3 ms·

The US supreme court allowed thank you gifts for politicians to not be considered bribes somehow in a 2024 ruling, I think that alone might break the US.

treetalker 7mo ago
lest we forget luxury fishing trips, RVs, real-estate debt payoffs, or payoffs of relatives' tuition
jacquesm 7mo ago
The US Supreme Court is the very worst a supreme court could be. They've been thoroughly co-opted and will only start to see the light when it is their asses that are on the line.
- simonh 7mo ago
  The whole way the Judicial system in the US is beholden to politicians, and is thoroughly politicised looks completely horrific to me in the UK. Even the election officials responsible for overseeing voting are politicians. Combined with this elected King George III presidential nonsense (not just king in general either, specifically the powers George III had in the 1780s) and I despair sometimes. Get yourselves a decent parliamentary system. If you avoid proportional representation it works fine. Unfortunately the US population is somehow convinced the current US system is modern and up to date. They'll probably still think that in another 200 years.
  - duskdozer 7mo ago
    What do you have against proportional representation?
    - tialaramex 7mo ago
      We can't "proportionally" represent a constituency which returns a single individual So, if you want PR you have to either: Have two distinct classes of MP: Some were directly elected and represent an area, others are just to make the up proportions - but obviously these are just worse right? Second class MPs. OR Abolish the constituencies entirely, now nobody represents your area and its particular concerns, or everybody does, which as we know amounts to the same thing because of how dilution works. Unlike other electoral reforms a PR system has deeper implications far beyond the elections themselves. Historically the UK actually didn't have a single electoral system for every constituency, and that was fine†, indeed it works fine in the US today, the thing which needs to be coherent is what happens after the election and PR meddles with that. † Well, not "fine", this is the era of the famous "Rotten Boroughs" but the fact that the system varies from one place to another wasn't key there.
      - simonh 7mo ago
        It also means that people are voting for party lists, not individuals, and the lists are controlled by the parties. In a proper parliamentary system the parliamentarians directly represent their voters, and have a mandate from them. Parties do not have that, only MPs have that. By passing the mandate from the representative to the party, and the party having list control, that puts far too much power over parliamentarians in the hands of unelected party functionaries that draw up the lists and have no mandate themselves.
        marcosdumay 7mo ago
        That's way less bad than it appears, because in a proportional system you will have more than 2 parties. In practice, every election is an election of those invisible bureaucratic hands, instead of some heads on display.
        tialaramex 7mo ago
        Party affiliation is already a problem, List systems make that worse. Years ago two of my friends lived in Vauxhall in London. That spy building in central London where James Bond works? That's in Vauxhall (and it is really for spies, though real intelligence agents do not look like James Bond), they lived like 10 minutes walk from there. Vauxhall is pretty far left even for a city borough, but they ended up with Kate Hoey as their Labour MP. Kate - despite being a representative of a left party was nevertheless pro gun rights, pro fox hunting, and pretty luke warm on LGBT issues, she was also, which led to her finally be thrown out by her local party, pro-Brexit. But the people of Vauxhall weren't really voting for Kate Hoey the woman who likes fox hunting and isn't too bothered if they make abortion illegal again, and who is supporting Brexit even though they don't want it - they were voting for Labour, a centre left party and Kate had Labour's endorsement. Maybe under PR Kate ends up finding a home in some party that more closely tracks her personal beliefs, but, equally maybe not. And so people end up voting for something they don't really want. I think that given simply counting is apparently too untrustworthy in our post-truth world, we might as well do something more sophisticated like Instant Run-off or Approval, but I don't approve of Proportional as a goal.
DeepSeaTortoise 7mo ago
[flagged]
- watwut 7mo ago
  It was SCOTUS, literally. They literally weakened the legislation. And by SCOTUS we mean conservative majority specifically. From dissent of disagreeing SCOTUS justice: "absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love."
  - DeepSeaTortoise 7mo ago
    > They literally weakened the legislation. IMO that's not the case, because if a legislation looses its intended focus, it gains a lot of arbitrariness in return. The more interpretations you consider valid, the more options you can choose from when applying it. So, obviously, the legislation had to be returned to a single interpretation, the one Congress intended (or the one the court thinks is the best if you believe courts should hold legislative power). Which leads directly to the second issue: Which was the interpretation Congress intended? > From dissent of disagreeing SCOTUS justice: "absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love." The majority opinion analyses this issue with 6 different approaches, including a textual one, arriving at similar conclusions from each. The dissenting opinion on the other hand argues, that all other approaches but the textual one should be rejected. The dissenting opinion's textual interpretation strongly asserts, that Congress intended with "accepts or agrees to accept, anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded" to address both bribes (intending to be influenced) and gratitudes (intending to be rewarded). The majority opinion argues that if you were to divorce the concept of a reward from the prior intent during the influenced/rewarded actions in a statute that criminalizes accepting something of value rather than the intent itself (because how would that even be possible?), you end up with a situation in which being promised something of value, but only receiving it after the influenced actions have been completed, would no longer fulfill the requirements to be considered a bribe. Basically the majority argues that if they are correct (666 being a bribery rather than a combined bribery + gratitudes statute), Congress still would have had to use language at least equivalent to the one at hand and therefore additional tests to deduce the intent of the 99th Congress can not be disregarded.

