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Rex Kickass

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just wrote to inform all related congressman, senators, majority leaders, and the speaker of the house to let them know I'm no longer voting in 2010. May they have as difficult of time finding a job as the rest of us.

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QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 12:02 PM)
just wrote to inform all related congressman, senators, majority leaders, and the speaker of the house to let them know I'm no longer voting in 2010. May they have as difficult of time finding a job as the rest of us.

Achieves very little. Better to vote for someone new, if that's your aim. Though I do applaud that you bothered to write them, not many people do that.

 

 

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QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 03:13 PM)

 

The session is open until January 2011. There's still 11 months to get this passed. This kind of makes sense and its really just a way to make sure that reconciliation happens.

 

What you aren't seeing reported right now is back channel negotiation. Essentially, the Senate is going to agree to make some concessions to the house bill in reconciliation after the fact and the House will vote for the Senate bill as is. That's the plan, as far as I can tell.

 

Setting aside what's become a super toxic debate for a few months to work on something like a jobs package which is what should be his front and center public voice right now is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

I'm not happy about where this is either, but this is not "shutting it down."

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QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 02:46 PM)
The session is open until January 2011. There's still 11 months to get this passed. This kind of makes sense and its really just a way to make sure that reconciliation happens.

 

What you aren't seeing reported right now is back channel negotiation. Essentially, the Senate is going to agree to make some concessions to the house bill in reconciliation after the fact and the House will vote for the Senate bill as is. That's the plan, as far as I can tell.

 

Setting aside what's become a super toxic debate for a few months to work on something like a jobs package which is what should be his front and center public voice right now is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

I'm not happy about where this is either, but this is not "shutting it down."

 

You've learned to backpeddle quite well, Rex. :lol:

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QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 03:46 PM)
The session is open until January 2011. There's still 11 months to get this passed. This kind of makes sense and its really just a way to make sure that reconciliation happens.

 

What you aren't seeing reported right now is back channel negotiation. Essentially, the Senate is going to agree to make some concessions to the house bill in reconciliation after the fact and the House will vote for the Senate bill as is. That's the plan, as far as I can tell.

 

Setting aside what's become a super toxic debate for a few months to work on something like a jobs package which is what should be his front and center public voice right now is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

I'm not happy about where this is either, but this is not "shutting it down."

What you're not realizing is...the longer this hangs out there, the sicker people are getting of hearing about it. We've had a legitimate 11 month policy debate right now, and the longer it's lasted, the worse the policy has gotten.

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 11:20 PM)
What you're not realizing is...the longer this hangs out there, the sicker people are getting of hearing about it. We've had a legitimate 11 month policy debate right now, and the longer it's lasted, the worse the policy has gotten.

 

and this backyard dealing for the senate to make after the fact changes, let me guess, headline: "House/Senate makes deal on changes to vote on"

 

3 hours later

 

"Joe Lieberman refuses to vote for changes"

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BTW, the next time we hear anything about an activist supreme court judge, I'm going to vomit. This is probably the most activist judicial decision of my lifetime.

It is time for everyone to drop all the talk about the Roberts court's "judicial minimalism," with Chief Justice Roberts as an "umpire" who just calls balls and strikes. Make no mistake, this is an activist court that is well on its way to recrafting constitutional law in its image. The best example of that is this morning's transformative opinion in Citizens United v. FEC. Today the court struck down decades-old limits on corporate and union spending in elections (including judicial elections) and opened up our political system to a money free-for-all.

 

...

What is so striking today is how avoidable this political tsunami was. The court has long adhered to a doctrine of "constitutional avoidance," by which it avoids deciding tough constitutional questions when there is a plausible way to make a narrower ruling based on a plain old statute. That's what the court did in last term's voting-rights case—in fact, going so far as to adopt an implausible statutory interpretation to avoid overturning a crown jewel of the civil rights movement.

 

What we have in Citizens United is anti-avoidance. Kennedy's majority had to go out and grab this one. Justice Stevens' dissent lists three ways the majority could have skirted the constitutional question. One of them would have been to say that McCain-Feingold does not apply to video-on-demand. This and the Stevens' other options are all plausible interpretations, certainly more plausible than the tricky footwork in the voting rights case. Instead, here the court went out of its way to overturn its own precedent, in violation of its usual rule of stare decisis, which calls for respecting past rulings for the good of reliable law-making. And it did so violating its usual rule, which it cited even yesterday, that it does not generally reach issues not raised in the initial petition to the court.

 

In short, the court did not have to do what it did today. The chief justice issued a brief concurrence apparently solely to defend himself (and Justice Alito, who signed it) against charges of judicial activism. Roberts wrote that the alternative interpretations were not plausible, and that exceptions to stare decisis apply. Opponents of the decision today are likely to be unconvinced. This is a court that has taken a giant leap toward deregulation of the electoral process.

 

It left in place one requirement: that the corporate and union groups unleashing the attack ads have to disclose who they are (and for that, Kennedy had everyone's vote but Justice Thomas'.) But given the history of money and elections, why should we think that disclosure alone will be enough to deal with the problems of corruption and inequality that threaten our government? I have my doubts. But I'm sure this is a bad day for American democracy.

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QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 06:25 PM)
Free speech my ass, the price of free speech just went up by a few million.

It'll only be a few million until it's realized that if you're Exxon or GS, you can outbid the people spending a few million.

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QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 05:25 PM)
Free speech my ass, the price of free speech just went up by a few million.

 

 

Then pay me, dammit.

 

That's twice in two days I'm trying to get you to see the benefits of "redistribution of income". Come on, lf.

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QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 05:29 PM)
I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I ask, how can we really call ourselves a democratic republic anymore? It couldn't be any more obvious that our votes don't matter.

 

 

That's the way it's been for a long time now. However, instead of backroom doors, it's going to be in the open.

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QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 06:30 PM)
That's the way it's been for a long time now. However, instead of backroom doors, it's going to be in the open.

Actually, Justice Thomas argued that having it in the open was unconstitutional today, and that it should be done in backroom deals. Quite literally.

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 12:31 AM)
Actually, Justice Thomas argued that having it in the open was unconstitutional today, and that it should be done in backroom deals. Quite literally.

 

exactly, companies don't have to disclose where their money went, they can merely funnel it through places like the chamber of commerce.

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