You Know Who Else Hates Everyone In Congress? Congress!
from the and-they-blame-themselves dept
Hating on Congress is basically a national past time here in the US. Other than a brief moment of probably misguided solidarity after September 11th, the public's view towards Congress tends to be pretty negative, and it's been getting worse lately. Here's a historical look from Gallup at the public's approval ratings of Congress.
Reading through the article, you begin to realize just how pitiful Congress really is.
What's interesting is how many seem to blame gerrymandering and redistricting for the problems of Congress, even though those in power did the redistricting on purpose to try to keep themselves in power. But it appears that people in Congress are now (finally) realizing the problematic consequences:
"You know, if I had a magic wand, one thing I would love to change—which you can't do unless you're king—is the redistricting process by which our boundaries are drawn," says Republican Aaron Schock of Illinois. "Because what has happened over the decades is he who controls the mapmaking process, you know, creates hyperpartisan districts. And you get more and more members who come out here and say, 'Gee, I know that I want to accomplish something on this issue. I want to take action on this issue, but the base of my district is so far to the right or to the left it makes it difficult for us to negotiate to the center.' But whether you're the most conservative member or you're the most liberal member, if you have half a brain, you recognize you're not going to get everything, and that any successful legislation requires the art of negotiation."Combine that with the fact that they only get attention when there's conflict, rather than when they actually accomplish something, and guess what you get?
[....]
"When you have these one-party districts, the only election is in the primary, and the winner of the primary will be the one who is closer to the views of the narrowest base," says Angus King, Independent senator from Maine. "You can't be moderate. Who votes in primaries? You have a 10 percent turnout in a primary election in Georgia, and Republicans are 30 percent of the population. So 10 percent of 30 percent—that's 3 percent of the population voting to choose the nominee, and then if it's a multiperson race, and the winner gets 35 percent, that's one third of 3 percent—1 percent of the population chooses the nominee, who in a gerrymandered district will be the eventual member of Congress. That is bizarre, and it has completely polarized Congress. In the primary system that we have now, there is no upside for a Republican to be reasonable. I have a friend who is a very conservative senator, and he faced a primary this year, and I said, 'Good Lord, man, what are they gonna charge you with?' And he said: 'Being reasonable.' "
"Our Venn diagram," says Derek Kilmer, Democrat of Washington State, "is two circles, miles apart. Just after we got here, a group of us, Democrats and Republicans, were at a burger joint talking, and after about forty-five minutes, I said, 'We have to be able to get our act together and figure some of these things out. And across the table, one of my colleagues said, 'Derek, I like you, but you have to understand that I won my seat by defeating a Republican incumbent in my primary, and I campaigned against him for not being conservative enough. The first vote I cast when I got here was against John Boehner for Speaker, and I put out a press release that I had voted against him because he was too compromising. I like you, but I have zero interest in compromising with you or anybody else. My constituents didn't send me here to work with you; they sent me here to stop you.' I left there and called my wife and said, 'Oh, my God!' "
But all the same, the great majority of members interviewed said that the most rewarding work they ever did in Congress was in finding points of agreement with a congressman or senator from the other party, working to forge legislation that bridged the usual divides. "But nobody cares about that stuff," says Republican congressman Morgan Griffith from Virginia. " 'News flash: People are getting along, compromising, doing their jobs like adults' doesn't have the sizzle of conflict that the media demands in order to hold your interest. I have good relationships with several Democrats, and last year Diana DeGette [Democrat of Colorado], Gene Green [Democrat of Texas], and I introduced an important compounding-pharmacy bill to help prevent disease outbreaks. It really matters. And gets very little attention."And of course, all of it has to do with "red team/blue team" crap, rather than any actual points of agreement or disagreement. There's a story from Democratic Senator Chris Coons, in which he talks about a conversation, back in 2011, with Republican Senator Marc Rubio, discussing the upcoming 2012 presidential election, in which both Senators admit to never bothering to have read the candidates' economic plans.
And, of course, the other big issue: money in politics. As we've discussed in the past, so many people look upon lobbying and such as a form of bribery, but the reality is often the opposite. It's almost a kind of extortion by politicians on industry, because they constantly need money for elections. So they do things designed to kick up controversy solely to get big interests to donate to their campaigns. And that often requires extreme positions that generate a lot of anger.
These snippets are just a bit of what's in the article. There's a lot more, including some people willing to name names (beyond just Ted Cruz) of the people they hate, and who else they blame. It's worthwhile reading.
