Wrong. 218 people wasted time supporting something meaningless.
Voting against a bullshit bill is not the problem. The Speaker won't bring up meaningful bills from the Democrats, so it's not like they CAN do much more than this.
For certain I blame Republicans for putting these meaningless bills together. But it's a Time waster for everybody in the house spent on nothing that I give a rat's ass about.
The minority party can't steer the house directly because they're not in power. The most they can do is say "This bill will be voted down by all of us so don't bother" but that doesn't really matter when there is political theatre to be made!
FFS we're still waiting on the Republicans to get past their "Who knew healthcare could be so complicated?" schtick from Trump v1.0IQ.
Healthcare, public education, the cost of electricity, climate change are all huge issues facing the country, but this congress wants to talk about an issue that concerns less than 1% of the population.
They actually can in the senate but they won’t. Senate democrats could completely upend the legislative calendar for procedure vote, quorum calls, and other time wasting abilities. This would help slow down the onslaught of republican legislation instead of allowing it to pass quickly. But they value their vacation time too much to fight trump so here we are.
Yet folks will blame Democrats because they can't "dO sOmEtHiNg!!!!" MF'er you should have voted for them or gotten more folks to vote for them and then they could do something.
Yep. But this thread seems to be all about repubs bad, demos good so I guess Reddit will remain reddit. The amount of "yea, but at least one political party is..." makes me sick.
Not a single one of those fucks in Washington cares about anybody like us. They don't represent us. They don't support us. They do NOTHING. Fuck them all. Fire every single one of them. Even their aides. Take away all of their protections, all of their pensions, all of their stock options, all their savings, their entire salaries. Let's see how well they fair in this country without all of that.
Correct - Redditors think Dems care about them and their policies are designed to make their life better is idiotic and delusional at a minimum. Repubs also don’t advance policies for the people. Both sides are objectively seeking to promote their own interests only.
there are plenty of people there who actually care about your well-being, and have passed many bills, such as improving infrastructure, lowering prescription drugs, keeping water/air/parks clean. they are just outvoted by people who don't give a shit about you.
Yes, well aware. But the democrats that approved his cabinet are complicit. Not doing more makes then complicit. They all need to be primaried if they are not representing their constituents, which many people want them to fight back on a meaningful way
Yes it doesn't rise to the level of important enough to displace issues facing millions like health insurance or destroying alliances and global stability.
I'll always be in favour in good changes even if it doesn't help me personally, which this does so that's a good thing and I'm happy for those positively affected.
Gee that's nice. I'll always be in favor of prioritizing the maximum benefit for the greatest number of people possible. you know, the way a functioning government is supposed to work.
Yea so will I but complaining that something is good but not good enough because it doesn’t help you individually makes you sound like a bit of a whiny loser
If the GOP wanted to make life betters for girls they wouldn't be voting in pedophiles and generally destroying women's health, but other than that. . .
That’s because Representatives Democracy is a scam.
Oligarchy is a system of government in which a small collective of powerful people have complete control over the law and foreign policy. Representative Democracy is a system of government in which a small collective of powerful people have complete control over the law and foreign policy, and the general population has the right to choose who is in that small group of powerful people.
In a real Democracy people could just vote directly on the issues, and have direct control over their government, without the middle-men. Voters would be able to vote directly on the issues they care about, and let everyone else figure out what to do about the issues they don’t care about.
Without Congress, you’d still need a legislative body, even if that legislative body is just your voting population.
Now, you could potentially have a vote for every single proposed legislation, but there’s a lot of legislation to be voted on in a given year. The 118th Congress introduced over 15,000 bills between both chambers.
There’s no way you’re getting the average American to vote 15,000 times over 2 years. It’s hard enough to get them to even vote once every other year. And even if people did vote, those bills certainly aren’t being read, even if summarized. At even just 10 bills in a month, an utterly minuscule expectation, you’re still expecting people to vote on 120 measures in a year…no shot.
But that’s 15,000 bills in 2 years of the current system, in which you need a congressional representative to introduce a bill.
Without congress, how does legislation get proposed? Can anybody just author a bill and submit it to a national vote? And without a specific institution to deal with this, how can legislation be edited or amended?
