Charlie Rose

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/24/2013 04:24 AM Report

US Senator Angus King supports the principle of the No Budget, No Pay Act, to prevent members of Congress from being paid until a budget is passed, but would seek a requirement that any passed budget "works" and is not simply a bad budget passed to meet the requirement.

King supports reform of the Senate filibuster, noting that Senators are no longer required to stand on the floor and speak during a filibuster. He also points out that a 60-vote requirement to conduct business in the Senate was not included in the Constitution by the Framers.[18]

Yes Micky on Angus.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/24/2013 04:19 AM Report

“Because when I served in the House -- and it's still true today -- if you want to be, say, the chairman of a committee, your party is going to make sure that you don't get that position unless you are absolutely committed to fighting for the party line and to being very vigorous in opposition to the other party. And if you're willing to do some compromise, some kind of working with the other party, you're not going to get that chairmanship.”

Hey, the Mafia Model of loyalty is tried and true, kapeesh?

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/24/2013 04:16 AM Report

“I would have open primaries, period where everybody could run together, and all -- everybody could vote in it. I would have nonpartisan redistricting commissions. And I would take away from party leadership the right to determine who sits on what committees and who could chair what committees.”

Yes, so the primary isn't the real race and the politicians do not get to choose who their voters are.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/24/2013 04:14 AM Report

“Brainpower has been turned off in Congress, and it shows.”

Indeed.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/24/2013 04:13 AM Report

Mickey tells us, "You know, James Madison and George Washington were right. Political parties have turned out to be a disaster, so that -- closed primaries, which resulted in nominating people like Christine O'Donnell, who could never have won in an open primary or people like that, the way you let the parties control the redistricting process through the state legislatures. That's the problem. The problem is the party system itself."

So be Independent then which is the majority party: 40% Independent, 30% Republican and 30% Democrat. If no one registers for an obstructionist party then they will Bull Moose away.

The Bull Moose Party with the Progressive platform called for the direct election of U.S. senators, woman suffrage, reduction of the tariff, and many social reforms. A key point of his platform was the "Square Deal"--Roosevelt's concept of a society based on fair business competition and increased welfare for needy Americans.

Who could ever think that would work?

odstudios  02/19/2013 01:08 PM Report

No sound, again.

REMant  02/19/2013 12:44 PM Report

We had political parties long before the Constitution. indeed from the first settlement of this continent, despite a persistent primitivism that this was not so. Surely those in the Convention were quite aware of them. They discussed two solutions: one, a balanced govt akin to the English; and two, a modified confederation. The latter prevailed. The problem is that nearly no one realizes it.

To be sure, early in our history, the aristocracy hoped virtue would be the criterion for office, but that lasted no more than a nanosecond, and the democracy has been campaigning ever since. And, I'm sure it didn't help the situation to have the Constitution itself, whatever its virtues, shoved down the ppl's throats.

Mr Edwards, I discover from a 2011 article with this book's title, proposes, however, simply to ban them, apparently having determined they are an imposition on the public instead of reflecting anything substantive.

Six-steps were therein proffered: 1. end partisan primaries; 2. end Gerrymandering; 3. end party discipline; 4. end party control of Congressional committees; 5. fill committee positions by lot; and, 6. choose "professionals" for committee staff. It would thus appear Mr Edwards is either calling for technocracy, or has never run into any of the latter.

But the two-party system is, itself, a function of majority rule. If you have to vote up-or-down on everything, you have to end up with two factions on every issue and position, and these will inevitably find common ground, and/or start logrolling.

Nearly every attempt to do an end around the parties has failed (Lincoln's election being the exception). The parties' politics have changed, but basically only two remain. Changes to the election of senators and the executive have just made the situation worse. These other steps are similarly likely to result in more demagoguery, not less. But it is just this which Mr Edwards feels is lacking.

Too, elections were heavily politicized when Lincoln debated Douglas, but no one would argue they didn't also reflect substantive differences, and the parties have the same differences today, the end of slavery notwithstanding. It is unlikely a nationwide vote on the latter would have solved anything.