Frankly, people have been complaining about Congress pretty much forever -- so I always try to take some of the "it's worse now" stories with a grain of "mythical nostalgia" salt. At the same time, gridlock in Congress has some benefits in blocking really bad regulations from passing. But it does seem problematic when important things can't get done, and it's all based on the color of your team and how to best raise money through conflict. It certainly doesn't seem like a good way to run a country.
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Filed Under: congress, gerrymandering, money in politics, redistricting, ted cruz
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And this is why people have no confidence in the system
'I like you, but I have zero interest in compromising with you or anybody else. My constituents didn't send me here to work with you; they sent me here to stop you.'
So you've got people so incredibly jaded with the system that the vast majority don't even bother to vote anymore(and with the insane rigging of the system, rigging done by both parties, it's hard to blame them), with only the most extreme even bothering anymore, meaning that if those elected want to stay elected, they have to pander to those extremists...
Yeah, the system is pretty much completely screwed, and fixing it would likely take a complete overhaul of the entire thing, something that, due to the previously mentioned extremist pandering, will likely never happen under the current system without a complete and total upset of it.
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Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
It's why I say that voting is necessary but insufficient. People who vote and do nothing else are about as helpful as people who don't vote. We need to actually engage with the process.
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Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
Because things will inevitably get um, rowdy, to say the least, if that were to happen.
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Re: Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
I'm doing my part, checking what my candidates are doing (very well at least in the municipal and legislative levels) and raising awareness of the problems. When partisan discussions start I simply ask about what's good for the country and taunt people to find good things the opposing party has done that improved life for everybody alike.
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Maybe Ted Cruz is our friend
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Try pastime?
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The core cause of Congressional dysfunction is money in politics which leads to corruption. Full stop.
I voted for Obama and democrat Senators back in 2008. Never again! I'm voting nothing but 3rd party from now on. I no longer care if Republicans or Democrats win, because they're both exactly the same. A party of corruption who sells themselves to the highest corporate bidder.
Until we breakup this dysfunctional two party system, nothing will change and America's paper money printing economy will end up imploding on itself.
Printing paper money and 0% interest rates doesn't make a healthy economy. Lots of well paying jobs does. Not lots of low paying part-time jobs.
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Re: Re: Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
True, which is why I generally don't talk politics in ordinary conversation. What I do in addition to voting is a large combination of things. I give money to organizations I feel are working in ways I agree with, I participate in actions of various sorts, including taking part in local governmental groups, I communicate with my elected officials, and much more.
Really, what are the options? It's either try to change things for the better in every way that is possible or revolution. And revolution is a hail-mary kind of act, a last resort that is more likely to result in bad than good. If that becomes necessary, then we have already lost.
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Re: Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
Agreed. But how do we do so effectively?
The courts, being what they are and how they've been acting lately, would take years, and there's precious little promise they would rule in favor of the little guy.
Our nation's armed services are bound by their oath to do nothing. It's that part about 'preserve and protect the constitution'. They're protecting our right to vote, after all.
The cops won't do anything, if for no other reason than the blanket immunity granted congress by the constitution for their travel to/from their place of assembly and for anything they say or do while acting in official capacity. Oh, they're beholden to each other, but is that really a deterrent?
Seems that leave some kind of armed rebellion. Good luck getting that organized. Given how NSA and FBI are spying on everyone and everything, it's a safe bet they'd be on your doorstep 3 seconds after you put out the word you're going to hold a meeting to get things going.
Again, how do we effectively engage the system?
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Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
And I was someone who voted in every election, registered people to vote, worked on various campaigns, etc. -- all the things that someone engaged with the process might be expected to do.
But there is no point any more: from the gerrymandered districts to the overwhelming influence of big money to the corruption behind electronic voting to the inability of officials to think long term to the ubiquitous back room deals and the revolving door between government and business, it's a lost cause.
I think the only way out is to push the "reset" button: remove ALL members of Congress, redraw the districts sensibly, require that all candidates pass a literacy/intelligence/knowledge test, and start over.
(That last one is a pet peeve of mine: I'm quite tired of inferior people with inferior minds being allowed to hold positions of power. We need to exclude everyone who simply isn't smart enough and/or educated enough, because stupid, ignorant people tend to make appallingly poor decisions. As we see...pretty much all day, every day. Of course sometimes smart and educated people do the same thing: but I'd still like to stack the deck in our favor.)
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Re: Maybe Ted Cruz is our friend
The Tea Party was supposedly started over the bailout outrage, right? It makes their support for Cruz suspect
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The courts are the best hope
It seems to me that the courts have the authority (per above) to fix the gerrymandering issue. Fix that, and a lot of the other problems will resolve themselves.
