First off, can I just say how great Rachel Maddow is? Remember when journalists used to investigate and not just report what's happening? She builds a remarkable case here, and presents it just as well. My intense crush on her continues.
But as for the story, the link is to a 17 minute video that's well worth watching even if you aren't from Michigan. It details how the Michigan state constitution says that all bills passed into law in the state cannot go into effect until 3 months after the end of the legislative session. So basically, all laws passed in 2011 should go into effect in March of 2012. It gives people a chance to adjust and to form a repeal drive if they wish.
But there is a provision to allow for emergencies, where 2/3 majority can be used for "immediate effect" if both houses vote on it. Ever since the GOP took over both houses of Michigan's congress and the governor's mansion, they've passed close to 600 bills in Michigan, more than 500 of which have been passed under "immediate effect, which is by far and away unprecedented. Like the filibuster, it only used to be used for actual emergencies, not as a matter of course.
Now, even as I was watching the video, I wasn't particularly het up about that. Yes, it wasn't the original intention of the that provision, but the provision is there, and Democrats have enough power in Congress to stop it from happening if they vote as a bloc, or near bloc, so it's not really against the law.
Or is it? As Maddow points out, the GOP has passed most of these laws with Democrats voting in a bloc against it. So if they don't have their 2/3 majority to pass the law, how are they getting the votes to enact immediate effect? This would be like Democrats in the Senate moving for cloture, the GOP voting against it, and the Democrats saying they had it anyway and moving on. So Maddow provides video evidence of a session where the GOP moved for immediate effect, and almost immediately ruled it as passed without counting votes, even as the Democratic minority leader was shouting for a roll call vote to be sure.
Democrats have since sued the legislature, but the GOP leadership has said that courts have no authority over the practices of the legislature. In other words, they can ignore the democratic process at will, and there is no enforcement mechanism to bring them to heel. Democrats might as well just stay home.
I think all this speaks for itself, really, I don't need to go into a length diatribe about how evil, illegal, undemocratic or wrong this is. But I will say, man, if Democrats were doing this, can you just imagine what Republicans would say in response to demonize them? The uproar would be everywhere. Fox News would cover it daily. Instead, Rachel Maddow had to dig her way down to the source to find it, and only because she made Michigan her special project, and she's STILL the only one talking about it. Where's the liberal media!?
The whole thing just sickens me, and I regret every single day voting for Darth Snyder. First and last time I'm likely ever to vote Republican.
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Blayne Bradley
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She also wrote a book called "Drift" I think that's worth a look.
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wisconsin is also a barrel of legislative sleazebaggery fun; it's like republicans really don't want to be a main party in 20 years or so.
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I'm glad you're not terribly up-in-arms about them voting so many of them as "emergencies" to take immediate effect, considering it isn't unprecedented at all. 365/383 bills in 2010 and 240/242 bills in 2009 used the immediate clause when passed by the Democratic majority. To say it is unprecedented seems like an outright falsehood.
Now, in order to do this they ostensibly need 73 votes, but there are only 63 Republicans, so the latter part that you're really indignant of seems legitimate.
Of course, during 2009 & 2010 the Democratic majority had only 65 members, so they were also short of the needed majority to properly accomplish what they were doing.
I know, I know, I'm making the equivalence argument!
But, even Kate Segal seems to acknowledge there is some equivalence here.
So yeah, it seems scummy. But I'm pretty much disgusted with Michigan's house of representatives in general, rather than with the Republicans in particular. And I think if you analyze the facts objectively you might agree.
Edited because Michigan and Wisconsin are apparently two different states! Who knew?
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I'm glad you're not terribly up-in-arms about them voting so many of them as "emergencies" to take immediate effect, considering it isn't unprecedented at all. 365/383 bills in 2010 and 240/242 bills in 2009 used the immediate clause when passed by the Democratic majority. To say it is unprecedented seems like an outright falsehood.
Now, in order to do this they ostensibly need 73 votes, but there are only 63 Republicans, so the latter part that you're really indignant of seems legitimate.
Of course, during 2009 & 2010 the Democratic majority had only 65 members, so they were also short of the needed majority to properly accomplish what they were doing.
I know, I know, I'm making the equivalence argument!
But, even Kate Segal seems to acknowledge there is some equivalence here.
So yeah, it seems scummy. But I'm pretty much disgusted with Wisconsin's house of representatives in general, rather than with the Republicans in particular. And I think if you analyze the facts objectively you might agree.
Now don't you go using facts to try and argue against me Dan.
What's certainly unusual, if not unprecedented, is that they've passed more laws in one year than the Democrats did during their entire term in office over the last years. Nothing illegal about that I suppose. But one has to admit that the sort of laws they are passing are troubling.
Laws that allow for the dissolution of city governments. Laws that are direct attacks on labor unions and dissolve previously made labor agreements. Laws that restrict voter registration. Laws that make it harder to enact a repeal or recall procedure by people. So they pass laws, have them take effect immediately, then make it much harder for the populace to overturn them if they don't like it.
It's like Michigan Republicans looked at what's happening in Wisconsin and said "Huh, looks like these policies might have a backlash, we should do what we can to stop people from overturning our unpopular laws." I don't like it. I don't like how willy nilly the GOP has been with taking over local city governments.
And I don't like that I voted for Snyder. So maybe I'm a little more peeved than usual because I feel a little guilty. You're right that reading some of the background tempers my annoyance to a degree, though, I wonder how many of those votes in the last two years really did have real flaws. In other words, how many controversial pieces of legislation did the GOP vote against as a bloc but were overruled with a lack of roll call vote. Because just in the course of the last year there have been several here.
And wrong is wrong. "He did it first" has NEVER been a good excuse to me.
