Republicans are grappling with public polls showing the public places more blame on them, rather than the Democrats, for the shutdown, even as they argue they have the moral high ground in the shutdown fight.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Republicans stress that they put no partisan poison pills in a GOP-crafted, House-passed stopgap to fund the government through Nov. 21. Democrats in the Senate have repeatedly blocked that bill as they demand that Republicans first negotiate with them on health care issues, particularly on enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expiring at the end of the year.
Poll after poll finds that slightly more Americans think Republicans are to blame for the shutdown than who think Democrats are at fault.
79 Comments
veroxii@lemmy.world · 212 pts · 310d
If you're in government it's your responsibility to keep the government running. In most other countries if the government can't pass a budget then it's a vote of no confidence and we call another election immediately.
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 102 pts · 310d
I think one of America's biggest fuckups was designing a system where elections can only be every four years
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 43 pts · 310d
Just add the way Athens dealt with this thousands of years ago. You vote twice for each representative: once to get him into office, and a second time at the end of the term to determine if he can stay or gets banished from the city.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 310d
Banishment should be making them live in Bakersfield. Nobody deserves such a wretched fate, deserved for a politician thought.
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 310d
No.
The correct answer is Gary, Indiana.
balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one · 2 pts · 309d
God dammit Jerry
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 309d
Some of them could be deported to Russia. They are doing Putins work, so he should pay their pensions.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world · 38 pts · 310d
For the presidency.
House terms are 2 years, and Senators are 6 years.
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 56 pts · 310d
Lack of term limits fir Supreme Court judges was another big fuckup
fonix232@fedia.io · 39 pts · 310d
Even the system of checks and balances were kind of a fuckup if you think about it - the whole system just presumes that most people are acting in good faith and bad faith actors are limited to a few positions or a single branch.
krashmo@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 310d
The system wasn't supposed to be perfect or eternal. The founders explicitly said that they expected each successive generation to essentially rewrite the constitution. It's not their fault that we only made minor tweaks over 250 years.
Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 310d
The threshold for passing reform is too damn high. There should've been some mandatory period to make the change happen more often and easily to keep with the times. Now we're stuck with an antiquated system that still mentions slavery in its founding documents and its loopholes are so well known that someone's using it to turn this country into an autocracy.
krashmo@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 310d
I don't know that the threshold is the problem. I think the problem is that about 35% of humans are complete pieces of shit. I don't know how you account for that effectively. Expecting the rest of society to counter them seems about as reasonable of a solution as you're likely to find and that's essentially what we have now.
fonix232@fedia.io · 3 pts · 310d
Shoulda made the revamp of the constitution an enforced, time-boxed process then. Currently the approximate timeframe of getting an amendment through is what, 60 years or so?
Fandangalo@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 310d
Correct. They cannot be separate powers but coequal without the ability of enforcement. If the military is all subordinate to the president, and Congress or SCOTUS don’t have resources to enforce their oversight of the others, then they are not coequal. They are coequal in theory, never in practice.
Skyrmir@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 310d
It actually assumes bad faith actors in all positions. The failure was allowing teams. That's why Washington hated them.
CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 310d
I'm curious how teams would be prevented.
Skyrmir@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 310d
Everything suggested also violated other parts of the constitution, so nothing was ever implemented. That was part of the 'it's a republic, if you can keep it.'
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 310d
While you are at it, add term limits to congress and senate seats as well.
Archer@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 310d
That just makes the new person very bribeable
drhodl@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 309d
What? Unlike now?
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 309d
While the current ones are not at all bribed? At least it would spread the corruption amongst more people.
CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 310d
Please goddess no.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 309d
Why no? You want to keep the 80+ guys who are firmly in some companies pocket sitting there?
CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 309d
Term limits is just a RW talking point. It would help nothing.
logicbomb@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 310d
Yeah, instead of having a lifetime appointment, or having a specific number of justices, they could just make it so that, at the beginning of the 4 year presidential term, the President gets to nominate a fixed number of Supreme Court justices, who serve for a fixed number of years.
