6 ms·

Good article but I think the issue has deeper roots stemming back to the formation of this country. It's all about the state vs federal issue. If you think abou

Good article but I think the issue has deeper roots stemming back to the formation of this country. It's all about the state vs federal issue. If you think about it, conservatives got exactly what they wanted with the shutdown. A small government with no ability to pay its social debts. They are going to keep doing this until there is civil war, again, or until states have all the power, again.

talmand 13y ago
Wait, where was this small government with no ability to pay its social debts? Because I sure as heck didn't see that outcome. Just because a bunch of people on the TV kept talking about this supposed default doesn't mean the government wasn't willing and able to pay on the debt. Your biased one-sided complaint completely sidesteps the issues at hand. The article that sparked this discussion quite correctly points out the problems that led us here when two sets, TWO mind you, of ideologies refuse to back down and compromise. You say conservatives got what they wanted with the shutdown? I say both groups got what they wanted out of this in their own way and we'll go through it all again in February. You need to get out of this "us-vs-them" attitude and realize that two different people who strongly disagree with each other may still have a point on the topic at hand. The only way the states will restore their former power is not through civil war, but through the total collapse of the federal government. Things have gone too far in terms of centralizing power for anything other than total failure to reverse the trend. It's just that no one knows when or if this would be.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  Though he may not mean it this way, he has a point about federal power causing this inability to compromise. As a voter in Kentucky, if you get fed up with Kentucky politics, you can move to Oregon or Tennessee. But when all laws are federal, the stakes are higher for everyone, so drastic measures will be taken.
  - talmand 13y ago
    That is an excellent point. You can still vote with your feet on the federal level, but unfortunately that involves leaving the country which in the end solves nothing.
- swalkergibson 13y ago
  This shutdown was not caused by lack of compromise. This was a hijacking of a run-of-the-mill spending bill to do an end-run around all accepted legal and legislative challenges to Obamacare championed by a miniscule fraction of fringe politicians. The spending bill is merely approving money for things that already passed, not a forum for legislative challenges. There were no negotiations or compromises to be had, and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the next election cycle.
  - talmand 13y ago
    We must have read from different sources, I saw both sides refusing to negotiate. I think there were even a few quotes along the lines of "I won't negotiate". It may be just me, but when someone says publicly that they do not wish to negotiate with the other side, I take that to mean they do not wish to negotiate regardless of what the proposals might be. Funny that you said there were no negotiations or compromises to be had when in the end that what was done to get the thing passed. Everything in politics that requires voting by multiple parties involves negotiations. By your logic there was no reason to vote on the thing at all because there was nothing to discuss. You don't have to wait until the next election cycle, all this did was kick the can down the road to early next year. We'll soon be back to the children in the playground playing "who blinks first".
    - swalkergibson 13y ago
      The time for negotiation was before any of the legislation was passed, not at the moment of implementation. In fact, there really has been no compromise at all. The only "compromise" the Republican caucus was able to extract was more stringent income verification of those people who requested financial assistance paying for health insurance. Considering Cruz and co. wanted complete dissolution or delay of the ACA, I would say that this whole display was a complete and utter disaster. The vast majority of his (Ted Cruz's) own party was not behind him. This was simply political posturing for his own presidential aspirations. You are correct that we are simply kicking the can down the road, but this sideshow was not the way to handle it. Holding the "non-essential" employees of the federal government ransom is ridiculous on its face. What did they expect the outcome was going to be? That Barack Obama would accept a "compromise" that would neuter his landmark piece of legislation? His magnum opus? Please. This is 110% politics.
