6 ms·

House Republicans Vote to Strip Independence from Ethics Office

82 points by miles7 10y ago

saboot 10y ago
Okay I'll pretend to give a benefit of the doubt here.. what's the possible upside or positives for doing this? I'm having a very hard time conceiving of them.
- crooked-v 10y ago
  Upside (for Republicans): the ethics office no longer investigates Republicans.
- jacalata 10y ago
  According to Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, this will "better safeguard the exercise of due process rights of both subject and witness". Have not seen this explained.
  - rev_bird 10y ago
    This is the most embarrassing part. They're saying "We can keep things secret to avoid being humiliated" like it's for our benefit.
  - dankohn1 10y ago
    In depth explanation here: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/back-to-the-auction-house http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/back-to-the-auction-hous...
- ars 10y ago
  It was a very confusing news article. The best I understood from it is that they were not happy at releasing reports of someone who was ultimately cleared. And I can kinda see their POV on that. If they are cleared they are cleared, releasing the full report after that seems intrusive and implies that they did something wrong even if cleared (which may be true, but if that's the case then don't clear them).
  - saboot 10y ago
    This is the kind of answer I was looking for.
  - naasking 10y ago
    > The best I understood from it is that they were not happy at releasing reports of someone who was ultimately cleared. Releasing reports of government activity and investigations into elected officials seems perfectly reasonable to me. Government should be transparent.
- MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
  I'm surprised they aren't trotting out a fiscal justification - eliminating wasteful regulatory bodies and whatnot.
  - myowncrapulence 10y ago
    Don't give them any ideas
rev_bird 10y ago
First of all, it looks like it's not a done deal quite yet: >The full House is scheduled to vote on Tuesday on the rules, which would last for two years, until the next congressional elections. That said, I'm absolutely baffled about how anyone can support the Republican Party these days. I'm not talking about tax policy or spending or surveillance or any of the big issues -- I disagree with their positions in many cases, but I can understand them. What I can't understand is the bizarre, nightmarish attacks on what seems to be... well, democracy. Regardless of how you feel about abortion or foreign policy or the social safety net, there's a party that: * Advocated the invalidation of big chunks of the Voting Rights Act, then passed voter suppression efforts (North Carolina, among several others) so brazenly targeted at minorities that even red-state courts stepped in to stop them. * Pushed gerrymandering to an almost comical conclusion in states like Wisconsin, where legislators aren't even pretending to have a reason for doing it other than to disenfranchise Democrats. They're adamant enough that it's probably going to end up in the Supreme Court.[0] * Holds an unannounced vote, with no debate, by secret ballot, on a day federal offices are closed, to gut the congressional office assigned to hold them accountable for corrupt behavior. If you didn't read the linked story, the move basically puts the House Ethics Committee in charge of the investigations, which means Congress is voting to put itself in charge of monitoring the ethics of... Congress. Republicans are whining about how the current system can be abusive, so their answer is to give a House committee more power over the process? The same House that spent years investigating Hillary Clinton over anything they could think of, insisting it had nothing to do with her running for president? The same House that then dropped all the investigations immediately after the election? More importantly than that, the same House that has had more than a dozen[1] members convicted of federal crimes since 2000? This whole thing is already waaay into "inappropriate rant" territory, but I'm so, so saddened by these developments. This isn't a question of political opinions coming into conflict, like with health care or climate policy or banking regulation. This is breaking the system. 0 - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/wisconsin-redistricting-found-to-unfairly-favor-republicans.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/wisconsin-redistricting... 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_politicians_convicted_of_crimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_polit...
- hackuser 10y ago
woodruffw 10y ago
This is nauseating, and the fact that it was done with a secret ballot [1] is indication that those behind it are entirely aware of its repulsiveness. [1]: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-their-own-oversight-233111 http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-...
hackuser 10y ago
> Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, spoke out during the meeting to oppose the measure, aides said on Monday night. Let's not take this at face value. It's an easy way for them to keep their cover as serious people and blame the insurgents.
- DrScump 10y ago
  How do you figure that? If this proposed rule change ever comes before the full House for a vote, that vote is public.
  - jacalata 10y ago
    It will come as part of a bundle that nobody expects any Republicans to reject - http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/back-to-the-auction-house http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/back-to-the-auction-hous... > Now, here's the good part, as it was with the DeLay Rule, the vote is secret. Why? Because this is a caucus vote, i.e., not an actual congressional vote. Let me digress for a moment and explain just one more bit of detail. With each new Congress the majority puts together a bundle of rules that will govern how the House works during that Congress. Mostly this just puts the old rules back in place. But there are always a few changes. All those rules get bundled into one bill and it's the first thing or one of the first to get voted on. That bill gets approved on a party line vote, just like the Speaker gets elected. If the caucus votes for it, it's a sure thing. So even though this was just a secret caucus vote, in effect it is binding as law since all Republicans will vote for it in the official vote.
saboot 10y ago
Why was this flagged/dead? I'm not sure how the voting system works here, and saying "it's political/not relevant to HN" is not a good reason, considering the anti immigration article on the front page from theamericanconservative.com
- grzm 10y ago
  It currently does not have a '[flagged]' tag from what I see, though user voting may have changed in the time between the posting of your comment and mine. What gives you the impression that it's flagged?
  - saboot 10y ago
    I had to "vouch" it, something I haven't done before. Previously it was dead/flagged.
    - grzm 10y ago
      As to why it was flagged, the submission has no direct tech link, and while it's politically relevant and of interest to some, it wouldn't surprise me that some users have flagged it, seeing it unlikely to produce a constructive discussion while producing a lot of flames and uncivil behavior. As to why some posts are flagged, and some to the point of '[flagged][dead]', from as much as I've witnessed it's not all that dissimilar to why some posts or comments get up-voted and others not. Certain occurrences of flagging will catch our eye based on our own perspectives. I haven't been convinced strongly enough that there's anything nefarious afoot to warrant diving into looking at the post statistics (though I do think it would be interesting to do so). From your initial comment I might assume that you think this might be the case. If so, I encourage you to do such a study yourself. The HN APIs will likely give you enough data to provide enough data to dig into it. - https://github.com/HackerNews/API https://github.com/HackerNews/API - https://hn.algolia.com/api https://hn.algolia.com/api
  - woodruffw 10y ago
    I had to vouch for it. It had been flagged, possibly multiple times.
bratsche 10y ago
Some good news - http://www.npr.org/2017/01/03/508043376/after-trump-tweets-criticism-house-gop-drops-weakening-of-house-ethics-office http://www.npr.org/2017/01/03/508043376/after-trump-tweets-c...

