As i suggested previously, you are welcome to your belief in this argument.
As a matter of principle regarding the proper operation of democracy, however, i still see a distinction without a difference.
Read the threads about Wisconsin and the teachers. you will find all the right wing anti union pro Walker people that you can stand.
Functional IQs. I know you don’t need me telling you this, but you really are a moron.
It seems to me that being subject to arrest is a significant distinction.
Great then in less than 2 years they can be voted out of office just like the Dems who voted for the health care bill got thrown out of office despite what their constituents wanted.
Our lives would be empty. Except for the sex, drugs, and rock n roll. Other than that, though, bleak and dark.
Yeah, but you’d be doing all that in a political vacuum.
Works for me.
fap, fap, fap…
If you’re not following the actual argument that i’m making then it would be.
The argument i’m making is an argument of principle, an argument about what i believe to be the appropriate course of action for lawmakers in a representative democracy. For me, as a matter of principle, leaving the jurisdiction is no more and no less disruptive of the democratic process and its ideals than standing there and delivering a 24-hour speech on cabbage patch dolls. Both are designed specifically to prevent the forward movement of the legislative process, and both succeed in doing exactly that.
While it is true that one of these actions (failing to appear) makes the person subject to arrest and the other (filibustering) does not, this does not, for me, have a bearing on whether either of those actions are subversive of representative democracy. It’s just like, for me, the fact that you can be arrested for smoking marijuana does not make the act of smoking marijuana immoral or any different, in principle, from smoking a tobacco cigarette.
Though in BBQ Pit, I hope it isn’t out of order for me to address my own ignorance by asking a question:
What is the legal basis for arresting an absent legislator? Any difference State vs Fed? (I’ve no opinion on whether it’s right or wrong; I’m just curious.)
Yes, I was following it. But there are many things that can prevent the forward movement of the legislative process. The use of firearms for example. A person could block legislative action by using a gun to threaten suicide or to hold the group hostage. People have to abide by the law, and this is especially true of lawmakers. In my opinion, if members of a legislature are acting outside the boundries of the law, they are no longer playing a legitimate role in democratic governance. In other words, it isn’t enough simply to impede legislative process. Whatever methods or tactics are brought to bear should still conform to the law. Filibustering acheives this purpose but fleeing the jurisdiction does not.
The facts.
Tea Party people like Walker also by “coincidence” has prevented any action that the government in Wisconsin was making regarding green jobs. After all, there is no reason why to do that when there is no really no problem like global warming :rolleyes:, like the favorite of the deniers and tea partiers Lord Monkton always says:
Facts are not for people like Monkton or most of the Republican leadership.
It is not too hard to see that the misinformation that Lord Monkton is making is then recycled or swallowed by the tea partiers and Republicans with the help and support of the oil companies.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/14/tea-party-walker-kills-high-speed-rail-in-wisconsin/
The blind are indeed guiding the blind among Republicans nowadays.
You mean like the Democrats did when they passed the health care bill that was opposed by the majority of Americans?
To be clear, I think it’s fine to do that - the whole point of representative government is to prevent the whims of the populace from dictating the day-to-day decisions of government. You elect your representatives, and then they may have to make hard choices that the people at that time oppose. If they still oppose it by the next election and it’s a big enough deal to them, out you go.
To the OP’s point, I think you can make reasonable arguments on either side. What you can’t do is justify it when Democrats do it, and then claim it’s invalid when Republicans do it.
Quorum rules are generally enforced to prevent circumstances where a small minority of decision-makers use the absence of the majority to pass rules. You don’t want a massive snowstorm to result in five Republicans showing up and passing a flurry of laws while everyone else is stranded.
The fact that fleeing legislators have to leave the state and hide would suggest to me that intentionally gaming the quorum rule is not intended to be part of a legitimate process.
On the other hand, to me anything that throws another wrench in the workings of government is probably a good thing. I just don’t want to hear you guys whine and moan about it the next time Republicans do it, like you whine and moan about the filibuster when Republicans are in the minority but champion it when Democrats are in the minority.
Furthermore, you have to be willing to accept the consequences of your actions. If the Democrats don’t come back in time to pass some sort of interim financing deal and Wisconsin winds up having to pay an extra 150 million bucks or suffers other bad consequences, then it’s on the Democrats, and they’ll be held accountable.
Even the Economist magazine, that congratulated Walker on taking on the unions, had to say that Walker is overreaching and making a mistake when he is uncompromising regarding the collective bargaining bit and concentrating on unions that are mostly democratic.
Well, I haven’t really commented on that. I was talking strictly about the quorum tactic.
But you may well be right. I do think the Republicans land on weaker ground when they go beyond the fiscal concessions and start talking about bargaining rights. There’s plenty of populist anger at the public unions the Republicans can draw on, but that doesn’t mean there’s general anger at the whole concept of collective bargaining. So the Republicans are certainly taking a chance of losing their gain in standing. Ultimately, you and others on your side will make the best arguments for your point of view as you can, and the other side will do the same, and we’ll have to see where political opinion goes. The early evidence is that this is in fact hurting the Republicans a bit.
Unsurprisingly, and for the umpteenth time in your stupidity-littered career on these boards, you missed the point of my argument again.
I was arguing precisely and specifically about the extent to which these tactics constituted, as a matter of principle (not of law) a subversion of representative democracy. Even if filibustering is allowed by the rules, and failing to appear is not, this does not change the extent to which those two tactics act to impede the democratic process.
As it happens, i actually think that the Democrats should not have departed. I tend to agree with the OP that tactics like this are problematic in a representative democracy, and i also dislike the type of hypocrisy that supports this sort of tactic when one side does it, but condemns the same tactic when the other side does it. But, legal or not, filibustering has virtually exactly the same intent, and exactly the same effect, and so even if it’s allowed by the rules, it is still contradictory to ideas of how legislative democracy is supposed to work. Which is the only point i was making.
Aaaccctually, someone here in the Pit (I believe) asserted that this board slants right wing, because it generally doesn’t question corporate power, or something like that.
(Damn, I wish I could find it again… I think it was gonzomax who said it, but I’m not sure…?)
Which would make you more of a socialist than any of the so-called lefties in this thread, who appear to be confusing class warfare with fairness. Oh, the irony, it burns…
It seems centrist at most to me. Of course that makes it left wing by American standards, because there really isn’t all that much that isn’t left wing by American standards.
Since there is constant class warfare from the wealthy, “fairness” does imply that the non-rich should fight back instead of just grovelling in worship before the wealthy and asking for more punishment like Americans tend to do. I’ve never heard of a more spineless bunch.
Yeah, not so much. The rich in general don’t give much of a shit about the poor one way or another, and would rather just ignore them. This seems to be what the left finds so hard to understand.