Doc Avid Mornington

Shilling for the status quo? I’ve got a whole laundry list of changes I’d love to make, some much more significant than term limits, to make legislatures more responsive to democratic oversight. Please see my response to Zaktor for just a few.

There’s this claim, probably kinda BS, that it takes ten years of practice to get really good at something. I’m always suspicious of nice neat numbers like that. But I think it gets repeated a lot because, ultimately, anybody who has become an expert at something kinda squints at it and says “yeah that sounds maybe right” - because it’s close enough, it’s on the right order of magnitude. Expertise takes time. Laws are complicated. If you have a twelve year term limit, and become an expert at year ten, you get two years to do something about it - but only a small fraction of the legislative body left has your level of expertise to work with you.

Always demand more democracy, never less.

So I did some digging… USTL is one of several shady, fake-grass-roots organizations operated by Howard Rich, a wealthy libertarian, and funded by his collection of wealthy libertarian friends, who clearly want to reduce the effectiveness of government, and make it more susceptible to their influence. The lobbyists investigated the lobbyists and found that they don’t support the thing they are saying you should support.

If you look deeper at the specific bills highlighted in that article, neither one is about term-limits versus no-term-limits. They’re both about restructuring existing term limits. We had a similar ballot measure where I live. It’s a fairly complicated issue, and not a good example.

Perhaps the most famous term limit in the US is the Presidential one, imposed because FDR was doing too many good things. By actually doing things to help people, he had become insanely popular, and won a fourth term - democratically, because the voting citizens approved of his actions, as it’s supposed to work. That’s when the corrupt capitalist wing of Congress decided to put a limit on democracy, and honestly, that might be one of the most significant “beginning of the downfall” moments we can point to in US history.

Another big supporter of term limits is the Heritage Foundation. If you can judge somebody by the friends they keep, how about legislation? It’s always the right pushing for this idea.

There’s a lot, and I mean a whole lot, we should be doing to reduce the influence of money on politics. Fully publicly funded elections; banning many current shady lobbying practices; improving our electoral systems to be more democratic; making it illegal for legislators to take bribes, no matter how subtle. Lots. But taking the choice away from the voters is not a good option. It’s a generally good rule of thumb: if your solution to a problem is to reduce democracy, you’ve got the wrong solution.

EDIT to add: https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-term-limits-turn-legislatures-6b2

Characterizing the voters as “lazy” is really failing to understand how bad legislators stay in office. We need to reform our electoral systems to make legislators more accountable to democratic oversight, not impose arbitrary limits that take the power away from the voters.

With term limits, the Congress would lose institutional knowledge. When a new member of Congress came in, they would only have lobbyists to give them introductions, teach them the ropes. Legislation is a difficult job that requires professionals, not just a bunch of newbies. We would be absolutely signing over the Congress to complete corporate control.

More democracy is better.

Less democracy is worse.

I think you’re underestimating the extent to which they really want these things, or their donors do. These issues aren’t new, and many of them either trace back to before the founding of the country, or are proxies for other issues which do. They’re just feeling bold these days.

Exactly. Dependency injection is good; if you need a framework to do it, you’re probably doing it wrong; if your framework is too magical, you’re probably not even doing it at all anymore.

Private ownership of capital altogether, but yeah.

I agree, it is a very bad sign, but the idea that we are either a “failed state” on the way to oblivion, or doing great, and there’s nothing in between, is silly. We’re a lot better now than we were when only landowners could vote, right? Or before the civil war and the second founding? Or before women gained suffrage? Or in the leadup to our entry in WWII, when it looked like we might just join the Axis powers? Or the nineteen forties, when “separate but equal” was basically unchallenged? Or in the nineteen fifties, when a woman was a housewife or nothing? Or the nineteen nineties, when “don’t ask don’t tell” was actually considered a victory for LGBTQ+ rights? Or the twenty-aughts when people were noy allowed to marry based on gender? We’re trying to decide, right now, if a former president can be tried for crimes - it seems wild that this should even be a question, but when it was Nixon, Johnson pardoned him, and that was it - we might be on the verge of a huge step forward, in even just going ahead with the trial, no matter the outcome. Does all this mean everything is awesome now? Oh, oh, HELLS NO! It’s a mess, but it doesn’t mean we are a “failed state”, it just means we aren’t there yet, and we gotta keep struggling.

I dunno why people are downvoting this. You’re absolutely right. Biden doesn’t give as good speech as Obama or Clinton did, but he is pretty charming when he turns it on. He should definitely be in front of cameras, and crowds, more often, especially as we get closer to the election. He’s not perfect, and his tepid stance toward Palestine is saddening, but on domestic policy, he’s been far better as president than I personally expected - probably the most progressive president since LBJ. He’s done more with less political capital than past Democratic presidents, yet a lot of people don’t really realize that, because he’s not talking directly to the populace as much as he could and, I think, really should.

I’m not sure they can realistically run out that clock. But they can absolutely just ignore a past ruling, if they want. Also, Biden just wouldn’t do that. He’s a shit, in a lot of ways, but not that kind of shit. Buuut the important point is that this argument is effective, accurate or not. Scare the MAGAts about what Biden, or, say, a future President Alexandria Ocasio Cortez might do. It doesn’t have to be a realistic threat, just play into their existing narrative.

I mean, Jeffrey Epstein springs immediately to mind. But they definitely have a plan for the future, anyhow.

The pardon power should be eliminated, and that’s been clear since Nixon was pardoned. Sure, just about every president has a feel-good set of pardons, people who were railroaded by bad laws and bad court practices, but those corrections are only a tiny fraction of the outrageous injustices committed by our system, and their existence is used to justify the injustice in the first place - “oh but surely there will be a pardon for people who really need it” - as if depending on a single King-figure at the top to make good decisions, instead of improving systems, was ever a good idea. But in the meantime, just about every president also has a list of political pardons they trade for favors, or use for people who committed crimes on behalf of the president, or the party. Why the fuck does it make any sense at all to say “hey, this person was elected head of the executive branch, they should be able to just shield people from the rule of law”, if the rule of law is an important basis of a free democracy? It’s weird, when you think about it. End the pardon.

Pretty sure they meant to not have review. Dropping peer review in favor of pair programming is a trendy idea these days. Heh, you might call it “pairs over peers”. I don’t agree with it, though. Pair programming is great, but two people, heads together, can easily get on a wavelength and miss the same things. It’s always valuable to have people who have never seen the new changes take a look. Also, peer review helps keep the whole team up to date on their knowledge of the code base, a seriously underrated benefit. But I will concede that trading peer review for pair programming is less wrong than giving up version control. Still wrong, but a lot less wrong.

I must not be educated. Please, what are the dangers of communism? And what, exactly, do you think the word “communism” means?

Why? Can you provide an accurate definition of communism, and a theory as to why you think it cannot be done without becoming a dictatorship? Can you provide an accurate definition of capitalism, and why you think it is more free?

Putin isn’t a communist, though. Far from it.

Thanks, @EunieIsTheBus@feddit.de and @justlookingfordragon@lemmy.world, for clearing that up. I forgot you have to leave and come back for the rock to become scenery. Makes sense.

I mean great, I support this, but 450 people is “a massive march”? How did 75 organizations only come up with 450 people? That’s only 6 people per organization. Here’s hoping this grows a lot by the convention.

That’s hilarious. After the Korok cutscene, normally the rock seems to be removed (as a physics item), and a scenery “rock” replaces it in the circle. Does the rock stay on your weapon?

The UCC I went to every Sunday of my childhood (Dad was the minister, so kinda had to go) would have a loaf of really good fresh bread. Some was cut up in cubes, to take neatly, or you could pull a hunk off the loaf if you liked. One side of the drinks tray had grape juice, the other had wine, again, your choice, although obviously when I was young, I didn’t reach for the wine in front of my mom. Little tiny snack was the best part of church.

Or gets promoted, and keeps moving on to new and bigger projects, leaving a trail of destruction, because all management sees is they close tickets faster than the people who are busy picking up the pieces behind them.