Secession is the Answer Update

Mark Noonan8 Comments

Just another example of what I’m always yammering on about:

When Gov. Andrew Cuomo is inaugurated for a second term in January, he will have New York City voters to thank.

Cuomo’s 13-percentage-point win over Republican challenger Rob Astorino on Nov. 4 was fueled by a large margin of victory in New York City, where he took home 77 percent of the nearly 1 million ballots cast, according to the state Board of Election’s unofficial results.

Take away the city, however, and the rest of the state backed Astorino — albeit by a slim margin. Outside of the five boroughs, Astorino collected 1.3 million votes — or 49 percent — compared to Cuomo’s 1.2 million, or 46 percent, in a low-turnout election. Three third-party candidates were also on the ballot.

New York isn’t one State, it is two. There is the NYC-Albany bit of the State, and then there’s the rest of it. And the two are not in any way, shape or form of the same ideas.

Cuomo’s New York is perfectly within it’s rights in getting the government it wants. Those people want a nitwit socialist like De Blasio as mayor and a liberal political hack like Cuomo as governor. Good for them. But why do the rest of New York’s citizens have to put up with it? Why do the people of Buffalo have to deal with a governor – and a government – which is entirely subservient to the people of New York City? Don’t the people of Buffalo deserve to have people leading them who reflect the values of Buffalo?

The answer, as I’ve been saying for years, is secession – break up New York into two States. West and East New York. Think about it – the liberal pinheads of East New York will have a happy hunting ground for pure, unadulterated liberalism even more so than now, while West New York would get a chance for sanity in government. Everyone’s happy – and, Democrats, think about it: you’d have two Senators-for-life in East New York and still have a shot at some times grabbing a Senator from West New York. Its win-win for ya! Win-win for West New York, too, of course…because they won’t have to put up with quite as much liberal nonsense.

Can the Constitution be Saved?

Mark Noonan10 Comments

Charles Cooke notes that some on the right appear to be eagerly anticipating the time when a Republican President can invoke the “Obama rule” and just start doing whatever he or she pleases – and he doesn’t like it:

…I am afraid that I consider this approach to be little short of suicidal, and I can under no circumstances look forward to a system in which the executive may pick and choose which laws he is prepared to enforce. On the contrary: I consider the idea to be a grave and a disastrous one, and I would propose that any such change is likely to usher in chaos at first and then to incite a slow, tragic descent into the monarchy and caprice that our ancestors spent so long trying to escape. During the last 500 years or so, the primary question that has faced the Anglo-American polities has been whether the executive or the legislature is to be the key proprietor of domestic power. In one form or another, this query informed both the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution that followed it, and it was at the root of the Revolution in America. Cast your eyes across the Declaration of Independence and you will notice that the majority of the “long train of abuses and usurpations” have to do with the violation of the rights of assemblies by individuals who believe themselves to be the dominant arbiter of the state’s affairs…

I don’t like it, either; but the question is, can the cat be put back in the bag? That is where we get into very doubtful territory. Earlier in his article, Cooke notes the impossibility of actually explaining what is at stake to the average audience – which either won’t know the issues (thanks, public schools!) or won’t have the patience to deal with it. We are a very long way from any sort of America which fully understands what is at stake. This puts anyone who wishes to have a constitutional republic at a disadvantage as it is useless to discuss the finer points of what is actually a human right against someone who is promising the sun and the moon in a political campaign.

No system will ever work better than the people who run it. And the trouble with all human systems is that they are run by human beings – human beings who are prey to cowardice, greed, pride, flattery and all that. The historian Will Durant, in discussing the Principate established by the first Roman Emperor, noted that in legal terms the powers the Emperor had were no greater than those of an energetic American President – how, then, did the Principate so swiftly degenerate from the high tone of Augustus to the madness of Caligula and Nero? Because the people who ran the system allowed it to happen – it was easier to just let the Emperor rule; to take the bribe, the obtain the sinecure position, to let things slide. Fighting for principal only forced you to work and exposed you to attack. Better to go along to get along. One would have hoped in 2009 that Congressional Democrats would have been keen to preserve their own power vis a vis the White House, regardless of who is in office. But, nothing doing – once Obama was sworn in, Congress became the merest rubber stamp…and once the GOP gained the House in 2010, nothing happened in Congress because Reid, the alleged leader of the Senate, decided that it was just easier to let Obama do whatever he pleased. This it the nature of things in human affairs – and no system we have or can create will really change it.

