Mega-Thread: 2020 United States General Election

[zealo]

yeah, a McConnell being able to block everything he doesnt like is extremely problematic. There needs to be mechanisms to bypass that. Should be something like "If 40 senators object top inaaction, the Senate has to take action." Empower the minority, even if the result is that the bill is voted down.

How about, if a bill passes the house, the senate is obligated and mandated to vote on it, no buts or ifs. It's horribly broken that any senator, no matter their influence in the senate, can outright block a vote from even taking place on something the other congressional chamber passed.

If they oppose a bill coming from the house, they should at the very least be forced to put it up for vote and have the result of that vote on record.

[cubby]

FBI reporting that their investigation and number of cases is "mind-blowing" reaching unprecedented numbers, and will also include Felony Murder charges.

Excellent.

[Edge-]

https://whyy.org/articles/federal-co...barred-by-gop/

Once again, Sen. Jim Brewster of PA has won won a challenge to his win in PA. Republicans refused to seat him earlier this month.

They'll seat him tomorrow.

Fuckin losers.

[Zan15]

FBI reporting that their investigation and number of cases is "mind-blowing" reaching unprecedented numbers, and will also include Felony Murder charges.

Excellent.

Law and order party ftw! /s

[Themius]

Never said we should, but sometimes it works "as intended" like it did in Alaska. Mind you, that's not just the "invisible hand", but also the social aspect of the market and people holding companies accountable for their actions. Which is good.

And to remind you, Republicans frequently control majorities in the House, so your argument would be to hand of de-facto total Legislative power to a single party and pray that the same party doesn't occupy the White House as there are no further checks. The House/Senate act as checks on each other, even if they can be abused like we've seen with McConnell. Pelosi, on the other hand gets to do the same if she wants. It doesn't matter what McConnell gets through the Senate, if Pelosi and the House says "nope", the bill goes nowhere.

I have already noted that we need

1. proportional representation which we do not have even in the house
2. Gerrymandering needs to be fixed

GOP generally controls the majority due to these two issues. Especially voter suppression.

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A single house means the government is way "swingier" than even the current government is. That's not really a positive. I'm a strong believer in a bicameral, or even tricameral, system. With significantly different selection processes and/or terms in office for each House.

Take Canada as an example. We've got the House of Commons, which is where all the elected members of Parliament sit, effectively similar to the US House of Representatives. But then we have our Senate. It's regionally distributed; 24 each to various regions plus 9 others for the remaining smaller bits. But it isn't elected. They're appointed, by the Governor General, based on recommendations by the PM. And they serve as long as they want, or until they hit the mandatory retirement age of 75. In practice, it's generally an end-of-career reward type thing for politicians; it's a cushy job but the Canadian Senate has a lot less power than the US Senate, and is decidedly a step down in power and influence than the House of Commons. While bills have to pass both houses to pass into law, it's basically just the House of Commons that gets to write bills, so the Senate is meant more as a sober second thought without as much partisanship influencing anything (since Senators may have been chosen from within a party, but no longer run for office, they're free to vote on their conscience rather than needing party support).

It's an imperfect system, but better than the American. I'd prefer the Senate be made into essentially a reward for non-politicians who've done good works in Canada; get more diverse voices into the process. Senate reform's an actively-discussed topic, here, though.

The advantage of a bicameral system is that members of each House have different selection processes and thus are less likely to respond the same way to changes in society; that reduces partisanship (in theory). The American system leaves so little distinction between the two this doesn't work out, however.



Capitalist markets.

Markets, in general, are just distribution systems. Their primary goals as systems are derived from their economic system; capitalism seeks to exploit for the profit of capitalists, a socialist market system seeks to balance benefits between workers and consumers.

I did indeed mean specifically capitalist markets.

Really what I would want is to have a government that isn't filled with people that aren't of the people... i would want us to actually have a say in what happens more directly.

I would have wanted to vote on whether or not we bail out airlines or banks. Not my representative who takes money from them... this past election I did vote for a progressive representative but she didn't win... didn't campaign enough but she got a surprising number of votes.

There are issues with that... like the speed of which things would move.... but when the voting system runs well... we know things within a day or two. Imagine all the jobs that could be created if we voted on a larger proportion of bills.

I would be all for:

Bill blocked from being brought up? Public vote

Giving away billions to trillions of taxpayer dollars not to 99% of the country? Public vote

Bailing out banks? Public vote

[Benggaul]

https://whyy.org/articles/federal-co...barred-by-gop/

Once again, Sen. Jim Brewster of PA has won won a challenge to his win in PA. Republicans refused to seat him earlier this month.

