Congress Will Suck No Matter Who's In Power
Here's a cynical take on whether polite bipartisanship can work, from Matt Taibbi: Congress Will Suck No Matter Who's In Power.
Which is not to say the two parties won't work together. They will -- just not on anything constructive. What most people fail to understand about Congress is that there have been some highly consistent areas of consensus even in these incredibly contentious past ten years. In the areas in which both parties typically agree, like military spending and giveaways to the more generous donor industries, Democrats and Republicans have worked swimmingly even in the most publicly antagonistic periods of the Bush and Clinton years. They helped each other sign off on the Iraq war and stroke the credit industry with the bankruptcy bill. They cooperated to pass a spate of free-trade agreements, the WTO, the MAI, GATT and a host of other legislative monstrosities.
Where they couldn't cooperate was in the area of upholding their constitutional responsibilities, and practicing bureaucratic self-defense. The social divide between Republicans and Democrats had to be a big part of the reason Congress lacked the institutional stones to really stand up to the president on the torture issue, to fight back when the vice president ignores a subpoena of the GAO, to demand someone's head when the defense department openly refuses to audit itself. The Republicans in Congress have been so busy in the last ten years figuring out ways to shut Democrats out of the process that they forgot how to stop the executive branch from giving it to them up the ass. The result is a Congress that is not only grossly corrupt and completely beholden to financial interests, but totally castrated in the national political arena, a tawdry little sideshow that drones on idiotically on CSPAN while the White House rules the country more or less absolutely (an additional insult; not only is the Congress a disgrace to two millennia of democratic tradition, it's the worst show on television).
What I hope this new Congress will show (and in this I think I actually concur with Chris below) is a new sense of its Constitutional responsibilities. As a check on the executive branch.
posted by Mark D. @ 10:17 AM |
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3 Comments:
A libertarian variation on the same theme ...
Pundits and bloggers have spent the last several days
sorting through the aftermath of Tuesday's election,
and analyzing its future impact on everything from tax
rates to foreign policy. However, many commentators
have stopped short of asking one critical question:
what does a Democratic congressional victory mean for
American liberty?
The construction of American politics poses a unique
dilemma for those who wish to preserve individual
freedoms, for neither major party has shown a holistic
commitment to upholding the full scope of individual
rights set forth in the Constitution. Likewise,
neither party has demonstrated an ability to stay out
of the private, consensual affairs of individual
citizens - quite often, the opposite has been the
case. In our bifurcated political system, each party
has tended to champion one set of rights and
privileges, while diminishing others that it disagrees
with. In this climate, the protection of freedom has
often relied less on voting for pro-liberty
candidates, than it has relied on continually pitting
partisan factions against each other, in order to
balance out their excesses, and prevent future damage
through gridlock.
In one sense, the recent Democratic victory plays an
important role in this balancing process. The defeat
of Bush-style Republicanism signals the end of several
invasive government initiatives, such as attempts to
pass an anti-gay marriage amendment at the federal
level. At the same time, proponents of freedom must
be wary, for the incoming Democratic majority has its
own history of legislating away behavior that its base
finds to be obnoxious - such as the ownership of
certain classes of firearms. While Democrats have
steered away from anti-gun rhetoric in recent years,
it remains to be seen whether the newly-elected
Congress will seek to reinstate federal gun bans that
Republicans had wisely let lapse.
Even weightier questions lie in the realm of national
security. In pursing its post-9/11 security agenda,
the Bush administration trod heavily upon the Bill of
Rights, and a compliant Republican congress enabled
much Constitutional mischief to occur. At the same
time, it is worth noting that many of the
administration's post-9/11 legislative gains were won
with Democratic support, and the extent to which
Democrats will seek to remedy problem statutes is an
open question. Senator elect Amy Klobuchar recently
showed gumption on the campaign trail by calling parts
of the Military Commissions Act unconstitutional
(which portions indeed are), but we shall soon
discover whether others in her party have the stomach
for doing the hard work of rolling-back
civil-liberties curtailments.