Our now-tattered and broken system had a good run. From 1787 until 1950 it pretty much worked as planned, aside from a few abuses. It worked because everyone kept it working – the President didn’t abuse and Congress was vigilant in protecting it’s power. Since 1950, though, it as rather fallen apart (the signal for this, by the way, was Truman’s commitment to war in Korea without obtaining prior Congressional authorization: going to war in Korea was correct American policy – but Truman should have got a declaration of war from Congress, first). We have just drifted along with the tide of events – and Congress passed its legislative powers away: first to the Courts, later to the bureaucracy and now to the merest whim of the President. The one defense the Founders gave us against Executive abuse – impeachment – is a dead letter. It never really worked (if it had, a good dozen Presidents would have been removed from office over the years), and it was killed off when Clinton was acquitted by the Senate even though he clearly had broken the law and should have been removed from office. Unless by some political miracle you can get 67 Senators in opposition to a President, impeachment will never happen – and I can’t see either major party ever getting to 67 Senators while the other party is in the White House. Freed from any fear of impeachment, a President can do as he pleases while in office – there’s really no way to stop him (some people hold that the power of the purse can still be invoked: I ask, how? Suppose the President draws money out of the Treasury which hasn’t been appropriated; what is the only sanction you can hit him with? The aforementioned dead letter of impeachment…).

I don’t know how we get back to a place where the President holds himself in check and/or the Congress vigorously protects it’s own power. It could be that we’ll need to go through a period of executive tyranny (you know, dictatorship) which leads to revolution and the re-establishment of constitutional law. I hope it doesn’t come to that. And as a means of trying to prevent that, I do have some suggestions:

1. Don’t be afraid to rake over the past a bit. When a new Administration comes into office, one of its first orders of business should be the investigation of the previous Administration. This is especially true when it is a change of political party as well as a new Administration. Sure, this means that Bush Administration officials would have been raked over the coals by Obama people – but it also might mean that Obama people get the same raking over by President Walker’s troops. The thought that in just a few years the other guys might be in power and thus looking to send you to jail would produce a great deal of fear about abusing power and breaking the law.

2. Term limits. Part of the problem with Congress is that they can stick around too long…you’ve got a nice office, a large staff, things are going pretty well: why rock the boat? Might cause you to lose office. Better to just go along to get along. Term limits brings that to an end – if you can’t re-seek your current office next year, then might as well do your job (true, some people will just coast along to the end of their term…but others will be ambitious for different office, and what better way to make a name than to shake things up?).

3. Make all government officials – elected and appointed – directly responsible for their actions. No more government pays when official so-and-so screws up: nope, the official pays. In criminal and civil penalties. No more immunity for government officials: and no more anonymity, either…their names, salaries, positions and performance reviews are on line for everyone to see. Having the people kinda looking over their shoulders might make them less willing to do wrong.

That is just a few things; other people can come up with other ideas. But do keep in mind that there are two ways to make a government behave: have honorable men and women as a majority of the government, or put the most intense fear of retribution into the minds of government officials. We can’t ever be sure that anyone is actually honorable (even the best of us can go wrong), so we should concentrate on putting the fear on them – the thought that you are to be hanged in a fortnight does concentrate the mind wonderfully…and if a government official is worried every day that he might be called to account for his actions, he’ll either do as little as possible or be as honest as possible…in either case, we’re ahead of the game.

Weekly Open Thread

Cluster13 Comments

A few topics to discuss:

– ISIS beheads another American. How many more Americans need to be beheaded before Obama takes this seriously?

– After 6 years of essentially doing nothing – Obama now deems immigration to be a crisis and promises to act unilaterally before the new Congress is sworn in. Polls show that a vast majority of Americans have other top priorities, but when has that concerned the leader of the new permanent minority?

– Open enrollment for the ACA is on again, and while 56% of Americans disapprove, MSNBC was able to find that those enrollees who receive subsidies actually like the law. Imagine that? The Supreme Court could change all that soon however if they actually uphold the law as it was written – meaning that only State exchanges can hand out subsidies. Of course, Justice Roberts has once before violated that trust, so who knows.