(PS, to anyone in this thread, this is Michigan, not Wisconsin, I can't tell if there's genuine confusion or if people are just making connections)
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So, I agree that if what Maddow really meant was just that the Re-thug-licans have passed an unprecedented number of laws, sure, 600+ seems like an awful lot!
And of course that also means she can say something like "they've used the immediate clause an unprecedented number of times" because it's strictly speaking true. But she's playing with statistics. I think you can see that the facts in this case do hurt the message she's trying to convey.
Whether or not their 600+ laws are good laws, compared to the 200+ & 300+ the Democratic majority passed during their tenure, is a whole different ballgame and has very little bearing on this particular issue. Would you agree?
Finally, I wholeheartedly agree that wrong is wrong, and "he did it first" isn't a good excuse. That's why I said I think this situation seems scummy and makes me lose respect for the Michigan house.
But when the narrative of your OP is basically that this is uniquely (unprecedented!) terrible behavior on the part of one party, and the facts show a strong indication of equivalent crappy behavior by both parties, that seems like a very relevant criticism.
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I'll retract from the OP that this is unique procedural behavior.
But I DO think the content of the laws matters.
Are you saying you'd be equally upset if someone in the US Congress passed a law through extra legal means that renamed a bridge in the middle of some random rural county as you would be if they passed a law through extra legal means that took away your mayor and city council for an executive they appointed for you?
Of course you wouldn't.
So if those laws the Dems passed were fairly routine and not a big deal, or for that matter if some of them that were controversial did manage to wrangle some GOP support, then I think the equivalence argument falls apart.
Two people fire a gun in a place where firing a gun is illegal. The first fires into a tree and does no damage. The second kills someone. In both cases the process is the same, but the outcome is different.
I'm not saying this is automatically the case here, but it's certainly a worthy question that DOES have bearing on the issue if equivalence.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: She also wrote a book called "Drift" I think that's worth a look.
It's on my summer reading list. Have you read it?
No but she was discussing it on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and it sounded good.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I'll retract from the OP that this is unique procedural behavior.
But I DO think the content of the laws matters.
Are you saying you'd be equally upset if someone in the US Congress passed a law through extra legal means that renamed a bridge in the middle of some random rural county as you would be if they passed a law through extra legal means that took away your mayor and city council for an executive they appointed for you?
Of course you wouldn't.
So if those laws the Dems passed were fairly routine and not a big deal, or for that matter if some of them that were controversial did manage to wrangle some GOP support, then I think the equivalence argument falls apart.
Two people fire a gun in a place where firing a gun is illegal. The first fires into a tree and does no damage. The second kills someone. In both cases the process is the same, but the outcome is different.
I'm not saying this is automatically the case here, but it's certainly a worthy question that DOES have bearing on the issue if equivalence.
If the OP had been railing against all the bad laws Republicans have been passing, I probably would've let it lie. I'm not specifically in the mood to argue policy, and especially not in the mood to defend the laws of a partisan house in a state I don't live in.
As long as we're in agreement that there is strong prima facie equivalence in the behavior of both parties re: immediate clauses & roll calls, and you're essentially retracting your endorsement of Maddow's report, I'm not going to argue with your postulating that these particular laws the Republicans are passing are bad.
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I think, with the exception of the sensationalized aspect that makes it look new, that there's nothing wrong with Maddow's report. As we both have said, "he did it too!" isn't a good excuse, so nothing she says is untrue (other than what I've stipulated). So I'm not retracting my endorsement, per se, but I am qualifying it.
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Equivalent proportion, then? Cannot they be said to be using it more when so many more laws are being passed, even if proportionally it's not being used any more often?
ETA: And this thought was promoted by your post, Dan, but it isn't directed solely at you: man, it's like people have to be dragged kicking and screaming and holding on by their fingernails to even begin to discuss that maybe, just maybe, the GOP right now is more nasty and detrimental than the Democrats, even while not denying that Democrats are also often sleazy and detrimental.
It's a different topic, but I look at the general silence on Childers's crazy 'does Obama run a murder racket?!?!?!' tweet of a few days ago. Some outcry, but I guess maybe it's just expected or something. She'll sure a hell keep co-hosting a major show on a major news network.
But holy freakin' s*#t some lunatic conspiracy theorists think Obama is a secret Muslim foreigner, and that story needed a stake, garlic, decapitation, drawing and quartering, and burial at a crossroads and it STILL might not be dead, you can't quite be sure some Republican or Tea Party politicians won't make a nod to it to score points.
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Rakeesh, I'm not sure using something more (but proportionally a little bit less) counts as more nasty and detrimental.
Fundamentally, at this point, to say they are being more nasty you need to drag out their 600 laws and compare them to the 500 laws of the Democratic majority. You can't simply assert that their laws are worse, you need to go law-by-law and show it.
And of course, if you do that, then I think there's an extremely good chance that you'll end up with a partisan division where half the people think one set of laws are more reasonable and vice versa for the other half.
"Oh, the Democrats rammed through school funding, what's wrong with that?" versus "Oh, the Republicans rammed through a union-busting initiative, what's wrong with that?" Etc, etc, ad nauseam.
And then that's not a story. That's just the same old division we already have, and nobody who likes the bills the Michigan House is putting forward are going to bat an eye.
Lyr, do you agree that if the real issue is simply that virtually all Michigan House members abuse this clause, and it should be changed, then the likelihood of achieving real bipartisan support for such a change is dramatically hurt by Maddow's presentation? She chose to misrepresent it, and turn it into a partisan attack. I think that's because she's more interested in casting Republicans in a bad light than she is in actually exposing a deeply flawed system and gaining momentum to change it.
What do you think?
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