82 points by miles7 10y ago

Okay I'll pretend to give a benefit of the doubt here.. what's the possible upside or positives for doing this? I'm having a very hard time conceiving of them.

crooked-v 10y ago
Upside (for Republicans): the ethics office no longer investigates Republicans.
jacalata 10y ago
According to Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, this will "better safeguard the exercise of due process rights of both subject and witness". Have not seen this explained.
- rev_bird 10y ago
  This is the most embarrassing part. They're saying "We can keep things secret to avoid being humiliated" like it's for our benefit.
- dankohn1 10y ago
  In depth explanation here: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/back-to-the-auction-house http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/back-to-the-auction-hous...
ars 10y ago
It was a very confusing news article. The best I understood from it is that they were not happy at releasing reports of someone who was ultimately cleared. And I can kinda see their POV on that. If they are cleared they are cleared, releasing the full report after that seems intrusive and implies that they did something wrong even if cleared (which may be true, but if that's the case then don't clear them).
- saboot 10y ago
  This is the kind of answer I was looking for.
- naasking 10y ago
  > The best I understood from it is that they were not happy at releasing reports of someone who was ultimately cleared. Releasing reports of government activity and investigations into elected officials seems perfectly reasonable to me. Government should be transparent.
MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
I'm surprised they aren't trotting out a fiscal justification - eliminating wasteful regulatory bodies and whatnot.
- myowncrapulence 10y ago
  Don't give them any ideas

