The way the accountability aspect is supposed to work is that voters are horrified and hold their elected representatives accountable by voting them out. As it turns out, though, most people are profoundly ignorant and have no idea who/what they're voting for and lack the intellectual curiosity to figure it out. These voters will just keep getting reamed by their ISPs and if the GOP tells them it's somehow Democrats' fault, they'll probably believe it.
In the US, people mostly remember the president / vice-president names, because they are so widely publicized, some possibly remember the name of their Congress representatives, or can google them up in the rare case when they need to write to them about some issue. AFAICT very few people even remember who did they vote into the state legislature.
This is very sad, and certainly disfunctional.
1. Web comes out and makes it trivial to distribute information for nearly free.
2. Users find enough "information" (in quotes because I mean "data that satisfies their instinctual desire to feel in the know" regardless of its actual value) on the web for free that they don't want to pay for their local newspaper anymore.
3. Dying paper subscriptions forces newspapers to go online. Even so and even with copious ads, their profit margins collapse.
4. The only news agencies that survive are national news because they can aggregate their journalism costs over a larger number of readers.
5. Bereft of money, local news agencies get bought up by conglomerations that produce "local" news which is a slurry of national stuff, press releases, and relatively low quality local reporting.
6. People stop reading the local stuff entirely since it's frankly just not good any more.
7. Now everyone is only clued in to national politics since national news sources rarely write about state or city politics.
Think Buzzfeed with no spellcheck. You had colorful characters, but I wouldn't argue the informational content is all that more hollow today than in that time period.
Sure the writing quality wasn't always great, but it was a functioning conduit of information about what local politicians were up to. And, more importantly it wasn't drowned about by other information sources so a greater fraction of people actually consumed it and were clued in to what was happening in their city and state.
This has probably been done, right?
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=uk&tl=en&u=https:/...
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=uk&tl=en&u=https:/...
https://openstates.org/tx/bills/?query=&session=87&classific...
Game-ify the shit out of it? Farmville, but for electoral awareness? Somehow piggyback on the inexplicably-popular-and-viral "take this quiz to find out which X from Y you are" thing?
They may not "remember who did they vote into the state legislature", but they're not totally unaware of them.
There's no deal you can make with rural states where they give up their stranglehold on the Senate and Electoral College and get... nothing... in return.
It sucks, but that's the way it is.
I'm not saying this doesn't have other problems, it's just an example that the rural states problem is not a hard blocker for proportional voting.
PR != no districting.
What is the rational incentive to do so?
That doesn't mean that this is impossible. There seem to be two ways this coordination and prisoner's dilemma problem could be resolved. First, by a constitutional amendment (unlikely) or second in a similar way to the National Popular Vote.
National Popular Vote is a bill with the goal of making the winner of the popular vote the winner of the presidency. The way it works is that states pass a law to give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular votes ONLY until enough states with enough votes pass the same bill.
This bill currently has been enacted by 15 states (195 electoral votes) [1]
Why would the GOP want to give middling members the room to break rank when the margins of power are so razor-thin? What is the selling pitch?
Small state power is unchanged. Full stop.
Republican power is also not necessarily worse for the reason you gave: blue big states will also be more purple. PR is certainly in the favor of moderate republicans, whoever they may be.
California's legislature can choose between giving a high percentage (63.48%[1] in 2020) or 100% of it's electoral votes to the democratic candidate. Alabama's legislature can choose between giving a high percentage (62.03%[2] in 2020) or 100% of it's electoral votes to the republican candidate.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...
I can't wave any magic wand for gridlock at that level, but that bypasses the coordination failure by not requiring coordinated steps at all.
Say you have two very large groups of junior developers and a handful of senior devs. Both groups of juniors propose conflicting pull requests using diametrically opposed designs. Then everyone votes on a PR. The group with more juniors ends up getting their PR merged. Even though both designs might be total crap, and in fact the groups might intentionally avoid good code just because it looks like the other group's code.
The solution is to disband the two gigantic groups and either A) create one mega-group, or B) create small "two-pizza" groups. Enable peer review, and empower the seniors to provide the necessary guidance and control to prevent a group of incompetents from merging shitty code just because they didn't like some other group's code. Oh, and mandate validation testing, and metrics to show whether the code should be kept or reverted.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
I don't want war, but I think taking the threat of war, mass unrest, etc. seriously is the only way we're going to be able to muscle-through the reforms needing to avoid it.
Our current institutions are massively politically unsustainable, and doing nothing about it is not going to maintain the peace in the long term.