– And Ferguson remains on edge. Apparently, being completely wrong and over reactionary about the facts of the case have not embarrassed the instigators and race baiters, nor has it given them reason to pause and reassess their juvenile actions.  Instead they move forward, sell merchandise, and request that the UN be involved in their struggle for justice. Justice of which fits with their narrow views and victim mindsets.

We Just Can’t Work With Liberals

Mark Noonan25 Comments

Over at Free Beacon, Sonny Bunch notes a recent article by Jonathan Chait wherein Chait demonstrates his abiding hatred of all persons Republican. Meanwhile, we have the Gruber revelations that bald-faced lies were used to enact ObamaCare. The question I ask is: how can we work with people who hate us and will flat-out lie to us? The answer: we can’t.

This is not an argument to start lying, nor an argument to start hating. In fact, it is our duty to be more careful that what we say is true, and that how we say it betrays not the slightest hint of hatred towards the other side. But it is an argument that there is no common ground for us to meet the left upon. And, I think, we all know this – and have known it for a long time. Even on this little blog, we found over the years that we just couldn’t so much as discuss things with liberals, let alone hammer out some mutually acceptable course of action. Any time we got a liberal on here, the discussion would immediately be filled with falsehoods and invective from the left. Didn’t matter what the subject was, it always went that way (to be generous, some liberals spread lies out of ignorance – they might sincerely have thought their falsehoods true, but that still doesn’t change the fact that lies were being spread). This is because liberals hate us, and hold to a view which believes that a lie, if it is allegedly in the service of a greater good, is ok. As we are not liars and we believe that there are some things out of bounds no matter how allegedly worthy the desire, there is just no way to get together with such people. We’re oil and water.

We could endlessly discuss just why the liberals are like this – but it would be a bit pointless. Unless they decide to change, there’s nothing we can do about it. Other than oppose them with all our powers and, hopefully, eventually remove them from any position of influence or authority within our nation.

This won’t be quite a difficult as it might sound. While it appears that our liberals are ubiquitous, their real numbers are somewhere around a mere one in five Americans. They just appear very powerful because they own most of the societal megaphones – especially in the popular culture. But the real basis of their power is, ultimately, government – either directly or indirectly they live and die by government subsidy. Once we cut that out, they will whither and die. Governor Walker – intentionally or not – has shown the way in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has been a very reliably blue State for a long time – it was, after all, one of the States wherein the early 20th century Progressives had some of their greatest successes. But, lo and behold, Walker has won three times in the past four years…and the GOP strength in the State government has increased, to the point where even if Hillary wins in 2016, we might see that State going GOP at the Presidential level. What was the main thing Walker did? He went after the government unions – the primary mechanism whereby taxpayer money (ie, money which mostly belongs to centrists and conservatives) is funneled to liberals. Without that government money, the liberals were just unable to rule the political roost. Do this on a State-by-State level and the federal level, and you’ll see a collapse in liberal power: enough of a collapse, in my view, where we can over time completely rid ourselves of them (as an aside, another line of attack is on the student loan scam – this funnels mostly conservative and centrist money to colleges, almost all of which are completely owned by the left…I’d agree to an annulment of all college debts in return for a cancellation of the student loan program: it’d be worth it in the long run…imagine thousands of “studies” teachers and liberal apparatchiks in college Administrations suddenly out of work, and no longer able to funnel money to the left!).

But we can’t do this if we’re looking to “work across the aisle”. If we do that, we’re just allowing liberals to continue to force centrist and conservative America to fund them to our own detriment. Its not that we’re unwilling to compromise, but that we’re unwilling to commit suicide. Unless liberals change, we can’t work with them – and even if they announce a change, we can’t trust them because we know they lie about everything all the time. Our best course of action is just rigid opposition to whatever they propose combined with a forthright argument in favor of our own cause. Let the voters decide which way to go – but if they choose us, then let us go our way, right down the line. This is, after all, just what liberals do – you might recall the dearth of argument for compromise in late 2008 and early 2009. If liberals have the power, they do as they please; if they don’t have the power, they demand we do as they please. No more of that. If we win, we do our thing – if the people reject us at the next election, so be it. But I don’t think they will – no more than the people of Wisconsin rejected Walker. Most people, as I said, are centrists and conservatives and so a center-right governing philosophy will always command majority support as long as it implemented (when center-right governments start acting liberal, they lose).

