American federalism stinks, says University of Washington political scientist Jacob Grumbach. In his book Laboratories Against Democracy: How National Parties Transformed State Politics, Grumbach says shifting power to the states allows national groups to more easily co-opt the political process to favor their special interests and box out the people. Instead of getting states conducting independent experiments in diverse policy producing results from which all states can learn and improve outcomes, we get oppression driven by the likes of ALEC and National Right to Life
The threat to democracy, according to Grumbach, is threefold. First, state policy decisions, shaped largely by national and partisan interests, are increasingly divorced from what the average person wants or needs. States have been pushed to the fore not because they are uniquely responsive or accountable, but because they are so readily captured by well-resourced interests.
Second, those interests, and the politicians beholden to them, recognize this disconnect — and double down on it by seeking to further mute democratic participation. Policies that subvert or defy the will of the majority are necessarily accompanied by constraints on political participation. Efforts to discourage or dampen the vote undermine democracy in the states where they are pursued and — because states bear primary responsibility for electoral standards and integrity — undermine democracy everywhere else in the bargain [Colin Gordon, “American Federalism Isn’t a Boon for Democracy—It’s a Disease,” Jacobin, 2022.10.06].
I like the idea of layers of government—local, state, and federal—handling issues at the closest level of accountability possible. But the oppression committed in the name of states’ rights and the history of the federal government having to step in to secure the rights of citizens indicates that in practice, we have to rely on a stronger federal government to stand up to the forces that would rig or tear up our social contract for their special interests.
Craig Holt Segall, JD is Assistant Chief Counsel of the California Air Resources Board, a Visiting Assistant Scholar at UCLA Law, a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh Law School and is married to Lilly Allen, who grew up in our Red Rock Road/Baja Waldo neighborhood. She got her Master’s at the University of Edinburgh and is expecting their first child. They stayed at our casita before their sojourn in Scotland. Her dad sent me the link to Craig’s paper. Craig was vetted for a post at the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Networked Federalism: Subnational Governments in the Biden Era
South Dakota is such a case study in this phenomenon! Groups like ALEC and AFP can carpet bomb us with print and media at a very low price – our voters are the cheapest lab they can find to give their bad ideas a try. The question I have: given that, why are Noem’s flyers so insultingly stupid?
Exactly, Mr. Price. Sackett v. EPA is in the Supreme Court spotlight in a test of the authority of the agency to regulate wetland protection.
Throughout its history the US Army Corps of Engineers has had purview over water that flows into bodies that can support navigation and in 2014, through the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Obama White House moved to identify more closely the sources of non-point pollution. Despite a judge’s ruling EPA went forward with a new federal rule protecting small streams, tributaries and wetlands. Waters of the United States or WOTUS legislation seeks to give authority to EPA and the Corps to use some teeth to enforce the rights of people downstream to have clean water. But Republicans and their toadies cry government overreach while WOTUS architects regroup for another round in Congress.
The easiest, least expensive thing to buy is a rural politician.
Which is why the well-healed corporations like the banksters, and communication cabals own so many of them.
Has Moscow Thune lowered your phone/internet/cable bill or increased your service in his decades in the senate – of course not. He’s working for his donors, while taking his voters for granted – waving a red meat flag, and moving on to the next corporate wish list and next election.
2009
Wealthiest American: $40 billion
Average income: $54,283
Minimum wage: $7.25
2022
Wealthiest American: $265 billion
Average income: $53,490
Minimum wage: $7.25
When laws are written by millionaires funded by billionaires they benefit, we don’t.
Elect a working class Congress. @DarrigoMelanie
I think it all depends on who people elect, whether it’s at the local, state or federal level. If you have candidates who are mouthing the talking points of some national party propagandist, some special interest, a cultish political machine,a lobby or ideological group, you are headed for trouble, if not fascism. If you elect someone who is interested in representing his constituents and not some other interest, refuses to use issues to divide people, has his or her own ideas for fixing problems, supports ideas that will lift everyone up and doesn’t demean people he disagrees with, and values honesty, open government and public participation, you will never have to worry.
Its a real scary deal when the average citizen refuses to read. Judy Woodruff said last night on PBS Daily News 1 in 5 voters can’t read the ballot and ballot makers know this and, lets put it this way, aren’t making it any easier visually to recognize a name or specific letter and fill in the circle directly next to it. The butt worms make sure the columns are goofy, they write more laws restricting letting another person help or even be near any voter, they are exploiting seniors and people with visual impairments, as well as people with English not as a first language.
Oh, but those flyers couldn’t get any bigger font or more obnoxious. Does the card stock have to be so thick? I would kiss a bald eagle on the lips if the ink Noem uses is biodegradable. Sorry I’m whining. My people need to not only vote, but run! Run for our lives! Run the establishment out of town! Run and win or lose elections! Just Run!
Circulating petitions is rather sad when I strongly felt that when a guy didn’t want to look at me and quickly replied, “Not today”, was because he wasn’t able to decipher the signing sheet and illiteracy is their phobia. They definitely could have done better making the sheet make more sense in the layout. But, it is all by twisted design. We will just have to get louder and cockier and insinuate we vote for many like the PACs do. Like our vote is the strongest in the land.
Those sonsabeeches. We need them and they keep letting us down and we are too Mayberry to stop it.
Succinctly, states’ rights are the rope we’re giving states like SD, TX, ID, MO, etc. to hang themselves.
We’ll just watch and wait because we’ve studied true history and know that you’ll come crawling back.
We blue states won’t pick up the tab, like we always used to do.
You’ll be ripe for plunder.
