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There is no excuse, it's very simple: the link you posted was blocked by a paywall, and you refused (and have still refused) to actually speak concretely or meaningfully about his comments and arguments. I'm eager to read any new material, but when posters can't even speak their own mind without relying on a mouthpiece to tell them their views, as you have done, I can't think much of their intellect.
Now that I've read it, it's clear that there is nothing radical about his argument, he wants to set up commissions that can act when Congress fails to break through gridlocks. I don't really like it, but my faith in Congress to get things done is waning significantly. If the commissions were bipartisanly formed, what is the issue?
It's a contentious concept, and he framed it in an overly provocative way, but it's not fascism or anything like that and our government used commissions like this in the 80s? So why the high-pitched screeching? This has much to do with our current government which has been made impotent by infighting. The potential for abuse is high, but he is talking about these commission as useful only when Congress cannot get resolve particularly urgent issues, yes?
Quote:
THE PROBLEM WITH such commissions is that, like automatic stabilizers and backstop rules, they reduce the power of elected officials and therefore make our government somewhat less accountable to voters. Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution at Stanford puts it this way: “There is something undemocratic about entrusting the formation of big policy decisions to expert commissions.” And yet he also goes on to note that “the process is not less democratic than having nine unelected justices with lifetime tenure and no political accountability to anyone but themselves decide such basic questions as when a woman can have an abortion and where a child can go to school.” He concludes that, despite the risks, rising polarization justifies the increased use of these types of commissions.
As the debt-limit experience vividly illustrated, by polarizing ourselves, we are making our country more ungovernable—and no one has come up with a practical proposal to deal with the consequences. I wish it were not necessary to devise processes to circumvent legislative gridlock, but polarization isn’t going away. John Adams may have been exaggerating when he pessimistically noted that democracies tend to commit suicide, yet, as we are seeing, certain aspects of representative government can end up posing serious problems. And so, we might be a healthier democracy if we were a slightly less democratic one.
There's a certain technocratic element to Orszag's argument that I dislike, and it is very reminiscent of some of Obama's personnel decisions in this regard. Experts is too nebulous a term, and their selection would end up being as contentious as anything else in our government. I think there is a better solution to getting past gridlock, honestly, but that would require even greater structural change in our political system, and frankly I'm not very optimistic.
There is no excuse, it's very simple: the link you posted was blocked by a paywall, and you refused (and have still refused) to actually speak concretely or meaningfully about his comments and arguments. I'm eager to read any new material, but when posters can't even speak their own mind without relying on a mouthpiece to tell them their views, as you have done, I can't think much of their intellect.
Now that I've read it, it's clear that there is nothing radical about his argument, he wants to set up commissions that can act when Congress fails to break through gridlocks. I don't really like it, but my faith in Congress to get things done is waning significantly. If the commissions were bipartisanly formed, what is the issue?
It's a contentious concept, and he framed it in an overly provocative way, but it's not fascism or anything like that and our government used commissions like this in the 80s? So why the high-pitched screeching? This has much to do with our current government which has been made impotent by infighting. The potential for abuse is high, but he is talking about these commission as useful only when Congress cannot get resolve particularly urgent issues, yes?
You don't get it obviously. Congress is there to do the bidding of the people they represent. Bypassing them is bypassing the people's voice and substituting it with absolute power, you know, like Obama has done a few times already. I don't know if you are aware or not, but in America, the people are supposed to be the boss, not a bureaucrat.
You don't get it obviously. Congress is there to do the bidding of the people they represent. Bypassing them is bypassing the people's voice and substituting it with absolute power, you know, like Obama has done a few times already. I don't know if you are aware or not, but in America, the people are supposed to be the boss, not a bureaucrat.
But the bureaucrats are the boss in reality, and I hope you realize that. This isn't a pure democracy, this is representative democracy, and what the representatives do when they get into Washington is much different than what they say on the campaign trail. Additionally, Orszag took care to note that the commissions would be themselves approved by Congress, so this isn't a real bypass. In fact, that's the problem with the plan itself, it relies on Congress to create the entity that would supervene in situations of deadlock.
Unlike you, I will actually pull from the article itself to support what I'm saying:
Quote:
That final point is the key: The commission’s recommendations took effect unless Congress specifically disapproved. Thus, unlike most commissions, this one had a guarantee that its recommendations would not sit on a shelf collecting dust. On the other hand, even though this process favored action over inaction, it was not completely undemocratic: Congress still had oversight and could, if it wanted to, reject the commission’s ideas.
lol. Funny how quickly this thread died once the actual article was brought up for discussion. Very telling.
Don't count on likes of SourD to get any of that. He might be just replacing his/her tin foil hat at this time.
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