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Old 28th December 2012, 02:53 PM   #3
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: The Antimemetics Division
Posts: 69,914
There's at least one other reason to block a vote: If it's politically inconvenient to take a stand on the issue in question. It may be expedient to block a vote that wouldn't pass, if you'd have to trade away too many favors, or force too many unwelcome positions, in order to guarantee the failure.

And don't forget that it's also "too easy" to combine many unrelated things into a single bill. Voting for something you like is usually also voting for something you don't like. Sometimes, it's more expedient not to vote at all, until you can get a better deal.

I say "too easy" because the legislature makes its own rules for how it conducts business. By what measure can you say it's "too easy" to block votes, rather than "not easy enough"? And by what authority would that be changed, anyway?

Can the President command the Legislature to make decisions on the policies of his choosing, in the time of his choosing? Of course not; nor should he.

Could we the people amend the Constitution, putting some such stipulation in place? Perhaps, but in over 200 years nobody has yet produced a compelling argument for doing so. Will you be the first to convince a majority of the federal legislature, and a majority of the state legislatures, that this is a problem that needs solving?

After we go over the cliff, maybe you will be, at that. Certainly if you convinced enough of the electorate, their elected officials would pander to their demands, if only to keep their seats in office.

So: What would your amendment look like, and what would be your best arguments in favor of passing it?

More to the point: If you had the budget for it, what propaganda would you spew to the electorate at large, to convince them that your amendment should be passed?

Would you send different messages in different markets? Would you make different arguments to different interest groups? Which lobbies would you court, and with what offerings of quid pro quo? What lobbies would you spurn, and why?

What sources of funding would you seek out, to seed your super-PAC (for surely you'd need one)?

I'm not saying you should do all these things; I'm merely curious, as a thought-experiment, how you would go about solving the problem you've identified. What changes would you make? What arguments would you use to convince your fellow-citizens to support those changes? What arguments would you use to convince the lawmakers--who must ultimately enact those changes--to go along with them?
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