anon_
19hr ago
As soon as Trump announced, their retaliation was already basically locked in. Their announce didn't move the needle because it was highly improbable they were gonna just do nothing.
anon_
19hr ago
I'd add that, unfortunately for me, if Trump proceeds to wreck the economy it will cause a lasting polarization against his anti-woke efforts.
anon_
1d ago
A majority can, at any time, remake the rules. The rules continue to apply at the pleasure of the majority.
anon_
1d ago
And likewise for tariffs.
It’s the folks that give different answers to the two questions that are suspect.
But yeah, voters don’t grok tax incidence.
anon_
1d ago
§2(b)(1)(A)(i) requires a valid reason be given in writing to the clerk to be verified (c)(1)(A) and returned as invalid if not conforming (c)(1)(C).
Modifying that would require another majority vote.
anon_
1d ago
Not only is it not realistic or practical, the goal is to have a house in which there is butter. Fixing the problem by removing the butter only gets us further from that goal.
anon_
1d ago
Because those incentives are tied to other matters -- they are not completely independent choices.
For example, if you want to live in a high-trust neighborhood where people don't lock their front doors, this implies leaving an incentive for thieves to defect. If you want to be able to have Amazon leave packages on your stoop, that implies leaving an incentive for porch pirates.
anon_
1d ago
It has similar negative incentives to a high corporate income tax (the latter of which was reduced in 45's term to be more in line with the rest of the world).
There was a very incisive point about this on one of the economics blogs -- that is it difficult to have a consistent model in which the costs of tariffs are primarily borne by consumers but the cost of corporate taxes are primarily borne by producers (or vice versa).
It is possible to come up with reasons why this might be so -- by adjusting the specifics on incidence -- but this requires the kind of fine-tuning that one has to be suspicious of when it just so happens line up with one's preexisting political commitments.
anon_
1d ago
I think when the House moves on to other business, you raise a point of order that this business is not properly before the House until it votes on your privileged matter. If the Speaker refuses, the appeal goes to the full House for a vote.
Since you had a majority for the DC in the first place, this vote presumably goes your way and the other business cannot be done.
anon_
1d ago
It was not allowed simply because House rules forbade it. As noted, the Constitution grants the House the right to make their own rules.
In any event, one doesn't need to be in favor of proxy voting for frivolous reasons (need to make a fundraiser) in order to support it for good ones (a newborn).
anon_
1d ago
I would assume the video feed would be authenticated (in addition to everything else) by a physical token that the representative has to retrieve at the point of swearing in. But anyway, for reasons I added above, this is extremely unlikely -- far more so than the modest request for new mothers not to have to fly to DC with a newborn under 12 weeks.
anon_
1d ago
That would be an even more radical change to the rules of the House.
Proxy voting is seen (perhaps wrongly) as a more conservative alternative in which votes are still fundamentally cast in person with a roll call.
anon_
1d ago
One parent refuses to teach the child not to scoop the butter off the butter dish and eat it.
The other decides that everyone must go without butter.
What is to be done?
anon_
1d ago
I hate researching anything related to Congressional Rules.
And yet here we are :-)
The above is all academic, of course. There is no mechanism I'm aware of (short of a motion to vacate the chair) to compel the Speaker to actually follow the rules.
Well both the rules and the Speaker are products of a simple majority vote. A Speaker that doesn't follow the rules and refuses to entertain a point of order to enforce it that would be supported by the majority can be voted out. That's also nice, in that it gives Johnson an out to punt the question to the House more generally where the point of order can be sustained by a majority and the resolution changing the rules passed.
Anyway, I share your view that this is all academic in the sense that the matter will be resolved between the parties, not as a parliamentary point.
anon_
2d ago
While eyes are on Trump and tariffs and all that, there is a minor crisis brewing in the House on proxy voting.
For background, the Constitution provides little substantive guidance for how to run the legislature other than Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, which in practice has been taken to mean that they can make and remake their own rules by a majority vote at any time. One aspect of this is that they need rules to do anything -- without a resolution adopting rules of procedure, the House cannot take up any business. Another facet of the rules (as they are today) is that the Speaker sets the agenda and controls what comes to a vote (and the rules for bringing amendments and so forth). This lead famously to the "majority of the majority" calculation -- a bill must have an absolute majority to pass but it must also have a majority of the majority to be put forth by their leadership to even get a vote. A curious exception to this is the "discharge petition" -- effectively a way for a majority of Representatives to force the leadership to put a particular matter up for vote without delay. Once presented with sufficient votes, a discharge petition is privileged from being preempted by other business.
