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Who in the right mind would propose cutting EPA budget? This current government. Who in the right mind would want to offer health care to fewer Americans? This

by yeukhon 10y ago

Who in the right mind would propose cutting EPA budget? This current government. Who in the right mind would want to offer health care to fewer Americans? This current government. With all the allegations and lying we read about this current administration, there is no sanity neither at the White House nor on the Capital Hill. I never like the fact Senate election is every six years. There should also be a fixed term for all representatives and senators. (Disclaimer: do not support Trump, but not Democrat / Republican, both parties are dirty in their own way). If one day voters are given a secure voting application they can vote on all issues, it will be great.

colordrops 10y ago
I would argue that they are not in their _right_ mind.
- amptorn 10y ago
  This subtracts from their responsibility.
  - colordrops 10y ago
    I don't believe so. Everyone goes through varying degrees of sub-optimal mental states, and unless they are completely debilitated by something like schizophrenia, they are responsible for bringing themselves out of whatever place they found themselves in.
bluejekyll 10y ago
> (Disclaimer: do not support Trump, but not Democrat / Republican, both parties are dirty in their own way). With current winner take all voting structures in the US, this isn't exactly an option. Winner-take-all voting systems end up with only two parties, because that is the only viable way to win. What we need is ranked choice voting so that voters are not penalized for supporting third and fourth options. > If one day voters are given a secure voting application they can vote on all issues, it will be great. I'm not sure I share your confidence in that. A representative government has it's positives, such-as people who are dedicated to govern while we all work, etc. And with only 50% turn out, or less, you'd get a skewed populous actually voting on these things.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  If we have the ability to vote (sort of electoral college), but giving incentive to people to participate, perhaps we will see some more engagement. Perhaps. I don't know, it's ideal. Perhaps if their job is more about explaining and convincing people, and we hold the keys voting, then perhaps the power will indeed back to us. Again, ideal, I don't know how effective it will ever be.
- vedranm 10y ago
  Perhaps there should be more freedom and the government should just do less.
disantlor 10y ago
why reflexively add that you think both parties are dirty in their own way. to be fair, I have this instinct sometimes but at a certain point the ways in which their "dirtiness" might be similar becomes less interesting/relevant than the ways in which one party is actively attempting to dismantle the government, and doing so from a place of transparent incompetence.
- ythn 10y ago
  One side pushes toward marxism, the other side toward facism. Both outcomes end with a dystopian society for the normal citizens. We can only pray the party in power switches enough to keep us in the middle.
  - disantlor 10y ago
    even if I accept that, my point is that one side has come much closer to facism than the other has marxism. Or fine, if you don't agree with that even, my point is simply why just hand-waive that it's the same. Let's discuss if the republicans have moved too close to facism without mentioning the democrats who are out of power and aren't a factor in this particular topic.
  - pstuart 10y ago
    Oh, the commie card. I call bullshit. Now the fascism part we're seeing that actually move forward in real time, so you get half a point.
    - ythn 10y ago
      > Oh, the commie card. I call bullshit. Had Sanders been elected, I am confident we would be talking about the marxist administration instead of the fascist administration. Hillary? Not so much.
      - pstuart 10y ago
        Not we. You would have been talking about the marxist administration. Just what is marxist about his platform?
bkohlmann 10y ago
While I'm sympathetic to the direct democracy argument, CA is a great example of the pitfalls of the concept. There are numerous, contradictory ballot propositions that have passed, severely limiting the legislatures ability to budget effectively. See prop tax cielings, other tax requirements, combined with numerous mandatory spending line items. As bad as legislators are, at least they are held accountable at the ballot box for making hard tradeoffs.
prolly_a_moron 10y ago
>Who in the right mind would propose cutting EPA budget? Once set, the EPA budget is untouchable? That seems like a terrible way to run government. I'm not for or against the budget cut, but I don't think anything should be off-limits. >do not support Trump You don't say.... >If one day voters are given a secure voting application they can vote on all issues, it will be great. I think you'd be surprised for how many people "internet privacy" is completely and utterly irrelevant to their daily struggles.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  I never say it is untouchable, but 31% is a lot. Perhaps they need to convince me their cutting will yield to better spending. But we know why the budget is cut - the head of EPA doesn't believe in EPA, Trump doesn't want EPA either. It isn't just the internet privacy, but everything else.
  - prolly_a_moron 10y ago
    >I never say it is untouchable No, but you did say "Who in the right mind would propose cutting EPA budget". I would think about it, as I hope my elected officials would. >but 31% is a lot. Perhaps they need to convince me their cutting will yield to better spending This is fair.
gpawl 10y ago
> This current government. > This current government. > both parties are dirty in their own way one of those ways seems more troubling, though.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  sigh. And supporters for both ways feel the same way you do, so, guess what? nothing truly changes.
Arizhel 10y ago
Why would you have a problem with the Senate term being 6 years? That makes no sense at all. See the recent election: we got a radical new Administration, plus a huge crop of new GOP politicians. From your stance on the EPA and health care, I assume that you do not favor the GOP. If we had a 2-year term for Senators like we do the House, then we would have even more GOP politicians in the Senate than we do now, because this time around we had a big GOP sweep. Is that really what you want? The whole point of the Senate having a 6-year term (and them not being popularly elected before the 18th Amendment) was to keep the federal government from having wild swings in leadership due to short-term political trends. In engineering terms, it's supposed to be a longer feedback loop, to prevent wild oscillations and instability. Having fixed terms doesn't help; then you get pols who are for sale to the highest bidder because they can't make a career out of government. If you like the EPA and single-payer health care, then Bernie Sanders is probably to your liking. He's been in Congress for several decades now. You want to force people like that out? Finally, letting voters vote on all issues is a terrible way to run government. If you put internet privacy on the ballot, how do you think people would vote? Why do you assume they'll agree with you? Advertising campaigns by the media can easily convince them that these rules simply increase their costs and are "bad for competition" or somesuch BS. In fact, they'll probably put a similar-looking proposition on the ballot which actually does the opposite of what it appears to. We see this all the time in states with ballot propositions; there'll be 2 props on the ballot, one which is the "good" one, and one which is put there by some industry which hates the good one and sounds good if you don't look at it too closely, and is designed to generate FUD. The whole reason we have professional legislators is because normal people don't have the time or education to handle all these issues; that's why we outsource it to "experts", except in our case the experts are corrupt hacks.
dang 10y ago
Please let's not have generic partisan battles on HN. They're not what this site is for, they destroy what it is for, and they inevitably degrade into useless flamewars (as in 'commie' vs. 'fascist' below). We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942925 and marked it off-topic.