I heard somebody propose that system, and I can't help thinking that it would solve a lot of the problems with our Supreme Court.
There are some laws tied to the lifetime of a person, like appointing certain judges, and copyright law, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that there is always a better solution.
SabinStargem@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 310d
I think it would be better to divide up the US into four regions, with each its own president. That president gets to pick one national justice, and each region elects four justices independently of their president. Plus, the four regional presidents elect a figurehead president to represent the nation, who gets to pick an final justice. 21 national justices in total, five of them picked by their respective president. When a president is removed from office, their justice follows.
This increases the separations of powers, and allows for the national court to have their pool of justices change relatively often. Keeping the minds of our judiciary fresh is important, otherwise they fall out of touch with the citizens they are supposed to serve.
Akasazh@feddit.nl · 6 pts · 310d
And for a mandated maximum age for politicians
cdf12345@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 309d
I think term limits would take care of this without v being discriminatory. You can win an office once and a reelection once. It doesn’t matter if you either that office at 25 or 70.
Akasazh@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 309d
How is age discriminatory? We don't debate the minimum age requirement, so what's so bad about an upper one?
I mean I do think someone younger than 35 could easily be a good president.
cdf12345@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 306d
If you’re going to do term limits I think you have to get rid of all age restrictions
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 310d
I'm not sure that would be a good idea because in the future, life expectancy could change. With advancement in medicine, there could be a time in the future when the average 80 year old is just as capable as the average 40 year old
MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 310d
It could potentially be handled like how we (should) handle minimum wage laws, adjusting for lived reality every so often.
Akasazh@feddit.nl · 4 pts · 310d
Could be, but it's rather speculative to legislate on that in the current.
I think it's healthy for politics to have more youthful individuals in the mix. And I think it's also important that the elderly are protected from themselves (thinking about McConnell and Feinstein).
If there's a minimum age, because of competence, there should be a maximum. It can then always debated about suspending that or raising the age if it's medically appropriate. But if rather see people retire in good health and spending time with their grandchildren.
Tinidril@midwest.social · 4 pts · 310d
Technically, I don't think supreme Court appointments are necessarily lifetime appointments. Appointments to the federal judiciary are lifetime appointments, but the constitution doesn't specify that federal judges can't be rotated in and out of the supreme Court. I could be remembering that wrong though, it's been a while since my last read through.
Wispy2891@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 309d
It's because if politicians aren't professional grifters, they are supposed to resign and indict new elections, if the parliament doesn't have the numbers to pass laws.
Saledovil@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 309d
Because back then, the fastest way to get a message from a to b was to send a guy with a 🐎.
balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one · -1 pts · 309d
I don't know how you have so many upvotes when your statement is so wrong.
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 309d
I could have been more precise and said presidential elections. It is a fact, presidential elections can only be every four years in the US. Unless there is a clause I'm unaware of that allows the possibility of them being more frequent. Whether it is a fuckup is a matter of opinion.
balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one · 3 pts · 309d
Well you also from context seem to be implicitly comparing a presidential system to a parliament system which had different design goals. The presidential system isn't good but the fatal flaw is treating the president like an elected king, not how often you can vote against them. The fatal flaw is not fixing the two party system. The fatal flaw was that it was designed by people doing their best to appease southern shitbags. The fatal flaw was they made the system too hard to change.
Voting for our king every 4 years was the improvement, it was everything else that was regressive.
shane@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 309d
Except in the USA there are only two parties and the party in power would basically never declare no confidence.
BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world · 59 pts · 310d
So Democrats are the reason the House has been in session only 20 days in the last 4 months?
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net · 16 pts · 310d
20 days? Wow. What is a typical number?
