6 ms·

Unless the way elections are handled changes, such as doing anything that selects for expertise instead of partisan hackery, all this is going to do is accelera

Unless the way elections are handled changes, such as doing anything that selects for expertise instead of partisan hackery, all this is going to do is accelerate the gridlock, corruption, and dysfunction. It just does not logically follow that putting more pressure on the legislative branch to be functional is going to work when its functionality or lack thereof is based largely on a very gerrymandered population being blasted non-stop by a completely co-opted, corrupt media. When the corruption and control is so thoroughly embedded already, the difference between "unelected official" and "party-and-special-interest-approved elected official" becomes a silly fig leaf of a difference.

thethimble 2y ago
On the other hand, enabling the judicial and executive branch to overcompensate for this disfunction also seems problematic - particularly as the former groups aren’t elected (except for the President, of course).
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  I think everyone agrees congress being dysfunctional is problematic. The question is if it’s better for the other other branches to pick up the slack or if we should just let the government do nothing
mike_hearn 2y ago
Institutionally-declared experts are not exactly famous for their lack of partisan hackery, especially not in recent years. > It just does not logically follow that putting more pressure on the legislative branch to be functional is going to work You're talking like this is a political tactic or strategy used by the Supreme Court to achieve a specific outcome (which might "work" or "not work"), but it's not. Justices aren't meant to make such plans. They are supposed to do their job. If Congress does or doesn't do theirs, that isn't by itself the Court's problem nor something to which they should be the solution. But it's also worth remembering that what "works" means varies a lot depending on perspective. There is plenty of stuff that is bipartisan in Congress and which they get done fairly quietly. Additionally, to the school of thought known as libertarianism, Congress not doing things is the desirable outcome and thus a gridlocked Congress is in fact the system working as designed, in the sense that it is being limited by the degree of agreement amongst voters on what it should do.
- adamc 2y ago
  I think few who have watched the court think it is anything but a strategy used to work toward specific outcomes.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    Hmm well I'm a foreigner so am not really affected by Supreme Court judgements, and I would say that this particular court seems to be doing an unusually good job of just following the law as written regardless of outcome. Certainly it seems true when compared to the supreme court equivalents in most other countries, which are largely a joke. As an example, the Supreme Court made another judgement this week that has pissed off lots of conservatives: it dismissed a case about social media companies banning political speech about COVID at the behest of the government, on the basis of lack of standing. This was widely seen as a blow against free speech. If you read the judgement though the problem was simply that the people being censored hadn't shown clearly that it was the government doing the censoring vs the social network executives, and were relying on a sort of ambient argument that the government was leaning on the companies in ways that weren't always clear, and so there was a First Amendment violation at one-hop-removed. The court rejected this reasoning, saying they could only rule on cases where the people doing the appeal could show they had been directly harmed by the government, so they weren't even going to consider the rest of the case. If the Supreme Court were a bunch of conservative activists they wouldn't have done that. They'd have accepted the indirect censorship argument, accepted that the case had standing and then ruled against the federal agencies. And in fact the conservatives I saw talking about it were raging against "technical" judgements that could only be the result of pro-regime bias etc etc. But the judgement seemed logically sound to me. So the idea that the current court is packed with judges abusing process to get specific ideological outcomes looks very wrong. I never paid attention to Supreme Court rulings before a year or so ago but suddenly it seems like they're all over HN. So