In the coming months, the answers to the following
questions will become clear: Will the Democrats take
active measures to fashion an effective national
security policy that complies with the Constitution?
Will they refrain from infringing on Second Amendment
rights, as they have done too often in the past? Will
the Republican party once again embrace small
government, and shed its adherence to the doctrine of
executive branch primacy? And might American politics
finally demonstrate a full commitment to liberty under
law? Recent history gives us one set of answers.
Those who care about the prospects for freedom in
America need to urge both political parties to work
toward another.
If history is any guide, what we are experiancing now, is a pendulum swing back to center. America's flirtation with fascism is now done. Democrats will now, with the help of the moderate Republicans will now work to craft, not only an effective national security poilicy, but a sane one as well. Drastic and deep cuts in military spending are an absolute must in the interest of the survival of the Republic. Second Amendment rights have never been under any real threat. No sportsman or target shooter has ever been in any danger of having his/her gun taken away from him. But that's what the NRA and Republican benificiaries want the hunters and shooters to believe. the NRA is interested in only one thing and that's raising money. That's it. The GOP uses their very effective fund raising techniques and donar lists and crows the same message. Hunters and shooters believing they are fighting the good fight vote GOP and give the NRA a hundred bucks. Suckers, each and every one of them. Small government sounds good, but which chunk of government do you want to reduce. Social Services? Department of the Interior? EPA? Get rid of those and there will be people starving in the streets and rivers catching fire. Single payer health care system would be the most business friendly initiative ever proposed except, of course for the insurance industry, but it would expand government. So while it sounds good, reducing government is not always in the best interest of the Nation. The GOP will be on it's back for twenty years as a result of the Neocon fascist wing and the pendulum is going to swing well left of center before it's done. The GOP is in the enviable position now of being so thoroughly defeated it can remake itself. It can look to it's giants of the past and say here are some Republican principles we can use in the future. '08 will be another bad election cycle for the right as these folks are phenomenally dense and choose to deny the obvious trend but after that, coming into '10, '12, there's a chance, such a thing as a progressive Republican will be at the forefront. Remember what John Anderson said in '80, "America cannot afford to lose this election." Well we lost that one, but time marches on and the spirit of that campaign and philosophy might again become a force in American politics
Like all individual liberties, gun ownership in America has had to endure a number of recent challenges:
At a federal level, Congress moved to ban specific types of firearms in 1994, when it passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. A provision of that law banned the possession, manufacture, and importation of certain classes of semi-automatic rifles and pistols. While the ban was neither as sweeping as critics charged - nor as comprehensive as its proponents made it out to be - it still proved to be constitutionally problematic. While Congress has the ability to regulate the interstate transfer and sale of firearms (under its enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce), a strict reading of the Constitution would show that Congress has limited authority to ban the mere possession of firearms (unless such possession is connected to interstate commercial activity, for example.) A law such as the assault weapons ban oversteps the authority of Congress to legislate (see the United States v. Lopez decision). While the 1994 law recently expired, Congress may be tempted to venture into this area once again (and perhaps more broadly) if the right political circumstances arise.
The federal government has also, at times, acted to intimidate prospective gun buyers. In recent years, BATF agents have made highly visible "walk-throughs" of gun shows in the eastern U.S., stopping attendees and demanding information about their gun buying habits. While this activity is not specifically prohibited by federal law, it is akin to the highly publicized "pre-emptive" interviews of anti-war protesters conducted by the FBI before the 2004 Republican National Convention. Both sets of actions are needlessly invasive, and result in a pronounced chilling effect.
Some states and municipalities have challenged gun ownership and possession in even more direct ways. Several cities have handgun bans on their books, and the New Orleans police department implemented a de facto firearms ban during the Hurricane Katrina event, and enforced it through paramilitary house-to-house searches.
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