rachel on 12/12/2020 at 20:52
That's the same conundrum Spain faced with the Catalan separatists: it's one thing to have differing opinions (up to and including a complete alternate reality universe where your side won) but proving there is actual sedition/rebellion is a completely different beast altogether. I would be extremely wary to touch these waters.
heywood on 12/12/2020 at 20:55
Quote Posted by Nicker
Not necessarily. In Canada (as in other functioning democracies), we have independent bodies that administer all elections, for both candidates and voters. The sitting government has no role in administering the election once it has been called. That doesn't prevent criminal interference but it does make it more difficult and obvious.
The fact that T***P has poisoned the present process in the USA should not be a reason for the States NOT to seek better and more universal solutions. Again, if fair elections are an equal right of all US citizens, that right must be upheld federally.
It IS upheld federally. See multiple SCOTUS decisions.
All so-called independent or non-partisan federal bodies that administer and regulate things are subject to political influence such as stacking through the nomination and confirmation process.
That can happen at the state and local level too, but the impact of one partisan election board is limited. If the election is centrally administered by a federal body, any partisan bias in that body can influence the vote nationwide.
Besides, one of the guiding principles in the design of our political system is avoiding the concentration of power in one person or one political body. Federal powers and responsibilities are intentionally limited by the Constitution and they are divided between different branches of government. It's a recipe for getting nothing done unless there's a consensus, which is sometimes frustrating, but it also stifles the ambitions of would-be authoritarians. It's designed to be amended, but it's also intentionally hard to amend, so a party or political movement that controls the Congress and Presidency can't just go changing the system in their favor. This basic system has served us for 230 years, through the end of European colonialism, through the industrial revolution, a civil war, two world wars, the cold war, a couple of worldwide political movements, many economic depressions, and countless domestic political battles. We're not going to change the formula just because we elected an extreme narcissist moron one time, or because we have an authoritarian political movement that's drunk on conspiracy theories.
nbohr1more on 12/12/2020 at 21:06
Forget about the reporter, listed to Seth Rich's actual words. No other news source will actually show videos of Seth Rich they are all hiding his likeness and voice.
Nameless Voice on 12/12/2020 at 21:37
Quote Posted by heywood
Besides, one of the guiding principles in the design of our political system is avoiding the concentration of power in one person or one political body.
This seems like a strange statement to me, because the president of the USA has an insane amount of power compared to the leader of most other democratic countries?
In most parliamentary democracies, the prime minster is simply the person elected by the parliament to be their leader; he only rules with the consent of the parliament, and most decisions are still made through majority vote. The parliament can also vote no confidence to remove or replace him at any time.
The US president has lot of powers on his own, without needing parliamentary backing, such as being able to pardon anyone he feels like.
heywood on 13/12/2020 at 00:41
The Prime Minister in a Parliamentary system is both the head of the government and the leader of the majority party/governing coalition in the legislature. In the US system, the federal government consists of three main independent branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. The President is the head of ONE of the three. In a Parliamentary system, the Prime Minister is the head of TWO of the three. Further, in an English-style Parliamentary system, a majority of members in the House of Commons can change the law, and the upper legislature is usually of minor influence. In the US system, both legislative bodies have equal importance, and it takes a majority of members in the House, a majority of members of the Senate, and a President to change the law. In a typical Parliamentary system, the power rests in one legislative body + the courts. In the US system, aside from the courts, you have two legislative bodies plus a President, all independently elected.
A motion of no confidence can dissolve a government in most Parliamentary systems. In the US, impeachment can remove a President. But there are two differences. First, a Parliamentary system requires at least a majority vote of the Commons, which is a lower bar compared to the US equivalent which requires a majority of the House plus 2/3 of the Senate. Second, there's no provision for an early general election in the US system. If the voters want to change their Representative, they have to initiate a recall or wait for the next election cycle.
The biggest difference by far is that the Parliamentary system is designed for one-party rule. Nearly all the political power comes from the majority party or coalition. The government ministers serve with the approval of the legislature. In contrast, the US system is designed for divided government.
A Prime Minister is more powerful than a US President. I don't know why I have to keep explaining this, but my guess is that if you don't live in the US, all you ever hear about is the President. Those who don't know the system here assume the US President is like some kind of King, but that is very far from true. Presidential power is relatively limited, often more limited than many Presidents expected when they took office. You need both houses of Congress to pass anything, you can't choose who works for you without the Senate's consent, you are constrained by past administration's precedent, and to quote Bill Clinton: “Being President is like being the groundskeeper in a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but none of them are listening.”
Nameless Voice on 13/12/2020 at 02:22
The majority rule (where the largest party or coalition can completely override the smaller parties) is definitely a problem with the parliamentary systems - even more so in systems geared towards producing only two huge parties.
The things that you've explained sound reasonable, but if the president has so little power, how come we're constantly hearing about things he's messed up? Though I guess the fact that his yes-men control the senate probably goes a long way towards explaining that.
demagogue on 13/12/2020 at 03:16
Presidents can pass Executive Orders within their listed powers, which is mainly military and foreign relations related, veto legislation, order short-term military actions, and they can propose legislation and things like the national budget, which can set the agenda or be influential like the first draft of anything.
