Gyroscopic Investing

A month after President Obama won reelection, America's most powerful liberal groups met to plan their next moves. Here's what they talked about.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... eace-naacp

Didn't sound nearly as scary to me as your headline implied....

"At the end of the day, many of the attendees closed with a pledge of money and staff resources to build a national, coordinated campaign around three goals: getting big money out of politics, expanding the voting rolls while fighting voter ID laws, and rewriting Senate rules to curb the use of the filibuster to block legislation."

Since the Republicans control the house, the senate filibuster rules don't strike me as all that important.

Interesting that they were left pledging money to get money out of politics though.

The filibuster is important because everything that Congress passes causes incremental destruction to the country. Nothing they do is good, except when they get rid of existing laws or pass restrictions on government, neither of which they do very often.

Everything they pass some new law, it inherently is economically infeasible because it benefits one special interest group (or a few groups) at the expense of the rest of the country. Or they pass a law that gives government greater powers to fight terrorism or child molesters or whatever evil of the week that will inevitable be abused over time.

Filibuster reform is such typical short-term politician thinking. If the Democrats manage to get it done, they're gonna be pretty unhappy once the Republicans take over the Senate again.

Simonjester wrote: the plan to kill filibusters could be a big deal (often referred to as the nuclear option) but it can go both ways, whats good for Dems in power now is good for Republicans when they are in power, biggest looser on that one are "the people", especially those that think a healthy dose of gridlock is better than almost anything government actually gets done nowadays, also a big looser on that is the idea that debate is fundamental to getting government right

the idea that money is a problem in politics is real enough.. the idea democrats would fix it when they are the beneficiary of it just as much as republicans are is laughable.

expanding voter rolls and fighting voter id (some times referred to as voter fraud reduction) and raising money are old standards for both democrats and Chicago style politics... no big surprise there.

Not sure I follow your thinking here.

Simonjester wrote: the ability to push through legislation without debate and without resistance from the opposition means the party in power can get what it wants when it wants it, as triple-b pointed out

TripleB wrote: The filibuster is important because everything that Congress passes causes incremental destruction to the country. Nothing they do is good, except when they get rid of existing laws or pass restrictions on government, neither of which they do very often.

Everything they pass some new law, it inherently is economically infeasible because it benefits one special interest group (or a few groups) at the expense of the rest of the country. Or they pass a law that gives government greater powers to fight terrorism or child molesters or whatever evil of the week that will inevitable be abused over time.

everything they pass equals more government, it doesn't really matter which party does it, more government benefits government far more often than it benefits the governed. Gridlock and the rare times when they are getting rid of existing laws or passing restrictions on government are the times that benefit the governed

Pointedstick wrote: Filibuster reform is such typical short-term politician thinking. If the Democrats manage to get it done, they're gonna be pretty unhappy once the Republicans take over the Senate again.

That is true (and you can find quotes from democrats when they were not in power being against it) however I think the democrats spirit of the moment is to fundamentally shift things i.e. do as many large things toward their progressive goals that cannot be easily undone e.g. Obamacare, that they don't care.

If they push too hard, the backlash will undo them quickly. There's an art in trying to rapidly change a society in a controversial manner. Push too hard and you can quickly find all your work undone and your ideas banished for a generation.

Imagine, for example, that by some minor act of $deity, the Democrats pass a bill ordering the confiscation of all firearms. All 300 million of them. Owned by all the tens to hundreds of millions of Americans who own them. Hundreds of thousands of people whose firearms would be confiscated are police officers or security guards. Millions are soldiers. It just wouldn't happen. There would be mass defiance or civil war.

That's why they have to move more slowly. And at a slower pace, we can defeat those proposals of theirs that strike at the freedom we cherish. And who knows, maybe some of what they want will actually add to  society's freedom! I don't see Republicans pushing drug legalization, for example. Liberals have their uses.

Pointedstick wrote: If they push too hard, the backlash will undo them quickly. There's an art in trying to rapidly change a society in a controversial manner. Push too hard and you can quickly find all your work undone and your ideas banished for a generation.

You are absolutely correct and I would suspect that Allinsky and the folks who long ago talked about how to deconstruct societies are well aware of those pitfalls. Fortunately for us I suspect the jokers in charge now believe what they are doing is correct, can't imagine that anyone would not agree with them given enough time/explaining things the right way, and are not as talented/"intelligent" as I gather Allinsky and the other "giants" in that "field" were.

The pitfall you describe may be the only hope of slowing things down.

The biggest problem liberals have, in my opinion, is that they try to change society from the top down, with laws, before society is ready for the change or even willing to move in that direction. You see this reflected especially in their gun control agenda, which is woefully utopian in a nation with 300 million privately-owned firearms and a very strong civilian gun culture. On this issue, they legislate as if we're a small European country with no significant civilian gun ownership or tradition of weapons proficiency. Their urban enclaves in NYC, Chicago, D.C., Boston, and San Francisco may fit that mold, but it's totally out of touch with what the majority of the culture will accept.

The flip side is that conservatives do the opposite: they fear legal change even when the underlying society is not only ready, but crying out for it. Civil rights, gay marriage, and drug legalization spring to mind.

In the end, they need each other to moderate the other's worst tendencies. Unfortunately, sometimes what you get is each side preventing the other from expressing what's good about them, and I believe society suffers as a result.