@Tuxan, when you get over your jet lag could you address what's below [filibuster stance] for me? I'd love to hear your take. Is it just more political bullshit...
These Are My Principles. If You Don’t Like Them I Have Others.
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Kamala needs Walz to help in interview!!! INCOMPETENT
- Thread starter wildchild
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@Tuxan, when you get over your jet lag could you address what's below [filibuster stance] for me? I'd love to hear your take. Is it just more political bullshit...
Well I need to stay awake until tonight.
The filibuster is meant to promote compromise, but because there's no real political cost to using or abusing it, reform is necessary.
The 'talking filibuster,' while seemingly absurd, could be reinstated to restore some of that cost. Additionally, lowering the threshold to end a filibuster and limiting its use to significant bills are important steps.
Many other countries have a guillotine or cut-off system where delay can only last so long before the majority can force a vote.
There must be a serious cost associated with filibustering, so a single senator can't repeatedly invoke it or be designated by their whip just because they can speak for days on end.
I'm not a fan of parties generally though. No deep though on this but it seems to me that electing a representative should be just that, and not the narrow will of a few party mandarins.
This needs fixing.
Paywalled but reloading a couple of times cleared it https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...unning-visualization-of-our-divided-congress/
"You'll see that they've created network diagrams for each House of Representatives from 1949 to 2011. They've drawn dots for each representative, and lines connecting pairs of representatives who vote together a given number of times. Finally, the dots for each representative are placed according to how frequently the Representatives vote together overall.
What we're left with is a picture of political mitosis. Similar voting between Democrats and Republicans was fairly common up through the 1980s. "
This mitosis was largely the work of Newt and some others imposing a national platform.
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I've always heard that it's not to promote compromise but to promote deliberation. As far as I'm concerned, interesting legislative (not judicial) reforms could include appointment by lottery and, one that the libertarian in me won't hold out for, term limits ;-)
Wish we could hear more of our candidates' take. Instead we just get "need a something something new deal at any cost". Oh well.
Thanks for the perspective.
It is pretty much just a bullshit thing that appeared in the US and doesn't have any deep historical pedigree going back to Rome or Greece etc.
The word "filibuster" has an interesting etymology rooted in piracy and warfare. It ultimately derives from the Dutch word "vrijbuiter," which means "freebooter" or "pirate / privateer". The term was borrowed into French as "flibustier" and then into Spanish as "filibustero."
In the mid-19th century, "filibuster" came to be used in English to refer to adventurers or mercenaries who engaged in unauthorized military expeditions in Latin America, particularly Americans who attempted to incite or lead uprisings in Central America and the Caribbean.
By the mid-19th century, the term began to be applied metaphorically in the United States to describe legislators who used obstructionist tactics, like prolonged speeches, to delay or block legislative action. The modern legislative meaning of "filibuster" reflects this idea of a small group or individual taking control, much like the original pirates or
privateers.
I would not get too caught up in divining it's depths. It is a new thing that really is not very democratic and not very old and wise.
It may have uses but I can't remember which of the founders warned very strongly against this kind of thing where the tail wags the dog. Simple majority makes a lot more sense however, a two party system is quite weird, and odd things like the filibuster have evolved.
It may be a cancer.
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Uhmmm... I thought democracy was two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. That's why we've got a constitutional republic, if we can keep it. Remember?
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They are liars and never going to acknowledge. It is 100% accurate that a large percentage of the party members are pissed off about the coup against Biden but they wont speak up because they are scared.
Doesn't sound like the party of joy to me.
Franklin almost certainly didn't actually say that. It is one of those well known spurious quotes that's probably very modern.
In any case, even if you include the next line about liberty and a well armed lamb, it is an oversimplification of democracy, which is more, institutions etc.
Edit: no surprise, came from a Libertarian author. It had that wiff of half-baked.
https://jimbovard.com/blog/2019/05/...d-a-sheep-voting-for-dinner-around-the-world/
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Yet again, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one Tux. I'd rather they didn't mess w/ the filibuster and when Kamala and her side talk and flip-flop on those kinds of deeper matters it can rub some of the electorate the wrong way.
The green new deal is a great, yet impractical, sentiment. And, proposing structural change (hate to call it reform) to the existing system in order to achieve such a thing shouldn't be taken lightly IMHO.
I wish CNN asked her about that... somebody needs to. Perhaps Schumer will be her mouth-piece on this instead?
Would you rather a direct democracy w/ simple 51% majority rule instead? That's mob rule in my book. It's not half-baked... it's a simplification for illustrative purposes.