A kind of shadow power they have is that they are the figurehead for the party, so they can stump for legislation or candidates or a doctrine, and then voters can go over the heads of the legislators and buy into what the president is trying to sell. This is what makes Trump kind of special.
He doesn't have the mental capacity to comprehend anything approaching a "doctrine" beyond enriching himself, much less develop it through legislation or budget proposals. He's made a random assortment of executive orders and foreign relations & military decisions, but they're literally so random and inchoate, driven by some deeply saturated vitriol or passing bowel movement of the moment like literally the last thing an advisor or just nearby person said to him in the moment before the decision, they have about as much influence as monkeys on typewriters--the effects of one undo the effects of another--which is not to say that monkeys on typewriters still can't do real harm to real people, like his arbitrary order one day just banning residents of six Muslim countries being able to even enter the country because Muslims, right? (He, at least verbally, made an exception if a person from the country was Christian.) Airplanes literally pulling into gates of airports had their passengers locked down, nobody knew what was going on or what they were supposed to do, and chaos ensued because he just pulled this confusing & poorly written mess of order out of his ass without warning one day. Of course the court threw out the order because it was unconstitutional on its face, but it still did real damage.
While that's a problem, the real threat is his influence on political culture. There's now an entire mass cadre of supporters that hold Trumpism over the heads of congressional candidates and require that they fall in line or they can realistically endanger their reelection. And the other part was just the deep distrust with American institutions he's pushing. No matter how carefully elections are handled now, there's apparently this rampant belief among masses of people that US elections can never be competently done or fair now, that court decisions can never be impartial, that any government agency isn't just a blatant arm of bloodthirsty Jews out to suck good Christians dry or whatever the conspiracy de jour is, which is usually just that repackaged--instead of Jews they can just call them elites, or the 1%, or "Hollywood", or bankers and lawyers, but we know what they mean.
The catch is that none of this kind of mischief is at the level of legal powers. It's at the level of influence on the political culture and how that comes through in terms of voting behavior and perceptions of legitimacy in government action, which is a whole other bag of ring-tailed lemurs.
Starker on 13/12/2020 at 03:29
Quote Posted by demagogue
instead of Jews they can just call them elites, or the 1%, or "Hollywood", or bankers and lawyers, but we know what they mean.
I think it's still "globalists" for now. The other term seen these days is "riggers", because racists don't have much of an imagination I guess.
Cipheron on 13/12/2020 at 04:05
Quote Posted by heywood
You do not want federally administered elections. That would put the incumbent President in charge. Just think about what Trump could have done if he was in charge of administering this past election.
You don't need the federal government running the elections to make them free and fair, and there's no reason to think the federal government would do a better job of keeping them free and fair than the states do.
You don't need the federal government to run the election itself, but having federalized laws that the states have to sign onto and agree upon would be the end of a lot of bullshit. Maybe this needs a constitutional amendment rather than a federal law however.
A big problem that breaks everything is how the president can just appoint any rando to run any department. Most nations definitely don't do that. In a parliamentary system for example you have defense minister, health minister etc responsible as the political head of each department, but these are elected members of parliament and not random appointments. Of course that's still not perfect but it's still better than someone like Trump appointing some oil guy as the director of the EPA. How a more parliamentary system would work in the USA is that congress would vote on who's going to be the environment director, out of actual congressmen. Then if that person royally FUBARS the whole thing, they're likely to get voted out. They have more responsibility and liability, and it encourages the selection and promotion of more compentent / intelligent congressmen and senators. Putting someone in charge of something where they actually have to do work is a fast way to sift out the morons, and you don't get the type of "purge" situation you saw under Trump, because elected official who are put in charge of something want to appear competent so they keep the competent people who actually run the department intact. People like Betsy DeVos on the other hand do not have to appear competent because she knows she's in the job until the moment Trump's gone, no shorter or longer. Trump appoints people to basically wreck departments as his way of side-stepping congress, more or less. they're political appointments in the purest sense to undermine checks and balances.
If I was able to rip the American system apart and make minimal changes to improve things, it would NOT be by keeping things the same and going for a presidential direct vote. Have congress elect the president from congress/senate, with a two year mandate, and all department heads need to be appointed from congress and the senate. The point isn't that they're better it's that they are ratified by the fact that people voted for them so they can be voted out. Couple this with either anti-gerrymandering and instant-run-off voting OR Mixed-member proportional.
Nicker on 13/12/2020 at 04:29
Quote Posted by heywood
So to punish a bunch of legislators who would thwart the results of a democratic election, he would thwart the results of a democratic election by not seating them?
Pot. Kettle. Black.
They are not legislators if they aren't seated and they can't be seated if they acted to pervert and damage the constitution they are supposed to uphold, once seated. They were not elected to plot to repudiate the constitution and if they stated that sedition was a plank in their election platform, their candidacies would have been terminated.
I know there would be more blood in the street if Pelosi tried this but 1) it's the fucking law and 2) the GOP should have handled this as an internal matter before it got this far with this many swamp monsters.
We shouldn't punish criminals because there are too many of them! That argument doesn't work for me.
