You’re right. Bar waaay too high.
That is not a form of corruption.
That is in fact the very reason politicians get elected, to help their constituents.
When money for one’s district is tied to voting for a bill you wouldn’t normally vote for, that’s corruption, IMO.
Not to mention the earmarking process was itself corruption because earmarks had a tendency to go to campaign contributors or even relatives of Congressmen, rather than towards legitimate needs of the district or state.
Jack Murtha, one of the most prolific earmarkers in Congress, and also one of the most corrupt:
There are honest porkers, Robert Byrd is a good example. But even when its honest, it’s still wasteful more often than not(did he really need a statue of himself? How tacky.)
I’d note that the earmarking example is one way in which Republicans are on the side of the public. I’ve never seen a Presidential candidate willing to defend the process, and candidate Obama was an anti-earmark candidate. He vowed to veto bills with earmarks during the campaign, then immediately broke that promise. Fortunately, the Tea Party kept it for him.
I have even heard Bachmanntalking in favor of earmarks. Of course anything that even makes the president fool good indirectly will be considered and of course, they are not earmarks if they say so.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/30/us-usa-congress-earmarks-idUSBRE82T10F20120330
And that’s a good thing. The President favored it. IT doesn’t make the President look bad, it makes him look GOOD that there are no more earmarks.
If you honestly believe only Dems did this, and Rs did not, I have a bridge (to nowhere, as it turns out) I’d like to sell you. You can’t be that politically naive, can you?
Why not include Senator Ted Stevens? He was a major-tier porker.
Or, was that because in Stevens being Republican, it invalidates your thesis that, “Democrats Bad, GOP Good”.
Of course not. But Republicans were the ones who stopped it.
Nah, I hate Ted Stevens. There were lots of Republican porkers and still are. The Tea Party was the primary catalyst as far as putting an end to it.
Secondly, I notice no conservatives on this board defending earmarking as “just politics”.
Even better.
The earmark ban happened in 2011. I’m not disputing that Republicans were big earmarkers before the Tea Party wave election.
I’d like to submit this Megan McCardle post for your consideration:
http://meganmcardle.com/2013/07/12/why-i-think-the-gop-will-have-control-in-2017/
She explains why she thinks the GOP will win in 2016, and history is on her side. The Democratic counterargument is that things are different now, but how many times do we hear that and it actually turns out to be true?
The “only 2 Democrats have been followed by another Democrat” is a weak, weak argument, just like any “only x has been elected after x” argument. Precedents like that are essentially historic coincidences- it’s just as useful to say “no President with an i in his first name has ever been followed by a President of the same party” (note- I have no idea if this is true or not). So her argument is pretty weak. This early, it’s essentially a crapshoot. I think looking at demographics is reasonable, but it’s still far from definitive. We’ll know in Nov 2016.
But you can gerrymander state legislatures. So what’s your point?
You have stated and implied over and over that it is impossible to draw proportionately representative districts because Democrats are concentrated in urban areas. Bull Fucking Shit. And the number one proof that what you’re saying is untrue is that Democrats also have used gerrymandering to their advantage.
But besides that, unless you can show some logical demonstration of why it is impossible to draw fairer or at least reasonably neutral district lines, I really think you ought to consider not saying this again.
If we’re looking at historical-pattern arguments, I think this 2009 Newsweek interview with Sam Tanenhaus about his then-new book The Death of Conservatism is a more relevant analysis.
Really, there have only been a dozen presidential elections since the Civil Rights Act and the Republicans picked up the banner of racism. Except for the anomaly that was Reagan, Republicans have either barely won (Nixon I), won against an incredibly bad candidate (Nixon II, Bush I), or stolen an election W I& II). With demographics and social values going against them, they’ve won their last presidential election.
The state boundaries are nothing but arbitrary accidents of administrative, military, and legal history. Do you honestly think that the states of the United States represent genuine socio-historico-political nations? If you do, then you’re kidding yourself.
Even in 1789, the idea that “Virginian” constituted a nationality distinct from “Massachusettsian” in the same way that “English” and “Welsh” were distinct nationalities was a shaky proposition. To the extent that there was some broad delusion that this was the case was put to bed decisively by the Civil War. We are as a nationality and as a people “American.” Period.
If an American was to go abroad and claim, for example, “Texan” as his or her primary national identity in the same way that others would identify themselves as Canadian or Australian, I would consider him or her either a liar or a moron.
So, to the extent that the states have some degree of sovereignty is a matter of legal, historical, and administrative accident, compromise, and convenience. It is in no way based on genuine nationhood.
From that point of view, the state boundaries really are nothing but gerrymandered jurisdictions with some particularly characteristics, specifically: (1) Very difficult if not impossible to redraw as a practical matter, and (2) Occasionally favoring one party over another, as a matter of, again, historical accident.
Furthermore, the idea that certain states are “red” or “blue” is so simplified that to draw any concrete conclusions from it is either a fallacy or deliberate misdirection. Every state has liberals and conservatives. Every state has Democrats and Republicans. Every region, every county, every municipality, every legislative district, and, as a practical matter, every voting ward has liberals and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans. Yes, they are unevenly distributed, but not to the extent that it actually means as much as it is often implied.
I live in a very heavily “blue” region, municipality, and district, but I can guarantee you that if I went outside and started shouting, there would be “red” voters who would hear my voice. So don’t pretend that American geography holds some kind of moral lesson for politics.
A nation is its people, not its arbitrary internal boundaries and not its population density. Painting a map red because of broad generalization of political trends is a trick, and a pretty cynical one.
Likewise, neither does race. African-Americans are the least likely to be conservative, but if you go into your average black church with 100 people, 10 of them are likely to be conservatives.
With other ethnic groups, the percentage of conservatives is much higher, from one third to 40%.
Not that severe.
Chart and article.