@sshole. Then he lost. Good riddance, Dennis.

note to michale, who is always prodding for evidence of weigantian criticism against democrats...

Yes!!!!

Statewide initiatives may be the only way to pass this type of legislation. Same with campaign finance reform.

You hit the nail on the head when you said both political parties hated it.

Remember Dennis Kucinich? Most liberal representative in the House?

He was for the redistricting plan even though it guaranteed a 12-4 split in favor of Republicans. Why? Because it put him in a district he thought he could never lose.

@sshole. Then he lost. Good riddance, Dennis.

But this is the type of resistance you'll face from established politicians of all stripes.

-David

A national independent redistricting system would be a good start. I'm not sure how it'd play out constitutionally.

A limit on donations/expenditures would help too. Wal Mart doesn't allow its Buyers to accept anything from persons seeking to do business with the company. Congress on the other hand.... But again I think it wouldn't get past the Supreme Court.

Michale will not doubt find plenty of quotes from "The Blaze" or "Real Clear Politics" to cite. The absolutely most important thing I learned in my Senior year High School Civics class was that you can find "An Expert" to say just about anything; if you look hard enough.

One thing California did right -- we do have an independent redistricting law, and it was a battle royale to get it passed. In the leadup to the 2010 redistricting, one politician in Sacramento, as the price of his vote on a budget deal, forced a ballot measure to vote in independent redistricting commissions. The governor hated the idea, and both political parties hated it. It passed by a wide margin.

Since then, multiple times there have been "stealth" ballot initiatives designed to redefine the commissions in such a way that the parties would be back in control. They all failed. When we did redistrict, it was by the independent commissions. So California is really leading the way on this one....

-CW

Heh.

C'mon, Michale, we promise we won't spike the football in the endzone TOO hard, and we swear we won't do a dance for more than, like, 5 seconds or so...

Heh heh.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

:-)

-CW

Dang. That is a good question.

Another suggestion would be to have it written by a some type of non-partisan group (if there is such a thing).

Here in Ohio, there was a great initiative on the ballot last time around which would have created a non-partisan committee for census redistricting. Basically, we tried to pass a constitutional amendment by statewide vote. Unfortunately, state Republicans influenced the language of the amendment and worded it in such a way that it sounded like something else.

-David

my suggestion would be to limit its scope. perhaps citizen initiatives could be limited only to those areas where congress has a natural conflict of interest, such as their pay and benefits, their ability to campaign, and their ability to take lobbying jobs after leaving office.

JL

I'm not sure I agree, but interesting that a little bit of craft and corruption is a stabilizing force. Also brings up the point we forget about when dividing the countries ideology and looking at polls: the largest group in the country is actually the don't vote, don't care, non-politicals.

That is a tough one. California has the initiative system and it has been a very mixed bag. Some initiatives that probably should have passed have been defeated with a lot of help from money outside the state. It is also susceptible to confusion. There was an insurance reform initiative not too long ago that was defeated by the industry sponsoring a bunch of competing initiatives, I think there were four altogether. When in doubt vote no usually wins in the end. So, the idea is good, but how do you craft it to be the pure will of the people and not just another vehicle to be abused by larger interest groups and business?

What really stood out for me:
Current deficit is now ~$550B, down from over $1T. Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist of Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote “We are baffled by the idea that the pace of deficit reduction needs to be increased, given how rapidly the picture is improving already.”

If the tax cuts from 2001, 2003 were repealed, half of that deficit goes away.

(My emphasis added)

And just before the usual 'both sides do it' - no they don't. A majority of Democrats have NEVER EVER in the history of the US voted for the US to default. Some did - including Obama I believe - but a majority never has. The same thing can not be said true of the nut-jobs in the House who went ahead and did so again - not for the first and probably not the last time under Obama.

Luckily - just like the last 2 budget crises - the grown-up adults in the Senate could get things done. The US House just now is a pretty sad state of affairs, you need to take it back.

that would be good too, bashi. but the larger problem is that "we the people" do not have any mechanism to directly impact legislation. all we have is our speech and our vote, and congress has demonstrated many times over that those powers are woefully inadequate to rein in the interests of most legislators. i'm not saying that free speech and voting aren't powerful rights, but gerrymandering and campaign finance can essentially nullify them.

JL

I think a big winner and also maybe a loser as well is our system of representational democracy.

It's a winner because the checks on a small minority held and we may be less likely to see this type of extreme tactic again.

It's a loser because our representatives in the House have largely safe districts where a Republican or Democrat is almost guaranteed to win and the proportion of Republicans to Democrats is going to be tough to change because of a decreasing number of swing districts.

This, as you mentioned, makes someone like Jim DeMint more powerful than John Boehner because the only thing Congressional Republicans fear is being "primaried". DeMint follows in the tradition of Tom DeLay albeit from the comfort of his Think Tank post. Good callout on DeMint. With all the money being floated through conservative PACs and think tanks, we haven't seen the last of their influence. People say it's the "Tea Party". The real influence is with the corporate lobbyist groups like The Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, and my favorite new one: The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity (ha!).

-David

I hadn't heard about the steno when I wrote this. What indeed was up with that? I've only seen vague descriptions of what she yelled, anyone got the full story?

-CW

How about a no budget, no Members’ Representational Allowance (MRA). Might be a little easier constitutionally. No paid travel, staff or any other expenses, and no reimbursement later...

Another loser in this might well be the House stenographer on duty at the time of the vote. How weird was that?

i asked this a few days ago, and i'll ask it again - imagine as an engineering problem the fact that there is no mechanism for the people to rein in congress directly, and no mechanism to make congress give us that power. i think if "no budget no pay" were put up to a citizen vote it would win unheard-of supermajorities of voters, but our constitution has no provision for that to happen.

JL

I disagree with your assessment of the Tea Party as losers in this particular skirmish. It's base is rural, it's core financial backer the oil and gas industry. Both base and backers have reason to be happy. It has fought a clever rear guard action against Progressives, and can still do so, at least until the mainstream Republican Party decides to crush it, which will be difficult, costly and distracting for the GOP. It's not clear to me the GOP is up to the task.

The Tea Party wins by fighting "the good fight" and not by enacting legislation. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see a lot of Tea Party incumbents going down in the next election cycle. Mainstream Republicans getting picked off in primaries or the general election? That appears much more likely to me.

The next three months will be interesting. I expect continued gridlock.