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I understand the idea of the SC kicking things back to congress and that would be well and good if we didn't have minority rule in this country coupled with the

I understand the idea of the SC kicking things back to congress and that would be well and good if we didn't have minority rule in this country coupled with the outsized power that land has over people. On top of that we have a disgusting high rep->citizen ratio because of a silly law congress passed capping it's size. Throw in gerrymandering and election boards rejecting results of elections (and things like Jan 6th) and it's clear democracy is dying.

josephcsible 4y ago
How does land have power over people? States with more land don't have more representation than states with less land, but states with more people do have more representation than states with fewer people. As a concrete example, New Jersey has the same representation in the Senate and 12x the representation in the House as Alaska, despite only having 1% of the land of Alaska.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  Maybe that was badly phrased but it refers to states having more power than they should (or less) due to how the electoral college and senators work.
  - hellojesus 4y ago
    It was designed that way on purpose.
    - halostatue 4y ago
      Yes. To give the slave states power beyond their value.
      - robonerd 4y ago
        The value of those states was not in question when they threatened succession; they were important enough to fight a war over. Nor would many of the states have joined the union in the first place if not for this system, so America wouldn't have existed in the first place if you had your way. The entire country is premised on this compromise.
        krapp 4y ago
        The centuries-old political climate in which the electoral college was born has little if any bearing on its utility for the modern United States. I doubt the only thing keeping rural states in the union now is leverage against abolitionists.
        hellojesus 4y ago
        It was designed to prevent tyranny of the majority.
        CamperBob2 4y ago
        This argument comes up often, but I've never understood how tyranny of the minority is any better.
        krapp 4y ago
        The people who make that argument are usually benefactors of that tyranny.
        hellojesus 4y ago
        It's because tyranny of the minority means prevention against new laws, not the enactment of them. It's the safer path, generally not absolutely. A bias towards inaction.
        krapp 4y ago
        Tyranny of the minority only means prevention of laws the minority disagrees with. That minority hasn't, historically, taken issue with new laws that cater to them.
- ALotOfBees 4y ago
  It's funny that you mention Alaska, because they are the #1 overall state when it comes to Senate and Electoral College "voter power". As you said, they get the same Senate representation despite having a fraction of the population of NJ. In addition, each vote cast in Alaska counts far more towards the presidential election than a vote in NJ does.
  - hellojesus 4y ago
    That's because the federal level is supposed to only deal with federal matters and be nonexistent elsewhere. Each state has the same weight in the senate because they are all equal players in that space. The house has the bias towards population. Most regulation is supposed to take place at the state level.
    - joshstrange 4y ago
      > Each state has the same weight in the senate because they are all equal players in that space. Except they represent wildly different populations and all have equal say in the senate. > The house has the bias towards population. One that has been capped by the DC Admission Act and perverted by gerrymandering. > Most regulation is supposed to take place at the state level. Says who? How in the world does that work for things like pollution (which isn't stopped at state lines) or basic rights such as the right to love who you love and/or get married?
      - hellojesus 4y ago
        > Says who? How in the world does that work for things like pollution (which isn't stopped at state lines) or basic rights such as the right to love who you love and/or get married? Says the Constitution... 10th Ammendment: any power not explicitly enumerated to congress is left to the states. Article 1 Section 8 enumerates the powers that the federal government has, along with some granted through ammendments.
        joshstrange 4y ago
remarkEon 4y ago
This is confusing. You claim that we have "minority rule" when certain things have to be done through Congress ... but by implication you prefer these decisions be made by SCOTUS (an unelected "minority" if there ever was one)?
- joshstrange 4y ago
  I never said relying on SCOTUS was a good idea but neither is tearing down precedent and kicking it back to an organization which will not or can not act.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    So we should just ignore the Constitution because our elected representatives, who we can actually kick out of office, don't want to do their jobs?
- tuckerman 4y ago
  Not who you are replying to, but my personal take is that we are deciding between Congress and career government employees making these regulations, not Congress and SCOTUS.
robonerd 4y ago
> it's clear democracy is dying. If democracy died every time somebody got mad at the outcomes and made claims like that, it would have been dead before it even started, and subsequently re-died every year since. What exactly was so democractic about SCOTUS permitting the executive branch to write their own laws anyway? Writing laws is meant to be the job of Congress. You can claim Congress is insufficiently democratic due to gerrymandering, but less democratic than the judicial and executive branches? Give me a break. Congress remains the most democratic of the three, and this SCOTUS decision gives power back to Congress.
- fullstackchris 4y ago
