House Republicans Vote to Strip Independence from Ethics Office
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
[1]: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-...
The best I understood from it is that they were not happy at releasing reports of someone who was ultimately cleared.
And I can kinda see their POV on that. If they are cleared they are cleared, releasing the full report after that seems intrusive and implies that they did something wrong even if cleared (which may be true, but if that's the case then don't clear them).
Releasing reports of government activity and investigations into elected officials seems perfectly reasonable to me. Government should be transparent.
Let's not take this at face value. It's an easy way for them to keep their cover as serious people and blame the insurgents.
> Now, here's the good part, as it was with the DeLay Rule, the vote is secret. Why? Because this is a caucus vote, i.e., not an actual congressional vote. Let me digress for a moment and explain just one more bit of detail. With each new Congress the majority puts together a bundle of rules that will govern how the House works during that Congress. Mostly this just puts the old rules back in place. But there are always a few changes. All those rules get bundled into one bill and it's the first thing or one of the first to get voted on. That bill gets approved on a party line vote, just like the Speaker gets elected. If the caucus votes for it, it's a sure thing. So even though this was just a secret caucus vote, in effect it is binding as law since all Republicans will vote for it in the official vote.
>The full House is scheduled to vote on Tuesday on the rules, which would last for two years, until the next congressional elections.
That said, I'm absolutely baffled about how anyone can support the Republican Party these days. I'm not talking about tax policy or spending or surveillance or any of the big issues -- I disagree with their positions in many cases, but I can understand them.
What I can't understand is the bizarre, nightmarish attacks on what seems to be... well, democracy. Regardless of how you feel about abortion or foreign policy or the social safety net, there's a party that:
* Advocated the invalidation of big chunks of the Voting Rights Act, then passed voter suppression efforts (North Carolina, among several others) so brazenly targeted at minorities that even red-state courts stepped in to stop them.
* Pushed gerrymandering to an almost comical conclusion in states like Wisconsin, where legislators aren't even pretending to have a reason for doing it other than to disenfranchise Democrats. They're adamant enough that it's probably going to end up in the Supreme Court.[0]
* Holds an unannounced vote, with no debate, by secret ballot, on a day federal offices are closed, to gut the congressional office assigned to hold them accountable for corrupt behavior. If you didn't read the linked story, the move basically puts the House Ethics Committee in charge of the investigations, which means Congress is voting to put itself in charge of monitoring the ethics of... Congress.
Republicans are whining about how the current system can be abusive, so their answer is to give a House committee more power over the process? The same House that spent years investigating Hillary Clinton over anything they could think of, insisting it had nothing to do with her running for president? The same House that then dropped all the investigations immediately after the election? More importantly than that, the same House that has had more than a dozen[1] members convicted of federal crimes since 2000?
This whole thing is already waaay into "inappropriate rant" territory, but I'm so, so saddened by these developments. This isn't a question of political opinions coming into conflict, like with health care or climate policy or banking regulation. This is breaking the system.
0 - http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/wisconsin-redistricting...
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_polit...
In 2012, Democrats won 1.2% more votes nationwide for House seats, but the GOP had a 234-201 majority in DC. [Edited to correct an error in my prior statement.] [0]
Also, don't forget the other ways they've seriously undermined elections: The Republicans on the Supreme Court removing the barrier to unlimited, anonymous election spending. Republicans on the Federal Election Commission blocking almost all enforcement action. Republicans in Congress threatening, intimidating, and investigating the IRS into ceasing campaign finance enforcement actions
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I don't mean this in a partisan way; I embrace some conservative ideas and wish the Republican Party provided excellent governance, great ideas and policy, and the best possible choice for voters. However, that is not the case right now. The hypothesis that seems to predict the Republican's behavior to me (and which I invite others to test and challenge) is that it is a scorched earth ideological war against anything 'liberal', good or bad.
* By "ideological", I mean these are the definition of dogmatic, extremist idealogues: Truth, facts, and human welfare are not the tests of statements or policy, ideology is; consider climate change, as an example, or all the extremist, clearly false statements by Republican candidates, including the President-elect - acceptable because they fit ideology, not truth or good policy. In fact, I believe any discussion of issues is a distraction from the ideological steps they will pursue regardless.
* By "scorched earth", I mean regardless of the harm it does to the country and world - burn down the institutions, economies, and ruin the people - again, think of climate change.
I think it's so extreme a problem that people naturally doubt it can be that bad, but I think it is: The current Republican Party, since 2001, is a serious threat the U.S. and world. The Democrats are complicit by their passivity - a dereliction of duty, even cowardice - which has allowed this behavior to become acceptable, even a norm.
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Consider, off the top of my head, real-world examples of the scorched earth ideological campaign:
* Climate change: Rejected because it's a 'liberal' idea
* The embrace and encouragement of torture, war, and violence.
* Undermining elections, as described above.
* The criminalization of opposition politics, with their voters accused of fraud, and their leaders impeached (Clinton), his legal legitimacy questioned (Obama), or investigated endlessly and threatened with imprisonment (Clinton), and the widespread demonization of them.
* Undermining the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches, regardless of the damage, through record filibusters and obstructionism: As examples, shutting down the government multiple times; seriously threatening bankruptcy of the U.S. government and causing its credit rating to be reduced; refusing to vote on a Supreme Court nomination for the first time, leaving the judiciary unable to act in some cases; nominating a clearly unqualified candidate for President who may even be cooperating with a foreign enemy.
* Damaging the news media and the cause of an informed public with an endless flood of ideological propaganda campaigns.
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe...
As to why some posts are flagged, and some to the point of '[flagged][dead]', from as much as I've witnessed it's not all that dissimilar to why some posts or comments get up-voted and others not. Certain occurrences of flagging will catch our eye based on our own perspectives.
I haven't been convinced strongly enough that there's anything nefarious afoot to warrant diving into looking at the post statistics (though I do think it would be interesting to do so). From your initial comment I might assume that you think this might be the case. If so, I encourage you to do such a study yourself. The HN APIs will likely give you enough data to provide enough data to dig into it.