Short of the courts fixing it, I am not optimistic.
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Re: Maybe Ted Cruz is our friend
Many wars and battles have been lost because people believed this fallacy.
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Well then
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Except it's not members of Congress who draw congressional districts. You can blame the amorphous group of "those in power", but that doesn't really help.
I also worry about whether a "nonpartisan" group to draw lines would actually be fair. In my state, our "nonpartisan" elections officials came up with this ballot where the Democrats are all listed first and there is no line between the Democrat and the name of the office, but there IS a line between the Republican and the Democrat. (On the other hand, the district drawing could hardly be *more* partisan than the current situation...)
You don't have to be "charged" with something to face a primary. Sometimes the voters just think they can do better. You aren't entitled to your seat, or even to your party's nomination, just because you currently hold the office.
And are they actually being criticized for dealing with the other side, or are they being criticized for dealing with the other side on important issues and giving up way too much? As the article says, nobody pays attention to a pharmacy compounding bill. So if it's so important, PASS THE BILL. You aren't likely to get heat for it. But if you compromise on a high profile issue like, say, immigration reform - if your constituents want to build a wall and you vote for a "compromise" bill that includes amnesty, or vice versa - don't be surprised when they are mad.
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But US politics has never approached the acrimony of Ukrain, where fist fights on the parliament floor have been a common sight throughout that nation's post-Soviet history. No wonder Klitschko went into politics, he was the perfect candidate.
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Re: Re: Maybe Ted Cruz is our friend
Many wars and battles have been lost because people believed this fallacy.
And are still to this day. The hard lessons learned from supporting Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda were completely lost on ISIS, an even more radical group (despite Obama's repeated personal assurances (since rescinded) that these are good people who can be trusted and the many bad things said about them are completely untrue).
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People voting in a partisan primary aren't what you would normally classify as common "voters". Sir Kings slightly exagerated numbers doesn't make it untrue. If you don't care about "high profile issues" or if a democrat or republican wins, primaries are screwing you over bigtime.
Also, you don't seem to understand what your "high profile issue" actually covers in this case. It is merely what has caught on in the media ecco-chamber.
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Ah yes, the issue of States Rights...
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Re: Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
The problem with excluding stupid, ignorant people is that stupid, ignorant people have needs that require representation as well.
And the main problem with smart people is that they favor decisions benefitting themselves. Which is one of the reasons we have such an intransparent cesspool of corruption and in accountability. If you are smart enough to put on a show for the voters, you can let your talk and acts diverge more easily.
I don't think it makes sense to have such a large divergence in mental capacity between people doing jury duty and congress duty.
At any rate, the problem is pretty much one of the free market: the monetary rewards for being corrupt are basically unlimited as the payout tends to be in money, and in the U.S.A., money can buy anything. The rewards for integrity are not tangible, and there are strict limits to how honest you can be. There is a hard stop at 100%.
So with the underlying capitalistic reward system, corruption scales much better than integrity.
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I'm confused. How do you elect members of Congress without districts? Do you have a ballot with about 999 names on it and say "please vote for 435 of these"? Do you do it by state (so the states become the district?) Do you have people just vote for a party and the party picks who gets in (because everyone knows that the problem with our political system is that the parties don't have enough power, right?)
By that logic, if 999,999 people in your state vote Republican and 999,997 vote Democrat, your vote also doesn't count. (Or if 999,999 vote Democrat and 999,997 vote Republican, your vote also doesn't count, even though you won.)
There's a vanishingly small probability that your vote is going to matter, no matter what system we use. That's just how things go when there are millions of votes.
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Re: Re: Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
Eh... although they may have needs that require representation, that does not mean we should actually elect stupid, ignorant people. Infants also have many needs that require representation, but we don't say that they need an actual representative in Congress.
That's not to say I agree with a literacy or other test to be able to hold office - I don't. It should be up to the voters to elect someone smart enough to pass good laws.
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I disagree. Primaries are where you have the largest impact! A general election is likely going to be a Republican vs Democrat, big-issue-only campaign. But in a primary, your vote counts more because there are fewer votes (there's a lower turnout in general, and half the people who do show up are going to be voting in the other party's primary.) Also, in a primary, the candidates tend to have similar views towards the "big" issues - they mostly follow their party line. The primary is where you can potentially elect someone who agrees with you on the "small" issues (small to the media, perhaps not small to you.)