rev_bird 10y ago

First of all, it looks like it's not a done deal quite yet: >The full House is scheduled to vote on Tuesday on the rules, which would last for two years, until the next congressional elections. That said, I'm absolutely baffled about how anyone can support the Republican Party these days. I'm not talking about tax policy or spending or surveillance or any of the big issues -- I disagree with their positions in many cases, but I can understand them. What I can't understand is the bizarre, nightmarish attacks on what seems to be... well, democracy. Regardless of how you feel about abortion or foreign policy or the social safety net, there's a party that: * Advocated the invalidation of big chunks of the Voting Rights Act, then passed voter suppression efforts (North Carolina, among several others) so brazenly targeted at minorities that even red-state courts stepped in to stop them. * Pushed gerrymandering to an almost comical conclusion in states like Wisconsin, where legislators aren't even pretending to have a reason for doing it other than to disenfranchise Democrats. They're adamant enough that it's probably going to end up in the Supreme Court.[0] * Holds an unannounced vote, with no debate, by secret ballot, on a day federal offices are closed, to gut the congressional office assigned to hold them accountable for corrupt behavior. If you didn't read the linked story, the move basically puts the House Ethics Committee in charge of the investigations, which means Congress is voting to put itself in charge of monitoring the ethics of... Congress. Republicans are whining about how the current system can be abusive, so their answer is to give a House committee more power over the process? The same House that spent years investigating Hillary Clinton over anything they could think of, insisting it had nothing to do with her running for president? The same House that then dropped all the investigations immediately after the election? More importantly than that, the same House that has had more than a dozen[1] members convicted of federal crimes since 2000? This whole thing is already waaay into "inappropriate rant" territory, but I'm so, so saddened by these developments. This isn't a question of political opinions coming into conflict, like with health care or climate policy or banking regulation. This is breaking the system. 0 - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/wisconsin-redistricting-found-to-unfairly-favor-republicans.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/wisconsin-redistricting... 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_politicians_convicted_of_crimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_polit...

hackuser 10y ago

woodruffw 10y ago

This is nauseating, and the fact that it was done with a secret ballot [1] is indication that those behind it are entirely aware of its repulsiveness. [1]: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-their-own-oversight-233111 http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-...

hackuser 10y ago

> Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, spoke out during the meeting to oppose the measure, aides said on Monday night. Let's not take this at face value. It's an easy way for them to keep their cover as serious people and blame the insurgents.

DrScump 10y ago
How do you figure that? If this proposed rule change ever comes before the full House for a vote, that vote is public.
- jacalata 10y ago
  It will come as part of a bundle that nobody expects any Republicans to reject - http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/back-to-the-auction-house http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/back-to-the-auction-hous... > Now, here's the good part, as it was with the DeLay Rule, the vote is secret. Why? Because this is a caucus vote, i.e., not an actual congressional vote. Let me digress for a moment and explain just one more bit of detail. With each new Congress the majority puts together a bundle of rules that will govern how the House works during that Congress. Mostly this just puts the old rules back in place. But there are always a few changes. All those rules get bundled into one bill and it's the first thing or one of the first to get voted on. That bill gets approved on a party line vote, just like the Speaker gets elected. If the caucus votes for it, it's a sure thing. So even though this was just a secret caucus vote, in effect it is binding as law since all Republicans will vote for it in the official vote.

saboot 10y ago

Why was this flagged/dead? I'm not sure how the voting system works here, and saying "it's political/not relevant to HN" is not a good reason, considering the anti immigration article on the front page from theamericanconservative.com

grzm 10y ago
It currently does not have a '[flagged]' tag from what I see, though user voting may have changed in the time between the posting of your comment and mine. What gives you the impression that it's flagged?
- saboot 10y ago
  I had to "vouch" it, something I haven't done before. Previously it was dead/flagged.
  - grzm 10y ago
    As to why it was flagged, the submission has no direct tech link, and while it's politically relevant and of interest to some, it wouldn't surprise me that some users have flagged it, seeing it unlikely to produce a constructive discussion while producing a lot of flames and uncivil behavior. As to why some posts are flagged, and some to the point of '[flagged][dead]', from as much as I've witnessed it's not all that dissimilar to why some posts or comments get up-voted and others not. Certain occurrences of flagging will catch our eye based on our own perspectives. I haven't been convinced strongly enough that there's anything nefarious afoot to warrant diving into looking at the post statistics (though I do think it would be interesting to do so). From your initial comment I might assume that you think this might be the case. If so, I encourage you to do such a study yourself. The HN APIs will likely give you enough data to provide enough data to dig into it. - https://github.com/HackerNews/API https://github.com/HackerNews/API - https://hn.algolia.com/api https://hn.algolia.com/api
- woodruffw 10y ago
  I had to vouch for it. It had been flagged, possibly multiple times.

bratsche 10y ago

Some good news - http://www.npr.org/2017/01/03/508043376/after-trump-tweets-criticism-house-gop-drops-weakening-of-house-ethics-office http://www.npr.org/2017/01/03/508043376/after-trump-tweets-c...