I think that Megan McArdle has put her finger on what we should be most concerned about in Barney Frank’s announced retirement: Maxine Waters will now be the ranking Democratic member of the House Financial Services Committee.
If anybody believes that all of the crazy people in the House are Republicans, Maxine Waters should provide evidence enough to disabuse them of the notion. Which brings up a good point. What I write around here might be taken as a “plague on both your houses” sort of thing but that’s not it at all. I think that the present structure of the House lends itself to fostering radicalism. And I’m against it.
Moderation is the fundamental virtue of a democracy. It is what makes democracies possible.
She’s not just more radical, she’s dumber.
We need a better system for drawing districts. Speaking of things I’d trust an app to do better.
Jeez Michael you don’t need an app you just need a simple rule. Drawing districts is not subject to simple rules though…it is subject to political gaming, hence the weird districts and to some extent the politicians we’ve got.
My general view is that no political party has a monopoly on either stupid or crazy. Their crazies may look loonier to us than our crazies but I’m willing to make an exception in Maxine Waters’s case.
Maxine Waters may be a loon with no ethics. But, much like the energizer bunny, she just keeps getting reelected and going on and on.
Michael,
The problem is that gerrymandering is pretty well entrenched and would probably require a Constitutional amendment to change. Somehow I doubt our current crop of politicians are going to deny themselves the ability to pick their own voters.
California has taken the redistricting task out of the hands of the legislature and placed in the hands of the California Redistricting Commission. However, the state Republican party trying to overturn the newly drawn map. See, Push against redistricting maps moves forward. Something about safe seats being no longer so.
This is a tribute to California’s goofy initiative system. The commission was brought into being via referendum. Now the GOP is trying to undo it via referendum.
There’s also a federal lawsuit:
The originates in the well-known Republican solicitude for minority rights. Minorities with a picture ID, I think.
sam, gerrymandering to ensure minority districts is well established, and pretty much expected. (I live in such a district.) In Florida we’ve had complaints from Hispanics complaining that they’re not getting enough seats, because they’re guaranteed to blacks instead. The flip-side of that is that such districts make for safer Republican seats as well, since it concentrates Democratic votes.
I had a good, very liberal friend who worked for a law professor one summer in the early 90s on the remapping of the Florida Panhandle to create minority districts. When asked what she was doing for the Summer, she would respond with disgust: “Helping carve out Republican districts in Florida.”
Illinois Republicans are suing here because the Democrats’ remap of the state failed to provide an Hispanic district. (Though I think this is a heads they win; tails you lose approach. They probably suspect the creation of such a district would help Republicans. They also see Hispanics “suburbanizing” and being marginalized by certain African-American voices in the Democratic Party, so its good publicity nonetheless)