[EL] More on How Gerrymandering Did Not Cause the Shutdown

[Greenberg, Kevin]

What does this have to do with Election Law?

Kevin Greenberg
215-279-9912
kevin.greenberg at flastergreenberg.com<mailto:kevin.greenberg at flastergreenberg.com>

On Oct 11, 2013, at 12:16 PM, "Jon Roland" <jon.roland at constitution.org<mailto:jon.roland at constitution.org>> wrote:

Contrary to some commenters, shutdowns have occurred in the past, and we have had defaults.

There have actually been at least three major defaults in our history: During the War for Independence, during the Civil War, and during the Depression. All resulted in payment in paper "money" instead of gold or silver. By constitutional standards, we are already in default, and have been for some decades. Printing debt-based currency to pay debt is default, and we are likely to continue to do that, even if the result is hyperinflation.

Gridlock is also not new. It has become somewhat worse for several reasons:


  1.  Parties have sorted themselves by ideology, into makers and takers, more than by merely trying to appeal to whatever the local constituency might support to get candidates elected.
  2.  The factions are more equally balanced. It is easy to avoid gridlock when one party dominates the presidency and both houses of Congress by a wide margin.
  3.  Makers and takers have become redistributed, with the takers concentrated in the cities and the makers everywhere else. Any system of single-member districting will tend to favor the latter.
  4.  The factions are divided by very different and incompatible understandings of the policy alternatives and likely consequences of each. One side thinks continued spending and borrowing will cause a world depression greater than that of the 1930s, and the other thinks spending and borrowing can go on forever, to support consumption by patronage recipients and the refinancing of existing debt. There really isn't much middle ground between those two concepts of our situation.
  5.  Both factions are panicked, one by the realization that economic collapse is now unavoidable, and that they will be blamed for it, and the other by the realization that their political base is about to be cut off from government benefits, and they will be blamed for that. Avoiding blame has replaced any effort at wise governance.

We have seen this kind of situation many times in history -- in the final stages just before the collapse of each of about 20 civilizations. This time the dark age will be enlightened by weapons of mass destruction.

"Oh we will all go together when we go. Every Hottentot, and every Eskimo. There'll  be complete participation in that grand incineration. Oh we all will go together when we go." -- Tom Lehrer song<http://youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs>

-- Jon

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