Curiousity Unbound

ryking:

“[Note from Ryking: What Pearlstein fails to mention below is that the endless senatorial holds on nominees have been placed by Republicans. The 60-vote “requirement” to pass legislation after two centuries of “51 votes wins?” A GOP requirement that the Democrats idiotically went along with.]

Last weekend, after months of committee deliberations, backroom dealmaking and leadership arm-twisting, the House narrowly approved a complex, 2,000-page plan after a mere four hours of political and ideological posturing that allowed for only two amendments, one having to do with abortion.

Almost nobody — including the House members themselves— found it odd that this process offered no chance to vote on what kind of “public option” they wanted, or whether they wanted to add some form of malpractice reform, or whether there should be some limit on the value of tax-free health benefits or any of the other two dozen key issues in the health reform debate. In the world’s oldest continuous democracy, these apparently are questions considered too important to be decided individually by a majority of the elected representatives.

The health bill now heads to a much less certain fate in the Senate, where instead of a dictatorship of the majority there is a dictatorship of the minority.

Because of the quaint traditions of the upper chamber, there are today scores of top positions in government that routinely remain unfilled for months because one senator or another has decided to put a “hold” on a nomination. And on any controversial issue, and even some that are not, 60 votes are now required to overcome the threat of endless “debate” and actually pass a piece of legislation, along with 60 votes on as many amendments as senators can dream up.

It’s gotten to the point now where all it takes to kill something in the Senate is the mere threat of a filibuster, without anyone actually having to mount one. And if you somehow managed to get, say, health reform legislation to the floor, it would take 60 votes to pass a bill that included the public option and 60 votes to pass one without it…

Despite what you hear from legislative leaders, there is nothing preordained about this wholesale disregard for majority rule. In fact, it violates the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution, which expressly delineates a limited number of instances in which anything other than a majority vote is required. And it makes a mockery of Senate rules and precedent, which for nearly two centuries were grounded in a tradition of comity and mutual respect between majority and minority.”

— Want real reform? Let’s start with Congress.

jonathan-cunningham:

christielouwho:

jonathan-cunningham:

poortaste:

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

— Noam Chomsky

This is why we have a two party system rather than a parliamentary one.

This is why we shouldn’t only have two parties, Chomsky’s belief is that a two-party system is more like a one party system that does not allow for a diversity of ideologies.

Right; my point was that we have a two party system instead of a parliamentary one is so that change and reform on slowed; with a parliamentary system we’d be able to enact social change much more quickly.  Proponents of the two party system simply don’t believe that democracy is an effective method of governance, if they did they’d favor more influence for the voting population.

ryking:

Anthony Wiener has abandoned single-payer, joining the rest of the Dems who foolishly abandoned it months ago:

“I feel very strongly that the employer-based model is not the way to go and single-payer is the better way,” Mr. Weiner said in an interview. “But I never wanted it to be the situation where we literally let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Unfortunately Mr.Wiener, the bill you have is so watered-down for the DINO Blue Dogs it doesn’t remotely approach “good.”

While Mr. Weiner said he recognized that his decision would disappoint legions of single-payer advocates, he said the danger to the larger bill was too great.

Forcing a vote on single-payer could be particularly problematic for lawmakers who represent districts that split heavily between liberal and more moderate or conservative voters. A vote against the single-payer issue would anger constituents on the left, while emboldening opponents on the right, making it more difficult to support the larger bill. Avoiding a vote on the issue, in turn, could allow centrist Democrats to take a tough vote in favor of the larger bill.

In short: Some members of the Democratic Party from the dumber districts are willing to fight against and even vote against actual progressive reform (in favor of supporting legislative pablum) out of fear that they may lose their seat to a Republican who will also fight against and vote against progressive reform.

Time for better Democrats.

ryking:

“…[C]entrism is a political position too. And you see moderate bias — i.e., a preference for centrism — whenever a news outlet assumes that the truth must be “somewhere in the middle.” You see it whenever an organization decides that “balance” requires equal weight for an opposing position, however specious…

Often, moderate bias is just the result of caution, but the effect is to bolster centrist political positions — not least by implying that they are not political positions at all but occupy a happy medium between the nutjobs. Meanwhile, conservatives see moderate bias as liberal, and liberals see it as conservative — letting journalists conclude that it’s not bias at all.

