The most likely way to improve things at the moment is to elect another Democrat to office, and hope that Justice Scalia and/or Justice Kennedy resigns within the next few years, and the composition of the Supreme Court changes enough to reverse the Citizens United case. Also, hope that the Justice Department under a Democratic president stays aggressive about promoting voting rights around the country.
Beyond that, the next big hope is getting Democrats back in control of the House of Representatives, which probably can’t happen until after the 2020 census, and only if the Democrats gain control of enough state legislatures to redraw fairer district boundaries.
So if we agree with Lessig that campaign finance reform is the most important national political priority, then electing a Democratic majority to the House is the necessary precondition. (I’m not saying you should agree with that, but it’s the premise of Lessig’s campaign.)
This is partly why his ideas to fix it seem drastic - there really aren't any non drastic solutions that can work.
https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...
It has nothing to do with which party is in power - the affect of fundraising has corrupted the underlying incentives of the entire congress.
I found his book on the topic pretty convincing: http://republic.lessig.org/
Probably an unpopular opinion in this thread, but...
It has always been protected speech. The Supreme Court just declined to make a distinction between The New York Times and an arbitrary group of citizens (or even a single citizen) doing a one-off publication.
Limiting the scope of government is not ideological -- its pragmatic and practical.
If people vote for one party to control everything, maybe, just maybe, they had a good reason to do so. I see no reason to assume this would be automatically destructive to the country.
I may be incorrect about this, was a while ago.
And major legislation certainly did pass:
- Obamacare
- American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus package)
- Dodd-Frank
- Fair Sentencing Act
- Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell
- Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#M...
I'd argue it has been destructive to our country. Specifically with the way healthcare reform was passed. All democrats by the slimmest margin. Absolutely no wider support for one of the biggest changes in our country in a long time, as far as domestic policy goes. The result? More fighting than before. Complete gridlock on every other issue.
There is half a valid objection to say that Bush wasn't bipartisan either. That's not entirely true. He certainly wasn't bipartisan enough, but he certainly tried more than once (remember medicare part D? no child left behind which was also sponsored by Kennedy?). I don't think the President and the democrats are solely responsible for the bad blood. But I think a wise person would recognize that lacking ultramajority (>70%) consensus for a major rule change was a major contributor.
That's a long unpacking of why I agree. We have to find resolutions that not just a majority of people agree with, but almost everybody wants.
The constant infighting caused by Republicans is a result of their corporate masters not wanting any health care reform passed, ever. And the gridlock they have created is a result of their endemic racism and inability to accept a black President. They stated, out loud for God's sake, from day one, that their admitted goal was to block Obama from doing anything at all.
Sorry, have to disagree. The amount of support for the ACA was plenty. Asking for even more support for that, in a country where we have Fox News around to brainwash a significant portion of Americans, just really amounts to insisting on permanent gridlock.
I don't think you can blame the passage of the ACA in 2009 for an obstruction policy begun in 2008. Time only flows in one direction, as far as I know.
If you were less ignorant about the subject, you would probably realize that the ACA passage without much Republican support was the result of Republican obstruction policies, not the cause of them.
The republican party of today is essentially a business lobby masquerading as a party. Place it into any European country, and it will be a far right extremist group.
To say that the Republican Party of today is a business lobby is an absurd and I'll-willed attempt to deliberately oversimplify, misinterpret, misrepresent, discredit, and ultimately slilence a legitimate political party that represents the thoughts and viewpoints of millions of American Citizens. Real people. Tax payers. Born here or abroad. Educated or self made. People that help make this country what it is.
I'm a registered Democrat and even I can't put up with this radical loyalist bullshit that aims to silence an entire portion of our population.
I don't trust one major political party to draw unbiased boundaries any more than I trust the other.
The green states in this picture use an independent commission to draw districts, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Redistri... It would be nice if more of the yellow states (redistricting controlled by the legislature) would switch to independent commissions.
It's also worth pointing out that the courts have actually mandated gerrymandering at times to promote majority minority districts... which actually help create supermajority caucasian districts. We would need to stop this kind of gerrymandering or somehow establish the bright line between 'beneficial' (scare quotes for skepticism, not sarcasm) gerrymandering and corrupt gerrymandering.