by yeukhon 10y ago

colordrops 10y ago

I would argue that they are not in their _right_ mind.

amptorn 10y ago
This subtracts from their responsibility.
- colordrops 10y ago
  I don't believe so. Everyone goes through varying degrees of sub-optimal mental states, and unless they are completely debilitated by something like schizophrenia, they are responsible for bringing themselves out of whatever place they found themselves in.

bluejekyll 10y ago

> (Disclaimer: do not support Trump, but not Democrat / Republican, both parties are dirty in their own way). With current winner take all voting structures in the US, this isn't exactly an option. Winner-take-all voting systems end up with only two parties, because that is the only viable way to win. What we need is ranked choice voting so that voters are not penalized for supporting third and fourth options. > If one day voters are given a secure voting application they can vote on all issues, it will be great. I'm not sure I share your confidence in that. A representative government has it's positives, such-as people who are dedicated to govern while we all work, etc. And with only 50% turn out, or less, you'd get a skewed populous actually voting on these things.

yeukhon 10y ago
If we have the ability to vote (sort of electoral college), but giving incentive to people to participate, perhaps we will see some more engagement. Perhaps. I don't know, it's ideal. Perhaps if their job is more about explaining and convincing people, and we hold the keys voting, then perhaps the power will indeed back to us. Again, ideal, I don't know how effective it will ever be.
vedranm 10y ago
Perhaps there should be more freedom and the government should just do less.

disantlor 10y ago

why reflexively add that you think both parties are dirty in their own way. to be fair, I have this instinct sometimes but at a certain point the ways in which their "dirtiness" might be similar becomes less interesting/relevant than the ways in which one party is actively attempting to dismantle the government, and doing so from a place of transparent incompetence.