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 29 pts · 310d
I wasn't sure so I went looking. It fluctuates, but 150 days a year is what I found. So that would be 50 days per 4 months. Or rather that they have shown up about 40% of the norm.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 310d
So for them this isn't even much different than normal. And they're still getting paid. Not that many of them need their government salary with all the campaign donations and insider trading. And guaranteed lobbying jobs at triple the salary or more after they're done.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 310d
Id say it's more than a bit different. It would be like if you or I started going into work Monday and Tuesday, and skipping Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Except yeah, they still get paid the same. To bad we couldn't all have jobs like that.
Credibly_Human@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 310d
The crazy thing is, with the productivity improvements recently in human history, and the amount of time wasted doing what amounts to fluffing people higher up the chain with busy work or literally just sitting there work, we could all probably work notably less than we do if that work was spread equally and not wasted on bullshit like ensuring poor people feel bad.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 310d
Agreed, I think with automation and technological improvements the only way forward is to supplement people's livings based off loss of work at a national level. 200 years ago, 70% of the U.S. were farmers. 1900, 38%. 1925, ~25%. 2025, less than 2%. Sure we can say about 10% of jobs surround agriculture in some way, but that is a drastic amount of work that has been offset. If we have offset 50% of the required work needed to keep our country fed, clothed and roofed, we need to develop ways to cut the workload by half for the people, and find other activities people can partake in that aren't just about making someone else money.
Maeve@kbin.earth · 3 pts · 310d
I have some news for you:
https://mander.xyz/post/40603344
Credibly_Human@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 310d
I can already think of a myuriad of things, though admittedly some would be surround eventually making money, but mostly because I want things to exist that don't exist.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net · 8 pts · 310d
Imagine working 2 days a week instead of 5. That's a pretty big difference.
balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one · 3 pts · 310d
They spend most of their time fund raising
Maeve@kbin.earth · 1 pts · 310d
And news punditry.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 310d
22
Kirp123@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 310d
They still get paid right?
HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world · 48 pts · 310d
RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES
whiwake@sh.itjust.works · 17 pts · 310d
Gotta put a space after the #
like this
HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 310d
I'm on Sync, I forget that others are not. My bad
whiwake@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 310d
Well, proper markdown requires a space, they should not be capitalizing that.
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 310d
To what end? What will it change? Do you think Trump will actually be held accountable? Do you think it'll make him lose the election?
HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 310d
They're willing to commit many FBI agents to redacting Trump's name from the files, they're willing to blatantly put their own careers at risk to lie to congress about it, they're willing to shut down the government and keep it shut down over it, and they refuse to swear in a newly elected Democrat from Arizona over it
Yeah, it may have some effect
ThePantser@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 310d
Maybe? Let's see the files and find out
Skyrmir@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 310d
Trump isn't actually the target of the files. It would put gop funding at risk at a level even greater than when they busted the NRA for being a Russian front.
skozzii@lemmy.ca · 39 pts · 310d
All of this just to hide the Epstein files.
LoafedBurrito@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 310d
They are doing it on purpose to keep Congress closed forever and Donald will HAVE to make all the decisions.
This is another project 2025 power play to take rights away from Democrats and non fascists.
I think it's time to go for a walk or something.
CarrmynCarnage@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 309d
General strike. It's time.
shane@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 309d
Is there a link to specific demands, or do you just mean as a show of strength?
meco03211@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 310d
Has polling ever shown a majority blaming dems for any shutdown? This has been a republican tactic for a while now and it doesn't substantially hurt them. Why would they give a shit?
HubertManne@piefed.social · 15 pts · 310d
Love the republican we are doing nothing and its their fault. Such a modest ask to.
aarch0x40@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 310d
The more people are available to self-inform (spending cuts/layoffs) means the more they’re available for waking up. Brilliant strategy on the GOP’s part.
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 310d
For every other time Republicans withhold their vote, in order to make demands, Democrats always give them what they want...and everyone calls them weak because of it.
Does it surprise anyone that Republicans don't want to look like Democrats?
drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 309d
jankforlife@lemmy.ml · -20 pts · 310d
Political. Theater. 2 sides of the same right wing coin