Investment Strategies / Mechanical Investing
No. of Recommendations: 8
While there's been lots said about the House bill to compel the release of the Epstein files, one thing it illustrates very vividly is the overwhelming power that comes with having a majority and having your party control the Speakership.
This is a bill that got a nearly unanimous vote in the House - which almost never happens for a substantive measure. It got unanimous consent in the Senate - ditto. It had nigh-overwhelming bi-partisan support. No one wanted to vote against it.
But even so, House leadership was still almost able to keep it bottled up.
That's how much power comes from the simple perquisite of having control over the agenda - of deciding what measures do and don't come up for a vote. It's an overwhelming amount of political power. And it shows why, no matter what your persuasion within a political party, the very most important first goal should always be to try to get that majority. Everything else flows from that - including the ability to stop nearly anything you don't like, no matter how much support it has.
No. of Recommendations: 0
...and what you're saying emphasizes the importance of maintaining the fillibuster rule in the Senate, and why Thune was correct to defy Trump and not nuke the fillibuster rule to reopen the government.
If 60 votes are required to get legislation passed in the Senate, it FORCES consensus to be achieved in a way which a bare majority does not.
A 60-40 vote represents a very solid majority.
To end the shutdown, it FORCED the Democrats to cooperate in ending the shutdown, at least in the Senate.
Now,whether that was based on individual votes by the Senators involved, or was really orchestrated by the Dem caucus to pick 8 Senators who weren't going to be up for election in the near future, isn't really that important.
The filibuster rule in the Senate also helps to prevent a situation in which Congress is almost equally split, but the majority keeps flip-flopping every two years, which would result in absolute legislative chaos far worse than what exists now.
No. of Recommendations: 2
That's how much power comes from the simple perquisite of having control over the agenda - of deciding what measures do and don't come up for a vote. It's an overwhelming amount of political power.
Then it should be removed. Agenda should be set on a FIFO basis, with exceptions for emergencies.
If the Speaker is going to have that kind of power (possibly more than POTUS?), then the American people as a whole should be voting on that position. I had no opportunity to vote for Johnson, and would have rejected him if I had. (And, in the end, if we won anyway, at least I had my say.)
No. of Recommendations: 5
This is a bill that got a nearly unanimous vote in the House - which almost never happens for a substantive measure. It got unanimous consent in the Senate - ditto. It had nigh-overwhelming bi-partisan support. No one wanted to vote against it.
An interesting theory was floated the other day. Recall how upset Johnson was, that the Senate approved the discharge, that the House passed, without amending it? The theory goes that, Johnson wanted the Senate to change the bill, so it would then need to go back to the House, and Johnson could bury it again.
Makes me wonder if there is video in Epstein's vault of Johnson with little boys, or animals, or corpses.
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 5
If the Speaker is going to have that kind of power (possibly more than POTUS?), then the American people as a whole should be voting on that position.
They are. We vote for our Representatives. The Representatives choose the speaker.
I mean, that's how a lot of countries pick the head of government. In most parliamentary systems, there's no direct election of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is chosen by majority vote in the legislature. Direct election of the head of government is not the only way to run a democracy, and there's a lot of arguments in favor of not doing it that way.
No. of Recommendations: 2
They are. We vote for our Representatives. The Representatives choose the speaker.
In a two-party system (which ours is de-facto), the minority party effectively doesn't get a vote. In a parliamentary system, that is less the case because they have to form coalitions. So at least the coalition parties have some say. It's not a direct vote, but at least there is more than one party represented (usually) as part of the coalition.
But I would be OK with a FIFO agenda system, to remove that power from the Speaker.
No. of Recommendations: 1
But I would be OK with a FIFO agenda system, to remove that power from the Speaker.
Well, that's not going to happen. I don't think there are many legislatures that are set up that way, where any bill filed by any legislator automatically gets a floor vote. There's almost always a gatekeeper, typically the Speaker/Majority Leader. It's that way in most state legislatures, AIUI - it certainly is in Florida, and a quick google search shows it's the same way in Arizona. The person who controls the gavel controls the agenda.
No. of Recommendations: 1
Well, that's not going to happen.
I didn't think it would. I was only expressing concern that the Speaker arguably has more power than the POTUS. Again, if I were emperor**, I would fix that.
Just recently, Johnson wouldn't let a vote happen, and some of his own people were trying to go around him with some sort of procedural trick (I forgot the formal name for it) to force a floor vote. That shouldn't have to happen.
**It's not a contradiction, because I would only be "emperor" long enough to fix the problems we have identified over the past 250 years, and then resign that position since I have no desire to be a ruler or leader.
No. of Recommendations: 7
Direct election of the head of government is not the only way to run a democracy, and there's a lot of arguments in favor of not doing it that way.
To be fair, that’s the way Senators used to be elected - by their state legislature. Then we found that State legislatures were far more easily corruptible, and were, and we changed it to Direct Vote.
Neither way of voting for a big job is perfect, and by the way, let me tell you about the Electoral College ;)
