Happy Birthday to Nick Lowe, 64.
And some good stuff:
1. Dan Hopkins on how to influence policy if you're a lobbyist.
2. Bob Dole and the current Senate, by Michael Kranish.
3. And Mark Kleiman tries a little education.
Monday, March 25, 2013
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That treaty story is very fascinating. It really shows the dysfunction of the Senate, even more-so than the endless filibuster stories.
ReplyDeleteIt can be argued that the Senate would operate better as a majority-run body for normal business, and that a majority swept into power should be able to enact their agenda through legislation.
But under no Senate reform would the threshold for treaties be changed. And if crazy conspiracy theories can sway enough votes to keep something like this disabilities treaty from getting the needed 2/3rds, what is the recourse? How can the Senate be fixed to allow inoffensive and routine business like this to pass?
Yes, that story is eye-opening. It's not only the story of an extremist party, but a party being held hostage by a very small extremist faction in the party. It seems unprecedented to me.
DeleteI think it's also the story of an extremist faction that can't recognize evidence nor can it seem to find much empathy. It's actually quite disturbing.
DeleteThe worst part about the Dole story:
ReplyDelete"Solving Washington gridlock shouldn’t be that difficult. Think of it as a math problem, he said.
'If somebody is at a two and you are at four, there ought to be some way to get to three,' Dole said. 'And you settle on three.'"
He's right, except that the GOP has tacked so hard right over the years that instead of being at 2 and 4, we're at -20 and 4, so of course meeting in the middle is, what, -8? Is it not reasonable to expect Democrats to move a little but not all the way down to -18, to meet at -19? Dole's sort of right that the math is simple, but not when Republicans have moved the Overton Window so far outside of the mainstream.
He's right, except that the GOP has tacked so hard right over the years that instead of being at 2 and 4, we're at -20 and 4, so of course meeting in the middle is, what, -8? Is it not reasonable to expect Democrats to move a little but not all the way down to -18, to meet at -19?
ReplyDeleteTotal nonsense. Democrats seem to forget their own old stances on purpose. One example of many:
In 1994 and until her death in 1996, Jordan chaired the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which advocated increased restriction of immigration, called for all U.S. residents to carry a national identity card and increased penalties on employers that violated U.S. immigration regulations.[5][6] Then-President Clinton endorsed the Jordan Commission's proposals.
This would now be dubbed a -20.
In the Kranish piece, why would the authors assume that Enron employees would email their most important/nefarious stuff? And why would number of email references to given subjects even make for useful data?
ReplyDelete