re re fillibuster in article c n wh izv dscomsa desy de hallam dscomsa desy de phill hallam baker writes in article apr martha utcc utk edu pa utkvm utk edu david veal writes in article c jpl cz dscomsa desy de hallam dscomsa desy de phill hallam baker writes in article apr martha utcc utk edu pa utkvm utk edu david veal writes well yes and no the federalist papers are propaganda and it is therefore difficult to determine precisely what maddison etc were up to from them there are a couple of ways to look at them one is we want you to support this constitution so we ll say anything that we think will appeal to you or the more straightforward this is why we think what we ve suggested in this constitution is a good idea you clearly consider the former to be the primary situation the point is that they did not make pains to point out where the consitution may have been aginst the new yorker s interests also they did not want to raise opposition by basing their advocacy on unpopular principles horrors appealing to popular principles can we perhaps as the question of whether the constitution might have been written to appeal to the principles rather than as you appear to believe it was written with something else in mind and propoganda put out by its supporters but let s be honest about something here when was the last time you brought up all the valid points against your own arguments or are they simply propogranda we can t know what phill really means because he s obviously using arguments designed to convince well i know hamilton was a dyed in the wool monarchist and probably the authoritarian extreme to jefferson s democratic impules but what would you suggest as a means of determining their opinions on the government if we don t consider what they wrote about the government i don t propose that any means exists for determining their true opinions thus their true opinions died with them and are of little help today their opinions have not the slightest bearing on the matter though only their arguments these are true or false regardless of who said them or why if they re true or false regardles of why they were said why on earth did you make a point of calling them propogranda that would seem to be irrelevent the difficulty that most us posters seem to have is in considering that their arguments may have been flawed or no longer apply to modern societies oh i have no argument with questioning them i don t believe they no longer apply but that s because i think most of them were good arguments i m not entirely happy about the situation because they were obviously only applied to a minority of the time but i don t think that alone is sufficient to invalidate them if they were alive today the one opinion we could count upon these men to express is that a careful study of the mechanisms of government is necessary and that an ongoing improvement of the same is required they gave their opinions in certain areas and have been proved right in other areas they got it wrong they ensured that there was a mechanism to adapt and improve the consititution this can only happen if there is a willingness to accept that the structural problems within the us political system may require constitutional change as a solution since the u s constitution is the basis for the u s political system most changes in it would require constitutional change in this particular case however the fillibuster is a matter of procedure and tradition it only should have been made part of the constitution 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 government today is theoreticaly dependent on the will of the monarch by convention any monarch seeking to exercise that power is deposed the subtly is that the prime minister is not able to identify their politics with the national interest in the same manner that us presidents regularly do phill we re discusing the power of legislative houses while the prime minister is member of parliament he is more analgous although badly to the u s president now please explain to me how the u s house of representatives is in principle more powerful than the house of lords or the senate but in practice is less are you suggesting that the writers of the constitution really intended for them to be more powerful but gosh darn the thing was ratified before they realized they d forgotten to put those extra restrictions on the senate in i disagree the system is not too slow it was simply designed to handle less than it has demanded that it handle as somebody in washington put it whose name i forget congress has become everybody s city council one reason for that is that at every level the government is rendered unable to come to decisions these decisions are pushed up to the next higher level instead not at all as any entry level political science course will tell you people who want laws implemented will always choose the level of government to attack which presents them with the best chance of getting what they want with national interest groups it is simply a very rational thing to do to want the federal government to enact a law rather than the states less people to persuade and less contributions to make why do those concerned about abortion primarily concentrate at the federal level simply because if they win that battle all the little state battlefields are won by extension the same extends to insurance medicine and most other questions local government has not failed in that it hasn t done what it should but that it is dominated by local interests thus non local interests who want localities to abide by their rules can t get their rules past the local government thus since they ve got more clout only in the wrong place they appeal to the next higher level because it can impose its will on the lower i mean let s get real here do we really need the congres of the united states deciding that x traffice light should be on thus and such pattern or that carjacking needs to be a federal as opposed to a local crime the more people want the more congress will take power to sell it to them for their votes i don t think the rise of special interests is coincidence with the increased power of congress congress is more than capable of quick action and has more than enough power and time on its hands if it confined itself to what its original jurisidiction was and allowed more local autonomy 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 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 and if you leave it to them you only have to worry about the pork in that state and since