Moderate bias also grows from a related phenomenon: status-quo bias. Journalists, like anyone, have a built-in bias toward believing that what was true yesterday will be true tomorrow. Establishment news outlets grow cozy and comfortable with other establishments. One reason some journalists insufficiently questioned the run-up to the Iraq war and underestimated the housing bubble was that they listened to their usual, credentialed sources…”

— Polarized News? The Media’s Moderate Bias

ryking:

…who needs Republicans? 64 Democrats joined 176 Republicans to stick a shiv in the backs of hundreds of thousands of poor women; bipartisanship at its “finest.” Notice how it’s always one-sided and hews to the right?

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Saturday to tighten a ban against using federal funds to finance abortions under the proposed Democratic healthcare reform legislation.

Opposition Republicans joined forces with anti-abortion Democrats to pass the amendment to the healthcare legislation on a vote of 240-194.

The amendment angered liberal Democrats who support abortion rights…

This is the kind of betrayal that led to me join the Green Party in 2008, and it’s the kind of betrayal that keeps me from donating to the odd Dem who still remembers that being a Democrat means not acting like a piece of right-wing trash.

ryking:

“Neither Republicans nor Democrats adequately acknowledge that it is deeply weird to tie health insurance to one’s job, and even stranger to discuss health care reform as though it is primarily a matter of getting everyone insured.

These two dysfunctional features are preserved in the legislation just passed by the House. Employer- provided health care distorts labor markets by incentivizing workers to stay put. But voters are risk-averse. They’d prefer to keep the insurance they have. Thus President Obama and Democratic leaders pushed reform that built on the employer provided health care system, rather than improving it.

The focus on insurance is even weirder. Voters overwhelmingly agree, for example, that a person who already has cancer — or is very likely to develop it — should get the medical care they need to save their life without being bankrupted or put into lifelong debt. That is certainly my position. But the situation I’ve described isn’t one best addressed by insurance, a tool used when outcomes are unknown. If we want to cover folks with pre-existing conditions or those genetically predisposed to certain ailments, let’s do so directly, rather than layering that requirement onto insurance companies as if it is part of a coherent scheme of pooling risk.

A final necessary reform: addressing costs. The present pace of inflation in the health care sector is unsustainable. Bettering the situation requires price pressures driven by consumers. The present legislation doesn’t bring us closer to that reality either.

It is increasingly likely that we’re going to wind up with a relatively expensive Democratic health care bill that doesn’t fix the fundamental problems with the current system. Blame for this failure is partly the fault of Republicans who’ve abdicated responsibility for advancing a positive agenda on the calculation that obstructionism is more politically advantageous. The whole ordeal makes me sick.”

— The Holes in Health Reform

ryking:

“In the House, the Stupak anti-abortion amendment passed 240 to 194 with one member voting present. 64 Democrats votes yes on the Stupak amendment. The Stupak amendment would effectively ban insurance companies from selling insurance plans that cover elective abortion on the individual and small group market. It would be one of the most far reaching national restriction placed on abortion in decades. It could also potential be used by insurance companies to allow them to legally discriminate against low income Americans.

Abortion would be the only legal medical procedure that the bill would ban insurance companies from covering. Abortion will be the only legal medical procedure the bill will officially “ration.” By voting for the amendment, 64 Democrats and all but one Republican voted to put a government bureaucrat between you, your insurance provider, and your doctor. If you choose to have an abortion, your doctor is willing to refer the procedure, and your insurance provider is willing to pay for the procedure, this amendment will have a government bureaucrat prevent that from happening. For all the talk about small government, these representatives are more than happy to give the government more power as long as it is used to restrict a woman’s right to choose.

You can see which Democrats voted for the Stupak amendment here.

[Emphasis added above.]”

— 64 Democrats Voted To Put A Bureaucrat Between You, Your Insurance Provider, And Your Doctor On The Issue Of Abortion