Does Miller realize that Alaska is the biggest welfare state in the country and would literally turn into Mexico without the federal governments support? I just don't get how people can get into politics and not even know the basics of their own local situation.

And I'm all for Miller getting elected if he sticks by his promise. I think it would be great for Alaska to get back what they put in for a change (instead of taking back twice what they put in). Would mean states like mine wouldn't continue to have to support states like theirs.

DT, I don't disagree with most of your points; for me its just a matter of degree. There are problems now that didn't exist then and need to be addressed. The area of the debate needs to be how deep should the government's fingers get in solving them? Perhaps I shouldn't be engaging in the argument because I'm not a strict constructionist, but I also feel like a lot of times someone who doesn't agree with large government is labeled a constructionist in order to make their positions seem absurd (see the socialist revolution currently taking place in Washington).

If your point is that those who believe that the U.S. should get out of workplace safety regulation are crazy, I won't disagree. I would imagine, however, that their numbers are smaller than the imagined number of them.

I was just using that as the most prominant example I could think of right now.

Those guys in the 18th century certainly didn't think they had all the answers to cover the next few centuries. They didn't think they were covering everything. They realized concepts of fundamental rights would change.

But on the other hand, I'm sure they didn't think both Congress and the Supreme Court would bypass whatever mechanism for constitutional change that they decided to include.

Interesting argument.

I appreciate the serious response.

The problem (as far as I think most people see it) is that the Amendment process is completely unworkable on a day-to-day basis due to the complexity of the issues involved vs. the intelligence of the average voters in this country.

To use the Commerce Clause as an example: you'd have to either pass an Amendment saying something like "all prior uses of the Commerce Clause to this point were lawful examples of its use and the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of whether future applications are legal" or you'd have to lay out in excruciating detail every possible application present (and future!) in which it could be used. Which is entirely impractical.

The Amendment process is fine for grand changes (as it has been used in the past). Fundamental rights and alterations to redress wrongs and such. But for continuing changes and the day-to-day running of the country? It's too cumbersome.

Would you want the implementation of a Food and Drug Administration or OSHA delayed for 4 years due to the need to wait for an Amendment? Think of how many people might get injured on the job, or die of foodborne illnesses, or be born with birth defects due to side effects of unregulated drugs?

It's not feasible in this day and age when things move so much quicker and the world is much more global.

Does the government have the right to inspect Tylenol brought into the country from Mexico? What's that - the Constitution doesn't say? Guess we'd better write and Amendment and wait to have it ratified. Too bad in the meantime everyone that took that tainted Tylenol and was pregnant had Thalidomide-babies.

It just takes too long. It's not practical.

And the counter-argument of "let the states themselves regulate things" has three disadvantages:
-Differing standards among states would be created
-Federal government has much better economy of scale when purchasing equipement/etc. that lends itself to cost-savings (when done right)
-Common policies and procedures can ensure (theoretically again) best execution

Isn't the whole point of the federal government to centralize, try to make things more equal?

Is complaining about how much money your state has to put in vs. others that much different than complaining that your state has to recognize fundamental rights that it doesn't want to (i.e., someone from the south saying that if they want to segregate, they should segregate)? Seems like the same argument.

I really think the only reason for that is that because when there's zero need to change the constitution (when you can just change laws and have the same effect), zero effort has gone into modernizing the process of doing it to make it more effective.

Edit: That potentially creates the same dangerous situation that the framers were trying to avoid. They didn't want 51% of a legislature to be able to vote and wipe out free speech, or anything else in the constitution. Today, with a "living constitution" that would be entirely possible.

If history had gone a different way, there'd be other ways to get an FDA-like entity. The criminal law (one of the places states still have some power), has been very efficient at developing nationwide uniform state acts. There's nothing unconstitutional about the states getting together and agreeing to do something. And when they get the chance, they're pretty quick to do it when it will save a lot of money. And when the number of states that join up reach that threshold for constitutional ratification - the rest then have to fall in, willing or not.

Oh come on now, Alaska is only the 2nd highest welfare state as of 2004.

Please get your facts right :p

How about we try to split the difference then? Grandfather things like this, set a 7 year time limit for the ratification of an amendment that renders them Constitutional or else they're abolished?


-- I don't know that differing standards is necessarily always the worst option.
-- How long would it take for what are essentially state co-ops to spring up to provide a similar purchasing benefit?
-- re: execution, I'm always reminded of John McKay's line about that during the Bucs losing streak ;)

The only thing that decentrailzation (which is essentially what all these people seem to be after) will lead to is more regionalism and a weakening of the US as a Global power. It's akin to when the Roman Empire started to fragment.