industries can t concentrate their political power and wealth rather they must divide it among the states to try and get what they want individual voices have more relative impact the problem with the fillibuster is not that you must buy off states but that the congress has acquired too much power to sell pork it is not a case of the system of government they created failing but that it is operating under a set of conditions they specifically wanted to avoid namely a concentration of power it would seem then that the proper thing to do is not to reduce the power of either house in some attempt to grease the wheels all you ll get then is a system which moves quicker to do stupid things it would make more sense to make more decisions at a local level no you have to break the machine free of seizure before you can redirect it but why on earth should we want to redirect it you said yourself that you have to sell pork to get things through congress if congres has less authority to sell pork and retains its authority to enact national legislation within its granted jurisdiction the pork problem is significantly reduced the current blocks on power simply absolve congress of any responsibility to come to a decision the current blocks essentially state that inaction is preferable to action thus it the system is weighted against action considering the government the usually the institution with the sole power to enforce its decisions by force i consider bias against making those decisions a good thing pushing the decisions lower in the pyramid won t work unless the lower levels are less corrupt in most cases they are worse not better the difference with the lower pyramid is that a they have more legal legitimate authority in most matters under our constitution than the federal government and b at those lower levels power is harder to concentrate and c you get the benefit of not imposing new deicisons on everybody at once you get to see them tried out without a national decision congressional action usually treats the entire country as a whole yet even with similar problems in different areas different solutions may be called for and while i often don t agree with the decisions my local and state reps make at least i have a better option of going to the city council and shooting my mouth off i d much rather the majority of laws be made by accessible people who hang around and end up having to put up with them rather than somebody far off in washington with half a million or more constituents i m curious what you base your assumption that lower levels are more corrupt i fail to see where any restrictions implied or otherwise were placed on the veto it could just as easily have been read as a means to put a check on democratically popular but unwise in the executive s opinion policies since we were arguing from the federalist papers i would point to them phill you brought up the federalist papers we were arguing the fillibuster and whether or not a minority of senators should be allowed to hold up a bill you claimed the senate was suppose to be a far less powerful house and i contended there was nothing in the constitution or other writings which indicated this which was when you brought up that we can t decide what the founders wanted based on the federalist papers you argued against them i never argued from them i have primarily referred to the constitution which places only very small restrictions on the senate than for the house the us constitution gives almost no reasoning as to how it should work the only part where a reason is given is the right to bear arms ammendment where the well regulated militia justification is ambiguous 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 that the veto was meant to be an exceptional measure follows from the fact of the senate if the president was meant to revise legislation then there would be three chambers of the legislature not two furthermore the separation of powers would have been much less distinct 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 there is no limit in the constitution to the president s veto power regarding what a bill is for previous presidents have used the veto for any number of reasons most usually having something to do with their agenda i am really curious how you single bush out as the president who abused vetos he has the record for vetos bush phill that s absurd bush had vetos one of which was over ridden go read up on fdr if you think that s anything resembling a record why is it not a reasonable restriction because senators is the magic holy number upon which laws must be based if senators feel safe enough with their state constituencies to stand up and fillibuster isn t that enough to indicate there s a sufficient question as to whether a law is a good idea or not to re evaluate it up to a point the fact is though that when the majority are opposed by a minority the minority should not be allowed to win by default 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 why one earth should be sufficient to enact a law which covers million people in very very diverse places and living in radically different conditions why shouldn t a super majority be required because the bill at issue is a money bill relating to a short term proposal now we re switching from a general question of a fillibuster to a specific bill i don t see how it make a difference it is not a change in the law where a presupposition in favour of the status quo is arguable sure it s arguable theyr e arguing it however requiring to bring it to a vote ensures that they ll have to have a good argument something that isn t based solely on party lines any system in which the simple majority is given absolute power to ignore the minority then the minority will be ignored i do not see this as a positive thing and for all that i m sure the republicans are looking for pork as much as the democrats they ve got some legitimate objections to the legislation in question so instead you consider a system under which the minority automatically win to be superior no i am completely happy with a system which requires a minority for action since u s history is a history of carving up population groups and implementing piece meal on minorities i feel minorities should have sufficent clout to prevent action they feel strongly enough about and is hardly a tiny minority i don t advocate the minority being capable of initiating actionm but i see no problem with biasing the federal system against action 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