We’ll see how the next two years go. I’m hopeful that even our more RINOish Congressional leaders have learned a bit of a lesson. The harsh invective and unconstitutional actions of Obama supported by Reid should have, it is hoped, opened a few eyes. These people on the left are serious – and they are hate filled and dishonest, into the bargain. Keep them at arms length and just keep on pushing a center-right agenda. Maybe we lose – and that is fine; at least we’ll have lost on principal. But I think we’ll win – and in 10 years, we just won’t have these liberals to deal with any longer…they’ll be out; out of government subsidies, out of power, out of any ability to use hatred and lies to advance their agenda. And that will be good for America – and good for them, as well: it might make them start to re-think their views.

Weekly Open Thread

Cluster13 Comments

Mark is quite prolific at posting thought provoking articles, so much so that it is hard to keep up with. Thus, I have decided to take on the difficult task of posting a weekly open thread and considering the current state of chaos in our body politic there is much to discuss.

Take for example Jonathan Gruber’s recent admission that the ACA was intentionally opaque, disguised, and lied about in order to secure passage, and thankfully the American electorate is stupid and never figured it out. This of course excludes the many conservatives that repeatedly warned everyone about dangers of this legislation, but unfortunately too many gullible people stood with slack jaws and wonder as Nancy Pelosi proclaimed – “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it”.

Better yet, how about Obama’s Chief of Staff Denis McDonough saying that “Washington will work better if Obama has is way”.

I can predict one thing. Now that the Democrats are entrenched as the minority party of this country, from Congress on down to State Legislatures, their comments and actions will become even more brazen and even more outrageous over the next two years. This is just the start of it. I think they are genuinely upset and privately panicking about these last elections where Americans soundly rejected their policies and tactics, and now they suddenly find themselves with a very weak bench of young talent, tired old campaign cliches, and just one polarizing figure as their best hope for 2016.

It was just five years ago that the Republican party was thought to be soon relegated to a regional party comprised primarily of old white men. How those fortunes have changed thanks to the arrogance and over reach of a rabid ideologue in the White House and the justice Department, and to the Tea Party for their continued opposition in the face of strong head winds and ridicule. Now the GOP boasts majority numbers across this country comprised of a lot of diverse and young talent. The GOP’s prospects are strong provided they stick to conservative principles, Constitutional governance and common sense.

Does Merit Lead to Success?

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Very interesting article by Robin Hanson:

How much does merit contribute to success? A rosy view is that success is mostly due to merit, while a dark view is that success is mostly not due to merit, but instead due to what we see as illicit factors, such as luck, looks, wit, wealth, race, gender, politics, etc.

Over a lifetime people gain data on the relation between success and merit. And one data point stands out most in their minds: the relation between their own success and merit. Since most people see themselves as being pretty meritorious, the sign of this data point depends mostly on their personal success. Successful people see a rosy view, that success and merit are strongly related. Unsuccessful people see a dark view, that success and merit are only weakly related…

And then James Joyner puts his two cents in:

…While lots of very successful people will acknowledge that luck played a large role in their success, most will point to the real merit that got them to where they are. They worked harder, were more persistent, delayed gratification, and otherwise behaved more admirably than their peers who were less successful. And, for the most part, they will be right on those scores while overlooking the extent to which luck also factored in.

Of course, defining “merit” and “success” will be controversial here, with reasonable and intelligent people disagreeing, sometimes quite broadly, as to what they mean. Several of Hanson’s commenters, for example, treat possession of extreme talent, even “genius,” as evidence of merit when it’s just as easily dismissed as luck. It’s not obvious why being extremely smart is any less a matter of happenstance than being pleasingly tall or attractive…

I don’t know – perhaps I haven’t met as many successful people as others have, but I don’t see many successful people acknowledging that luck played a role in their rise. And by “luck” I mean any particular factor which was outside of the individuals control – and this includes who your parents are, what sort of people you meet, etc. Most people I’ve met who have had the easy route to the top appear convinced that they really merited it all. To take the most egregious recent example, I get the distinct impression that Obama believes he’s President based upon his meritorious actions…even though I can’t think of any he’s done, other than being a good father to his daughters, which is a very meritorious thing, indeed, but hardly something to set him apart and raise him to the most powerful office in the world.

Continue reading →

Massive GOP Win; So, Now What?

Mark Noonan34 Comments

First and foremost, boys and girls: be realistic.

No, there won’t be an impeachment of Obama (and, anyways, even if we could, do you really think we’d want to relieve the Democrats of the Obama albatross at this point?).