US has 13 states that send only 1 or 2 representatives to the House (6 states: 1, 7 states: 2). Then 2 states with 3, and 6 states with 4. At these 21 states, proportional representation would not differ (much) from the current two-party system.
Then again, those 21 states contribute only 50 out of the 435 House representatives, so maybe that wouldn't matter much. Maybe it could work, if the rest 39 states went properly proportional.
If the national legislatures determine national policies, there should be no reason to split representation by state at all. There is every reason to split by actual interests evenly, this is only way minorites views get a voice like californian republicans or Texas democrats
It will also break the two party system eventually, people are not binary, neither are their beliefs there won't be need to compromise and go with a dominant party
Yup.
I also have no problem increasing the number of House representatives or making multi-state districts.
I thought you might have substantive point about PR not working within Ohio to follow up.
Are they? From the article:
> Last week's vote to restrict municipal broadband "was along party lines, with 25 GOP State Senators voting in favor of the Senate budget bill and the chamber's eight Democrats voting against it."
(The quote was from the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR)).
But what the quote says was that the Republicans voted for the bill, and the Democrats voted against the bill. They aren't (at least on the evidence presented) voting for or against the broadband limitations, but for or against the budget as a whole. Are the broadband limits why the Democrats are voting against? From the evidence given, we can't tell.
What we need are the voting records on the amendment that added this stupid ban to the budget. That's probably down in a committee somewhere, but it might be on the state Senate floor. What we need is the breakdown on that vote, not on the vote on the overall budget.
But Ars is taking evidence of votes on the budget as a whole, and trying to make them say that Republicans are against municipal broadband. They may in fact be against it, but Ars needs to show that, not just claim it on somewhat-tangentially-related evidence. As it is, one could reasonably wonder if Ars is just trying to spin an anti-Republican narrative.
If you voted for a bill containing a specific provision, it is entirely reasonable to supose that you support that provision, especially when you don't make a public protestation against the inclusion of that provision.
The counter claim is not as reasonable. Just because you vote against a bill containing a provision, that doesn't mean it is reasonable to supoose you oppose that provision (at leat without additional context.)
> What we need are the voting records on the amendment that added this stupid ban to the budget.
That would might give us additional information on who takes a strong stance against municipal broadband (or possibly who got their palms greased.)
No, that's not reasonable. You support the bill as a whole, not every sentence in it. The strongest that can be said is that you don't disagree with that provision strongly enough to reject the whole bill over it.
In any meaningful sense, they’re voting to ban muni broadband.
It's unfortunately more than ignorance. These budget bills have to be balanced so they include hundreds of items in them. It's a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. With that large amount of provisions, it's easy to slide in things that only peripherally pertain to budget.
I wish this were broken up in such a way that any changes to how things work and to laws need to be done BEFORE if required by the budget, such that the budget vote stops being this monstrosity.
This strikes me as unkind. It's true of some, surely. But people are just busy. The whole theory of representative democracy is that direct democracy is impractical, so we delegate most of the work to people who focus on governing. You also ignore the extent to which the average voter is energetically manipulated and actively discouraged from participation. In the 2020 election cycle alone, There was $14.4 billion in direct spending alone. That's ~$90 per voter.
If we want more people to engage, wishing for better humans won't get us anywhere. We should do just like we do for tech products: figure out how to make useful behaviors easier.
Somehow, it certainly is the Democrats' fault.
https://ilsr.org/washington-state-removes-all-barriers-to-mu...
Seems to me the Democrats in WA have worked to allow municipal broadband to exist whereas the Republicans in OH are trying for the opposite outcome.
And ISPs have a lot of it.
Sorry, don't have a reference for that, as I don't recall specific details.
But the point remains. Their lack of any opposition at all at the county and city level means they can, and do, whatever they want. They can also count on a judiciary that approves the illegal laws they pass (such as a city income tax. The judge's dubious rationale was the employer was paying it, not the employee, although both are at the expense of the employee).
A state income tax is unconstitutional in Washington, so the city just required the employer to pay it.
Sadly, the Democrats simultaneously argue that capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income, and yet passed a state capital gains tax arguing the capital gains are not income.
So, yeah, blaming the GOP in Washington State isn't going to work.
It's always too late by this point. It's a flaw. The elected official get's to screw over their constituents for the duration of their term..
Said politician is then free to step on the backs of their voters for some period before the next campaign for election starts without fear of being removed from office.