  Regardless, you can't ignore the far reaching affects of Trump as president and January 6th. Was it just a "phase"? Perhaps. But any scenario I can think of leads to more of this boneheaded nonsense. You can't simply say 'bah people disagreeing is not the end of democracy' and be done with it. The statistics are there; the US is far more polarized and contentious than it ever was before.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    This country has stumbled through boneheaded nonsense after boneheaded nonsense ever since it was founded. What is going on now is not even remotely the worst it has ever been, and I don't think you can rationally plot any trajectory from the present to "death of democracy" unless you are discounting any datapoint more than a few years old. > the US is far more polarized and contentious than it ever was before. This is completely divorced from reality. Everything that has happened in the past 10 years is a mere candle to the bonfire that was the Civil War. You must be discounting datapoints you didn't live through if you really believe what you've said here. Shit man, the present state of affairs is tame even compared to the 60s and 70s.
    - enragedcacti 4y ago
      We are one supreme court decision away (via the independent legislature doctrine) wherein a state legislature could overrule its own laws or constitution and federal law and flip election outcomes as they desire, both statewide and federally. The decision to even hear the case is radical and affirming would represent a massive shift away from democracy in the US as we know it.
rayiner 4y ago
Democrats need to shake this notion that Republicans represent "minority rule" because it both delegitimizes our institutions and goads Democrats into overplaying their hand. Republicans won almost 1.5 million more total votes in 2016 for the House, the country's primary law-making body: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_House_of_Re.... They are on pace to win the House again in 2022 by millions of votes, like they did in 2010: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/generic-ballot https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/generic-ballot. Features like the Electoral College can lead to different incentives in close elections, but even that does not systematically favor Republicans. As recently as 2012, the Electoral College favored Democrats. Obama would have won in 2012 even if he had lost the popular vote: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/did-democrats-get-lucky-in-the-electoral-college/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/did-democrats-get-lucky... ("President Obama won the Electoral College fairly decisively last year despite a margin of just 3.8 percentage points in the national popular vote. In fact, Mr. Obama would probably have won the Electoral College even if the popular vote had slightly favored Mitt Romney.")
- maxerickson 4y ago
  And the Senate? You seem to try to imply that they are not important to legislation, which is just silly.
  - knubie 4y ago
    The Senate represents the individual states, not the people. The fact that relatively small states like Delaware have as much representation in the Senate as large populous states like New York is by design, and was a critical for the creation of the Union in the first place.
    - dctoedt 4y ago
      > The fact that relatively small states like Delaware have as much representation in the Senate as large populous states like New York is by design, and was a critical for the creation of the Union in the first place. Yeah, but conditions have changed somewhat since 1787 — not least, what genteel white Southern ladies used to sometimes refer to as The Late Unpleasantness (1861-65).
worker_person 4y ago
For EPA. Court took power away from unelected bureaucrats and gave it back to elected officials. For Row. Court took power away from itself and gave it back to elected officials. You can vote for those elected officials. This is democracy working as intended.
- vkou 4y ago
  > For EPA. Court took power away from unelected bureaucrats and gave it back to elected officials. The elected officials never lost this power, if congress didn't want the EPA to do something they could draft and vote on a bill to that effect by Tuesday.
- philosopher1234 4y ago
  This is exactly the type of comment I’m talking about.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  > You can vote for those elected officials. This is democracy working as intended. Not when elected officials can pick their voters and throw out the election results they don't like. Please join the rest of us in reality and not the la la land where our system is working or even healthy.
  - spoils19 4y ago
    Given that largely only happens in liberal states, yet liberal states are the ones most against this ruling, it makes you question the motives of those concerned.
citilife 4y ago
> it's clear democracy is dying. The united states has never been a democracy. The united states was designed with a state being a nation, each nation joined a federation (the united states). This is similar to the EU (they're following the same model). Your local governments still have WAY more power over your life than the federal government. Think about your daily life, when you drive do you worry about speeding in town? If you do, that's because your local government. Local taxes, approvals for construction, education, health services, power, etc is all decided locally. Local governments are decided within a community, they can ignore federal laws. Local officials are decided via a democratic way, direct votes. IMO that's actually becoming stronger, as the federal government weakens, it returns the power to where it belongs people and local government.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  Yeah but how do I get people in other communities to live how I would prefer them to?
  - ejb999 4y ago
    Hopefully you meant that as funny...because it is!
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  > Your local governments still have WAY more power over your life than the federal government This was true a 100 years ago, i don't know if it's true anymore. My retirement, how much i pay in taxes, can I get healthcare, what does that healthcare look like, how much pollutants can the power plant produce, how safe is the car I drive, and many more questions are determined by the federal government.