peterwwillis 13y ago
If you remember your history, it was backwards before. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2010/05/20/when-and-to-an-extent-why-did-the-parties-switch-places/ http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2010/05/20/wh... http://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html http://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parti... http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/197976/explainer-how-democrats-and-republicans-switched-sides-on-civil-rights/ http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/197976/explainer-how-democra... (and completely irrelevant, red vs blue) http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/When-Republicans-Were-Blue-and-Democrats-Were-Red-176776491.html http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/When-Repub...
pinaceae 13y ago
easier to secede if there is a weak federal structure.
- websitescenes 13y ago
  I think that is also a very good point. Nobody wants to take America over, they just want to divide and make us weak. This goal is being facilitated by the political and financial elite for some diabolical end which is very likely to be mass secession. Long live confederate America!
mjn 13y ago
It's not clear to me that conservatives want strong state power in general. A small number of hardline libertarians do, but mainstream conservatives have much more mixed views. The mainstream view wants stronger state control of some things, but strong federal control of other things. Which way it aligns often has more to do with other policy preferences of liberals and conservatives, rather than any consistent view of states' rights on either side. To take one issue on which the conservative/liberal alignment on that question is reversed: conservatives tend to oppose state control over regulation and product liability, and have been strong proponents of uniform federal regulations, which through the doctrine of federal preemption displace state regulations. The reason is that they consider it impractical to have to comply with 50 mutually incompatible auto-safety laws, since cars are not built separately on a state-by-state basis. Instead, they have lobbied (successfully) for the federal government to "occupy the field" with a comprehensive set of automobile safety and emissions regulations, which, through the Supremacy Clause, preempt any state regulation. This has generally been the "conservative" view in both legislation and jurisprudence: conservative federal legislators have been more willing to explicitly preempt state economic and environmental regulation, and conservative judges have been more willing to apply the preemption doctrine broadly. The "liberal" view, meanwhile, has tended to be more in favor of preserving the prerogative of each state to regulate sales, pollution, and product liability within its borders. National security is another one where the alignment is typically the opposite. Many liberals would support a return, at least partially, to the classic decentralized view of armed forces: each state maintains a national guard to be used in case of invasion, and the federal government provides basic coordinating and informational services, but doesn't maintain a large standing army in peacetime. Conservatives generally oppose any significant reduction in the size of the federal armed forces.
- T-hawk 13y ago
  It's not clear to me that conservatives want strong state power in general. Conservatives don't in general, only for some minor social issues like abortion. But Republicans generally do. There is no classically conservative party in American politics now. Hasn't been since the Bush administration's response to 9/11. Both major parties now stand for expanding state power as much as they possibly can. edit: child comment is correct, I misread "state" as any government. As for actual states, my perception is that neither party cares about state power vs federal power. Republicans occasionally make noise about it, but only because they're not in power federally at the moment. The next time the presidency goes Republican, the GOP will be fully on the federal side.

