re re fillibuster in article c ovfr c u dscomsa desy de hallam dscomsa desy de phill hallam baker writes in article veal utkvm utk edu veal utkvm utk edu david veal writes if the senate was less powerful than the house of lords than we d almost have to state that the house of representatives was also in fact they both were because the british government had much greater power than did the american system in principle no in practice yes in principle no that they had less power of that they should have had less power the british parliament in principle has absolute power so does the monarch much of the stability of the system rests on what is not defined clearly in the case of a clear abuse by one side or the other the other side can act to remedy the situation two institutions with absolute power cute let s talk practicality shall we if the monarch tried to do something what would happen if they were to start from a social welfare model instead of the current no state subsidy motto they would be better placed as it is there is plenty of state money being handed out the problem is that it is distributed on the basis of power in congress and not on the basis of actual need bingo the higher up the governmental ladder the less actual need matters because political power can be concentrated at higher levels while people with less cloud only find themselves reduced to in effectiveness that was not my point but you illustrated the problem very well in order to set up a school project in new york state you have to pay off the other states with pork defense contracts agricultural subsidies etc or to be precise of the states since you need to beat the filibuster then why not simply leave new york s education to new york i remain unconcinved that there is any state in the union which is not capable of educating its own children if that s what they want to do the point is of redistribution of cash from the poor areas of the ecconomy to the rich ones i am contending that there is no state in the union which does not have ample wealth if they choose to spend it to run a perfectly acceptable education system i further contend that the amount of money being spent now is more then sufficient but is being spent badly or vice versa if you aren t a republican so tell me phill were the republicans also responsible for some of the huge increases in social programs or were they only responsible for what you don t like i contend it is congress which is to blame democrat and republican alike if society simply writes off any areas of the country that is ecconomically weak you end up with a basket case ecconomy there are inevitable cycles in any business some of these act in phase to produce the business cycle others are countercyclic localities can experience boom to bust cycles outside the national trend to produce a strong ecconomy you need to ensure that the bust areas do not fall bellow the level where they cannot be ecconomically rebuilt most of our worst areas are still better off than most of europe in any case we re talking about education if the industry in an area collapses the us as a whole still has a responsibility to ensure that the children in that area get a good education in some areas of the us schools are closing halfway through the year for lack of money yes i live in once such area you re woefully ignorant of the situation at the same time some of tennessee s school districts are closing down the governor asked for million dollars for bicentenntial celebration license plats in almost the same breath he wanted to raise unemployment compensation and reduce taxes which paid into it i don t know about the rest of the country but our education problems stem directly from two problems neither of which are a lack of money in the state btw tennessee is considered a tax heaven and our economy is one of the strongest in the country i see a correlation what money we spend goes primarly to administration the average administrator makes two and a half times what the average teacher makes and sucks up an enormous amount of revenue and the governor is making a concerted effort to create an education crisis in order to push for his pet income tax some of the most idiotic programs get funded like state funds for new art in the county seat while schools are closing it s not a lack of funds it s an unwillingness to spend them on what is more appropriate education is the parental hot button education is always the first to but cut because it s easier to get people to pay for their children than ugly art the u s constitution is a nuts and bolts document the delcaration of independence was the high brow reasoning there are a couple of other examples though such as the reasoning for the power to tax and the reasoning for the power to grant permits both in article i section the declaration on independence cam a decade earlier and has not a line of justification for the us constitution you could argue that it went into the broad concepts but little more it spoke very eloquently on government being based on the consent of the governed in fact it is little more than a protracted whinge more to do with the price of tea than the design of a government it would be a pretty daft idea for a bunch of guys to sit arround designing the structure of the new government while the little matter of the british army remained to be settled they did it anyway the continental congress had its own set of bylaws it wasn t quite a government but a means of making decisions had to be created however low george washington s opinion of them were to a certain extend i do believe the veto has become something it wasn t intended however i also believe it is inevitable considering the congress own abuse of their power to make bills say whatever they want them to say unlike most people i think we shouldn t be worrying about the veto which is fine but of the problem in congress which almost necessitates its abuse the congress is the most democratic body in the whole system allow me again to speak heresy against the holy democratic orders so what the government was built with a very non democratic presidency with fairly broad powers including the veto it has not only the fairest system of election but the two year term means that the members have always got a recent mandate yes and the senate was intended to act as a balance to this too much democracy was intentionally avoided it was considered a good thing to place non democratic blocks to impulsive action on the other hand if the period of election were to be made years in antiphase to the presidential cycle there would be much less dependence on fund raising from special interests than there is at present so long as congress has something to sell people will pay for it most congressmen rake in more money than they need why not what is inherently wrong with biasing the system against action historically governemnt action in the u s when dealing with issues with a bare minority and a large minority have not been successful when you re in a position of imposing federal power on diverse people why should the federal government not have to got through something more than a bare majority in other words david thinks that the reactionaries should need only votes while progressives should need no if the progressives don t want the reactionaries to move backward they get the same benefit of the states is a lot of people and historically laws with that sort of minority arent very effective especially since it is usually geographically concentrated when wielding the federal big stick i don t see why they shouldn t have to make a better argument than more people than not agree now we know why nobody calls the republicans democrats i m not a republican i m a republican and no i m neither a democrat nor a democrat now i ve asked several times and all you ve done is answer it isn t democratic which i knew before i said it why should it be democratic we don t have a true direct democracy and few people advocate one why then is this other modification of democracy to bias it against action so much worse david veal univ of tenn div of cont education info services group pa utkvm utk edu i still remember the way you laughed the day your pushed me down the elevator shaft i m beginning to think you don t love me anymore weird al