They'll seat him tomorrow.

Fuckin losers.

That was always going to be the outcome. The point for the GOP fucks was to make a big show to the MAGA crowd for when it's time for their reelection campaigns.

[cubby]

Law and order party ftw! /s

And the dam breaks. First GOP House member backs impeachment vote.

[Eviscero]

FBI reporting that their investigation and number of cases is "mind-blowing" reaching unprecedented numbers, and will also include Felony Murder charges.

Excellent.

Is Trump allowed to just issue a blanket pardon for all 71M people who voted for him for all past and potential future crimes? Seems like the way some people talk about the pardon power Trump could create an army of 007s... with a lot less swagger.

[PhaelixWW]

Is Trump allowed to just issue a blanket pardon for all 71M people who voted for him for all past and potential future crimes? Seems like the way some people talk about the pardon power Trump could create an army of 007s... with a lot less swagger.

Pardons can't apply to future crimes.

[masterhorus8]

Pardons can't apply to future crimes.

Do I remember someone mentioning that they can only work on crimes that are currently being charged in court?

[PhaelixWW]

Do I remember someone mentioning that they can only work on crimes that are currently being charged in court?

I think you can pardon any crime that has already happened, and that would include charges that are in process. Certainly, pardons are normally reserved for crimes that have already been adjudicated, so there's no point at which it's too late for a pardon.

[masterhorus8]

I think you can pardon any crime that has already happened, and that would include charges that are in process. Certainly, pardons are normally reserved for crimes that have already been adjudicated, so there's no point at which it's too late for a pardon.

My bad on my wording for the tense. But specifically, charges have to be involved and it can't just be "lol, you're good from all the crimes, even ones that they haven't caught that you did yet!"

[Eviscero]

Pardons can't apply to future crimes.

I see, I didn't realize there was an explicit temporal restriction. Was misled by the idea of a preemptive pardon; that it refers to crimes already committed but not yet charged.

[Zan15]

Is Trump allowed to just issue a blanket pardon for all 71M people who voted for him for all past and potential future crimes? Seems like the way some people talk about the pardon power Trump could create an army of 007s... with a lot less swagger.

Past crimes sure, i mean he can pardon anyone for anything.

Imagine the list of people committed of crimes against children/spouses that would be printed on 600 pages of the NY times the following week.

[Eviscero]

My bad on my wording for the tense. But specifically, charges have to be involved and it can't just be "lol, you're good from all the crimes, even ones that they haven't caught that you did yet!"

No, I think that it could, at least it's not so clear that charges have to be involved. But, thankfully, it does have to involve a crime that already took place:

The Supreme Court said as far back as 1866 that the pardon power applies “to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...-been-n1249707

[PhaelixWW]

I see, I didn't realize there was an explicit temporal restriction. Was misled by the idea of a preemptive pardon; that it refers to crimes already committed but not yet charged.

Quite probably, though it's never been tested.

[cubby]

I think you can pardon any crime that has already happened, and that would include charges that are in process. Certainly, pardons are normally reserved for crimes that have already been adjudicated, so there's no point at which it's too late for a pardon.

It's never been tested in the court. Ford pardoned Nixon without any charges being levied.

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MULTIPLE NEWS SOURCES ARE REPORTING THAT MCCONNEL SUPPORTS IMPEACHMENT EFFORTS AGAINST TRUMP.

Holy. fucking. shit.

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No, I think that it could, at least it's not so clear that charges have to be involved. But, thankfully, it does have to involve a crime that already took place:

The Supreme Court said as far back as 1866 that the pardon power applies “to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...-been-n1249707

The statement is true, but again, it's never been actually tested in a court of law.

[Timester]

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/12/p...iot/index.html

Bye bye "President" Trump. You will be just plain douchebag lunatic racist Trump on history books.

[PhaelixWW]

MULTIPLE NEWS SOURCES ARE REPORTING THAT MCCONNEL SUPPORTS IMPEACHMENT EFFORTS AGAINST TRUMP.

Your link is a text string, I think you meant this:

Business Insider: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is 'pleased' at the prospect of Trump being impeached, new report says

[cubby]

Your link is a text string, I think you meant this:

Business Insider: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is 'pleased' at the prospect of Trump being impeached, new report says

Yes. Yes I do.

Thanks.