this is the first time I've read them. The thing that's really striking is how stupidly obvious all these cases seem to be and how weak the original legal reasoning being overturned was. You can understand the argument within a few pages of reading, usually. Like when Roe v Wade was struck down, all I knew about it was that it was related to legalizing abortion. So naturally I figured it was something to do with abortion law. When it was struck down, I learned for the first time that it actually relied on some convoluted backflips to do with privacy law that had nothing to do with abortion, moreover it seemed almost everyone in the legal profession had always known it was logically dubious and the product of an activist court, etc. It was pretty surprising that such a judgement had survived so long, honestly. Likewise for this judgement, what they're saying is there's not only the Constitution but also a specific act of Congress which both state that when statutes are ambiguous the courts decide on the correct interpretation. In the original Chevron judgement those laws appear to have been ignored and the courts started letting the executive branch decide what ambiguous law meant. That then became just the way things are done, but the law had never actually been changed to allow that. Once again this judgement seems .... kinda obvious? It's not exactly a complex feat of legal reasoning. The laws says the courts resolve ambiguity, they weren't doing it, now they've been told to do it. End of judgement. It's quite fascinating how many commenters just assume that if there's a decision they don't like from a court it must be due to bias and corruption. Makes me wonder what they think when there's a decision they do like.
snapplebobapple 2y ago
i am sympathetic to desire to change how elections are handled (universal suffrage is a stupid idea without universal risk/ skin in the game, we need a way to make voters universally and roughly equal uncomfortable eith poor fiscal managment so they feel the pian when they vote thwmselves more stuff without also voting in a payment method) but its not happening. i also think you are mistaking long term corruption and chaos with a normal process in big party system where every several decades the big voting blocks move around and thatparalyzes the politicians until they are sure who their voting blocks are. onve the voting blocks finishmigrating and sort out dominance per party things will go back more towards historical functioninglevels
- goostavos 2y ago
  >make voters universally and roughly equal uncomfortable eith poor fiscal managment so they feel the pian when they vote thwmselves more stuff without also voting in a payment method) What does that look like in your mind?
  - rustcleaner 2y ago
    My idea is to apportion costs to the voter's choices (you want lobster, you pay for lobster), and/or hamstring the ability to move and immediately get access to voting in the new place's elections.
  - snapplebobapple 2y ago
    you can read in my other response but the short answer is: post a bond equal to X weeks salary to vote, bond is held for duration of those elected people's time and if they run a deficit the first hit comes off the posted bond before the country starts taking on debt. If you want to vote again next time post more money to top yourself up.
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  Maybe eliminate secret ballots to do an "if you vote for it/him, you pay for its/his costs" sort of system? Or keep ballots secret and apportion taxes to districts or counties which vote for increased costs, and have it be sticky on move for 5-10 years. Also prevent new-comers from voting in local elections for a period of up to 5-10 years (while retaining the vote in the previous jurisdiction). All these things add costs to locust electorate and will slow down the californication of the south and midwest as californians continue to flee in droves. It's already causing political havoc in various locales. Do not vote for garbage politics thus destroying your home, then move to a nice place with opposite politics just to vote your garbage again. You act like chauvinist locust when you do that, moving into new political ecosystems to destroy them into your 'ideal' vision. If you move from blue to red state because your blue state went to hell, wait 5 or more years to register to vote. I only wish this was law so places like AZ can stay nice with lower crime, castle doctrine, and presumptive consealed carry. Now to batton down my hatches, I sense a downvote typhoon in the air...

