WHO WILL WIN IN NOVEMBER?

Ah, I think I recognize the tone...

Freeduck,
please ignore that fool.
We all know who that is,and we were having an interesting,intelligent discussion until he came along and started being an idiot.
Lets just continue the discussion and pretend he isnt here.

No problem.

Just to reiterate, my issue with a line item veto is a constitutional one. If the constitution explicitly spells out how legislation should be passed then I don't think we can or should change that just because the weiners we keep electing can't control their spending or won't veto excessive spending because it makes them look bad. I don't like or support pork, but I feel strongly that we need to stick to what's left of our constitution.

How many times has the Constitution been amended?
Why cant there be a constitutional amendment that would allow for the line item veto?

Giving the nitwit Bush a line-item veto should scare the hell out of everyone.

What is amazing to me is that the Reps are still not saying a word about balancing the budget. They act like we can continue forever borrowing 19 cents out of every dollar spent. And this is done in light of the baby boomers hitting retirement.

But, they feel, we must continue to give tax cuts to the super rich.

I am not advocating just giving it to Bush.
I am advocating giving it to EVERY President.

There can be.

But there won't be.

Cycloptichorn

Mysteryman, I think you are making a cogent argument and I appreciate your consistancy (that you would accept it for presidents of any stripe).

I think that the presidency already has too much power. The line-item veto shifts the balance of power even further toward the president.

I also suspect that since it keeps Congress people from working out compromises (since the president can sign only half of a conpromise) it will lead to an even more polarized Congress.

Checks and balances are a good thing... even though they sometimes lead to inefficiency. With the yahoos we often get in all branches of government inefficiency is not always a bad thing.

What about just giving Congress the line-item decision?

Because I agree - this add-on thing is one of the very most baffling things about US politics to me. How completely unrelated things are snuck into bills that have nothing whatsoever to do with it. Costly pork stuff for individual Congressmen's backyards. Or symbolic ideologized stuff, which can then also be neatly used to sink rivals in future election campaigns ("you voted against soldiers' body armor" - never mind that he did so because they attached, say, an add-on about gay marriage to it or something.)

The whole thing stinks. It also strikes me as somehow counter to the whole concept of democracy. A democracy is a system where government decisions are subject to the vote of people's representatives. The add-on system is basically a way to escape that vote - add some minor thing that the people nor their representatives would ever vote for to some larger, more popular bill, so it cant be rejected.

Plus, you get all these elections where people re-elect their Congressman because he has a position on this or that Committee and can then "bring home the bacon", rather than because they agree with his views or because he's a good guy. The whole thing breeds corruption.

And by allowing all kinds of things that people wouldnt ever have voted for into bills through these wheeling-dealing ways after all, it also promotes this mood of disaffection / disempowerment from politics among voters - also the plague for democracy.

Why not just let Congress vote on each separate proposal - judging each on its own merits, like you'd expect them to be able to? Rather than forcing it to accept a lot of crap just not to sink the important main thing - or vice versa, to reject something good because of the nonsense they've added to it?

I mean, I think thats how it works in most all other countries no? Like when British parliament - I think it was the Lords - accepted a security bill but threw out, specifically, the provision that would allow police to hold suspects for up to 72 hours without a warrant?

Jeez, think about how much work it would require to do this!

I mean, they would have to start coming in three, maybe even four days out of the week instead of the usual two!

Cycloptichorn

This is of course old fashion thinking, but I'll post it again anyway.



Maybe the proper question is not whether to amend the Constitution to provide a line item veto. Maybe the proper question is enforcement of the Constitution as currently amended (27 times).



Do the contents of earmarks that give money away to various government and private organizations "provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States?"

I don't think so!

Chris Buckley is a smart guy. Here is his take.




LET'S QUIT WHILE WE'RE BEHIND

By Christopher Buckley (son of William F. Buckley)

