dajafi wrote:Perry has said at least one thing I think I agree with: that he's no more interested in being governed by someone from Massachusetts than most folks there probably are in being ruled by Texans.

Given the geographical/ideological sorting of the country, I'm wondering whether the current setup even makes sense anymore and if we'd be better off in some kind of federated system. Keep one currency and one military, but pretty much everything else--education, infrastructure, trade, laws, social services/safety net, corrections, etc--devolves to groupings of states: New England, Midlantic, Gulfland, Dixie, Pacifica... everyone gets a delegate to some kind of national council that decides use of force and other tie-breaker questions, resolves trade disputes, etc.

The Tea Party folks in theory would love it, because it severely de-emphasizes Washington. Liberals would like it because we could actually have a functional polity where we can invest in people and things get done. You probably have less war because the political costs of going are higher and there's no president who can unilaterally assert himself by swinging his junk around. You get smaller government closer to the ground.

edit: admittedly, disentangling current obligations like the debt and entitlements would present a wee complication

Not to be glib, but this just sounds like support for states' rights.

And as later posts have argued, I don't see why it has to be a left-right thing; there's nothing wrong with there being differences between states' laws on most issues. I don't see why unification of policy at the federal level is strictly good.

Until the early part of the 2000s, we really were moving towards a more state oriented approach to domestic policy, and there were all kinds of good reasons for that. Interesting policy ideas were found in state governments in areas like health care and poverty. Bush reversed a lot of it with Homeland Security centralizing law enforcement efforts and No Child Left Behind doing something similar with education. The economic crisis also served to increase centralization. However, I suspect the forces that were present really from the 60s to the 90s will in fact result in continuing the trend towards state oriented policy solutions. We really need not get so grandiose and apocalyptic about it.

I also think people in the media and such tend to overemphasize the cultural and political differences among people in different parts of the country. There are plenty of people in Texas who really don't like Perry. Houston has a gay mayor. And so forth.

In my opinion, one huge problem is that the left automatically writes off places like Texas, rather than make an investment in trying to reach people here. Actually, it's probably worse than that. The contemptuous of people on the left for people in Texas and other parts of the country is one of the big reasons that the left has been more or less a non-entity in US politics for the last 40 years.

I don't see this as a left/right thing. I see it as a structural response to the problem (in the sense that it impairs capacity for collective action even under majority-rule systems) of increasing individualism and a system, designed to require compromise toward consensus, that no longer fits in a time when a large faction views compromise as the devil's work.

It's selfish in the best sense of the word. I'm suggesting we not mess with Texas, and that they reciprocate. Simply saying we should have more respect for states' rights without changing the structures won't get us there, because the more extreme folks on each side *always* will want to use the federal power to force their utopian vision on everybody.

not to get all single-issuey, but you can do all those other domestic things locally, perhaps even at the state level, EXCEPT for health care. For health care improvement you need standards applied on an encompassing level.

A good model for what's needed to improve health care - and by improve I mean improving care while throttling cost - is the interstate highway system.

Boehner's on tv now. I've arrived at a point where the very sound of his voice angers me. The substance of his ideas, if they can be called that, inspire a disorienting combination of pity and fury.

drsmooth wrote:not to get all single-issuey, but you can do all those other domestic things locally, perhaps even at the state level, EXCEPT for health care. For health care improvement you need standards applied on an encompassing level.

A good model for what's needed to improve health care - and by improve I mean improving care while throttling cost - is the interstate highway system.

I don't see why this is true. Sure, you need a certain economy of scale, but it seems to me health care is mostly delivered locally.

I am surprised that I saw no mention of the smear campaign in book form against Palin. I personally cannot stand the woman, but the tabloid style book is pretty nasty. The target market for it is really people who already know she is a hypocrite, so it is pointless.

TenuredVulture wrote:

drsmooth wrote:not to get all single-issuey, but you can do all those other domestic things locally, perhaps even at the state level, EXCEPT for health care. For health care improvement you need standards applied on an encompassing level.

A good model for what's needed to improve health care - and by improve I mean improving care while throttling cost - is the interstate highway system.