josephcsible 4y ago

How does land have power over people? States with more land don't have more representation than states with less land, but states with more people do have more representation than states with fewer people. As a concrete example, New Jersey has the same representation in the Senate and 12x the representation in the House as Alaska, despite only having 1% of the land of Alaska.

joshstrange 4y ago
Maybe that was badly phrased but it refers to states having more power than they should (or less) due to how the electoral college and senators work.
- hellojesus 4y ago
  It was designed that way on purpose.
  - halostatue 4y ago
    Yes. To give the slave states power beyond their value.
    - robonerd 4y ago
      The value of those states was not in question when they threatened succession; they were important enough to fight a war over. Nor would many of the states have joined the union in the first place if not for this system, so America wouldn't have existed in the first place if you had your way. The entire country is premised on this compromise.
      - krapp 4y ago
        The centuries-old political climate in which the electoral college was born has little if any bearing on its utility for the modern United States. I doubt the only thing keeping rural states in the union now is leverage against abolitionists.
        hellojesus 4y ago
        It was designed to prevent tyranny of the majority.
        CamperBob2 4y ago
        This argument comes up often, but I've never understood how tyranny of the minority is any better.
        krapp 4y ago
        The people who make that argument are usually benefactors of that tyranny.
        hellojesus 4y ago
        It's because tyranny of the minority means prevention against new laws, not the enactment of them. It's the safer path, generally not absolutely. A bias towards inaction.
        krapp 4y ago
        Tyranny of the minority only means prevention of laws the minority disagrees with. That minority hasn't, historically, taken issue with new laws that cater to them.
ALotOfBees 4y ago
It's funny that you mention Alaska, because they are the #1 overall state when it comes to Senate and Electoral College "voter power". As you said, they get the same Senate representation despite having a fraction of the population of NJ. In addition, each vote cast in Alaska counts far more towards the presidential election than a vote in NJ does.
- hellojesus 4y ago
  That's because the federal level is supposed to only deal with federal matters and be nonexistent elsewhere. Each state has the same weight in the senate because they are all equal players in that space. The house has the bias towards population. Most regulation is supposed to take place at the state level.
  - joshstrange 4y ago
    > Each state has the same weight in the senate because they are all equal players in that space. Except they represent wildly different populations and all have equal say in the senate. > The house has the bias towards population. One that has been capped by the DC Admission Act and perverted by gerrymandering. > Most regulation is supposed to take place at the state level. Says who? How in the world does that work for things like pollution (which isn't stopped at state lines) or basic rights such as the right to love who you love and/or get married?
    - hellojesus 4y ago
      > Says who? How in the world does that work for things like pollution (which isn't stopped at state lines) or basic rights such as the right to love who you love and/or get married? Says the Constitution... 10th Ammendment: any power not explicitly enumerated to congress is left to the states. Article 1 Section 8 enumerates the powers that the federal government has, along with some granted through ammendments.
      - joshstrange 4y ago

remarkEon 4y ago

This is confusing. You claim that we have "minority rule" when certain things have to be done through Congress ... but by implication you prefer these decisions be made by SCOTUS (an unelected "minority" if there ever was one)?

joshstrange 4y ago
I never said relying on SCOTUS was a good idea but neither is tearing down precedent and kicking it back to an organization which will not or can not act.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  So we should just ignore the Constitution because our elected representatives, who we can actually kick out of office, don't want to do their jobs?
tuckerman 4y ago
Not who you are replying to, but my personal take is that we are deciding between Congress and career government employees making these regulations, not Congress and SCOTUS.

robonerd 4y ago

> it's clear democracy is dying. If democracy died every time somebody got mad at the outcomes and made claims like that, it would have been dead before it even started, and subsequently re-died every year since. What exactly was so democractic about SCOTUS permitting the executive branch to write their own laws anyway? Writing laws is meant to be the job of Congress. You can claim Congress is insufficiently democratic due to gerrymandering, but less democratic than the judicial and executive branches? Give me a break. Congress remains the most democratic of the three, and this SCOTUS decision gives power back to Congress.

