Yeah making a case for extra time debating things so that they can focus on big projects and insulating them from the popular will just sounds like a poorly thought out idea to keep a second chamber when they are just superfluous.
Like I said, that’s the logic on paper. The reality ends up not being that way.
The major problem is simply that the scale of society has changed both in size and speed. The constitution was designed for a society 200 years ago. It was flexible enough to be able to handle big changes. It’s even smart enough to have a built-in amendment functionality. It’s just not flexible enough to last forever if we don’t use that amendment function.
Honestly the problem is a super majority need to do anything. The articles of Confederation had a super majority and it was one of the reason’s that government failed. Most of the founders thought that a super majority was too high of a bar. Republicans care about Supreme courts and appointments and they got rid of the fillbuster for that, now they are happy with the 60 votes to do things that actually do things since they don’t actually want to do anything they are happy just blocking and destroying with the courts. I’m usually one to say we need the fillbuster (but I think you should have to get up and actually fillbuster) but I think the way things are now we need to get rid of it regardless of who is in power. Everyone is using the fillbuster to avoid taking any hard votes.
I do sort of wish states with major urban centers had more Senate representation. For no other reason than to incentive-ize states to urbanize a little more consistently. There are a lot of cities in the midwest that are basically dying for various reason. It also might take the pressure off the more populated metro areas.
As it is most cities are not willing to design for high density, so it might be better to relocate to other cities that are starving for occupancy.
The issue is that a large number of the best paying jobs are in the Superstar cities and those cities also offer a density of services not found in mid-tier cities for the most part. There are large swaths of major industries that exclusively exist in coastal cities or all of the core/best paying aspects of their business lives there (hence why Amazon HQ2 was every metro area in america falling over itself to get at those high wage jobs for their payroll tax and local economy spend).
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But Jesus was a real person who actually existed.
My cousin’s son is named after Thaddeus Stevens and I’m very proud of everyone involved.
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Thomas Jefferson (or one of his supporters) DEFINITELY killed America’s first investigative journalist, James T Callendar. Jefferson sued Callendar for libel, which up to that point meant only that damage to the person’s character had to be proven, not whether or not the statement was true. Hamilton took up the defense of Callendar (despite his damning revelation of the Reynolds Affair), saying that libel needed to be false to be a crime. The day before Callendar was to be brought to testify in the trial, Callendar showed up dead in a river. Coroner’s reports declared it had been an accidental drowning due to intoxication (to be fair, Callendar was a notorious alcoholic), but anyone can put together what really happened.
SOURCE: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.
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Just got home from seeing Eric Foner in conversation with Henry Louis Gates. It was especially exciting to tell Foner the influence he had on my ConnectiCon talk, “Equal Before The Law.” Very inspirational. Some thoughts:
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The notion that Citizens v United invented the notion that corporations are people is bogus. Foner stated that in the 1880s and 1890s SCOTUS repeatedly ruled against labor laws on the basis that they infringed on corporations’ 14th Amendment right to equal protection. It even seems that the 14th Amendment has been used in more cases to protect corporations than it has to defend black people.
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The Constitution, and especially the Second Founding Amendments (13, 14, and 15) were specifically vague so that they could be interpreted broadly. John Bingham, who helped write the 14th said that the language was vague so future generations “could breathe new life into them.”
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Foner spoke extensively at the need for the courts to consider more than just previous SCOTUS decisions in their rulings. He applauded Sotomayor for saying that “judges need to get out more” when he asked her why she cited DuBois’ “Souls of Black Folk,” a non-legal text, in a ruling. He spoke of the significance of the ratifying conventions throughout the south (which were mostly comprised of black people) and how it is as important if not more in determining the intention of the documents as the white Federal Congress’ debates.
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Although I had previously been under the impression that Sumner’s 1875 Civil Rights Act was gutted in Congress, it was in fact gutted by the Supreme Court 8 years later. The bill ensured desegregated public accommodations and transit until SCOTUS deemed that unconstitutional in 1883. This means that the US in 1880 was as de jura segregated as it would be in 1980.
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Reconstruction is only seen as a failure because of the scope of what it tried to accomplish. If we had not shot for the sun in demanding total civil equality between races and had only gotten public schools, black colleges, equal protection, and birthright citizenship, we would consider Reconstruction a radical leap and a massive success. Reconstruction is only a failure in that it was not a more equal society than what we have even today.
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Gates gave Foner a copy of “Black Reconstruction in America” (one of my fav books ever) signed by WEB DuBois. What a historiographical relic.