I don't see why this is true. Sure, you need a certain economy of scale, but it seems to me health care is mostly delivered locally.

"health care" covers 1/6th of the economy, and a bewildering array of services and goods, dealing with situations from an RN spreading salve on your poison ivy to multi-organ transplantation. "Health care" on the rightmost end of the spectrum I've outlined - which affects, for all corporeal purposes, practically no one, but has significant economic effects for practically everyone - cannot be rationally provided absent a much more robust, very-large-population scale base than you find in all but the largest US states.

Note that I didn't say "isn't now being" I said "cannot". And I mean that.

But we have a health care thread, in which I've covered reasons why this is so,and practically incontrovertibly so. At root is the skewed distribution of health care costs across population, which makes income skews look inconsequential. Solving health care would blunt, if not solve, so much of our current sociopolitical tensions. But there's no natural political forum, nor any market, in which to make the changes needed.

dajafi wrote:Perry has said at least one thing I think I agree with: that he's no more interested in being governed by someone from Massachusetts than most folks there probably are in being ruled by Texans.

Given the geographical/ideological sorting of the country, I'm wondering whether the current setup even makes sense anymore and if we'd be better off in some kind of federated system. Keep one currency and one military, but pretty much everything else--education, infrastructure, trade, laws, social services/safety net, corrections, etc--devolves to groupings of states: New England, Midlantic, Gulfland, Dixie, Pacifica... everyone gets a delegate to some kind of national council that decides use of force and other tie-breaker questions, resolves trade disputes, etc.

The Tea Party folks in theory would love it, because it severely de-emphasizes Washington. Liberals would like it because we could actually have a functional polity where we can invest in people and things get done. You probably have less war because the political costs of going are higher and there's no president who can unilaterally assert himself by swinging his junk around. You get smaller government closer to the ground.

edit: admittedly, disentangling current obligations like the debt and entitlements would present a wee complication

I was sort of thinking about the exact opposite in my dream scenario this morning: eliminate the states altogether. They serve no useful purpose, except to add unnecessary levels of bureacracy and taxes, and make it possible for corporate entities to play one state off against another. We see it in sports all the time: what will you give me for my team if I move it to place X? The places wind up giving out sweetheart deals to billionaires. It's similar among corporations. How many rights, and how much remuneration, is your workforce willing to surrender so they can have any job at all, and so the corporation can reward its upper-level executives with enormous salaries and bonuses (and, to a certain degree, its shareholders)?

I say abolish the states. We settled the federalist vs. confederation question long ago. That is what the Civil War was for, besides freeing the slaves. Local governments to control matters of purely local interest - parking ordinances, street cleaning, etc. - and one united federal system of laws that does not allow corporations to pit Washington versus South Carolina, etc. One tax law. One labor law.

The thing is, even assuming the resulting system had fairly generous protections for labor, I am guessing you couod get businesses behind it as well. How much money would be saved just in time spent on lawyers sorting out what a company may or may not do in each state? And what tax structures exist in each state? This would allow for a massive simplifications for businesses, which would save them lots and lots of money spent on relatively expensive items like labor and tax law specialists. The tradeoff would be a more unified, worker-friendly labor law.

Obviously, this is a total pipedream, but I think one that has some merit for all sides.

Mozart's idea is, just about, the worst idea in the world.

The really sad thing about doc smooth is that he really may think he's laid out a convincing case for health care reform. And I bet, if we could translate it, I'd agree with 99.9% of it. But he's so dense, so joboggi'ish, that no one can understand any of the points he makes. He PROBABLY knows a lot more about health care than I do, but he doesn't make any sense, so his ideas will never gain traction.

I loved it loved it loved it when even pacino told him he couldn't understand him.

jeff2sf wrote:Mozart's idea is, just about, the worst idea in the world.

The UK is run on more or less the same principle. Granted, it's a much smaller country, but hardly an unsuccessful one.

The thing that frustrates me is that we hear all the time about how the business of America is business and how we have to make this a business-friendly place and give tax breaks and incentives and every other goddamn thing in order to keep businesses here. We have to suck their dicks basically.