Next to the good points by the sister comments, there is usually the problem that you won't find somebody who fits you 100%. Are you going to vote someone who, for example, proposes widespread surveillance, just to get someone out who doesn't deny a bill that bans municipal broadband?
As Southpark eloquently put it, sometimes you have to decide between a douche and a turd [0]. No ignorance needed (except, maybe, to stay sane).
Trump isn't imposing a ban on municipal broadband, state lawmakers are which are in power due to gerrymandering.
Let's get rid of first-past-the-post already.
It's not impossible that one of the Democrats did it, so they could pretend to oppose it. Controlled opposition isn't a new thing.
If one of the Republicans did it, can they have the numbers to pass it, why wouldn't one of them take credit for it?
I have one electric distribution utility provider. They use service trucks that have internal combustion engines. Suppose I was passionately pro-EV and against ICE vehicles; it would still not be a contradiction that I purchase my electricity distribution from that one available grid provider. "He's buying from them, so clearly he must support their use of ICE vehicles."
I can virtually guarantee that you disagree with at least one position that the candidate you voted for has taken. They're your representative, not your agent.
Have you asked yourself why rich people pretty reliably vote Democrat if, according to your model, it’s going to disadvantage them?
Personally, to give others access to education, parental leave, sick leave, vacation, healthcare, access to broadband internet, ranked choice voting, personal freedoms, public transportation, etc.
Obviously Dems are nowhere near perfect, but they at least tick some boxes. But the point is I do not mind voting for someone even if it causes me a loss, as long as I think it helps others.
and to most republicans and libertarians believe none of those things are a proper role for government nor should be provided by the government
So then they are wrong.
Really? Ignorance at this level is just something I have no response to. I take it then you have no respect for Individual rights, Individualism, or the founding principles of the US system of government?
They don't see themselves that way. So when you accuse them of being these terrible things, they resent you. And if they resent you, they are not under any circumstances going to vote for you, even if it might be to their benefit in reality.
We could debate for a long time exactly how we got here, and everyone thinks the other side is entirely responsible.
The racism rhetoric isn't meant to appeal to the rural poor or anyone with Real Problems(TM).
Black, white or neon green if you're living paycheck to paycheck you have more important things to care about than whether someone else thinks your a BadThingOfTheDay-ist. You're not gonna vote for someone promising to solve your image problem. You're gonna vote for someone promising to solve your real problems (unless their proposed solution is wildly incompatible with your ideology)
The racism rhetoric is designed to appeal to the suburban white collar class who doesn't have many big pressing day to day problems. If you convince them people who vote against you are racists (which some of them probably already believe at least a little bit) they will vote for you because they don't wanna be called racists and they don't have enough real problems so they care about things like that.
There are plenty of people who will tell you to go fuck yourself if you insinuate that you look down on them before offering what they perceive to be a hand out. I personally know many people who don't even bother applying to government programs they qualify for because they view it as humiliating or beneath them, and that's without people shit talking them. Not everything is purely about money.
Also to suggest that the left is solving the problems of the right is somewhat disingenuous. The true problems of the right are largely unsolvable. We're never going to make small farming communities matter again; we're never going to bring back dignity to unskilled labor; we're never going to bring back manufacturing to the degree where manufacturing jobs yield middle class lifestyles; we're never going to change our value systems back to what they used to be; etc. Money largely can't solve any of those problems.
That's exactly what I meant by the bit in parenthesis.
>is solving the problems of the right is somewhat disingenuous.
A healthcare solution that doesn't suck (regardless of which side of the isle it comes from) would help left and right alike. I agree with you on all that other stuff. The 50s aren't coming back.
It's a nice thought to want to pretend all the problems of poor people are the same regardless of color but it's not true. I have multiple family members that were alive during Jim Crow and had to go-to the segregated black schools. Those people protesting integration as an example didn't just disappear and their opinions didn't either even though America has tried to pretend they have.
Those people exist and I am sympathetic to their plight but they are not the target demographic that politicians are trying to convert using the racism rhetoric. They were mostly already voting for the people pumping out the racism rhetoric. The fact that they may see those politicians as further allies is just a secondary or tertiary bonus.
You need to look at this from the perspective of a political strategist with a moral compass that makes Nixon look like Jesus.
That is the single best piece of advice in this entire thread. I will probably end up paraphrasing this at some point, because it drives the point home pretty effectively.
It's understandable that they would resent such blanket statements. No one alive today participated in slavery, the vast majority of their ancestors did not participate in it. Many families hadn't even immigrated yet and may have had their own discrimination issues to contend with.
