The Empty Chamber - The New Yorker

Just How Broken is the Senate

George Packer - 09 August 2010

Max Baucus, of Montana, the manager of the bill for the Democrats, rose and said, This is the first time in recent memory that a reconciliation bill has all the amendments on one side only. These are clearly amendments designed to kill the reconciliation and, therefore, kill health care reform.

The Republican goal during the vote was to embarrass the Democrats wile appearing to suggest useful changes; the Democratic goal was to prevent any changes to the bill so it wouldn't have to return to the House.

History of the Senate

1. Post Civil War- Senate was captured by wealthy and sectional interests--ending the more high minded debate of Webster, Clay,etc. The Senate was controlled by an alliance of Souther racists and Republican shills and served as the chief obstruction of the federal government.
2. 1958- New class of liberal democrats like Muskie, Eugene McCarthy, and Hart began to produce reforms.
3. 60s-70s - Southern conservative control was broken by a coalition of left of center Democrats; Civil Rights Act passed in 1964 and Medicare passed in 1965. Every major initiative--voting rights, open housing, environmental enjoyed bipartisan support.
4. 1978-Senate's modern decline with the election of a new wave of anti-government conservatives that weren't there to get along with Democrats. 1981 was the arrival of Dan Quayle and those that thought and looked like him.
5. 1979-C-Span leads to more posturing by Senators being on TV.
6. Democrat Metzenbaum and Republican Jesse Helms used the Senate rules for tying up business for ideological reasons. Number of filibusters shot up in the 80s.
7. 2004 - Older senate members were perturbed when Rep Majority leader, Frist, went to South Dakota to campaign against Daschele, the minority leader.
8. Clinton vs Gingrich
9. Bush years--Republican minority did not check executive power.

After the Republicans lost the majority in 2006, filibusters became the norm; there were 112 cloture votes in 2007.

Seventy-six nominees for judges and executive posts have been approved by committees but because of blocks, haven't come up for votes so courtrooms and jobs remain unfilled.

The deepest source of the Senate's problems is not rules and precedents, but people who have created a culture where lofty thoughts and generous impulses have no place.

Briefing : The Future of the Internet

A Virtual Counter Revolution - Economist Briefing - 04 September 2010

The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies, and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it.

1. Governments are reasserting their sovereignty. Countries have demanded that law enforcement have access to emails sent from smart phones.
2. Big IT companies are building their own digital territories where they set the rules and control or limit connections to other parts of the internet.
3. Network owners would like to treat different types of traffic differently, in effect creating faster and slower lanes on the internet.

Devotees of a unified cyberspace are worried that the online world will soon start looking as it did before the internet took over: a collection of proprietary islands reminiscent of AOL and Compuserve.

Net Neutrality - every packet of data, regardless of content is equal, and should be treated the same way and every effort should be made to forward it.

1. If operators were allowed to charge for better service, then those not willing to pay would be forced to crawl in the slow lane. Allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would undermine the principles that have made the internet such a success.
2. Opponents say that this could discourage operators from investing to differentiate their services. And given the rapid growth in file-sharing and video, operators may have good reason the manage data flows, lest other traffic be crowded out.

America has a relative lack of competition in broadband service. In Europe and Japan, open access rules requires network operators to lease parts of their network to other firms on a wholesale basis, thus boosting competition. Countries with such rules enjoy faster, cheaper broadband service than America because the barrier to entry for new entrants is much lower. And if any company starts limiting what can be done, they will just defect.

American operators have insisted that open access requirements would destroy their incentive to build new and faster networks since they would have to share them. As a result, America has a small number of powerful network operators, prompting the concern that they will abuse power unless compelled by a net neutrality law to treat all traffic equally.

Rather than trying to mandate fairness, it makes more sense to deal with the underlying problem of lack of competition.