So with all that parliamentary background aside, here's where we are: a (now former) member of the freedom caucus with an solid conservative voting record is leading the charge to allow new parents to designate another member of the House as their proxy to vote on their behalf for 12 weeks after the birth of their child. The GOP leadership refused to put it up for a vote so she got 218 votes to discharge it, which means (under the current rules) the House has vote on it within 2 weeks.
Instead of taking the L, GOP leadership tried to play hardball and brought up a procedural rule to forbid the use of discharge petitions entirely. I found the text here. This apparently rankled enough republicans (changing the rules on what can be voted for because you're about to lose a vote is still frowned upon) to vote against the procedural rule, which in turn means the House is stuck. At that point, Johnson had no option but to adjourn till next week to buy time.
So basically this issue has frozen the House, right at the point where we might need a functioning Congress.
Tallying it up, I see a decent number of conservatives whose opposition to proxy voting for new parents is such that they won't accept any rules resolution in which it might come up for a vote (because they wouldn't accept losing that vote). On the other side, with Luna is is Trump who weight in saying (direct quote, because he's always quotable) "I like the idea of being able to — if you’re having a baby, I think you should be able to call in and vote. I’m in favor of that".
Editorializing a bit, for me the Article I framing firmly puts the procedural rules outside the realm of constitutional or judicial reckoning and makes it a political matter. Hence, I find the legalistic arguments on it to be misplaced -- it's not a legal matter. On the policy, it seems reasonable enough for the House to make a point of being pro-natal and I think voters can throw out any representative if they don't like her votes (by proxy or otherwise) in the next election.
I also think embedding a substantive proposal into a rule is pretty silly -- maybe I'm procedure-brained (or WEIRD) but this is just pants
SEC. 5. (a) House Resolution 23 and House Resolution 164 are laid on the table.
(b)(1) A motion to discharge a committee from con-
sideration of a bill or resolution that, by relating in sub-
stance to or dealing with the same subject matter, is sub-
stantially the same as House Resolution 23 shall not be
in order.
(b)(2) A motion to discharge the Committee on Rules
from consideration of a resolution providing a special
order of business for the consideration of a bill or resolu-
tion that, by relating in substance to or dealing with the
same subject matter, is substantially the same as House
Resolution 23 shall not be in order.
(c) A motion to discharge on the Calendar of Motions
to Discharge Committees that is rendered out of order
pursuant to subsection (b) shall be stricken from that cal-
endar.
So I fully agree with that on principle. There were two generations of overly soft parents that lead to a reasonable number of sociopathic moochers.
But living in a prosperous and high-trust society without degenerating into sloth, that's a core piece of what makes anglo civilization worthwhile. Destroying the prosperity rather than reinforcing those values is madness.
anon_
2d ago
The rich can absorb the hit if fixing their roof goes from $15K to $35k. The middle class, less so.
anon_
2d ago
I won't discipline my kids well enough so they can live in a prosperous economy without wireheading themselves off scraps, therefore we can't have a prosperous country.
Can't have shit in Detroit vibes
anon_
2d ago
Suppose that Trump's tariffs contract the economy to the point that lazy unemployed 20-30 year old men find it much more difficult to comfortably survive off their standard combination of day trading, intermittent gig work, and freeloading off their families. Suppose it gets to the point that their only option is to begin filling the vacancies left by the deportations. Isn't that just... wonderful? Isn't that exactly what Trump's base voted for? Isn't that, quite literally, how you make America great again?
This depends critically on the amount of collateral poverty you would need to create for each such vacancy filled.
That in turn is an empirical matter.
anon_
2d ago
I think there should be a taboo on citing "due process" as a concern without articulating what process you think is due in this particular case.
For example, I don't think that anyone is claiming that countries may never expel someone short of a full criminal conviction. Nor do I think anyone is claiming that countries don't have discretion when to renew temporary visas or confer discretionary status.
Rather, it just seems like a free-for-all term.
That's meaningless. If Canada puts a 1000000% tariff on US dairy, the US will export 0 dairy to them and there will be 0 tariff paid.
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