4 ms·

It seems kind of disingenuous to dismiss useful bills like infrastructure ones as "minor" and "few". A single bill can contain many changes and carry huge amoun

It seems kind of disingenuous to dismiss useful bills like infrastructure ones as "minor" and "few". A single bill can contain many changes and carry huge amounts of funding, like HR3684 or perhaps better known as the "Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act". Seems like a pretty major omission from your bill summary. I'm not sure what you're expecting, The US Congress doesn't and shouldn't be passing a lot of huge sweeping changes every single year. When it's not passing huge sweeping economic changes, legislative bookkeeping is another critical job. It's not "nothing substantial". Planning bills, department/agency confirmations, and grant renewals are all important duties that keep the country running which does impact 99% of us. The OP's comment did not say "Congress doesn't move fast enough", it said Congress doesn't do anything beyond expand police/military and social issues. That's evidently not true.

autoexec 4y ago
> The US Congress doesn't and shouldn't be passing a lot of huge sweeping changes every single year. If everything were going great I'd agree with you, but "a lot of huge sweeping changes" is what we need and it's exactly what the American people have been asking for. Where's the federal law America wants to end prohibition on marijuana? Campaign finance reform? Internet privacy? Gerrymandering? Immigration? Consumer protections? Healthcare? Domestic Surveillance? Mass incarceration? Climate change? Education? Congress isn't doing just fine, it isn't "not moving fast enough", it's broken. It's failing to serve the interests of the American people year after year after year. There is so much that needs done and so many people being hurt because none of it is getting addressed.
- themacguffinman 4y ago
  The American people ask for conflicting things. Marijuana is a partisan issue, campaign finance reform, gerrymandering, immigration, healthcare, education, climate change, mass incarceration etc are intensely partisan issues. Polarization rightfully makes change slow in a representative democracy. No matter how you as an individual feels about the urgency or necessity of your favorite causes, there are people who feel just as strongly about doing something different or not doing things at all.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > Marijuana is a partisan issue Every topic will have people on both (or many) sides, but the majority of both democrats and republicans want legalization with only 1 in 10 of all Americans opposing legalizing it for both medical and recreational use. Polarization isn't the problem. There is common ground and wide agreement on various aspects of these issues which are actionable even if it doesn't solve the entirety of the problem. While of course there will be people who want to argue over specifics that's congresses entire job. To represent our disagreeing perspectives on how a problem should be addressed, work out solutions collectively, and put those solutions in place. No party is going to get everything done in the exact manner they want it, but as long as the issues do get addressed (one way, the other, or by some compromise) the system works. If nothing substantive can be done about the issues that the vast majority of the country agree we need to act on because of partisan bickering then the system is broken and broken systems should be replaced with something that is capable of actually working for Americans. "people disagree so nothing can be done!" is not acceptable.
    - themacguffinman 4y ago
      It's pretty obvious these people simply aren't voting or aren't voting for appropriate representatives. The US is an optional democracy. It doesn't really matter what you answer in these no-stakes surveys if you can't be bothered to show up for them when electing your representatives. If you sent out a survey asking if people wanted free money, you'll probably get a similarly high approval rate. Your revealed preference when you don't vote accordingly is not "deep down I think Congress should legalize marijuana", it's "I don't care". And let's not get carried away, not legalizing marijuana or establishing your preferred healthcare system does not mean the system is "broken". There are ways for people to express that they think the system is broken, but it usually takes more effort than voting accordingly if you're actually right that there is such a strong consensus.
      - autoexec 4y ago
        The problem I see now is that neither party in our two party system have any interest in candidates who are willing to represent the American people. It's nice that in theory we can vote for anyone we want, but the impracticality of that makes it irrelevant. In practice we vote for who they tell us we can vote for. We are essentially not allowed to vote for appropriate representatives. We usually see the frustration with that reality expressed as some form of "Nobody votes for who they want in office, we all just vote against the person we oppose". The problem is widely acknowledged and there have been a number of suggestions like ranked voting systems which would make it more likely for people to be allowed to vote for the candidates they actually want in office, but as you'd expect those elected by our current system have no interest in implementing them. The system may not be entirely broken (it has allowed for things to get accomplished in the past), but because today it consistently fails to represent our interests or meet our needs even over several election cycles there are clearly bugs to be worked out and I think the problems go beyond which particular asses are filling seats in the capitol building. If we had the ability to simply vote our way out of this mess we'd have done it decades ago. That said, I'll agree that far too many people aren't participating in the process, and the longer this goes on the more I think that will change and in fact it has been improving (in presidential elections voter turn out hasn't been this high since the early 90s and for the 18-24 group it hasn't been this high since the early 70s), but that's also why we're seeing an increase in voter suppression.
pessimizer 4y ago
> It seems kind of disingenuous to dismiss useful bills like infrastructure ones as "minor" and "few". This is a dishonest summary. The person you replied to dismissed "relatively minor infrastructure bills," they did not dismiss all infrastructure bills as minor.
- themacguffinman 4y ago
  They said "Then we have a few relatively minor infrastructure funding bills" after summarising categories of bills in the past year as if there weren't other non-minor infrastructure bills like the whopper of HR3684. There's no mention of any non-minor infrastructure bills. The clear implication is that after reading the 100+ bills in the past year, the only infrastructure bills worth mentioning/summarising are relatively minor ones.

