Charlie Pierce put me on to this one, too. As Deep Throat said (a line William Goldman made up for the script; it's not, sadly, true history; but now it's truer than history): "Follow the money."
At a weekend donor retreat attended by at least 18 elected officials, the Koch brothers warned that time is running out to push their agenda, most notably healthcare and tax reform, through Congress.Why Cassidy-Graham now? Why tax reform?
One Texas-based donor warned Republican lawmakers that his “Dallas piggy bank” was now closed, until he saw legislative progress.
“Get Obamacare repealed and replaced, get tax reform passed,” said Doug Deason. “Get it done and we’ll open it back up.”
Follow the money.
Norm Ornstein and E.J. Dionne were telling Terry Gross yesterday:
Well, by 20 - I think it's by 2050 - 70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. That means that 70 percent of Americans will have 30 senators and 30 percent of Americans will have 70 senators. The Senate, which unfortunately is very hard to change the way it was written into the Constitution, radically underrepresents populous states. And it does so more now than it used to. The ratio when the Republic started between the smallest and largest state was 13 to 1. Now it's around 70 to 1 or more.
They didn't even get to the money question.
We are so screwed.
and I say again..we're fucked
ReplyDeleteThe American Constitution is a time bomb and it has been since the beginning. I don't think we're going to avoid another civil war unless the majority minority thing works, somehow, to avoid it.
ReplyDeleteThe thing needs to be radically altered, making the Senate more if not entirely proportionally representative is essential to making it work.
The Senate was meant to be a House of Lords with more teeth. Maybe we do need a more representational body, as many states have.
ReplyDeleteWe certainly can't go forward with the imbalance in the Senate that demographics are going to create, and we don't need a unicameral legislature that is entirely the House of Representatives.