>>>"The trouble with our times," Paul Valéry said, "is that the future is not
>>>what it used to be."
>>>
>>>This glum aperçu has been much with me as we move into the home stretch of
>>>the 2006 mid-term elections and shimmy into the starting gates of the
>>>2008
>>>presidential campaign. With heavy heart, as a once-proud-indeed,
>>>staunch-
>>>Republican, I here admit, behind enemy lines, to the guilty hope that my
>>>party loses; on both occasions.
>>>
>>>I voted for George W. Bush in 2000. In 2004, I could not bring myself to
>>>pull the same lever again. Neither could I bring myself to vote for John
>>>Kerry, who, for all his strengths, credentials, and talent, seems very
>>>much
>>>less than the sum of his parts. So, I wrote in a vote for George Herbert
>>>Walker Bush, for whom I worked as a speechwriter from 1981 to '83. I
>>>wish he'd won.
>>>
>>>Bob Woodward asked Bush 43 if he had consulted his father before
>>>invading
>>>Iraq. The son replied that he had consulted "a higher father." That
>>>frisson
>>>you feel going up your spine is the realization that he meant it. And
>>>apparently the higher father said, "Go for it!" There are those of us
>>>who
>>>wish he had consulted his terrestrial one; or, if he couldn't get him
>>>on the
>>>line, Brent Scowcroft. Or Jim Baker. Or Henry Kissinger. Or, for that
>>>matter, anyone who has read a book about the British experience in Iraq.
>>>(18,000 dead.)
>>>
>>>Anyone who has even a passing personal acquaintance of Bush 41 knows
>>>him to be, roughly speaking, the most decent, considerate, humble, and
>>>cautious man on the planet. Also, the most loving parent on earth. What a wrench it
>>>must be for him to pick up his paper every morning and read the now-daily
>>>debate
>>>about whether his son is officially the worst president in U.S. history.
>>>(That chuckling you hear is the ghost of James Buchanan.) To paraphrase
>>>another president, I feel 41's pain. Does 43 feel 41's? Does he, I
>>>wonder,feel ours?
>>>
>>>There were some of us who scratched our heads in 2000 when we first
>>>heard the phrase "compassionate conservative." It had a cobbled-together,
>>>tautological, dare I say, Rovian aroma to it. But OK, we thought, let's
>>>give it a chance. It sounded more fun than Gore's "Prosperity for America's
>>>Families." (Bo-ring.)
>>>
>>>Six years later, the White House uses the phrase about as much as it
>>>does "Mission Accomplished." Six years of record deficits and profligate
>>>expansion of entitlement programs. Incompetent expansion, at that: The
>>>actual cost of the President's Medicare drug benefit turned out, within
>>>months of being enacted, to be roughly one-third more than the stated
>>>price.
>>>Weren't Republicans supposed to be the ones who were good at
>>>accounting? All
>>>those years on Wall Street calculating CEO compensation....
>>>
>>>Who knew, in 2000, that "compassionate conservatism" meant bigger
>>>government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in
>>>personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster
>>>relief?
>>>Who knew, in 2000, that the only bill the president would veto, six
>>>years
>>>later, would be one on funding stem-cell research?
>>>
>>>A more accurate term for Mr. Bush's political philosophy might be
>>>incontinent conservatism.
>>>
>>>On Capitol Hill, a Republican Senate and House are now distinguished
>>>by-or
>>>perhaps even synonymous with-earmarks, the K Street Project, Randy
>>>Cunningham (bandit, 12 o'clock high!), Sen. Ted Stevens's $250-million
>>>Bridge to Nowhere, Jack Abramoff (Who? Never heard of him), and a Senate
>>>Majority Leader who declared, after conducting his own medical
>>>evaluation
>>>via videotape, that he knew every bit as much about the medical
>>>condition of
>>>Terry Schiavo as her own doctors and husband. Who knew that conservatism
>>>means barging into someone's hospital room like Dr. Frankenstein with
>>>defibrillator paddles? In what chapter of Hayek's The Road to Serfdom or
>>>Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind is that principle enunciated?
>>>
>>>The Republican Party I grew up into-Dwight D. Eisenhower, William F.
>>>Buckley
>>>Jr., Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon (sigh), Ronald Reagan-stood for
>>>certain
>>>things. It did not always live up to its ideals. Au contraire, as we
>>>Republicans said in the pre-Dominique de Villepin era-often, it fell
>>>flat on
>>>its face. A self-proclaimed "conservative," Nixon kept the Great Society
>>>entitlement beast fat and happy and brought in wage and price controls.
>>>Reagan funked Social Security reform in 1983 and raised (lesser) taxes
>>>three
>>>times. He vowed to balance the budget, and drove the deficit to historic
>>>highs by failing to rein in government spending. Someone called it
>>>"Voodoo
>>>economics." You could Google it.
>>>There were foreign misadventures, terrible ones: Vietnam (the '69-'75
>>>chapters), Beirut, Iran-Contra, the Saddam Hussein tilt. But there were
>>>compensating triumphs: Eisenhower's refusal to bail out France in
>>>Indochina
>>>in 1954, Nixon's China opening, the Cold War victory.
>>>
>>>Despite the failures, one had the sense that the party at least knew in
>>>its
>>>heart of hearts that these were failures, either of principle or
>>>execution.
>>>Today one has no sense, aside from a slight lowering of the
>>>swagger-mometer,
>>>that the president or the Republican Congress is in the least bit
>>>chastened
>>>by their debacles.
>>>
>>>George Tenet's WMD "slam-dunk," Vice President Cheney's "we will be
>>>greeted as liberators," Don Rumsfeld's avidity to promulgate a minimalist
>>>military doctrine, together with the tidy theories of a group who call themselves
>>>"neo-conservative" (not one of whom, to my knowledge, has ever worn a
>>>military uniform), have thus far: de-stabilized the Middle East;
>>>alienated the world community from the United States; empowered North Korea,
>>>Iran, and Syria; unleashed sectarian carnage in Iraq among tribes who have been
>>>cutting each others' throats for over a thousand years; cost the lives
>>>of
>>>2,600 Americans, and the limbs, eyes, organs, spinal cords of another
>>>15,000-with no end in sight. But not to worry: Democracy is on the
>>>march in
>>>the Middle East. Just ask Hamas. And the neocons-bright people, all-are
>>>now
>>>clamoring, "On to Tehran!"
>>>
>>>What have they done to my party? Where does one go to get it back?
>>>One place comes to mind: the back benches. It's time for a time-out.
>>>Time to
>>>hand over this sorry enchilada to Hillary and Nancy Pelosi and Joe
>>>Biden and
>>>Charlie Rangel and Harry Reid, who has the gift of being able to induce
>>>sleep in 30 seconds. Or, with any luck, to Mark Warner or, what the
>>>heck, Al Gore. I'm not much into polar bears, but this heat wave has me thinking
>>>the man might be on to something.
>>>
>>>My fellow Republicans, it is time, as Madison said in Federalist 76, to
>>>"Hand over the tiller of governance, that others may **** things up for
>>>a change."
>>>
>>>(Or was it Federalist 78?)

There are a lot of flaws in the constitution. One is the current veto power vesting in the president. It gives the president far too much power, and is anti-democratic.

The original intention--I think it a damn good intention--was to establish a representative republic that would protect the minority against the majority, and protect the majority against the minority. It was never intended to be a pure democracy wherein a majority always rules. In a pure democracy, a majority can take the property of a minority, and a minority can take ... its ... lumps.

Hmmmm ... Yes, a reasonable argument can be made that the USA is evolving rapidly toward the day it shall become a pure democracy.

In addition to several earlier Federalists, Hamilton wrote Federalists 65 through 85! He said nothing about quiting when you're behind.

Tough choice: shall we vote for the psychotic Democrats or the neurotic Republicans?

I advocate the neurotic Republicans, they're a little bit more controllable.

Ican- Haloween is coming and do you know what is really scary? The prospect of having the Jesse Jackson clones, Conyers- who has pressed for "reparations "for Blacks all his life and Rangel, who never met a tax hike he did not like and the queen of her disrtict- Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House--Gay Marriage here we come.

That is only a sample of what can happen on Nov. 7th. Rangel and Conyers who would head key committees are bitter African-Americans who are just itching to get even with whitey and Nancy Pelosi will defend her gays to the death.

Ican, how does the veto power protect the minority against the majority?

Here ia how it protects the minority from the majority. You should have learned this long ago in Poly. Sci. Class. You were probab ly out demonstrating so you missed the class.


If a Senate voted to take away essential civil rights, an honest and moral president like Bill Clinton would veto the bill. The Constitutionm, which you probably have never read, allows the Senate to override the veto with a two thirds majority. That would mean that the vast bulk of the Senate was in favor of the bill and that even those who usually protected the minority were not, in this instance, going to stop until they passed the bill. If you know anything about the Veto power as used by presidents, yyoou know that when a president vetos a bill,it usually dies.

A line item veto would provide another avenue for a president to exercise undue control over congress. He could and I have little doubt would veto all those items that favor his political enemies and allow to stand all those of his political allies.
If congress wasn't rife with political hacks and corrupt congress people they would do the right thing and do away with the pork laden system called earmarks.