Damnit - at this point I really should have gone to grad school and gotten my Ph.D. in Roman History - then I could write the fascinating book I've always conceptualized in my head comparing the US to Rome.

Exactly why the Amendment process should remain difficult and not a way of everyday governing.

No, no it wouldn't. I know this is a favorite line of thinking of yours, but it just doesn't have any basis in reality. You always say "it could be possible", but there is a mountain of legal precedent for laws to be found unconstitutional. That is the difference, a law can be found unconstitutional, but an amendment is by definition part of the constitution.

AARGH ... not a politic aggravation here, just a lack of proofreading irritant.

See the following headline from AP as of 5:14
My Way News - Biden says US won't war-battered abandon Iraq

Yes, I'll understand if you have to read it twice to see the problem, the eye tends to see what it expects to see after all.

Interesting. But again - I'm still not sure the Amendment process should be used for things like that (see molson's point on free speech a post or two ago). Also, see cartman's point re:laws being able to be found unconstitutional but amendments can't be.

-Differing standards is always bad when it comes to things like human rights and health & safety. Particularly when that health & safety can cross state lines and affect others. Otherwise you're going to have to have countless more bureaucracy because every state will have to stop and inspect everything that comes into their state, even from another state. Ridiculous levels of redundancy there.
- re: state co-ops. I think the free market would have an interest in ensuring that those co-ops never happen, by hook or by crook. As they would have with insurance co-ops.
-I'm not familiar with it, but I assume it's :lol:

The framers definitely knew about the Roman Empire, and the constitution, even as originally written, certainly gave the U.S. more centralized controls than anything involving the Roman Empire

Another awesome point. Damn - thanks for the backup cartman!

The difference is just on paper.

"By definition part of the constitution" is still subject to very creative "interpretation" under any kind of living constitution theory. Legislators and courts are not truly bound by what the constitution says, only by what their policy views interpret it to say.

Freedom of religion for example, has definitely shrunk a lot. Maybe that's good from a personal policy standpoint, but there's no question that 200 years ago, someone wouldn't be forced to take down a small war memorial that was on public ground on establishment clause grounds.

So we changed - that's fine, the establishment clause is growing in importance and freedom of religion shrinking. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just saying that every right in the constitution is subject to severe curtailing, just depending on the policy views of the people that matter at the present time. That's exactly what the constitution was trying to avoid.

And maybe we've gone beyond those tricky early years and we don't need a constitution at all. The framers would definitely be down with that. That's a fundamental right - when your government doesn't work anymore, the people can tear it down and start again. I'm just not a fan of people using the constitution to make arguments that have no basis in the constitution, or the continuing of this "legal fiction" in appellate courts across the country that the constitution matters and their policy views don't. If we want to be a country that relies on the wisdom of judges first, we can do that. We don't have to lie about it and go through this whole goofy legal analysis when the judge is really just determining: "do I think gay marriage is good, or not? "

Freedom of Religion is shrinking?

Really?

I know it sure seems like about 31% of the population would like to see it shrink more, according to a recent poll's results.

Wrinkle in that - it's the most vocal "Why are you taking away our freedom of religion" group of complainers out there - Christians.

Freedom of religion apparently should only apply to white people worshipping the proper Christian god.

(yes, feel the vitriol in that last sentence of mine. fucking hypocritical, hateful christiains make me fucking livid. non-hateful, non-hypocritical ones are okay).

So you are arguing that if there was a constitutional amendment that allowed a small war memorial on public ground that "the difference is just on paper" to a law that was passed allowing the small war memorial on public ground? I'm sorry, but that just doesn't hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.

I don't know what that is - the mosque? Sure, throw that in too, that's definitely consistent.

I'm just saying that people are allowed to express their religion in much fewer ways (i.e. involving the government in some way), then they were 200 years ago.

Again, maybe that's good. It's at least neutral. But its clearly a right that once existed that is gradually losing importance. Any right in the constitution is subject to that kind of decay.

Yep. I heard a poll the other day.

69% of people support their right to build it there. 31% oppose it.

Interestingly, while supporting their right to build it, something like 60% of them also wish they'd choose to build it elsewhere.

That's where it gets tricky - if we had a country that passed amendments like that to the constitution - then we wouldn't have as much super-creative constitutional "intrepretation" disgusing appellate court policy determinations.

