GOP tries to gut Office of Congressional Ethics

[Mori Chu]

As one of their first acts of the new term, House GOP guts independent ethics board that monitors them for corruption.

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/po ... ffice.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... er/512021/
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/h ... ght-233111

If you don't know about the OCE, here's a good primer. They help make public any investigations into Congress members to make it harder for corrupt behavior to be swept under the rug. They have filed around 100 total investigations. While they haven't busted a huge ring of malfeasance, they discourage bad behavior and make it easier to bring bad behavior to light. Here's a little more on their work:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/o ... -do-233128

The latest update is that they seem to be retracting the measure to cut the OCE after intense complaining from lots of people around the country. Trump also had a few tweets criticizing the move, though I think it's an exaggeration to say that Trump helped stop this thing.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/02/politics/ ... index.html

[Indy]

The worst part is they did this behind closed doors, in a special session that excluded all non-GOP members.

[Cap]

The worst part is they did this behind closed doors, in a special session that excluded all non-GOP members.

Kevin "Untrustable" McCarthy may seem an unlikely hero, but he apparently killed (or at least delayed) the move by threatening to do it in public.

According to several people in the private meeting Tuesday, McCarthy convened the gathering and laid out options for proceeding: Either Republicans could decide among themselves to change course on the ethics changes, or the matter would be hashed out on the House floor, where members would have their views publicly recorded.

With that, he asked if there was any objection. While some members maintained that the House should act immediately to rein in the OCE, the vast majority agreed to eliminate the proposal and move on.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpos ... 716ae6168f

[Nodack]

Yeah, that stinks. They say they were doing it because too many times Congressmen were being accused of wrong doing anonymously and they were having to spend money and time defending their good name.

It sounds like they were trying to make themselves immune from prosecution when violating ethics. Nothing fishy about that....

[Nodack]

I dislike Trump a bunch but, he gets brownie points from me by calling out Republicans. I was going to say his fellow Republicans but, I don't really consider Trump a Republican and he proved it today.

[ShelC]

Part of me wants to believe that this was a wake up call to Republicans - that Trump really isn't beholden to anyone, in any political party, and will call them out accordingly. It's one of the things I'm hoping to see. That he'll throw anyone under the bus, even Republicans, if they're up to shenanigans like this, or unwilling to compromise on bills/deals. Even Ryan, who was against the move, went along with it after the initial vote - which made him look pretty bad overall.

Another part of me wonders whether this was some kind of set up for Trump. That they tried to do something this reckless on Day 1 (literally) only for him to put out a tweet and save the day. A little far fetched but not out of the realm of possibility. I just can't believe they'd try something this egregious on their first day. If this is a sign of things to come, we'd better hope Trump puts them on blast every time they try some nonsense like this.

[carey]

You guys are aware that all he called out was the timing, right? He said nothing at all in support of the independent ethics committee. He just said there are other things they should be doing right now. Which to me reads like this, "Hey, do this later. We have to repeal Obamacare first."

[In2ition]

I guess that's a way to ding him on this and say he's actually for this. I think this is ridiculous by the Republicans to even propose this at any time. They need to have a good reason and convince us that it's good for the country, but it seems like they are trying to cover their @$$ so that they can govern and judge themselves. An old boys network so to say.

[Mori Chu]

Trump's same tweet also said that the OCE was "very unfair." I don't think he's the hero here. I think Trump just likes to be popular and got the sense that the wind was blowing the other direction on this one, so he decided to take the popular side. He also didn't stop anything with a tweet; thousands of people called their Congress critters and complained. They're the real heroes here.

[Nodack]

I guess it makes sense. Trump is all about Trumps ego.

[SDC]

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/03/polit ... -nominees/

[Mori Chu]

I actually think the current number of 51 is fine for approving cabinet position nominees. The President should generally get to appoint "his" people unless they are truly reprehensible. I don't think he should be forced to choose a cabinet based on the will of the opposing party.

[ShelC]

What a putz...Schumer's like "Yea it was a great idea when we were in power, that's why we changed it. Now....". Kinda like the electoral college...no one had a problem when Obama won two terms, now everyone wants it done away with because Hillary lost. And don't think Schumer and the Dems didn't change the rule thinking Hillary wouldn't be the next President. They thought they'd be in power until at least 2020.

[Indy]

What a putz...Schumer's like "Yea it was a great idea when we were in power, that's why we changed it. Now....". Kinda like the electoral college...no one had a problem when Obama won two terms, now everyone wants it done away with because Hillary lost. And don't think Schumer and the Dems didn't change the rule thinking Hillary wouldn't be the next President. They thought they'd be in power until at least 2020.

The clamoring has nothing to do with who won. There were tons of Republicans saying we needed to do away with it before the election actually happened, because they said the will of the voters should count equally, not based on the size of the state the vote from. The EC was set up to appease slave holders in the south so their votes would count more than non-slave owners. And the Continental Congress was pretty well split, and compromised.