talmand 13y ago

Wait, where was this small government with no ability to pay its social debts? Because I sure as heck didn't see that outcome. Just because a bunch of people on the TV kept talking about this supposed default doesn't mean the government wasn't willing and able to pay on the debt. Your biased one-sided complaint completely sidesteps the issues at hand. The article that sparked this discussion quite correctly points out the problems that led us here when two sets, TWO mind you, of ideologies refuse to back down and compromise. You say conservatives got what they wanted with the shutdown? I say both groups got what they wanted out of this in their own way and we'll go through it all again in February. You need to get out of this "us-vs-them" attitude and realize that two different people who strongly disagree with each other may still have a point on the topic at hand. The only way the states will restore their former power is not through civil war, but through the total collapse of the federal government. Things have gone too far in terms of centralizing power for anything other than total failure to reverse the trend. It's just that no one knows when or if this would be.

humanrebar 13y ago
Though he may not mean it this way, he has a point about federal power causing this inability to compromise. As a voter in Kentucky, if you get fed up with Kentucky politics, you can move to Oregon or Tennessee. But when all laws are federal, the stakes are higher for everyone, so drastic measures will be taken.
- talmand 13y ago
  That is an excellent point. You can still vote with your feet on the federal level, but unfortunately that involves leaving the country which in the end solves nothing.
swalkergibson 13y ago
This shutdown was not caused by lack of compromise. This was a hijacking of a run-of-the-mill spending bill to do an end-run around all accepted legal and legislative challenges to Obamacare championed by a miniscule fraction of fringe politicians. The spending bill is merely approving money for things that already passed, not a forum for legislative challenges. There were no negotiations or compromises to be had, and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the next election cycle.
- talmand 13y ago
  We must have read from different sources, I saw both sides refusing to negotiate. I think there were even a few quotes along the lines of "I won't negotiate". It may be just me, but when someone says publicly that they do not wish to negotiate with the other side, I take that to mean they do not wish to negotiate regardless of what the proposals might be. Funny that you said there were no negotiations or compromises to be had when in the end that what was done to get the thing passed. Everything in politics that requires voting by multiple parties involves negotiations. By your logic there was no reason to vote on the thing at all because there was nothing to discuss. You don't have to wait until the next election cycle, all this did was kick the can down the road to early next year. We'll soon be back to the children in the playground playing "who blinks first".
  - swalkergibson 13y ago
    The time for negotiation was before any of the legislation was passed, not at the moment of implementation. In fact, there really has been no compromise at all. The only "compromise" the Republican caucus was able to extract was more stringent income verification of those people who requested financial assistance paying for health insurance. Considering Cruz and co. wanted complete dissolution or delay of the ACA, I would say that this whole display was a complete and utter disaster. The vast majority of his (Ted Cruz's) own party was not behind him. This was simply political posturing for his own presidential aspirations. You are correct that we are simply kicking the can down the road, but this sideshow was not the way to handle it. Holding the "non-essential" employees of the federal government ransom is ridiculous on its face. What did they expect the outcome was going to be? That Barack Obama would accept a "compromise" that would neuter his landmark piece of legislation? His magnum opus? Please. This is 110% politics.

peterwwillis 13y ago

If you remember your history, it was backwards before. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2010/05/20/when-and-to-an-extent-why-did-the-parties-switch-places/ http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/edgeofthewest/2010/05/20/wh... http://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html http://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parti... http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/197976/explainer-how-democrats-and-republicans-switched-sides-on-civil-rights/ http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/197976/explainer-how-democra... (and completely irrelevant, red vs blue) http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/When-Republicans-Were-Blue-and-Democrats-Were-Red-176776491.html http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/When-Repub...

pinaceae 13y ago

easier to secede if there is a weak federal structure.

websitescenes 13y ago
I think that is also a very good point. Nobody wants to take America over, they just want to divide and make us weak. This goal is being facilitated by the political and financial elite for some diabolical end which is very likely to be mass secession. Long live confederate America!

mjn 13y ago

It's not clear to me that conservatives want strong state power in general. A small number of hardline libertarians do, but mainstream conservatives have much more mixed views. The mainstream view wants stronger state control of some things, but strong federal control of other things. Which way it aligns often has more to do with other policy preferences of liberals and conservatives, rather than any consistent view of states' rights on either side. To take one issue on which the conservative/liberal alignment on that question is reversed: conservatives tend to oppose state control over regulation and product liability, and have been strong proponents of uniform federal regulations, which through the doctrine of federal preemption displace state regulations. The reason is that they consider it impractical to have to comply with 50 mutually incompatible auto-safety laws, since cars are not built separately on a state-by-state basis. Instead, they have lobbied (successfully) for the federal government to "occupy the field" with a comprehensive set of automobile safety and emissions regulations, which, through the Supremacy Clause, preempt any state regulation. This has generally been the "conservative" view in both legislation and jurisprudence: conservative federal legislators have been more willing to explicitly preempt state economic and environmental regulation, and conservative judges have been more willing to apply the preemption doctrine broadly. The "liberal" view, meanwhile, has tended to be more in favor of preserving the prerogative of each state to regulate sales, pollution, and product liability within its borders. National security is another one where the alignment is typically the opposite. Many liberals would support a return, at least partially, to the classic decentralized view of armed forces: each state maintains a national guard to be used in case of invasion, and the federal government provides basic coordinating and informational services, but doesn't maintain a large standing army in peacetime. Conservatives generally oppose any significant reduction in the size of the federal armed forces.

T-hawk 13y ago
It's not clear to me that conservatives want strong state power in general. Conservatives don't in general, only for some minor social issues like abortion. But Republicans generally do. There is no classically conservative party in American politics now. Hasn't been since the Bush administration's response to 9/11. Both major parties now stand for expanding state power as much as they possibly can. edit: child comment is correct, I misread "state" as any government. As for actual states, my perception is that neither party cares about state power vs federal power. Republicans occasionally make noise about it, but only because they're not in power federally at the moment. The next time the presidency goes Republican, the GOP will be fully on the federal side.