> This is more "both sides are the same" rhetoric that is only used to empower the fringe beliefs and extremism in the American right.
This is exactly the sentiment the parent comment is alluding to. I think the American left is more guilty recently of avoiding introspection and dismissing criticism, to the detriment of advancing their mostly positive goals.
If you think hundreds of millions of people are acting irrationally, you’re probably wrong, and you’re probably using some busted first-order approximation “rational” model.
And while Texas does have an impressive economic growth record, some other states (California and NY) are actually growing faster [1]: The most trusted measure of economic strength says California is the world-beater among democracies. The state’s gross domestic product increased 21% during the past five years, dwarfing No. 2 New York (14%) and No. 3 Texas (12%), according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
I remember before Corona, we had record deficits and government spending. How is that an example of limited government?
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-14/califo...
On economic issues, people ascribe far too much blame or thanks to whoever happens to be president at the time. Whatever positive indicators you think pointed to a healthy economy in 2017 or whenever probably have nothing to do with the regime at the time; that was just the continuation of a decade of post-recession growth.
Anyway, where are you going to move to next now that Texas is slowly turning purple?
"Trump didn't screw it up" isn't as impressive a claim though, I suppose...
Dems span all the way from Sinema to AOC. GOP goes from Collins to Taylor Greene.
People can express their individuality in the primary process fairly well, especially for national elections with lots of candidates.
But at the end of the day, every election is between the #1 and #2 candidates, and those candidates are going to be a hard compromise for lots of people.
That’s the mistake people keep making about Collins: she says things that sound reasonable and sensible, but at the end of the day, she votes with the rest of the party almost all the time.
Lisa Murkowski has been more independent and she may well lose her seat because of it.
Luckily, Alaska passed a ranked choice voting / open primary proposition in the last election cycle so it won't be possible to primary her out of the election (as was done in the past, forcing her to run and win a write-in campaign.) Still, We will have to see how much the administration drags it's heels on implementation...
Ironically, Lisa has been one of the better state representatives from Alaska (many others have been very corrupt). This is despite her father literally giving her his senate seat when he was elected governor.
The only single time within my memory that she was part of a 1-vote margin against the GOP was when John McCain faked out McConnell and at the last minute rejected the ACA repeal in 2017. Collins had been told she was allowed to vote against because her vote would not matter, she did so, and McCain’s No vote came afterward.
Pick a few wedge issues for either side and voila: you have a 'representative' democracy.
No, they don't. What is correct for rich western liberals often means further poverty, suffering, and death for those who don't belong to that class.
The sheer arrogance to even say that is boggling to me.
The conservatives are the party of letting the poor starve and die with their constant demands of eliminating social programs and fighting against universal health care.
Also, I hate to break it to you, but even if GOP opposition to social programs disappeared overnight, I would wager money that we still wouldn't get basic social necessities like UHC or UBI or housing rights. Liberal ideology is just as good at letting the poor die and starve as are the conservatives. The dog and pony show where they pretend their hands are tied cause of opposition is almost completely BS.
See how we still haven't gotten any student debt relief even though the executive could immediately provide it. See how these two liberals are still blocking the filibuster.
Both sides are guilty of this. We can discuss a myriad of ways to fix our political system, but the root issue is a low trust and highly divided society. No system will fix that.
I know it’s not everyone. Reading this thread is hard - even if one side is objectively right, it doesn’t matter. Compromise is the only way forward. I don’t like considering the alternatives.
It is trivial to commit someone else’s patch as your own and without any history if you want to write the script. Just not that hard.
That is the bigger problem than the way that bills are presented to the public.
For most people, I assume they're talking about the federal government when they say things like you said. I just want you to know that it's already open and available. For straight legislation - congress.gov tracks bills and gives you the text of most things. Whereas federalregister.gov gives you regulation changes.
Yes, there is a day or two delay on congress.gov from introduction and when it is transmitted from the GPO to the Library of Congress. But overall it's pretty quick.
How come no one ever slips a good thing into legislation when they can?
I'm going to speculate that it's some state legislator who put this in and probably got $1000 dollars in a campaign contribution, a golf game, a dinner and a hooker for the night. That is all it takes to buy a politician these days. The only reason for any uproar is it's now in the open and they're catching shit for it while trying to distance themselves from it. We continuously elect the most stupid, undesirable, corrupt people to represent us at every level of Government.