ythn 10y ago
One side pushes toward marxism, the other side toward facism. Both outcomes end with a dystopian society for the normal citizens. We can only pray the party in power switches enough to keep us in the middle.
- disantlor 10y ago
  even if I accept that, my point is that one side has come much closer to facism than the other has marxism. Or fine, if you don't agree with that even, my point is simply why just hand-waive that it's the same. Let's discuss if the republicans have moved too close to facism without mentioning the democrats who are out of power and aren't a factor in this particular topic.
- pstuart 10y ago
  Oh, the commie card. I call bullshit. Now the fascism part we're seeing that actually move forward in real time, so you get half a point.
  - ythn 10y ago
    > Oh, the commie card. I call bullshit. Had Sanders been elected, I am confident we would be talking about the marxist administration instead of the fascist administration. Hillary? Not so much.
    - pstuart 10y ago
      Not we. You would have been talking about the marxist administration. Just what is marxist about his platform?

bkohlmann 10y ago

While I'm sympathetic to the direct democracy argument, CA is a great example of the pitfalls of the concept. There are numerous, contradictory ballot propositions that have passed, severely limiting the legislatures ability to budget effectively. See prop tax cielings, other tax requirements, combined with numerous mandatory spending line items. As bad as legislators are, at least they are held accountable at the ballot box for making hard tradeoffs.

prolly_a_moron 10y ago

>Who in the right mind would propose cutting EPA budget? Once set, the EPA budget is untouchable? That seems like a terrible way to run government. I'm not for or against the budget cut, but I don't think anything should be off-limits. >do not support Trump You don't say.... >If one day voters are given a secure voting application they can vote on all issues, it will be great. I think you'd be surprised for how many people "internet privacy" is completely and utterly irrelevant to their daily struggles.

yeukhon 10y ago
I never say it is untouchable, but 31% is a lot. Perhaps they need to convince me their cutting will yield to better spending. But we know why the budget is cut - the head of EPA doesn't believe in EPA, Trump doesn't want EPA either. It isn't just the internet privacy, but everything else.
- prolly_a_moron 10y ago
  >I never say it is untouchable No, but you did say "Who in the right mind would propose cutting EPA budget". I would think about it, as I hope my elected officials would. >but 31% is a lot. Perhaps they need to convince me their cutting will yield to better spending This is fair.

gpawl 10y ago

> This current government. > This current government. > both parties are dirty in their own way one of those ways seems more troubling, though.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
sigh. And supporters for both ways feel the same way you do, so, guess what? nothing truly changes.

Arizhel 10y ago

Why would you have a problem with the Senate term being 6 years? That makes no sense at all. See the recent election: we got a radical new Administration, plus a huge crop of new GOP politicians. From your stance on the EPA and health care, I assume that you do not favor the GOP. If we had a 2-year term for Senators like we do the House, then we would have even more GOP politicians in the Senate than we do now, because this time around we had a big GOP sweep. Is that really what you want? The whole point of the Senate having a 6-year term (and them not being popularly elected before the 18th Amendment) was to keep the federal government from having wild swings in leadership due to short-term political trends. In engineering terms, it's supposed to be a longer feedback loop, to prevent wild oscillations and instability. Having fixed terms doesn't help; then you get pols who are for sale to the highest bidder because they can't make a career out of government. If you like the EPA and single-payer health care, then Bernie Sanders is probably to your liking. He's been in Congress for several decades now. You want to force people like that out? Finally, letting voters vote on all issues is a terrible way to run government. If you put internet privacy on the ballot, how do you think people would vote? Why do you assume they'll agree with you? Advertising campaigns by the media can easily convince them that these rules simply increase their costs and are "bad for competition" or somesuch BS. In fact, they'll probably put a similar-looking proposition on the ballot which actually does the opposite of what it appears to. We see this all the time in states with ballot propositions; there'll be 2 props on the ballot, one which is the "good" one, and one which is put there by some industry which hates the good one and sounds good if you don't look at it too closely, and is designed to generate FUD. The whole reason we have professional legislators is because normal people don't have the time or education to handle all these issues; that's why we outsource it to "experts", except in our case the experts are corrupt hacks.

dang 10y ago

Please let's not have generic partisan battles on HN. They're not what this site is for, they destroy what it is for, and they inevitably degrade into useless flamewars (as in 'commie' vs. 'fascist' below). We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942925 and marked it off-topic.