thethimble 2y ago

On the other hand, enabling the judicial and executive branch to overcompensate for this disfunction also seems problematic - particularly as the former groups aren’t elected (except for the President, of course).

HDThoreaun 2y ago
I think everyone agrees congress being dysfunctional is problematic. The question is if it’s better for the other other branches to pick up the slack or if we should just let the government do nothing

mike_hearn 2y ago

Institutionally-declared experts are not exactly famous for their lack of partisan hackery, especially not in recent years. > It just does not logically follow that putting more pressure on the legislative branch to be functional is going to work You're talking like this is a political tactic or strategy used by the Supreme Court to achieve a specific outcome (which might "work" or "not work"), but it's not. Justices aren't meant to make such plans. They are supposed to do their job. If Congress does or doesn't do theirs, that isn't by itself the Court's problem nor something to which they should be the solution. But it's also worth remembering that what "works" means varies a lot depending on perspective. There is plenty of stuff that is bipartisan in Congress and which they get done fairly quietly. Additionally, to the school of thought known as libertarianism, Congress not doing things is the desirable outcome and thus a gridlocked Congress is in fact the system working as designed, in the sense that it is being limited by the degree of agreement amongst voters on what it should do.

adamc 2y ago
I think few who have watched the court think it is anything but a strategy used to work toward specific outcomes.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  Hmm well I'm a foreigner so am not really affected by Supreme Court judgements, and I would say that this particular court seems to be doing an unusually good job of just following the law as written regardless of outcome. Certainly it seems true when compared to the supreme court equivalents in most other countries, which are largely a joke. As an example, the Supreme Court made another judgement this week that has pissed off lots of conservatives: it dismissed a case about social media companies banning political speech about COVID at the behest of the government, on the basis of lack of standing. This was widely seen as a blow against free speech. If you read the judgement though the problem was simply that the people being censored hadn't shown clearly that it was the government doing the censoring vs the social network executives, and were relying on a sort of ambient argument that the government was leaning on the companies in ways that weren't always clear, and so there was a First Amendment violation at one-hop-removed. The court rejected this reasoning, saying they could only rule on cases where the people doing the appeal could show they had been directly harmed by the government, so they weren't even going to consider the rest of the case. If the Supreme Court were a bunch of conservative activists they wouldn't have done that. They'd have accepted the indirect censorship argument, accepted that the case had standing and then ruled against the federal agencies. And in fact the conservatives I saw talking about it were raging against "technical" judgements that could only be the result of pro-regime bias etc etc. But the judgement seemed logically sound to me. So the idea that the current court is packed with judges abusing process to get specific ideological outcomes looks very wrong. I never paid attention to Supreme Court rulings before a year or so ago but suddenly it seems like they're all over HN. So this is the first time I've read them. The thing that's really striking is how stupidly obvious all these cases seem to be and how weak the original legal reasoning being overturned was. You can understand the argument within a few pages of reading, usually. Like when Roe v Wade was struck down, all I knew about it was that it was related to legalizing abortion. So naturally I figured it was something to do with abortion law. When it was struck down, I learned for the first time that it actually relied on some convoluted backflips to do with privacy law that had nothing to do with abortion, moreover it seemed almost everyone in the legal profession had always known it was logically dubious and the product of an activist court, etc. It was pretty surprising that such a judgement had survived so long, honestly. Likewise for this judgement, what they're saying is there's not only the Constitution but also a specific act of Congress which both state that when statutes are ambiguous the courts decide on the correct interpretation. In the original Chevron judgement those laws appear to have been ignored and the courts started letting the executive branch decide what ambiguous law meant. That then became just the way things are done, but the law had never actually been changed to allow that. Once again this judgement seems .... kinda obvious? It's not exactly a complex feat of legal reasoning. The laws says the courts resolve ambiguity, they weren't doing it, now they've been told to do it. End of judgement. It's quite fascinating how many commenters just assume that if there's a decision they don't like from a court it must be due to bias and corruption. Makes me wonder what they think when there's a decision they do like.

snapplebobapple 2y ago

i am sympathetic to desire to change how elections are handled (universal suffrage is a stupid idea without universal risk/ skin in the game, we need a way to make voters universally and roughly equal uncomfortable eith poor fiscal managment so they feel the pian when they vote thwmselves more stuff without also voting in a payment method) but its not happening. i also think you are mistaking long term corruption and chaos with a normal process in big party system where every several decades the big voting blocks move around and thatparalyzes the politicians until they are sure who their voting blocks are. onve the voting blocks finishmigrating and sort out dominance per party things will go back more towards historical functioninglevels

goostavos 2y ago
>make voters universally and roughly equal uncomfortable eith poor fiscal managment so they feel the pian when they vote thwmselves more stuff without also voting in a payment method) What does that look like in your mind?
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  My idea is to apportion costs to the voter's choices (you want lobster, you pay for lobster), and/or hamstring the ability to move and immediately get access to voting in the new place's elections.
- snapplebobapple 2y ago
  you can read in my other response but the short answer is: post a bond equal to X weeks salary to vote, bond is held for duration of those elected people's time and if they run a deficit the first hit comes off the posted bond before the country starts taking on debt. If you want to vote again next time post more money to top yourself up.
rustcleaner 2y ago
Maybe eliminate secret ballots to do an "if you vote for it/him, you pay for its/his costs" sort of system? Or keep ballots secret and apportion taxes to districts or counties which vote for increased costs, and have it be sticky on move for 5-10 years. Also prevent new-comers from voting in local elections for a period of up to 5-10 years (while retaining the vote in the previous jurisdiction). All these things add costs to locust electorate and will slow down the californication of the south and midwest as californians continue to flee in droves. It's already causing political havoc in various locales. Do not vote for garbage politics thus destroying your home, then move to a nice place with opposite politics just to vote your garbage again. You act like chauvinist locust when you do that, moving into new political ecosystems to destroy them into your 'ideal' vision. If you move from blue to red state because your blue state went to hell, wait 5 or more years to register to vote. I only wish this was law so places like AZ can stay nice with lower crime, castle doctrine, and presumptive consealed carry. Now to batton down my hatches, I sense a downvote typhoon in the air...