Thank you ATT, Verizon, Spectrum
That's the challenge. When you put someone in charge of money or rules that are not theirs, they become an amplifier for anyone who can find the gate. The problem is that for a big system, someone has to be in charge/have control over it. How do we design it so they actually have the public interest in mind?
All bills should be edited in a system/software analogous to Github, where the user has to be authenticated (and verified) and edits can be tracked.
Of course the lobbyist would hate it, but fuck them.
Things don't magically appear in a bill, it is just that now no one wants to own up to it as they had hoped to slide it in unnoticed.
Have a read of Dark Money (Mayer) and/or Democracy in Chains (MacLean) to get a picture of the why and how.
At this point, the only bills we can pass federally are budget reconciliation bills an small token "Juneteenth is a holiday" bills.
Why? Primarily because of the senate filibuster rule. We require that 60+ senators agree on every bill passed because every bill gets filibustered. That doesn't work well when you have
A: A party that coined the phrase "do nothing democrats"
B: A senate minority leader that openly says their job is to stop any legislation from passing.
Compromise is dead at this point, because regardless of the compromises made, the minority party will filibuster.
So the end result is the only bills that get passed are budget reconciliation bills and those try and cram in everything that could possible be thought as "budgetary" into a single bill. Hence, thousands of pages long legislation.
If you want to be mad at giant bills, be mad at the party that filibusters all tiny bills. Go read HR-1 and be mad that THAT bill is being filibustered (make federal voting day a national holiday and extending early voting). Go read any of the small common sense bills that get filibustered simply because they came from the opposing party.
And if you really want to get mad, go read up on the Jan 6. investigation bill that had 24 amendments added by republicans and 6 added by democrats that was ultimately filibustered.
That's where we are at. We've got Democrats bending over backwards to try and appear bipartisan and Republicans who are playing the game of "The best way to make democrats look bad is to filibuster everything".
Oddly enough, computers are enabling this. You couldn't get bills thousands of pages long with typewriters, because they get that long with a series of changes. It just wasn't physically possible to re-type it time after time, and then run it through Xerox machines to produce copies for everyone who needed them.
From the Congressional Research Service ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Research_Service ):
* The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970 and other 1970s Sunshine Reforms - https://www.congressionalresearch.org/LRA.html
I'd point to the graphs (and the various dots below them - there are lots of graphs there).
The lack of accountability is a reaction to this (trying to protect the members / lobbyists who helped draft it) with the addition of the current polarization of the various parties in state and federal legislatures.
In the most recent mid-term elections for things like Mayor, road commissioner and county council, the turnout was 8%.
8% of people decided who would do things that ACTUALLY impact the day-to-day life around here. Wonder why only the rich neighborhoods get their streets fixed? BECAUSE THE ELDERLY AND WEALTHY PEOPLE THERE VOTE. Wonder why they're spending an unbelievable amount fixing an out-of-date lake/riverfront to be prettier? BECAUSE THE OLD PEOPLE THERE VOTE IN LOCAL ELECTIONS.
Why don't people get this?
And if there's one thing that the elderly and the wealthy have more of than the rest of us, it's time. Time to call up city offices when things are not to one's liking, time to figure out the org charts and bureaucratic relationships, and time to get your neighbors riled up.
If you skim the positions and get an 80% hit rate on policies which actually match yours (which means you screw it up and guess wrong 20% of the time) that is still way better than not participating at all.
This takes a toooooon more time than looking up people once you have a ballot. But I'm the other hand, voting isn't such a huge thing for controlling local political outcomes.
The local officials have a similar lack of information about what voters want. So they tend to be easily influenced by a small number of highly motivated people that show up to meetings. In a town or 50,000, if 100 people show up to a meeting and there's no significant opposition, it's quite likely that the 100 people will win, even if they don't represent the community. Because with the small amount of effort that it took to get 100 people to show to a meeting will go much further come election time, and that 100 people who bothered to show up will remember a vote that went against them when they were the only people that showed up for public input.
IMHO, this is hugely un democratic, and a source of many problems. But it's how politics work: connections and organizing, instead of a poll of everybody's opinion on every issue.
Local communication has completely broken down. Few, if anyone, watches local TV, listens to local radio (if they haven't been replaced by Sinclair et. al) , subscribes local newspapers (if they exist). I'm not so upset at people, because they have no avenue to learn this information except word of mouth.
National politics at least has enough money to pay for ad spots. Local campaigns rarely can afford such measures.
How did we end up with such a gross lack of accountability? That seems more scandalous than the bad idea itself.