In that kind of world, I think you're right, the amendment would be stronger than a law, and eveyone would accept that. In our world, on the other hand, where judicial determinations have pushed out the need or desire for constitutional amendments, it's a free-for-all.

(I admit that at this point whatever the hell I'm talking about may be circular, I'm riffing off the top my head)

Well yes and I don't have a problem with supporting poorer states for the most part. I don't think the states are as important as they were back in the day thanks to technological advances.

But to me, it's like having a deadbeat brother-in-law living in your basement and having him constantly complain about things in the house he doesn't like.

Socially and culturally, definitely. And I'm sure legally, to some extent (which is all that's relevant here, that "Congress shall make no law...")

I'm not sure off the top of my head what laws Congress passed that infringed upon the free exercise rights of non-Protestan religions, but I'm sure there's some, and they should have been struck down as unconstitutional. Just like this mosque nonsense (if any state entity actually tried to stop it, which I don't think has actually happened - more like just loud mouths expressing their own free speech).

Dola-

My only real point is my blabbering is that after reading probably thousands of federal and state appellate opinions, I am 100% convinced that the great majority of appellate judges decide the outcome first ("gay marriage is good/bad!", or whatever), and then construct some kind of constitutional analysis to get there, almost kind of pretending that they analyzed the constitution in order to get to this result. This bothers me to an irrational degree. It's like a lie or something. Many times I think "what's the point!!" when going through the analysis, when the judge is only expressing his or her view on the policy involved. The policy reasons are the deciding factor in the case, AND they have to be kept secret. (i.e. - Appellate Judge: "I think abortion is good, but I can't just SAY that, I have to waste everyone's time through years of constitutional analysis to get there.") If all we care about whether abortion is good and what judges think about that, then let's just make that transparent.

But if 2/3rds of Congress agrees to propose the abolishment of X, and 3/4ths of state legislatures agree to said abolishment, then under the basis of our form of government then it should be abolished. This is what allows for change without the 51% issue that Molson seemed to be referring to.




Oh dear, that's one of the more serious gaps in knowledge I've seen anyone admit to around here ;)

I'll paraphrase. When the Bucs sucked, under John McKay's tenure, a reporter asked something to the effect of "What do you think of your team's execution". McKay replied "I'm in favor of it".

What you're talking about here, I think, it what's referred to as the "informal amendment".

I want some war-battered chicken fingers.

I agree that judges tend to have their minds made up(although I wouldn't limit it to just traditionally liberal causes). The problem as I see it is what would work better? At least in this system over time precedent is set that's difficult to overturn. Without any sort of foundational document how do you keep the laws from changing weekly depending on which judge is hearing a case?

And the idea of just looking for the answer in the Constitution falls apart when the document is deliberately vague. Just look at the Second Amendment and try to tell me that there's anything clear cut there. It reads as if it was designed to change over time.

:lol:

(I love the "labeled constructionist... [to] seem absurd" followed by "socialist revolution")

SI

Good God.

seriously??

wow.

color me - not really surprised i guess though.

there's a shitload of unintelligent people in this country. As this poll shows - a lot of them are flocking to the GOP these days.

Shame that the old-guard GOP cares more about winning the elections through whatever means necessary then educating, or even marginalizing these kooks.

Sweet Jesus.

For example, writing in The Hill today, Walter Alarkon argues:

Most of the budget savings from House GOP Leader John Boehner’s proposed spending cuts would be canceled out by the extension of upper-income tax cuts also backed by Republicans.
..
Boehner's spending reductions would total more than $700 billion in savings beyond cuts that Democrats have proposed. But that’s also the approximate cost of extending the tax cuts for upper-income earners, meaning extending those tax cuts would wipe out those savings.
...
The proposal backed by Boehner and top Republicans would extend the expiring tax cuts for all taxpayers, including those making more than $200,000. That would cost about $3.7 trillion over the next decade — $3 trillion for the middle-class and low-income earners, and another $700 billion for wealthier taxpayers.
"Doing what the Democrats want to do with taxes, will save somewhere between $700 billion and $900 billion, which is more fiscally conservative," said Roberton Williams, a Tax Policy Center senior fellow.

Believe it or not, Alarkon's analysis is actually fairly chairtable towards the Boehner/Ryan plan. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities analyzed the Ryan plan (before Boehner endorsed it) and found that it would:

1. Eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program and replace them with vouchers to defray the cost of private health insurance.

1. Pay for partially privatizing Social Security by cutting benefits to 1950 levels when half of elderly Americans lived below the poverty line.

