Ding Dong.....the US Politics Thread (Part 1)

I just cannot get my head around this sort of thinking. Our government is not set up for one party to make significant legislative changes without majorities that are very rarely seen. The Dems are united enough on this issue to push through meaningful legislation on the issue, they just don’t have the numbers by themselves do so.

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Right wing only cares about ideas in so far as getting to a unified end goal.
Left wing cares about where the idea came from - mostly to a fault - and will sacrifice the end goal to argue about the germination of an idea.

That’s my take on why Republicans are always more organised and united than Democrats.

Dave Rubin cares about ideas.

He gets tired after thinking about so many high-level ideas.

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It’s a more unified coalition with more limited scope for what it wants to achieve (preservation of existing power structures). How we change the existing power structure to redistribute that power more equitably throughout the population is a much more complicated conversation that makes being on the same page with tactics and priorities way harder.

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A ‘falied state’ usually refers to the workings of government being so severely compromised by corruption that they are unable to provide basic services. We’re not at that point obviously , but if you consider that the first duty of government is to protect its citizens , then by that metric alone you would have to conclude they are indeed failing.

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Like I said…

High. Level. Shit.

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Indeed.

I cannot help but think that is an incredibly low bar for perhaps the richest state there ever was.

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I’d question the use of “obviously”. I acknowledge that effective government is actually difficult, but when I look at the failings of our government on domestic policy I think it is due to corruption more so than not.

The property insurance crisis in Florida is a great example. Property insurance is a requirement. If you cannot maintain it you lose your home, but the industry if being fucked on both sides in way that is making it near impossible for them to operate. You have an unregulated, corrupt roofing industry coming at them from the front and a legal industry that has stacked the deck to make insurance claim cases unusually lucrative for them at the back. The Insurance industry is responding in the only way it can, by fucking the homeowners. Most people cannot meet the terms that are now being required and are being forced out of the market into the state funded safety net, an insurance program called Citizens. These policies are no cheaper than industry policies and dont cover as much, but they are where you go when you cannot find anything else. The result is that Citizens now cover enough people that does not have the reserves to pay out a big claim. If a hurricane comes through a well populated area of the state millions of homeowners could be left without a home.

This is all because the construction industry is very politically connected, and most state legislators are either lawyers themselves or have political connections to the major law firms pursuing these cases. It is within Tallahassee’s capacity to reset the balance here and they are refusing to…all at the risk of displacing millions of people. And this is the worst case scenario. The best case without action is that people like me are forced to shell out $20k for a new roof I dont need and still me premiums go up by $300 a month. Even without hurricanes people are losing their homes because of this unexpected financial burden.

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I see Abbott is coming out with the old ‘mental health’ line.
If Republicans think that mental health is the reason for the mass slaughter of schoolkids why aren’t they doing anything about it?

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an example from Britain

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Cruz said the same thing.

Another easy way to allow people to have Hunting rifles etc etc is to provide when there’s a concrete need for it and also to have the owner of the permit show accountancy for bullets in routine intervals. It’s one thing being able to acquire firearms. It’s another when you can procure and shoot ammo’s for the said firearms with impunity.

Ya for hunting, while everyone will say they want their own rifles, but if its only for that period of hunting, you can “rent” a rifle from stores for that purpose? The idea of having guns for protection just do not cut it seriously, I feel for those who insist on it, quoting the 2nd Amendment etc are just throwing their toys out of the prams because its the land of the free, its people power, we want what we want.

I would ban hunting. Is there a need beyond the 0.1 percenters (in the UK specifically)? The US I grant is a “bit” different and even there I would argue hunting is unnecessary.

For maintaining land fauna balance you can have a regulated team - none of whom have to own the weapon or house it.

Has it always needed 38 out of 50 states to pass an amendment to the constitution? That seems like a high bar and yet there were loads of amendments in the immediate aftermath. That frequency then slowed dramatically into the 20th century, perhaps because the constitution had then been refined to make changes less necessary but did it also become harder to make any changes?

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I believe the earlier mass shooting referenced in the article was the one in Hungerford. One of my mates from school lost an Aunty in that one :pensive:

The method for amending the Constitution has not changed. It requires a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress to pass the proposed amendment. Then three fourths of the state legislatures must ratify the amendment. The actual text is below. It would seem to me in these very polarized times, amending our Constitution is very unlikely.

In actuality, excepting the Bill of Rights (first ten amendments passed as a group), the document has only been amended 17 times.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

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That sensible and fairly modest restriction would be enough to get you called a communist and lead to public demands to have you lynched by the ragtag of even more extremist NRA offshoots were you to propose it in the US.

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Well, you know me… :joy: