Karma's a Bitch, eh Dems?

A friend just linked me to this story about Massachusetts having to wait 5 months to replace Senator Kennedy due to a law they passed in 2004 designed to prevent Governor Mitt Romney from replacing Senator John Kerry with a Republican had Kerry defeated George Bush.

5 comments:

  1. HAHA - I absolutely love this! Work together to run this country you asshats, and shit like this would never need to happen.

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  2. Haha this is a great story of karma. A fantastic example of why it's dumb to legislate based on short-term views of politics, and why our partisanism is dumb.

    Stupid ass ideas like this get codified, and then calcified, and then we are left with absolutely ridiculous situations like gerrymandering.

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  3. I know we're going to get into it at some point, but right now I want to start brainstorming the problems with the government process...not even the ideas, just the process.

    All right, I'll just skip straight to it and make Royce explode... campaign finance. I actually agree with Royce that this is at the root of every problem in politics. Politicians are supposed to represent their constituents, and if they do well, they hope to be re-elected and continue to represent their constituents. However, politicians also need to keep raising money to be able to run a campaign and get re-elected. This means politicians are overly influenced by those who give the politicians money.

    For the recent health care debate, I am not sure is Republicans are against it because they think it costs too much, they just want to beat the Democrats, or health insurance companies have given so much money to Republicans and the Republicans don't want that money to disappear.

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  4. It's interesting that you've gone straight to that conclusion regarding the health care debate.

    If those are really the only two reasons that Republicans are blocking, do you think that means they'll be called on it? If so, would the public demand that they get their ass in gear and formulate real policy?

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  5. No, I think it's a combination of all three reasons. And it is just one of many examples of how campaign finance is influencing public policy.

    I almost want to say that with those three reason, why shouldn't Republicans oppose Obama's health care plan?

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