto power on global affairs, what can possibly go wrong?

[Larry of the Lawn]

43 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

FB appears to be back up but a six hour outage is huge for FB.  I wonder if we will ever get a real explanation?

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the whistleblower.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Actual cause of FB outage:

https://makeagif.com/amp/NctJSz

 

 

[Corvinus85]

4 hours ago, Babblebauble said:

Make them a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and they'll have to tell us!

Global Corporate Congress, here we come!

[DireWolfSpirit]

Fuck Facebook, I hope Zuck loses another $6 billion tomorrow.

[ants]

14 hours ago, Fez said:

.....

But if you look at the procedures involved in say, the UK, it's just as complex, with all the different committee reports and readings and so on. It's just that no one every talks about it because it's almost always never in question that if the government wants to push a bill forward it'll pass. But the mess that occurred in September/October 2019 when the opposition had a majority (sort of) over the government in the House of Commons is basically every single day in the US Congress.

Cough, Brexit votes, cough Theresa May, cough. 

[Winterfell is Burning]

17 hours ago, Fez said:

 

But if you look at the procedures involved in say, the UK, it's just as complex, with all the different committee reports and readings and so on.

That's because those two are the oldest democracies in the world, and hasn't updated their systems in a major way for centuries. The countries with more sane systems, like in Western Europe, are post-WWII creations in it's majority. 

[Fez]

17 hours ago, Kaligator said:

No, we are completely and totally fucked. Completely disagree.

- We have the Electoral College system, which gives points based on statehood and little else. This alone makes it significantly more fucked than like 99% of all other systems out there.

- We have the senate, which combines with the above.

- we have the weird veto rules

- we have the completely self-owning filibuster

 

That's because they have majority governments formed automatically. The idea that a majority government couldn't pass bills the majority wants is kind of the point of majority governments.

 

The electoral college and the senate make-up are election problems, not governance problems. We need to address them for sure, if we can, but they are not the kinds of things mormont brought up. My point was that all those arcane procedural rules we have are actually par for the course for democracies and aren't the reason why nothing gets done in the US.

3 hours ago, ants said:

Cough, Brexit votes, cough Theresa May, cough. 

Right, that's what I'm saying. It's like that every day here, whereas it was a big change for the UK when that happened. But even then, how much coverage was there of the minute arcana (e.g., the bill has gone to the Office of Parliamentary Counsel to write instructions; the explanatory notes have been written; the bill passed second reading; the bill passed third reading; etc. as here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/legislative-process-taking-a-bill-through-parliament) versus broader coverage like: the whip was withdrawn for 21 Tories.

Here in the US, political coverage loves diving into all that arcana, giving up all broader context for why things are happening, and becomes a major bore for voters. But its' not the arcana that's the problem, it's the bad coverage.

[Durckad]

18 hours ago, mormont said:

Just musing aloud here, but I've always just accepted the low turnout in US elections as a manifestation of the feckless, easily bored American public. But looking at the last few threads, I'm rethinking my stance. Debt ceilings. Reconciliation. Appeals to the Parliamentarian. Arguments about the timing of procedural motions to move the debate out of committee, for pity's sake. It's this sort of pointless procedural arcana that causes voters to just give up. Heck, I've been in student politics all my life and I'm bored rigid reading this stuff.

Have you folks ever thought about instituting a system of government instead of this bizzare mess?

No because the Founding Fathers (tm) created the most perfect governmental system ever and changing/fixing it would be blasphemy on a level far beyond that of choosing not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

[Zorral]

28 minutes ago, Durckad said:

blasphemy on a level far beyond that of choosing not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Because the FF didn't write the Pledge, which was brought into being by a socialist, of all things, back at the end of the 19th C! So no, not blasphemy, merely lack of orthodoxy.  I guess?  Still, you know, hang 'em.

https://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm