| Title | Post Boost | Reach | Like | Comments | Shares | Clicks | Hide | Hideall | Cost | Topic |
| Getting to 60 in 2018 | 2017-12-28 | 69 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 2 | democracy | ||
| Biennial Affirmation of Elected Federal Officials | 2017-12-04 | 9 | - | democracy | ||||||
| Comment: "I suggest recalls from the State | 2017-12-03 | 8 | - | 2 | democracy |
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========== Getting to 60 in 2018 The Senate requires 60 votes to pass most legislation - the recent tax bill was passed with 51 votes under a process called reconciliation which imposes quite a few limits on what can be passed. The website get-to-sixty.net argues that the Senate should have started over on the tax bill and worked to get at least 30 Republican and 30 Democratic votes. Too late for that now, but what's next for the period Jan 3 - Nov 6 2018? Here's some suggestions: Continuing resolutions are required to keep the government running when Congress can't pass a budget, which is most of the time. No good purpose is served by unpredictable temporary shutdowns and restarts of government services. As a general principle of good government, continuing resolutions should not address any other matters. Republicans and Democrats alike are fond of using continuing resolutions as leverage for other matters, but it's bad government when the Republicans do it and bad government when the Democrats do it. So don't do it. Less frequently, resolutions are required to raise the Federal debt limit. No good purpose is served by veering toward default on US Government obligations. As a general principle of good government, debt ceiling resolutions should not address any other matters. Republicans and Democrats alike are fond of using debt ceiling resolutions as leverage for other matters, but it's bad government when the Republicans do it and bad government when the Democrats do it. So don't do it. So for these two categories, Democrats and Republicans alike should vote for clean resolutions and against those bundled with other issues. What about everything else? The Democratic Senate caucus should strive toward bipartisan solutions by declining to vote for any legislative initiatives that have less than 30 Democratic votes. The Republican strategy will be to try to pick off the nine Democratic votes they need to get to sixty, basically by bribes or threats. Don't let them do that! Let the Republicans who want to solve problems find common ground with the Democrats that want to solve problems. Ignore the President and those Senators of both parties that just want to create problems rather than solve them. In particular, the Republicans now own tax law and Obamacare. It's up to them to come up with solutions that appeal to 30 Democrats when they need them. PAYGO: Republican Congressional leadership planned for Trump to sign the tax bill early in January, rather than late in December, to avoid triggering something called PAYGO in 2018 before elections, rather than afterward in 2019. But Trump had promised to sign a tax bill before Christmas, so he did. Congressional Democrats apparently went along with a continuing resolution that waived PAYGO with respect to the tax bill. Trump signed the continuing resolution the same day as the tax bill. I wonder if the Democrats threw away a potential point of leverage there. Don't vote for continuing resolutions with other matters tacked on! What's PAYGO? http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-paygo https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-the-pay-as-you-go-budget-rule It's a system for keeping deficits under control. It was thought to be a factor in timing the signing of the tax bill: http://www.businessinsider.com/when-will-trump-sign-tax-reform-bill-paygo-medicare-2017-12 But in the end, the Democrats went along: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/after-passing-tax-overhaul-gop-returns-to-infighting-as-shutdown-deadline-looms/2017/12/21/dfad1890-e659-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html ===== comments 1 hideall 2 impact 848 impactrate 0 likeimpress 1 negative 2 posted 2017-12-28 ratio 4 react 16 reactrate 0 shares 3 sharesrate 0 sumclicks 9 title Getting to 60 in 2018 topic democracy wordrate 0 words 530 ID 556498241361366 URL https://www.facebook.com/politicalscrapbooknet/posts/556498241361366 audclicks 9 audreach 5 commentsimpress 1 commentsusers 1 engaged 8 hideallclicks 2 hideallclicksusers 2 impress 116 likeclickusers 5 likeimpress 1 likeuimpress 56 likeusers 1 likeuusers 28 matchedotherclicks 9 negclicks 2 negusers 2 oimpress 116 oreach 69 posted "12/28/2017 07:57:30 PM" postotherclicks 5 reach 69 sharesimpress 3 sharesusers 3 type Link ========== Biennial Affirmation of Elected Federal Officials Considering the lack of mechanism for recalling elected Federal officials and the barely-better-than-nothing mechanism of no confidence resolutions discussed in no-confidence-vote.net, perhaps there is a better way of providing relatively quick removal of grossly unsatisfactory officials. Federal elections occur in November of even-numbered years. How about a re-affirmation vote in November of odd-numbered years? Within each state, For each Federal office - president, vice-president, both senators, all representatives - there is a ballot question: vote either AFFIRM: The people of California AFFIRM the competence of XYZ as United States Representative. or REJECT: The people of California REJECT the competence of XYZ as United States Representative, and the Secretary of State, in accordance with California law, shall direct the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives to initiate expulsion of XYZ from that House. For Senators, the California Secretary of State shall direct the President of the United States Senate (that's the US VP). For President and Vice-President, the direction is to the Speaker of the House to initiate impeachment. The California law would be that a 2/3 REJECT vote is required for the California Secretary of State to direct the Feds. "Direct" is perhaps too strong; "urge" would be more realistic. But each House of Congress has the power to "with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member." One would expect Congress to act after a 2/3 rejection from the state's voters; that means that the rejectee who presumably had won with at least 50% had lost at least a third of his supporters. It's 2/3 to avoid electing somebody with 51% one year and rejecting them with 49% the next year and perhaps returning them to office with 51% the following year. 2/3 majorities are pretty uncommon in general elections; this would be a rare event, hard for the rejectee to recover from politically, and hence more likely to be acted on by Congress. There's no necessary implication of wrong-doing; simple incompetence is a good enough reason if it's egregious enough to 2/3 of the voters. But anybody losing by 2/3 had probably committed financial or moral corruption far beyond simple incompetence. The rejectee would not be disqualified for running for office again if he thought he could recover his lost support. What would happen if the Senate or House did expel a member? As with other vacancies, in most states the governor would appoint a temporary substitute and schedule a special election to elect a successor to finish the term of the rejectee. Candidates to succeed the rejectee do not launch campaigns until the rejectee is expelled and the special election scheduled. The House would not initiate impeachment proceedings of the President or VP on the basis of one state's rejection. But if enough states rejected, it would be a cumulative vote of no confidence that might spur the House to act. Then the constitutional impeachment process would proceed through the House and Senate. Having the affirm/reject vote on every elected Federal official on every odd year, during an election which is already scheduled to decide state offices and issues, avoids the expense of a signature gathering process and a special election. Note that it's important for the President and VP to be on the odd-year ballot; turnout for other offices and issues is better when voters can express their support or unsupport for the President. No amendment to the Federal Constitution is required; the necessary state rules could be authorized by statute of each state legislature. Note that this is different from the current California recall process for elected state officials; there is a slate of one of more replacement candidates to be chosen from if the recall succeeds; the recall and replacement occur in the same election. That's because recall elections are pretty rare and often succeed. In contrast, the mechanism outlined above for Federal elected officials would happen every two years but seldom result in a rejection. ===== impact 0 impactrate 0 negative 0 posted 2017-12-04 reactrate 0 sharesrate 0 title Biennial Affirmation of Elected Federal Officials topic democracy wordrate 0 words 660 ID 545783922432798 URL https://www.facebook.com/politicalscrapbooknet/posts/545783922432798 impress 19 likeuimpress 19 likeuusers 9 oimpress 19 oreach 9 posted "12/04/2017 09:44:47 PM" reach 9 type Status ========== Comment: "I suggest recalls from the State level." The Constitution has no provision for recall of elected legislators. Instead either house may "with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member." So either or both houses might adopt a resolution promising to expel any member properly recalled under the laws of that state. That wouldn't require a constitutional amendment, but would break down the first time the majority party refused to expel one of its properly recalled members. One could easily imagine that happening. There are a couple of issues with recall worth considering. First, the reforms of initiative, referendum, and recall were originally populist ideas to restore the power of the people against interests entrenched in the legislature. But nowadays it's been exactly reversed; ballot measures are often used by various special interests to avoid dealing with the legislature. That's due to the power of money in politics. The ultimate solution to that is to limit all political contributions to registered voters, with all contributions publicly and promptly tabulated so voters can see who's buying what. Note in particular no political contributions from foreign sources, nor from organizations, except organizations like PACs that would pass through individual contributions, retaining the identity of the donor. americanpromise.net is working on a less extreme version of that. Barring that, a more specific restriction would simply bar any kind of payment to persons soliciting signatures for ballot measures. Or at least, a requirement that such solicitors sign under oath whether they have received or will accept any compensation for their efforts, and on the final ballot the secretary of state state what percentage of qualifying signatures was obtained by paid circulators. A final consideration is multi-member elections with preferential balloting. It's an idea promoted by fairvote.org to increase centrism and decrease extremism; it would make it possible to have e.g. one Republican senator from California and one Democratic senator from Texas, both of which are pretty unlikely unless both senators from a state are elected in the same multi-member election with preferential balloting. The problem with recall is that everybody in the same multi-member district would have to be recalled at once, otherwise selective recall would be used to undo minority representation. ===== impact 74 impactrate 0 negative 0 posted 2017-12-03 ratio 4 react 2 reactrate 0 sharesrate 0 sumclicks 2 title Comment: "I suggest recalls from the State topic democracy wordrate 0 words 369 ID 545174529160404 URL https://www.facebook.com/politicalscrapbooknet/posts/545174529160404 audclicks 2 audreach 2 engaged 2 impress 21 likeclickusers 2 likeuimpress 19 likeuusers 7 matchedotherclicks 2 oimpress 21 oreach 8 posted "12/03/2017 01:53:00 PM" postotherclicks 2 reach 8 type Status