We need a meaningful REDUCTION in "intellectual property" nonsense, and I think it's going to happen -- the worldwide trend is beyond clear. Musk agrees.
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BTW, Tesla won't get the tariff relief as long as the government is shut down, because the office which processes those applications is shut down.
Yet another result of the Orange Nincompoop's temper tantrum.
He chased South Korea into the arms of North Korea by making it clear that the US was more dangerous and unreliable than North Korea.
Um.... good, I guess? As long as you aren't in the US?
North Korea has nukes and will keep them, of course.
Trump's bumbling idiocy abroad may finally dismantle the US imperial military operation, simply because all of the US's former allies will kick us out. Fine, I guess that's a good result? Surely we could have gotten there without hurting the US so much, though?
I gave him credit for that until he reversed himself and decided to keep troops in Syria.
I mean, really.
Totally agree. WTF is up with that? Bolton directly contradicted Trump. I guess he got his "mind right."
Has anyone noticed the pattern? Trump makes his own crises. Trump claims a minor concession. Takes credit for solving the problem he himself made.
Also:
Beto’s viral video explains the overlooked reason why Trump’s border wall makes no sense
Also:
Beto’s viral video explains the overlooked reason why Trump’s border wall makes no sense
I can't remember where I saw it, but I saw somebody else make that observation a few weeks ago.
This makes the story even more surreal:
Lucky_Man
Member
Don't forget the deleterious effect of the 'very rich' buying lawmakers to further preserve their wealth by reducing/eliminating their tax burden. Reference the Mnuchin antics here as well. TY!
Lucky_Man
Member
Tell that to McConnell, who seems to be waiting for authorization to do his job, from POTUS.
The founders wrote specifically about separation of powers, but @SenMajLdr is defeating the founder's imperatives by not bringing bills to the floor for a vote - "because he believes the president wouldn't sign it" - thereby circumventing any possible veto.
dmckinstry
Model X 2019
What does it take to get the Senate Majority Leader out the position of stonewalling everything? Can his own party vote him out, or can he be challenged by other members of his party?
Neroden, I believe, has discussed this earlier. See
Current Agendas of the US House of Representatives and Senate
for more info.
lolachampcar
Well-Known Member
Neroden,
I say this with the most love and respect.
I need you to go live in Russia or China for a bit then come back here and compare these systems with our amateur version of corruption. I've lived and worked in several banana republics and I really appreciate home.
80% say it happens here and it happens. Redistricting did not save the Reps' butts in the mids and that was only a 8-9% avalanche. Sure, it is not perfect but getting money out of it is the first step to inviting people to the party that are interested in Public Service and Power only.
It depends on the rules of the current Senate. This is an administrative thing within the Senate, not a law. I think the law is actually silent on whether there is a majority leader at all. The Constitution refers to the President of the Senate who is VP of the US and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate who is officially 2nd in charge, but has very few defined duties. Since the late 1800s the President Pro Tempure has usually been the most senior senator from the controlling party. Until the beginning of this month it was Orin Hatch and it is currently Chuck Grassley. If the Democrats take control, it would be Patrick Leahy.
The majority leader had evolved within the Senate rules and has become the most powerful position in the Senate, but the Constitution is silent about political parties. Most of the founders were opposed to them, but they evolved anyway. My SO thinks political parties should be abolished and while it's a noble goal, running any sort of government that relies on elections is pretty much impossible without some kind of political parties, though I do think that we should have lower barriers to 3rd parties getting in the door. At minimum more viable 3rd parties would make the two big parties more honest and probably more moderate. Though the Democrats are pretty moderate now, the Republicans have become an extremist party.
Senate Rules are a baroque complicated mess designed to create confusion and fog, but the *bottom line* is that 51 Senators can overrride anything in the so-called rules. At this point I think pretty much all the Democrats are ready to change the calendar; so it requires 4 Republicans who are fed up enough.
Our 2-party system is caused by first-past-the-post single-member districts, and the game-theoretica mathematical consqeuences of them.
Insert plug for proportional representation and approval voting here.
(See the Center for Election Science for more info)
Done. And I like it here, but the fact is that Canada has a better system, and so does Mexico, and Ireland or Germany have an even better system (BTW, American experts designed their systems).
Except it actually did save them. They've still got the Senate, and they shouldn't.
bhtooefr
Active Member
Redistricting didn't change anything for the Senate, unless you're proposing that they managed to gerrymander state lines. 
(I mean, there's a massive bias towards Republicans due to the urban/rural split and many states being rural-heavy and low population, but hey.)
(I mean, there's a massive bias towards Republicans due to the urban/rural split and many states being rural-heavy and low population, but hey.)
Redistricting didn't change anything for the Senate, unless you're proposing that they managed to gerrymander state lines.
(I mean, there's a massive bias towards Republicans due to the urban/rural split and many states being rural-heavy and low population, but hey.)
Pretty much my point. The Senate is undemocratic. (And it doesn't even represent any other power base, the way the House of Lords used to.)
There's a democracy gap here. I mean, it's no Congo, but it's also no Ireland or Australia. A party which has clearly lost popular support, where the majority wants it gone, can keep power, and frequently does.
This doesn't happen so much in California (with independent redistricting *and* recall elections), and it happens a lot in Georgia (with so many failures of election integrity that there are already three or four ongoing lawsuits and now an entire organization devoted to replacing their election system root and branch).
At the state level, Republicans kept the Michigan and Wisconsin legislatures despite being voted down massively, thanks entirely to gerrymandering. Luckily an initiative-and-referendum happened in Michigan to end gerrymandering, so it won't happen *there* again, but it's still a problem in Wisconsin.
There are countries politically worse than the US, but there are also countries that are better. At one time the US was among the best governed countries in the world. Many of the best run democracies of the world today took some inspiration from the US when they were crafting their own constitutions.
We can do better. We once did.
Because of gerrymandering the Republicans didn't get blown out in the House as much as an 8-9% election has done in the past. And on the state level it's helped them dramatically in some states. Wisconsin is so rigged that the Democrats won the generic vote for the state assembly 53/45, but only won 39 out of 99 seats.
It is true that gerrymandering did not affect the Senate. That was affected by one party having become the rural party and the other the urban party. States with mostly rural populations have become Republican strongholds and states with majority urban populations have become Democratic strongholds. The rural parts of the blue states are mostly Republican areas too.
Money is a problem in politics, but it isn't the entire problem. Donald Trump's campaign spent significantly less than Clinton's and she lost. Citizen's United has allowed Pacs to flood the airwaves with advertising before elections, but a lot of those ads are just ignored by voters. Over the last few years I believe there has been an increase in less well funded campaigns beating a well funded competitor than before Citizen's United.
All the money in politics is a corrupting influence and I am in favor of doing things to fix it, but the bigger problem I see is propaganda masquerading as news. Fox is the prime example of this, but there are many more. As long as propaganda outfits are able to peddle their tripe as news to a demographic that can't tell the difference, politics is going to be corrupted by it.
gilscales
Banned
I would be curious to hear your complete list of propaganda masquerading as news channels
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