1. Cut taxes in half for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, including an average cut of $502,000 per year for families earning more than $1 million and $1.7 million per year for the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans. These tax cuts would be on top of the Bush cuts, if made permanent.

1. Raise taxes on families earning between $25,000 and $200,000 by an average of $900 per year (relative to a continuation of current tax rates).

As has been discussed previously, that formulation can lead to very different meanings. Those who believe that Bush knew the time and place of the attacks but chose to do nothing are nuts, but those that believe Bush had enough information available to know that an attack would take place aren't nearly as crazy. The problem with the question is that there's no way to separate the crazies.

How can a belief that Obama wants to help impose sharia law be anything but nuts?

(I will agree that some of these people just chose to agree with anything bad about Obama, but then I'm old enough to remember when Bush derangement syndrome was a worry.)

And by even charitable analysis Ryan's plan won't balance the budget for something like seventy years.

My point is that I think [Current President] Derangement Syndrome is a political fact from here on out. Remember when Clinton getting a blowjob was our biggest concern as a country? Who would have thought we'd long for those days.

That I can agree with.

Yep. The liberals proved that you can drag any president down enough to be ineffective by filling the airwaves 24/7 with innuendo, slander and creative editing (not that Bush didn't give them lots and lots of help), and the conservatives are perfecting the plan (and again, Obama isn't doing himself any favors)

I know it probably started with Clinton, but it didn't seem quite so vitriolic back then. Or at least it was kept to a relatively small, crazy minority.

I think it's because there's so many more ways to get the message out in the full internet area.

Before, you had traditional media.. who was relatively in favor of the status quo. So the extremes on each side got filtered out.

In the Internet age, people with like minded ideals can find each other easy, turn into an echo chamber, and make enough noise that it causes a stir down the line..

Because there's virtually nothing that seems beyond the pale for that vile son of a bitch.

Ask about Obama having carnal knowledge of a goat & the percentage isn't likely to be all that different IMO.

Completely agree. And I think the internet has brought more good than bad. Sure you are going have the racists, the birth certifcate people, the 9-11 doubters but you also have a lot of questioning of what the government does on a daily basis with taxpayer money that is very healthy. Both sides should be held in check on some of their more outragous ideas. Twenty years ago if the nightly news or newspaper chose not to cover a story you would really have to do some digging to find out what is going on. I think questioning every move the government makes it what makes this country so great.

I get done posting about how big of strides the internet has made in questioning government and it has to come right after this nonsense? :p

*laughs*

{shrug} Just consider it two separate discussions taking place in the same thread.

JPhillips asked a question (somewhat rhetorical I'll admit) and I answered it. I'll also admit that my answer had a certain amount of gusto attached but I'm steadfast in my belief that it also makes a completely serious & valid point that goes directly to his question.

Simply put, there really isn't much of anything that a large percentage of the nation would put past Obama. That's not a conservative/liberal thing, that's not a black/white thing, that's a trust thing and that's why you get results like what both JP and subsequently RonnieDobbs2 posted up the thread.

Not that this is news, but you have issues.

Man, even in the worst of the Bush years you didn't hear liberals calling him a vile son of a bitch and suggesting he had carnal knowledge of a goat.

About the worst I remember is the observation that he looked slightly like a chimp with his round face and big ears.

Bullshit.

It is absolutely 100% a conservative/liberal thing.

And I'd venture to guess that a significant percentage (put your own numbers on that) is a race thing. Whether it's the racism of the actual people with the thoughts, or the racism of the people behind the ideas.

If you honestly believe otherwise you're dumber than I thought.

1) I saw Bush hung in effigy, among other things. I saw Fuck Bush bumper stickers on the cars of half the hippies in Athens.

2) I didn't suggest that Obama was a goat fucker, I used that as an example of what could have been asked to get about the same percentage of replies.

TBH, I would have assumed you would have gotten the point I was trying to make with that, which had nothing to do with human/goat one night stands.

It ultimately comes down to Group X not trusting Person Y. Not trusting them to make good decisions, not trusting them to have a clue, not trusting them as far as they could throw them, not trusting entirely that they're completely human. Class envy, race, politics, ethics, morality, the size of someone's ears, the ability to pronounce nuclear, the ability to read from a teleprompter, all of it plays a role but the poll results cited here look to come down to a bottom line of trust & whether people believe there's much that's unbelievable about Person Y.

And if you don't understand that, you really shouldn't be throwing around the word dumb at anyone. May be time to revise your signature in fact, because that would compel me to issue a retraction.