It is hard to see, as well, how a top-two open primary would be any different from those which allow crossover voting. And while it can be argued that Gerrymandering is bad, without it, it's doubtful ppl like Gerry (who became Mass. governor when Jeffersonians defeated Federalists and was Madison's VP) would ever be elected, the like-minded not always living near each other. I am not at all sure we should have a geographical districting system. Britain and many other nations didn't and/or still don't.

It was in fact the radical constitutions of the French Revolution which, unlike our Federalism which built on the states, adopted measures like Mr Edwards advocates, wiping away all vestiges of the past and instituting an homogeneous and unitary state, indivisible but divided into new departments approximately equal in population, rights and duties, altho I have to admit it makes it a lot easier to find one's way around the Midwest than the DC suburbs.

Either we accept geographical differences in which case it becomes more questionable whether any national govt can or should govern a country of this extent, or we attempt to obliterate them. This, of course, was precisely the problem facing the Convention. It has, however, through better communications, been largely ameliorated, and perhaps we do not now need such districts at all.

Another instance of this is that under the Constitution the president and vice-president do not need to be elected directly at all, and how those who do elect them are chosen is a matter for the states alone, subject to a few qualifications. While we now adhere to popular election, there is no justification for a winner-take-all rule and it clearly favors the more populated states, which is made clear when comparing the margin of victory in the electoral College with that in the popular vote. The problem, as always, lies with the combination of democratic and non-democratic institutions, and the corruption of one by the other, not either one alone.

Mr Edwards might find libertarian principles in direct, majoritarian rule, but I don't, and neither I'd say has The Heritage Foundation. Libertarianism, or republicanism, is based on ideals of truth, not choice, nor certainly equality, and always has been. The only reason for considering the latter is so that the former may be found. One of the commonplaces of political thought is that the measure of political justice lies in how the majority treats those in minority. A wise govt it has been believed since Plato, Popper notwithstanding, is one which limits rather than expands the political sphere.

He is also involved with No Labels, a bipartisan group, including His Honor The Charlie Rose Show Sponsor, which advocates largely the same agenda as mentioned, the Constitution Project, another bipartisan group aimed however at more substantive issues, and Mr Isaacson's Aspen Institute, which aims merely to talk about them. But just between you and I, we've talked about them quite enough.

My own idea is to return to what our founding document specifies, and only make clear what has been obscured by tendentiousness and sheer ignorance - perhaps we need Michelle Rhee to clean up the rest of the 10-mile square - at least until we can agree on the need for something better. And the power of the purse is certainly one of the items specified.

I was thinking the other night after reading an idiotic essay by Judith Shklar in an old collection published by the Smithsonian around the time of the Constitution's bicentennial, that we don't have a rule of law, we have a law of rules, and that's indeed the way the founding document was designed, altho nowhere the power to design toilets and light bulbs. Common law forms no part of it really, and as I say the mistake made not only in the Convention and ever afterward is that it did and that we have a balanced or mixed constitution. We don't and we never did. The question is given political differences, whether we should, or must.

But as things stand Madison's or "states-rights," as opposed to the "state-sovereignty" and "ultra-nationalist" positions is the only correct interpretation of it, despite all of Morris' maneuvering and blather, and Publius' as well. Morris alleged he was invited to join in the production of the Federalist, and declined, no doubt, because he didn't believe in it. After returning from Europe he worked to support an independent judiciary to rein in democracy, supported Northern economic mercantilism, tho eventually came, however to appreciate Madison's general notion, a century before Turner, that the West acted as a democratic pressure relief valve.

A great part of the problem has been that the Constitution's critics both left and right, from the anti-Federalists on, have assumed the government was mixed or balanced, should be or would quickly become so. But the Constitution recognizes the partial sovereignty of both the states and the Federation, and individuals are answerable to both for different, and, unfortunately, at times, overlapping things. It has never been established that they are subjects of the latter (or that matter the former either), nor do I expect, under this constitution, they ever will be, for Bill of Rights or no, it seems hardly one capable of preserving liberty, or preventing corruption and mismanagement. If we ever do scrap it, we had better put one with a really independent judiciary, and a parliamentary political system in its place.

Those of more academic persuasion, I advise, to sit down and read the Greeks and Romans.