How about this: we have 300M basically wealthy people (in world economic terms). Any business that wants to be big time HAS to have a foothold in this market.

The workers and the people more broadly have some leverage here, if only we could use it. You want to sell goods and services to the 300M eager customers we've got here in the USA? Here are the rules. It begins with the treatment of workers, and has lots to say about environmental regulations, consumer protections, and the like. If you don't like it, best of luck finding a bigger, better market to sell your broke ass shit.

jeff2sf wrote:Mozart's idea is, just about, the worst idea in the world.

The really sad thing about doc smooth is that he really may think he's laid out a convincing case for health care reform. And I bet, if we could translate it, I'd agree with 99.9% of it. But he's so dense, so joboggi'ish, that no one can understand any of the points he makes. He PROBABLY knows a lot more about health care than I do, but he doesn't make any sense, so his ideas will never gain traction.

I loved it loved it loved it when even pacino told him he couldn't understand him.

Great contribution. Anyone else you want to bag on?

You must be new here, swiggers.

The idea of not having local government or having someone in Washington make all my decisions from trash pick up to the crime for marijuana to any other host of different STATE issues is ludicrous.

Swiggers wrote:

dajafi wrote:Perry has said at least one thing I think I agree with: that he's no more interested in being governed by someone from Massachusetts than most folks there probably are in being ruled by Texans.

Given the geographical/ideological sorting of the country, I'm wondering whether the current setup even makes sense anymore and if we'd be better off in some kind of federated system. Keep one currency and one military, but pretty much everything else--education, infrastructure, trade, laws, social services/safety net, corrections, etc--devolves to groupings of states: New England, Midlantic, Gulfland, Dixie, Pacifica... everyone gets a delegate to some kind of national council that decides use of force and other tie-breaker questions, resolves trade disputes, etc.

The Tea Party folks in theory would love it, because it severely de-emphasizes Washington. Liberals would like it because we could actually have a functional polity where we can invest in people and things get done. You probably have less war because the political costs of going are higher and there's no president who can unilaterally assert himself by swinging his junk around. You get smaller government closer to the ground.

I think eventually we'll either see something like this or the country broken up into multiple nations. May take another 100-200 years to happen, but that's the direction we're going in.

And a robot will be president / prime minister / supreme overlord!

Hmm. Wonder if Al Gore will still be around?

jeff2sf wrote:Mozart's idea is, just about, the worst idea in the world.

The really sad thing about doc smooth is that he really may think he's laid out a convincing case for health care reform. And I bet, if we could translate it, I'd agree with 99.9% of it. But he's so dense, so joboggi'ish, that no one can understand any of the points he makes. He PROBABLY knows a lot more about health care than I do, but he doesn't make any sense, so his ideas will never gain traction.

I loved it loved it loved it when even pacino told him he couldn't understand him.

Systematic national health care improvement requires development and use of information sharing standards that reflect
a) the extremely skewed distribution of health conditions whose treatment requires extraordinary expense, and
b) that effectively managing many of those particular health conditions requires the ability to anticipate them many months, sometimes years, in advance of "rescue stage".

You're a fatuous ass.

Anything there you don't understand?

Actually yes, could you try speaking more plainly? Don't forget, smoothie, people who LIKE you can't understand anything you say. That's people who like you.

jeff2sf wrote:Actually yes, could you try speaking more plainly? Don't forget, smoothie, people who LIKE you can't understand anything you say. That's people who like you.

My vote in the next presidential campaign goes to the first candidate to promise that his top priority is having jeff2sf banned from the internet.

Hey moz, why don't you go freak out over a meaningless August game against the Reds?

jeff2sf wrote:Hey moz, why don't you go freak out over a meaningless August game against the Reds?

I don't know how many posters I would win a "Survivor" style vote-off-the-island contest against (probably not many), but I've got you beat hands down. You being banned = addition by subtraction.

Maybe so, moz (though I was never banned). That still doesn't change the crux of my argument. Stop freaking out over meaningless shit and proposing dumb ass ideas.