Primaries matter. Jim Sensenbrenner is not Mike Rodgers. Ron Wyden is not Nancy Pelosi.
Compromise bills were suggested that would provide funding for closing the border and also make current illegal immigrants legal, weren't they? I'm just saying that Congress should not be surprised when people on one or both sides oppose such a compromise. And I could have used any other issue an an example instead. Taxes, spending, abortion, gay marriage, education, health care, foreign policy, etc.
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A Guarantee is meaningless when there are no consequences for failure.
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Congress
> pretty much everyone in Congress, no matter
> which house or party, really dislikes Cruz.
If Cruz is pissing off all of those encrusted Beltway barnacles on both sides, he must be doing something right.
> In the primary system that we have now, there
> is no upside for a Republican to be reasonable.
It's interesting that they limit this to Republicans, as if they're the only ones not being reasonable. Or that 'reasonableness' is defined as 'not conservative'.
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Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
Actually, they're just voting "none of the above".
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Yet somehow I received a flier from on of the political parties recently that lists what I should vote, yes or no, on all the local ballot measures in the next election. Funny that it tells me I should vote "yes" on all ballot measures except the one that matters the most to me: allowing non-partisan voters to vote in the primaries. On that one, the party firmly says I should vote "no".
Thing is, I am supposed to have the right in America to vote and have my vote counted, but I am disenfranchised from being able to vote where it matters most: determining who should even be allowed to be a candidate in the next election.
This is why I'm never given any choice in an election but the lesser of two evils. The lesser of two evils is still evil. I have no say in even putting someone else that better represents me on the ballot. Third parties aren't even given a seat at the debates, no media coverage at all, and still I am given no say as to who either of the major parties picks as their candidate.
I am told that if I, a moderate independent voter, want to have any say at all as to who represents me then I have to join one party or the other. Then I would no longer be independent or moderate, I would become partisan and be expected to vote party line all the time. This is not my America.
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If you fail the public to which you were elected for: YOU ARE THEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE in the same manner the people are. Wishful thinking I know, but let's see how many of them make an election run when their whole world is collateral.
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Re: Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
Sounds like a good idea to me, as people would no longer be forced to choose between the lesser of two corruptions(or which type of corruption they want), but could continue to vote out the scum until someone decent came along.
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No. We need to allow officials to change their mind, to compromise, to decide that the bill in front of them is not the bill they want passed because a comma is in the wrong place. You "cure" is worse than the disease.
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Re: Re: Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
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The issue are those politicians who promise some sort of change/progress/reform as their selling point for election only to fail to deliver on said promise or work actively against it. If anything, the lack of responsibility usually displayed with similar situations you cite are at the root of my suggestion.
Simply put: there is a double standard at work here in regards to elected officials and "normal people" (us)
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I'd be satisfied if existing laws were enforced, starting with the people who have already lied under oath. Like James "least untruthful" Clapper.
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"None of the Above"
As I firmly believe in the election of representatives that who I vote for doesn't affect what is going to be done in my name.
Who among us voted for torture? Who voted in favor of mass surveillance? Who among the people wanted the police state, the war on drugs, drone strikes against civilians?
How can we vote against these things?
We can't. Nothing changes.
No confidence in the system.
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Re: A Guarantee is meaningless when there are no consequences for failure.
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Re: Re: Re: And this is why people have no confidence in the system
If the game is rigged, the market is not free. Pretending that it is won't free it up, we've been doing that for 200 years and it hasn't worked yet.
the monetary rewards for being corrupt are basically unlimited as the payout tends to be in money, and in the U.S.A., money can buy anything.
That's the problem. And what happens if you don't have enough money? You may find that if you ask for more you're accused of "taking" or messing things up for the rest of us by driving up the cost of living if we actually get the minimum wage increased to $15ph.
But the cost of living is going up anyway because the job market is rigged, the housing market is rigged, broadband is rigged...
...and because our damn politics are rigged we're not being properly represented.
Maybe, just maybe, if we stopped making everything about money, it wouldn't become about buying power and we'd get something done for the good of the people, not the good of the people with the most money.
The rewards for integrity are not tangible, and there are strict limits to how honest you can be. There is a hard stop at 100%.
It doesn't help that we pretty much expect our politicians to be crooks, and if they try to actually make a stand on anything they get crucified for it whether they're right or wrong because we're so damn partisan these days.
As John Fenderson has said, voting alone is not enough, we need to educate each other as much as we can. We The People have let go of the steering wheel and don't seem to notice that we're heading for a brick wall. We need to grab it back.
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