treetalker 7mo ago

lest we forget luxury fishing trips, RVs, real-estate debt payoffs, or payoffs of relatives' tuition

jacquesm 7mo ago

The US Supreme Court is the very worst a supreme court could be. They've been thoroughly co-opted and will only start to see the light when it is their asses that are on the line.

simonh 7mo ago
The whole way the Judicial system in the US is beholden to politicians, and is thoroughly politicised looks completely horrific to me in the UK. Even the election officials responsible for overseeing voting are politicians. Combined with this elected King George III presidential nonsense (not just king in general either, specifically the powers George III had in the 1780s) and I despair sometimes. Get yourselves a decent parliamentary system. If you avoid proportional representation it works fine. Unfortunately the US population is somehow convinced the current US system is modern and up to date. They'll probably still think that in another 200 years.
- duskdozer 7mo ago
  What do you have against proportional representation?
  - tialaramex 7mo ago
    We can't "proportionally" represent a constituency which returns a single individual So, if you want PR you have to either: Have two distinct classes of MP: Some were directly elected and represent an area, others are just to make the up proportions - but obviously these are just worse right? Second class MPs. OR Abolish the constituencies entirely, now nobody represents your area and its particular concerns, or everybody does, which as we know amounts to the same thing because of how dilution works. Unlike other electoral reforms a PR system has deeper implications far beyond the elections themselves. Historically the UK actually didn't have a single electoral system for every constituency, and that was fine†, indeed it works fine in the US today, the thing which needs to be coherent is what happens after the election and PR meddles with that. † Well, not "fine", this is the era of the famous "Rotten Boroughs" but the fact that the system varies from one place to another wasn't key there.
    - simonh 7mo ago
      It also means that people are voting for party lists, not individuals, and the lists are controlled by the parties. In a proper parliamentary system the parliamentarians directly represent their voters, and have a mandate from them. Parties do not have that, only MPs have that. By passing the mandate from the representative to the party, and the party having list control, that puts far too much power over parliamentarians in the hands of unelected party functionaries that draw up the lists and have no mandate themselves.
      - marcosdumay 7mo ago
        That's way less bad than it appears, because in a proportional system you will have more than 2 parties. In practice, every election is an election of those invisible bureaucratic hands, instead of some heads on display.
        tialaramex 7mo ago
        Party affiliation is already a problem, List systems make that worse. Years ago two of my friends lived in Vauxhall in London. That spy building in central London where James Bond works? That's in Vauxhall (and it is really for spies, though real intelligence agents do not look like James Bond), they lived like 10 minutes walk from there. Vauxhall is pretty far left even for a city borough, but they ended up with Kate Hoey as their Labour MP. Kate - despite being a representative of a left party was nevertheless pro gun rights, pro fox hunting, and pretty luke warm on LGBT issues, she was also, which led to her finally be thrown out by her local party, pro-Brexit. But the people of Vauxhall weren't really voting for Kate Hoey the woman who likes fox hunting and isn't too bothered if they make abortion illegal again, and who is supporting Brexit even though they don't want it - they were voting for Labour, a centre left party and Kate had Labour's endorsement. Maybe under PR Kate ends up finding a home in some party that more closely tracks her personal beliefs, but, equally maybe not. And so people end up voting for something they don't really want. I think that given simply counting is apparently too untrustworthy in our post-truth world, we might as well do something more sophisticated like Instant Run-off or Approval, but I don't approve of Proportional as a goal.

DeepSeaTortoise 7mo ago

[flagged]

watwut 7mo ago
It was SCOTUS, literally. They literally weakened the legislation. And by SCOTUS we mean conservative majority specifically. From dissent of disagreeing SCOTUS justice: "absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love."
- DeepSeaTortoise 7mo ago
  > They literally weakened the legislation. IMO that's not the case, because if a legislation looses its intended focus, it gains a lot of arbitrariness in return. The more interpretations you consider valid, the more options you can choose from when applying it. So, obviously, the legislation had to be returned to a single interpretation, the one Congress intended (or the one the court thinks is the best if you believe courts should hold legislative power). Which leads directly to the second issue: Which was the interpretation Congress intended? > From dissent of disagreeing SCOTUS justice: "absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love." The majority opinion analyses this issue with 6 different approaches, including a textual one, arriving at similar conclusions from each. The dissenting opinion on the other hand argues, that all other approaches but the textual one should be rejected. The dissenting opinion's textual interpretation strongly asserts, that Congress intended with "accepts or agrees to accept, anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded" to address both bribes (intending to be influenced) and gratitudes (intending to be rewarded). The majority opinion argues that if you were to divorce the concept of a reward from the prior intent during the influenced/rewarded actions in a statute that criminalizes accepting something of value rather than the intent itself (because how would that even be possible?), you end up with a situation in which being promised something of value, but only receiving it after the influenced actions have been completed, would no longer fulfill the requirements to be considered a bribe. Basically the majority argues that if they are correct (666 being a bribery rather than a combined bribery + gratitudes statute), Congress still would have had to use language at least equivalent to the one at hand and therefore additional tests to deduce the intent of the 99th Congress can not be disregarded.