No, there won’t be a repeal of ObamaCare: Obama would veto any such proposal (or anything which defunds or otherwise guts the legislation) and we would not have the votes to over-ride.

Just forget about things like that. Obama is still President and still wields awesome authority and influence – that is a problem for another day: we GOPers also let the President get too powerful and that power has to be reduced…but we can’t get there right now. All we can do for the present is remember that Obama is a committed leftist, doesn’t give a rat’s patoot about what the American people think, is more than willing to break the law to get his way and believes that it is his bound duty to destroy anything non-left. We have to work with this, or around this – we can’t get rid of it or destroy it right now. And the MSM will still form a praetorian guard around him, with the only caveat being that they’ll jump on a grenade for Hillary in preference to Obama; they gotta think about the future and Obama is old news.

But there is still plenty the GOP can do. Always keeping in mind that the real purpose is to set the stage for a complete GOP victory in 2016, of course. We’re not necessarily going for enacted reforms – if we get some, great: but the real purpose is to set a reform agenda comprehensible to the American people as a platform for defeating the Democrats in 2016. The best means to do this is to pick about 10 issues which are very popular with the American people and over time pass them out of Congress and send them to Obama. Passing popular reform legislation will give GOPers things to brag about in 2016 and will show our party as being the party of “getting things done”. It will also put Obama in quite a pickle – reforms such as approving the Keystone Pipeline or allowing people to recover their cancelled health care plans will be popular, but Obama will be in a bad position on them. He’ll either have to veto them and anger the American people, or sign them and tick off the liberal base he needs to ensure his agenda is protected in 2016 (and Obama does want a Democrat to win in 2016 – he knows a GOP President in 2016 will undo all or most of what he’s accomplished). To us, it doesn’t matter what he does – if he signs it, then we’ve got good stuff to talk about; if he vetoes it, then we get to campaign on getting a Republican into the White House to move forward with reform.

To be sure, Obama will try to short-circuit such actions. His Presser on Wednesday is enough to confirm that. He will try to do things to outrage Republicans and, in his hopes, provoke a heavy counter attack which he hopes can be used to cast him as the long-suffering reformer stymied by an obstructionist Congress. Hillary wants this, too – she’d like nothing better than to campaign on the concept that she can get Congress to work. We dare not let Obama do this. In fact, its much better at this point that we ignore what Obama wants to do. Let him propose away – just go ahead and pass what we believe is best and let it land on his desk. Once the reforms are there, he’ll have to do something. For the first time in his life he’ll have to take concrete action that he can’t blame on anyone else. He’ll hate it. It will be wonderful

We did very well in 2014. The 2016 electorate will be different – it will be more Democrat friendly, no matter how bad things are going for Obama and the Democrats by then. But it will not be insurmountably Democrat. A program of clear, easy to understand reforms which will directly benefit the American people will show us as the party of the people – and allow our 2016 nominee to campaign on a reform platform against eight years of Obama failure, and the prospect of an Obama Third Term if the Democrats win. This is not the sure path to victory, but it is the path to victory. Let’s go ahead and take it.

Open Thread… What Happens Next? Or……. Massive Gloating Open Thread!

tiredoflibbs13 Comments

To start, I believe Obame will push his executive order for amnesty. He has nothing to lose now. Then the Senate Democrats will remove the nuclear option from the Senate – a 60 vote majority to end the filibuster. Remember, we have to “protect the voting rights of the minority party”. Your thoughts and predictions.

Gloating?

Let’s see what comes to mind…..

“We won, you lost. Get over it!”

“I won, you lost. Deal with it.”

“They could come along for the ride, but they would have to sit in the back.”

on and on and on…..

Now, again, they speak of “bipartisanship”, “cooperation” and “working together” – they were not interested when they held the majorities of both houses and even only the Senate.  Amazing what happens after their policies put them in the predicament they find themselves in.

Also…. both environmental and gun control candidates lose big – both victories for common sense and the 2nd Amendment!

2014 Mid-Terms (RED WAVE!!!!) Open Thread

Mark Noonan21 Comments

Ok, so here we go – the Big Day. Or, as Democrats have put it over the last couple days: The Day The Racist, Sexist, Homophobic GOP Doesn’t Really Win Because We Never Cared About This Election, Anyways. So There!