fullstackchris 4y ago
Regardless, you can't ignore the far reaching affects of Trump as president and January 6th. Was it just a "phase"? Perhaps. But any scenario I can think of leads to more of this boneheaded nonsense. You can't simply say 'bah people disagreeing is not the end of democracy' and be done with it. The statistics are there; the US is far more polarized and contentious than it ever was before.
- robonerd 4y ago
  This country has stumbled through boneheaded nonsense after boneheaded nonsense ever since it was founded. What is going on now is not even remotely the worst it has ever been, and I don't think you can rationally plot any trajectory from the present to "death of democracy" unless you are discounting any datapoint more than a few years old. > the US is far more polarized and contentious than it ever was before. This is completely divorced from reality. Everything that has happened in the past 10 years is a mere candle to the bonfire that was the Civil War. You must be discounting datapoints you didn't live through if you really believe what you've said here. Shit man, the present state of affairs is tame even compared to the 60s and 70s.
  - enragedcacti 4y ago
    We are one supreme court decision away (via the independent legislature doctrine) wherein a state legislature could overrule its own laws or constitution and federal law and flip election outcomes as they desire, both statewide and federally. The decision to even hear the case is radical and affirming would represent a massive shift away from democracy in the US as we know it.

rayiner 4y ago

Democrats need to shake this notion that Republicans represent "minority rule" because it both delegitimizes our institutions and goads Democrats into overplaying their hand. Republicans won almost 1.5 million more total votes in 2016 for the House, the country's primary law-making body: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_House_of_Re.... They are on pace to win the House again in 2022 by millions of votes, like they did in 2010: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/generic-ballot https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/generic-ballot. Features like the Electoral College can lead to different incentives in close elections, but even that does not systematically favor Republicans. As recently as 2012, the Electoral College favored Democrats. Obama would have won in 2012 even if he had lost the popular vote: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/did-democrats-get-lucky-in-the-electoral-college/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/did-democrats-get-lucky... ("President Obama won the Electoral College fairly decisively last year despite a margin of just 3.8 percentage points in the national popular vote. In fact, Mr. Obama would probably have won the Electoral College even if the popular vote had slightly favored Mitt Romney.")

maxerickson 4y ago
And the Senate? You seem to try to imply that they are not important to legislation, which is just silly.
- knubie 4y ago
  The Senate represents the individual states, not the people. The fact that relatively small states like Delaware have as much representation in the Senate as large populous states like New York is by design, and was a critical for the creation of the Union in the first place.
  - dctoedt 4y ago
    > The fact that relatively small states like Delaware have as much representation in the Senate as large populous states like New York is by design, and was a critical for the creation of the Union in the first place. Yeah, but conditions have changed somewhat since 1787 — not least, what genteel white Southern ladies used to sometimes refer to as The Late Unpleasantness (1861-65).

worker_person 4y ago

For EPA. Court took power away from unelected bureaucrats and gave it back to elected officials. For Row. Court took power away from itself and gave it back to elected officials. You can vote for those elected officials. This is democracy working as intended.

vkou 4y ago
> For EPA. Court took power away from unelected bureaucrats and gave it back to elected officials. The elected officials never lost this power, if congress didn't want the EPA to do something they could draft and vote on a bill to that effect by Tuesday.
philosopher1234 4y ago
This is exactly the type of comment I’m talking about.
joshstrange 4y ago
> You can vote for those elected officials. This is democracy working as intended. Not when elected officials can pick their voters and throw out the election results they don't like. Please join the rest of us in reality and not the la la land where our system is working or even healthy.
- spoils19 4y ago
  Given that largely only happens in liberal states, yet liberal states are the ones most against this ruling, it makes you question the motives of those concerned.

citilife 4y ago

> it's clear democracy is dying. The united states has never been a democracy. The united states was designed with a state being a nation, each nation joined a federation (the united states). This is similar to the EU (they're following the same model). Your local governments still have WAY more power over your life than the federal government. Think about your daily life, when you drive do you worry about speeding in town? If you do, that's because your local government. Local taxes, approvals for construction, education, health services, power, etc is all decided locally. Local governments are decided within a community, they can ignore federal laws. Local officials are decided via a democratic way, direct votes. IMO that's actually becoming stronger, as the federal government weakens, it returns the power to where it belongs people and local government.

willcipriano 4y ago
Yeah but how do I get people in other communities to live how I would prefer them to?
- ejb999 4y ago
  Hopefully you meant that as funny...because it is!
JamesBarney 4y ago
> Your local governments still have WAY more power over your life than the federal government This was true a 100 years ago, i don't know if it's true anymore. My retirement, how much i pay in taxes, can I get healthcare, what does that healthcare look like, how much pollutants can the power plant produce, how safe is the car I drive, and many more questions are determined by the federal government.