The last time “states rights” (Republican code for white supremacy) bullsheit was pushed to a violent extreme, our Gen’l Custer, was there at the “last” battle of the Civil War, May 13, 1865, after Gen’l Lee surrendered in April and Lincoln was assassinated. Republicans disingenuously and incorrectly refer to themselves as “The Party of Lincoln” although they really are not.
Confederate President Davis ran and hid and finally was arrested later. Little people died while military leaders padded their resumes. Commanding the “lost cause” Confederates, Ford previously proclaimed that he would never capitulate to “a mongrel force of Abolitionists, Negroes, plundering Mexicans, and perfidious renegades”…Ford was not about to surrender to invading black troops…. Wiki
Colonel Theodore H. Barrett, commanded … the 62nd U.S.C.T. (colored troops), an officer since 1862, but he had yet to see combat. He volunteered for the newly raised “colored” regiments and was appointed in 1863 as colonel of the 1st Missouri Colored Infantry. In March 1864, the regiment became the 62nd U.S.C.T. Barrett contracted malaria in Louisiana that summer, and while he was on convalescent leave, the 62nd was posted to Brazos Santiago. He joined it there in February 1865.
Soon after the battle, Barrett’s detractors claimed he desired “a little battlefield glory before the war ended altogether.”[2] Others have suggested that Barrett needed horses for the 300 unmounted cavalrymen in his brigade and decided to take them from his enemy.[4]
Barrett is reminiscent of Robert Gould Shaw, 1863 commanding officer of the courageous Massachusetts 54th portrayed in GLORY by Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Ferris Bueller!
Custer, under Gen’l Sheridan was part of command of the 50,000 Union force maintained on the very tip of TX while France was encouraged to invade Mexico and Reconstruction commenced.
Custer is reminiscent of, well, … lost cause proponents still clinging to guns and civil war as a solution for complex societal issues Dems strive heartily to solve every 4-8 years or so after Republican debacles, over and over.
Lies We Never See, Michael Lindley (Sage River Press 2020) is the story of Ford’s troop remnants after-battle.
States’ rights is a container that holds whatever you want. You never hear of states’ rights unless there is some issue that’s floating in that container. Some southern states wanted slavery. That was defended by arguments about states’ rights. Same with Jim Crow. Same thing today with states trying to disenfranchise voters. As indicated by others in this thread, there were many bad things that happened in America that were defended by some form or another of “states’ rights.” The reality is everyone uses states’ rights arguments when it’s convenient as a vessel for their issue. We used it in our fights against nuclear waste and garbage imports into South Dakota.
My opinion is states don’t have rights. People do.
Leslie makes a good point. Republicans in the 1860’s, including Lincoln, would be labeled “RINOs” by today’s Republican party.
For sure it will allow young women to flock to states where they have full and equal rights. It will also allow minorities to flee places like Tommy Tuberville’s Alabama. Although fleeing isn’t the best it will lead to a better country overall, because eventually the blue freedom states will overcome the red dead states.
State’s rights is the curtain the wizard hides his fraud behind. America was founded on group action by a central government. We beat the British as a group, beat Hitler as a group and we beat Covid as a group. Using state’s rights to mask white supremacy and white privilege is the peril you chew at Donald Trump’s behest.
Donald Pay
“If you elect someone who is interested in representing his constituents and not some other interest…”
At least two schools of thought on what constitutes a “representative:”
(1) “Representatives who are *delegates* simply follow the expressed preferences of their constituents. James Madison (1787–8) describes representative government as “the delegation of the government…to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.” Madison recognized that “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” Consequently, Madison suggests having a diverse and large population as a way to decrease the problems with bad representation. In other words, the preferences of the represented can partially safeguard against the problems of faction.”
[Simplistic IMHO as the majority cross-section can be as sincerely wrong or mislead just as Bentham’s claim of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” can result in what is similar to pigs wallowing in the lowest level they know: not all pleasures are weighted equally, as Mill, Carlyle and others have pointed out.]
(2) “In contrast, *trustees* are representatives who follow their own understanding of the best action to pursue. Edmund Burke (1790) is famous for arguing that
‘Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interest each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole… You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament,’
The delegate and the trustee conception of political representation place competing and contradictory demands on the behavior of representatives. Delegate conceptions of representation require representatives to follow their constituents’ preferences, while trustee conceptions require representatives to follow their own judgment about the proper course of action. Any adequate theory of representation must grapple with these contradictory demands.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-representation/?source=post_page—————————
Of course, anyone would claim to be a trustee and follow their own judgement about competing and often contradictory demands of their constituents is, one would hope, highly educated to adjudicate and weight those demands…but according to what criteria?
Hey Dave, there are 574 federally recognized tribal nations trapped within the borders of the occupied United States. Is that federalism or something else?
larry kurtz
As I understand it, tribal members are citizens of three different sovereigns: their tribe, the United States, and the state in which they reside. They are also autonomous individuals from the standpoint of an international context with legal-political (not “natural”) rights afforded to any other individual.
We speak of land that is located “within the exterior boundaries” of an Indian reservation as Indian country.
Are you confusing federalism with confederalism? Are you thinking of colonialism? Or….?
Some conservatives want to abolish the 17th Amendment, direct election of senators. It would be so much easier to buy state legislators, and with gerrymandering in full flower, our Senate would be filled with the finest grifters money could buy.
When the US Constitution was written the Federalists argued for a strong central government with co-equal branches but today neo-Federalists advocate for a weaker central government with a strong unitary executive. Tribes are bound by the Supremacy Clause just like individual states are.