Will it be a blow out? Not sure. The thing to look for if that is happening is a late call in Virginia and/or a Brown win in New Hampshire – if that happens, then things are going rather well for the GOP. Here’s What I think will happen:

The GOP will win on election night the Senate contests in West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana, Iowa, Colorado. Arkansas and Alaska. We’ll eventually win Georgia and Louisiana, as well, but both of those might go to a run-off. I’ll go out on a small limb and say we survive in Kansas, though the bogus “Independent” Orman might be able to eke out a win as the Republican Governor of Kansas loses, and thus drags down the whole GOP ticket in that State. For those doing the quick math, that means on election night, even with a Kansas loss, the GOP gets to 51 Senators – 53 once the run-offs are done, and Georgia just might be decided on election night. Given that the GOP will almost certainly win an outright majority on election night, even Orman might decide that he likes the GOP just fine for caucusing purposes.

There is still, by the way, a realistic chance for the GOP to pad its total if we pull out the win in North Carolina and surge to victory in New Hampshire. NC is real tight and could go either way while for all of Brown’s vigorous campaign, New Hampshire is further out of reach…but a big GOP wave, if it really shows up, could drag both those States into our column. That happens and after all is said and done, the GOP comes away from Campaign 2014 with 55 Senate seats. A 10 seat gain would be astonishing, but Democrats will still claim it means nothing and now we’re all Ready for Hillary!

For the House, I’m thinking 244 is the eventual GOP total – though a big GOP wave could get the Republicans up to as high as 250.

Governorships – its a bad year for us: we’re pretty sure of losing Kansas, and absolutely sure of losing Pennsylvania. We might also come up short in Florida and even Michigan is looking a little iffy. Walker will win in Wisconsin – and thus make himself the logical choice for the GOP nomination in 2016. State legislatures will fall our way, but the only prediction I’ll make is the Nevada State Senate going GOP – the others I just don’t know enough about (and there’s an outside chance that the GOP will win the Nevada Assembly, as well, though that is longish-shot…but Governor Sandoval has done a great job of rebuilding the GOP in Nevada…I figured him for a run against Reid in 2016, but word I’ve heard is that he’d rather have bleach poured into his eyes than be a Senator…so, he’ll either angle for a VP slot or he might shock everyone by tossing his hat into the Presidential ring).

What do you think will happen?

UPDATE: John Hindraker gives us all a downer to start our day:

…Mitt Romney’s pollsters were famously wrong in 2012. They thought Mitt was going to win because they failed to foresee how extraordinarily effective the Democrats’ ground game would be; therefore, they underestimated Democratic turnout. The great unknown in this year’s election is, how many Democrats will the party be able to drive to the polls, notwithstanding that Obama is not on the ballot and things have gone poorly for the administration and for Senate Democrats over the last two years? The reality is that no pollster knows the answer to that question…

Everything does depend on who actually shows up to vote – we do have some good indicators in early voting that lots of GOPers are showing up, not quite so many Democrats. But this is now Election Day, and if the Democrats have their GOTV on warp drive, things can come out very different from what the polls say. We’ll just have to wait and see.

UPDATE II: Just wow! Happy dance. Might get to 54!

A 680 Member House of Representatives?

Mark Noonan

It is, at least, proposed:

The American public’s dislike of Congress is far from a new development in US politics. However, over the past few years the situation has gotten even worse with public approval of this institution hovering around historic lows.

The vast majority of citizens in this country think most members of Congress have lost touch with the people and don’t represent their interests. There are not many simple answers to remedy this problem but one change that might help bring members of Congress closer to the people is to increase the size of the US House of Representatives to 680 members.
One hundred years at 435 seats

For almost a century the House has consisted of 435 members. This seemingly permanent fixture of American politics often obscures the reality that during the first century of the country’s existence the House was increased almost every ten years after its original size of 65 members was established…

Of course, I’ve been yammering on about this for years. Over at Hot Air, Jazz Shaw reviews the proposal and counters with the idea that it might be better if we just got to some hard-to-game redistricting system. This is a good idea, but I’ve been advised since I was a teenager – and first got a bit outraged at gerrymandering – that there is no system which can’t be gamed by people with the right amount of shamelessness and dishonesty (ie, the general run of any political class).