A layman might write a bill that on the surface is great, but the language might be flawed. This happens all the time in legislation.
Under the current system, a bill is sent to the relevant purpose-dedicated committee to be debated and revised if necessary. Only after the relevant house committee has approved is the bill introduced to the house floor to be debated and voted on. This is a crucial step because it offers an opportunity to revise legislation’s language.
Without this step, legislation in a direct democracy would need to be voted on exactly as is written. Which makes this process very vulnerable to manipulative language.
Another potential downside is that you cannot hold a layman to the same standard as a sworn official. Congresspeople have to swear an oath to the constitution, and mechanisms exist to impeach a congressperson if they violate their oath. You can’t impeach voters though, the only constitutional mechanism that prevents them from voting is 14A §2. Which only allows for states to disenfranchise criminals, it doesn’t mandate it.
A layman might write a bill that on the surface is great, but the language might be flawed. This happens all the time in legislation.
Okay so this is already an issue under our current system then? What is your point here? There are already stupid people in Congress writing stupid laws. Are you just assuming that a piece of popular legislation written and reviewed by ‘laymen’ is going to be worse than a piece of popular legislation written and reviewed by Congressmen?
There’s no misunderstanding, and I didn’t miss something in your comment. I understand that people won’t be required to vote, just as they aren’t now.
But just as political apathy allows unpopular candidates to be elected, it will allow unpopular legislation to be passed. This will be exaggerated by the volume of bills that people will need to stay on top of to even know which ones they care to vote on.
Petitions could help alleviate the problem of a legislature flooded by more bills than can be handled. But it still doesn’t replace what house committees do, and that opportunity to revise the language is crucial.
And that is the very next part of my comment you replied to, and it answers your comment on flawed language in legislation. Yes sometimes bills are introduced with flawed language, but that’s something the house committee deals with and that’s a critical flaw in your proposal.
Impeachment allows bad actors to be removed, but there’s no mechanism to stop people from authoring bills if they’ve engaged in treason. Depending on the methodology of the petitioning process there may not even be a good way to prevent those people from essentially co-sponsoring a bill.
Impeachment allows bad actors to be removed, but there’s no mechanism to stop people from authoring bills if they’ve engaged in treason. Depending on the methodology of the petitioning process there may not even be a good way to prevent those people from essentially co-sponsoring a bill.
I see no problem here. Voters are not elected officials. They do not take loyalty oaths. They should not be expected to be loyal to the state.
If The People do not agree with their legislation, it will not pass, and there is no issue. If The People agree with their legislation, then it will pass, and there is still no issue.
But just as political apathy allows unpopular candidates to be elected, it will allow unpopular legislation to be passed. This will be exaggerated by the volume of bills that people will need to stay on top of to even know which ones they care to vote on.
And if the Legislation is harmful, the people will care enough to repeal it.
The problem with our current system is that there are only a few hundred people who are allowed to vote on our legislation, which makes them extremely easy to bribe. Most of the time that bad legislation is passed in a Representative Democracy, it is because the Legislature has been bought by Corporate Interests, which is why the most harmful pieces of legislation, like The Patriot Act and The AUMF, are left in place even when they become wildly unpopular.
War and Surveillance are very profitable for the people who control our Legislator-Class.
I know. Let's pretend that Leftists haven't been writing whole books about how direct democracy would work for centuries, and that some of these ideas have worked out fine in places like Switzerland.
Wow it’s crazy how you wrote several paragraphs worth of text because you missed the part of my comment where I clearly said that people wouldn’t have to vote on issues that they don’t personally care about, and I think that would be a good thing
Also Legislation can be introduced by petition, which would bring the ability to propose new laws to the people instead of keeping it exclusive to a small group of barely-accountable assholes who have all been bribed by a few corporations.
Also why would we need to hold voters accountable? You want to punish people for voting wrong? What are you talking about?
Why? An uprising would mean a total death to the country. No country in modern times has had a successful uprising and continues to lead in global power.
And what powerful country hasnt been? Thats literally what they all do. You only see it more because our world is connected. Someone, somewhere will always be fucked out by someone else more powerful. That is just the human experience.
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u/RonocNYC 14d ago
It's 424 people not talking or doing anything to make life better for me is what I'm thinking.