"...I'm still shopping for a candidate and I'm looking for one who appreciates the checks and balances of a healthy democracy."
-(Mary)
You will be 'shopping' for a very long time.
America as now constitued can never not elect a candidate who is not an out right fascist or a Neo fascist, despite appearences to the contrary.
Until America has for starters, a new Constitution, built from the ground up and a Parlimentary system of goverance-your system will resemble nothing so much as a clown's parade at a bad circus.
Posted by Jill Bains at July 6, 2007 05:56 PMWhat has happened is that we no longer have a government with a separation of powers, but instead have a government with a separation of parties.
Congressional Repubs especially refuse to understand that their first allegiance is to protect the powers and prerogatives of their branch, not protect the power of their party and their president. It seems to me that the old Dem Congress, voted out and destroyed completely in 1993, understood that fairly well, and rode herd over presidents of both parties for many decades.
Today's Repubs simply refuse, and would rather kowtow to their executive "leader". And thus our ramshackle, out of date constitution, balky and difficult to operate at the best of times, has simply failed. It's flat on its back.
What Jill B writes is harsh in-your-face truth. The problem is that we aren't ever, ever, ever going to (re)build the constitution from the ground up. So we (and she) are stuck with it. If you think women's sufferage was a long, tough row to hoe, try building a movement to scrap the constitution and replace it with a parliamentary system. The sea will have swallowed Florida long before you have your first interview on CBS.
That means we better damn well understand how to make our elected clowns run a competent circus, where the rings have proper acts in them and the elephant shit is swept up frequently. And we better understand that Repubs are drunken, crooked ringmasters who are looking to run off with the week's proceeds and the tattooed man's teenage daughter while the acts are toiling away before the crowd.
And if that's fascism, then (again) we're stuck with it.
Posted by euzoius at July 6, 2007 08:02 PMn the words of Frank Herbert:
Power doesn't corrupt but it does attract the corruptible.
Sorry, you will never limit The Mad King, idiot son of Georgee, and his out of control power, Prince Sparkle Pelosi even says so:
"It's not really that she doesn't think Congress couldn't succeed in impeaching Bush and/or Cheney. It's that trying to do that would interfere with her only real goal-getting herself and her Democratic colleagues re-elected."
Uhhhhh...I'll vote anything but Dem the next election. I really don't care if Mengele is on the Independent ticket. I don't care if I have to vote Fred fucking Thompson. FUCK the Dems.
Posted by phidipides at July 6, 2007 09:38 PM"Presidential power has been growing through the past sixty years..."
Or since the National Security Act (of 1947). What. A. Coincidence.
By the way, next up is the FY '08 DOD Authorization. Oink. Oink. Oink.
The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation is a good place to start getting this behemoth's number. Pelosi, Reid & Co will add Iraq measures.
This'll be a good opportunity for us publics “to insist that Congress vigorously defends its own prerogatives and holds the executive branch accountable” and “that Congress holds oversight hearings, that Congress demands information, and that Congress doesn't delegate.”
We also need to come up with a better way to sustain aggregate demand.
Phidipides, you may be onto something. Just as Pelosi told BushEtAl that impeachment was off da table and he felt free to speed up his loco-motive of criminality, so should we progressive folks let da Dems know it ain't a free ride, mebbe we'll just stay home next election if they are so determined to present us with a deaf ear (even as they reach out to us palm-upward).
Like it was said recently somewhere, we really need the gummint to be scared of the people, not the other way around. That's what we have now, and you see who is getting the shaft.
Posted by Sharon at July 7, 2007 06:27 AMWe are supposed to fix the problem of excessive presidential power by urging the public to "support Congress in its efforts to make substantive policy"?
Are you serious? The "public" is under the influence of, for example, Fox News. Furthermore, I see no signs that anyone in government is taking anything "the public" says seriously.
This sounds like one of those "voluntary compliance" programs. "The public" is supposed to voluntarily "support" the Congress?
On this one, I am in agreement with Jill Bains. We need a full Constitutional overhaul, and a parliamentary system of some kind would likely give the best results.
In the British system, remember, Parliament can override the P.M. at any time if the members of Parliament decide that the P.M. is overreaching. They don't do that very often, because the majority party in Parliament is always the party of the P.M., but it certainly does happen. In fact, that's how elections are typically called: by a vote against the P.M. in Parliament -- meaning that the P.M. has lost the confidence of his/her own party.
Jill Bains, please correct my very likely errors in the above.
Posted by Ralph at July 7, 2007 10:09 AM"The problem is that we aren't ever, ever, ever going to (re)build the constitution from the ground up."
Euzoius, such rebuilding usually takes place only when an existing system of government breaks down entirely. This can happen in various ways, all of them involving political chaos in one form or another, or else a full conquest by another nation.
Either way, the change is forced on the country in question. When the time comes, there will be no alternative.
That scenario becomes increasingly likely by the day now. If we see a standoff between Congress, the Executive, and the Courts, with no way of resolving it -- for example, if the Bush regime announces that in future it will no longer obey any decisions of the other two branches, our existing Constitutional system stops functioning right then and there. It is effectively finished.
A new overall system of government, maybe another Constitution, maybe a dictatorship of some kind, then has to be constructed from the ground up. There is simply no alternative at that point.
Posted by Ralph at July 7, 2007 10:24 AMInterestingly, there are people in this country who have been working for a long time to replace a Constitution: try these folks in Alabama. They are on the ground doing it -- and Washington isn't as different from Alabama as we might assume.
Sure this is sort of a joke comment -- except I want to point out that we do have to ground our outrage a little more.
Posted by janinsanfran at July 7, 2007 11:28 AMRalph, thanks for your thoughts.
I wonder if even in the face of complete governmental breakdown a consensus would form that the constitution and democratic structure needed an overhaul. My feeling is that we can no longer reform ourselves, and am unsure what would happen in the face of complete political chaos. Authoritarian Dictatorship would be far more likely than a "recommitment" to democracy, IMO.
Bush already ignore the decisions of the Congress (see the Iraq funding bill and the refusal to abide by subpeonas) and he essentially ignores the orders of the Supreme Court (years go by before decsions against him are "implemented", like his illegal military commissions). The people seem not to care very much.
I think upwards of 90% of the population think that the constitution is the greatest form of government yet conceived by man, its inability to provide any meaningful social progress for the last 25 years of "conservatism" notwithstanding. And don't forget that 35% of the population (the Bushist deadenders) could never conceive of accepting any type of visionary change and would fight anyone proposing it to the death.
Hence, our doom, foolishly ushered in by the nation's retarded "conservatives".
Posted by euzoius at July 7, 2007 02:28 PMRather than throw the baby out with the bath water, what we really need is for people to do their god damned jobs.
Now, how to do that is the kicker. I think we need to do a lot less doom and gloom, and a lot more actionable items. I hear Cindy Sheehan is planning on running against Nancy Pelosi if she doesn't start impeachment proceedings in 2 weeks.
Mind you, I don't subscribe to the they're all corrupt ravings of some, Speaker Pelosi has a lot of constraints on what she can and can't do, but that doesn't mean she can't LEAD.
If you all let her know why you support Sheehan, and support her with those almighty talking dollars, maybe she'll get the message. Or not.
Posted by Duckman GR at July 8, 2007 09:36 PM