autoexec 4y ago

> The US Congress doesn't and shouldn't be passing a lot of huge sweeping changes every single year. If everything were going great I'd agree with you, but "a lot of huge sweeping changes" is what we need and it's exactly what the American people have been asking for. Where's the federal law America wants to end prohibition on marijuana? Campaign finance reform? Internet privacy? Gerrymandering? Immigration? Consumer protections? Healthcare? Domestic Surveillance? Mass incarceration? Climate change? Education? Congress isn't doing just fine, it isn't "not moving fast enough", it's broken. It's failing to serve the interests of the American people year after year after year. There is so much that needs done and so many people being hurt because none of it is getting addressed.

themacguffinman 4y ago
The American people ask for conflicting things. Marijuana is a partisan issue, campaign finance reform, gerrymandering, immigration, healthcare, education, climate change, mass incarceration etc are intensely partisan issues. Polarization rightfully makes change slow in a representative democracy. No matter how you as an individual feels about the urgency or necessity of your favorite causes, there are people who feel just as strongly about doing something different or not doing things at all.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Marijuana is a partisan issue Every topic will have people on both (or many) sides, but the majority of both democrats and republicans want legalization with only 1 in 10 of all Americans opposing legalizing it for both medical and recreational use. Polarization isn't the problem. There is common ground and wide agreement on various aspects of these issues which are actionable even if it doesn't solve the entirety of the problem. While of course there will be people who want to argue over specifics that's congresses entire job. To represent our disagreeing perspectives on how a problem should be addressed, work out solutions collectively, and put those solutions in place. No party is going to get everything done in the exact manner they want it, but as long as the issues do get addressed (one way, the other, or by some compromise) the system works. If nothing substantive can be done about the issues that the vast majority of the country agree we need to act on because of partisan bickering then the system is broken and broken systems should be replaced with something that is capable of actually working for Americans. "people disagree so nothing can be done!" is not acceptable.
  - themacguffinman 4y ago
    It's pretty obvious these people simply aren't voting or aren't voting for appropriate representatives. The US is an optional democracy. It doesn't really matter what you answer in these no-stakes surveys if you can't be bothered to show up for them when electing your representatives. If you sent out a survey asking if people wanted free money, you'll probably get a similarly high approval rate. Your revealed preference when you don't vote accordingly is not "deep down I think Congress should legalize marijuana", it's "I don't care". And let's not get carried away, not legalizing marijuana or establishing your preferred healthcare system does not mean the system is "broken". There are ways for people to express that they think the system is broken, but it usually takes more effort than voting accordingly if you're actually right that there is such a strong consensus.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      The problem I see now is that neither party in our two party system have any interest in candidates who are willing to represent the American people. It's nice that in theory we can vote for anyone we want, but the impracticality of that makes it irrelevant. In practice we vote for who they tell us we can vote for. We are essentially not allowed to vote for appropriate representatives. We usually see the frustration with that reality expressed as some form of "Nobody votes for who they want in office, we all just vote against the person we oppose". The problem is widely acknowledged and there have been a number of suggestions like ranked voting systems which would make it more likely for people to be allowed to vote for the candidates they actually want in office, but as you'd expect those elected by our current system have no interest in implementing them. The system may not be entirely broken (it has allowed for things to get accomplished in the past), but because today it consistently fails to represent our interests or meet our needs even over several election cycles there are clearly bugs to be worked out and I think the problems go beyond which particular asses are filling seats in the capitol building. If we had the ability to simply vote our way out of this mess we'd have done it decades ago. That said, I'll agree that far too many people aren't participating in the process, and the longer this goes on the more I think that will change and in fact it has been improving (in presidential elections voter turn out hasn't been this high since the early 90s and for the 18-24 group it hasn't been this high since the early 70s), but that's also why we're seeing an increase in voter suppression.

pessimizer 4y ago

> It seems kind of disingenuous to dismiss useful bills like infrastructure ones as "minor" and "few". This is a dishonest summary. The person you replied to dismissed "relatively minor infrastructure bills," they did not dismiss all infrastructure bills as minor.

themacguffinman 4y ago
They said "Then we have a few relatively minor infrastructure funding bills" after summarising categories of bills in the past year as if there weren't other non-minor infrastructure bills like the whopper of HR3684. There's no mention of any non-minor infrastructure bills. The clear implication is that after reading the 100+ bills in the past year, the only infrastructure bills worth mentioning/summarising are relatively minor ones.