We do, however, need to do something – quite clearly, regardless of which party is in power, the government and it’s attendant Ruling Class is entirely disinterested in the fate of the American people, and when it gets into the hands of the actually baleful (ie, the Obama Administration), the results can be rather catastrophic. To me, there isn’t just One Answer – there has to be a complete reworking of the system. In service of this, trying to make a harder-than-usual-to-game districting system is a good idea, but we also need to increase the size of the House (my preference these days is for 651 members) because a House member should be (a) someone who can actually be in touch with his constituents and (b), potentially, be someone who can run for the office on a shoestring relative to the cost of a Senate or gubernatorial office. But with redistricting and increasing the size of the House, term limits are a requirement or we’re just spinning our wheels. But here’s the part that will make a lot of people stop in shock – term limits just in the sense of saying “Congresscritter, you can’t be in office after Date X” isn’t good enough. Term limits must also include a prohibition against obtaining a different federal elective or appointive office for a period of time after leaving the current office. I’d say five years is a good time frame. You’re a Representative and coming to the end of your term limit (I’d limit House members to four, two-year terms) – see ya in five years. Until that time has passed, you can’t run for President or Senate, nor be appointed to a federal judgeship, nor take a position within the Executive Branch of government (five years it to make it unlikely in most cases that a person who leaves office will be able to be rewarded with a new federal office by gift of a grateful President). Yes, this does mean that a sitting Senator or such won’t be able to be selected for the Cabinet by the President – this, right there, would have spared us both Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of State Kerry; it also would have spared us President Obama. It would not, however, have spared us President Lincoln nor President Reagan – and for you liberals, it still would have allowed President Roosevelt and President Wilson.

But we can’t stop there. We need to go further and further into this, I’m afraid. We need more States. 50 just doesn’t cut it – especially since at least a dozen of them are not really States, but two or more States rather mashed together as the States were created in the 19th century – when national population wasn’t a third of its current level and the new States, especially, were largely empty of people and hadn’t had time to develope into organic politico-economic units. As I’ve said again and again, just in my State of Nevada it is starkly clear that the northern part of the State is vastly different in needs and outlook from the southern part. There is no reason that the people of Winnemucca should have to put up, for instance, with a Senator or governor elected on the strength of voters in Las Vegas – and vice-versa. Having more States would ensure that the State government are really representative of the people of the State rather than being representative of the large population centers within the States – it would make it so that Senators, especially, represent their States, rather than select special interests within the States (California’s Senators, for instance, are the merest tools of the monied interests in San Francisco and Los Angeles – the rest of the State has, in practical terms, no representation in the United States Senate).

It is, as we have seen, enormously difficult to maintain a democratic Republic – but part of our difficulty is that a great deal of power is held by a very small group of people representing only very narrow interests – and they can do this because the way our system is set up combined with the way our nation has developed from 3 million people on the east coast to 317 million people spread out of over 3 million square miles has allowed too much power to aggregate in just a few areas. California, Texas, Florida and New York have power far in excess of their aliquot portion because they carry far too much weight in Presidential and Senatorial elections…but, worse than that, all four of the States garner their power from just a few metropolitan areas – New York from New York City, California from Los Angeles and San Francisco, eg; in other words, the powerful in those States are wielding power they haven’t properly earned from the totality of the people within the States, because they can safely ignore a lot of the people as long as they please the particular people in the large, urban areas…and then take that excess, unearned power and apply it to the rest of the country. Breaking up the sources of power will allow more people access to the power – and thus to have a say in how things shall and shall not be done. In a democratic republic, political health is only possible if the largest possible number of people and interests have a say in governing. It does, of course, make for lumbering, slow and contentious government, but that is the only way to safety for a people wishing to remain free. It must be that we have to ask everyone’s brother for permission before we move – that way we have the best chance (though still not perfect, of course) of ensuring that national policy reflects the overall desires of the American people.

So, redistricting reform; term limits, increase the size of the House, increase the number of States. That has to be the ultimate plan for the political reform of the United States – if we don’t do this, then we will, as I said, be spinning our wheels. Those who have power right now will not want to give it up – and if the GOP wins on Tuesday, as everyone expects, then all you’ll see is the Ruling Class turning itself to the task of co-opting the new GOP powers-that-be, to ensure that they stay on board with things as they are (this is what killed the GOP revolution of 1994 – eventually, the GOP was captured by the system; for all the reformist zeal of the Class of ’94, they failed to recognize that only fundamental reforms will do – anything less than that, and the Ruling Class will eventually re-conquer).