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Henry Louis Gates and I got to talk briefly about Charles Sumner and it cemented my belief that we need a new biography of the honorable Senator. I do hope to accomplish this task if no one else does before me, perhaps even if they do.
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This is my 2nd time seeing Foner give a lecture. I have now seen him live more times than I’ve seen Bruce Springsteen. I would recommend seeing him over the Boss in the 21st century every time. Each time I see him I feel absolutely enlightened, this time even more than the first.
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Inspired by the discussion in the Impeachment thread: Have we had a major leap forward (besides arguably the ACA) from Democrats since the 1960s? From the 1930s to 1960s we had massive near revolutions in government towards creating a social democracy in the model of Frederick’s Prussia or Napoleon’s France. From the New Deal to the Civil Rights Act to disability income, Democrats pushed major changes in America as core parts of their platform. The major changes I can think of since 1968 were either Republican (like the EPA) or bipartisan (like the ADA).
Also someone please reply to this cause I just hit the 5 post limit.
I certainly can’t think of one.
I can say that we’ve had Democrat control for a good chunk of that time as well.
This literally goes back to the post I just made. RBG was appointed by Clinton in the 90s. Does that count as a major leap forward?
If not, how can Cabbage and gorsuch count as wins for the republicans?
For Clinton, I was looking up the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993 (FMLA) but that appears to have had bipartisan support. There’s several footnotes about positives for the economy, unemployment, supreme court justices, and stastical changes of crime/teen pregnancy, but no real permanent change.
I’d argue that SCOTUS nominations are not major leaps. Their rulings can be (Roe v Wade, Brown v Board of Ed, and in the other direction Dred Scott), but placing someone on the court doesn’t constitute one. Cabbage and Gorsuch are wins for the Republicans, but they’re not the massive leaps that I’m talking about.
I mean generally speaking your talking about Democrats taking over and having to deal with Economic stangnation (Carter) or a major recession (Obama). Clinton pushed for a very progressive Healthcare policy at the time and that exploded in his face. Beyond that there wasn’t a whole lot of time that the government wasn’t divided, another issue was the elimination/reduction of being able to attach “pork” to a bill to entice those from the other side to come on board a bill. The the last decade has been marked by the increase of using the fillbuster to block literally nearly anything.
The Democrats controlled Congress from 1954 to 1994. Since that time the moments they had control of both chambers (and a President) AND were not dealing with a 60 vote threshold for all bills is pretty slim.
So most anything after 94 would have had to be bipartisan.
Oh this is a fun site Historical Statistics about Legislation in the U.S. Congress -- GovTrack.us
I’m about a third through Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and it’s rather racist. Zinn tends to gloss over the horrors of American slavery so that he can talk about the oppression of white people. He seems to equate indentured servitude with the practice of chattel slavery, which is not at all accurate because (1) servitude was placed on them in adulthood (2) servitude was temporary and (3) it was often voluntary, and when it was it was compensated. His extensive coverage of the American labor movement in the 19th century is good, but his discussion of the general strike by slaves against the Confederacy is summed up in a single paragraph, maybe even less. He has read DuBois, as he cites him a few times, but doesn’t seem to have learned anything from him. While DuBois delivered a nuanced perspective on the Civil War and Reconstruction, demonstrating how capitalist incentives mixed with abolitionist sentiments at the beginning of the War and abolitionism was dominant by the end, Zinn speaks exclusively about the capitalist interests and makes it sound like it was a war to preserve trade exclusively. He credits the downfall of the Confederacy to white workers refusing to fight as soldiers single handedly, with no real credit due to runaway slaves, the slave general strike, or northern industrialization.
Furthermore, his coverage of Native Americans is criminally short. He discusses fairly well the relationships between native tribes and colonizers in the early chapters, but somehow Native Americans just disappear after 1837 when Andrew Jackson relocated the Cherokee, which was really just the beginning of modern American policy towards natives. There is, so far, no discussion of events like The Long Walk or the wars in the West, which was where Natives fought most effectively for their independence.
Zinn is to this day praised by the left as one of the best historians in American history, but he neglects people of color so thoroughly I’m surprised that progressives continue to tolerate it.
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On this day in 1859, 160 years ago, John Brown began his famous raid on Harper’s Ferry. Although the attempt to abolish slavery failed, he was immortalized during the subsequent Civil War with this song. #HisSoulIsMarchingOn
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I can no longer hear John Brown’s body or talks about His truth.
I’ve listened to this so many times it’s all I hear now.