[Rant]Hell, if you read the Constitution, it is in pretty stark contrast to the Declaration of Independence that started it all. The Declaration of Independence is a radical, forward thinking ideal. The Constitution is what happens when you lock 100 lawyers in a room and try and negotiate that great ideal into a contract.[/Rant]

[In2ition]

What a putz...Schumer's like "Yea it was a great idea when we were in power, that's why we changed it. Now....". Kinda like the electoral college...no one had a problem when Obama won two terms, now everyone wants it done away with because Hillary lost. And don't think Schumer and the Dems didn't change the rule thinking Hillary wouldn't be the next President. They thought they'd be in power until at least 2020.

The clamoring has nothing to do with who won. There were tons of Republicans saying we needed to do away with it before the election actually happened, because they said the will of the voters should count equally, not based on the size of the state the vote from. The EC was set up to appease slave holders in the south so their votes would count more than non-slave owners. And the Continental Congress was pretty well split, and compromised.

[Rant]Hell, if you read the Constitution, it is in pretty stark contrast to the Declaration of Independence that started it all. The Declaration of Independence is a radical, forward thinking ideal. The Constitution is what happens when you lock 100 lawyers in a room and try and negotiate that great ideal into a contract.[/Rant]

A common misunderstanding is that the Constitution counted slaves as three-fifths of a “white person,” and that this provision “gave the slave states more electoral votes.” The apportionment of representatives in the House of Representatives was determined by all persons — not just voters — living in a state, which would include all legal residents, whether man, woman or child, citizen or non-citizens, white or black, who were living within the borders of a particular state. The states with large slave populations wanted all the slaves counted, so as to give themselves a greater representation in the House of Representatives. In contrast, it was the states with smaller numbers of slaves (only two states had no slaves at the time of the first federal census) that objected to counting any of the slaves.

So the Three-Fifths Compromise was not to give the slave states more representation, but rather to reduce some of the impact of counting larger slave populations found in the South. And it is also important to note that the wording of the Constitution was not “three-fifths of a white person,” but rather three-fifths of non-slaves. At the time of the Constitution’s adoption, there were thousands of free blacks, whose numbers were not fractionalized by that compromise.

What does all this have to do with the Electoral College?

Under the Constitution, no national elections were contemplated — not for Congress, and not for the president. Because the government created by the Constitution was to be a federal republic, the states were expected to elect both the Congress and the president. The selection of the president by electors followed the pattern of the people in the states electing members of the House of Representatives and the state legislatures of each state choosing the members of the Senate. Each state would be entitled to two U.S. senators, regardless of its population, and each state would be allowed to choose a number of representatives, according to its population determined after each decennial federal census.

The delegates did not want Congress to choose the president because this would make him a creature of that body, and would lessen his ability to check its power. Therefore, the delegates created a system wherein the states would choose electors who would then choose the president. How many electors would each state receive? It was determined, in keeping with the Great Compromise earlier in the Convention, that each state legislature could choose, by whatever method they so determined, a number of electors equal to their combined numbers of representatives and senators. The electors would not meet as a national body, but rather in their state capitals. The term “Electoral College” was a later invention. Over the course of time the system has evolved, and today presidential electors are chosen by state popular vote, and not by a national popular vote. The election of the president is just as democratic as the election of the House of Representatives, or the election of the Senate. In short, it is a good example of the form of government created by the Constitution: a federal republic.

Writing in the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton described the system devised for electing the president through electors, though not perfect, as “excellent.” He stated, “The mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents.”

And it had nothing to do with slavery.

[In2ition]

I thought these were a pretty good explanations of the Electoral College: [youtube][/youtube] [youtube][/youtube]

[Indy]

Thanks for the copy and paste article, but that doesn't address my comment. I never said that the 3/5ths compromise was adding more votes to the south/slave owning states. Of course they wanted to count all people towards their Congress representation/EC count), which would obviously increase their power because the owners voted, not the slaves. The fact that the northern states argued it down to 3/5ths was a way to not let it get too out of control. But that doesn't change the fact that our very foundation of a "representative government" was built on giving slave owners (especially large slave owners) more votes/representation than non-slave owners.

And it did have to do with slavery.

[Cap]

The 3/5 clause was use during to compute population not only for purposes of representation in the HOR and EC, but also for apportionment of direct taxes, which is how the federal government was funded in those days. So the slave states paid for their extra representation.

FWIW.

[Indy]

The 3/5 clause was use during to compute population not only for purposes of representation in the HOR and EC, but also for apportionment of direct taxes, which is how the federal government was funded in those days. So the slave states paid for their extra representation.

FWIW.

Well, their slaves paid for it.

[In2ition]

Did the slave owners get to vote per every slave they had? If the slave owner had 100 slaves, could he vote 100 times plus himself and his possible wife?

I'm not convinced at all that it is was because of slavery, nor that the EC should be done away with.