No time for anything original from me. But here’s some funny lines written by other people about the Conrad-Gregg deficit reduction commission being proposed:
Jonathan Chait:
“Conrad and Gregg seem to think that instituting major reforms in the public interest is rare because the threshold for passing legislation is too low. Thus they’ve designed a process that creates new and higher supermajority requirements, on an issue where getting even 51% to sign on is probably impossible. And if that fails, maybe they’ll conclude the process was too easy. Next time they could also require the commission members to create a cold fusion reactor or retrieve a magical ring from inside a volcano.”
Ezra Klein:
“There needs to be a Conrad-Gregg entitlement commission because bipartisanship has broken down. In response, Conrad and Gregg are setting a higher bar for bipartisanship? It’s like trying to cure the flu by competing in a triathlon.”
Pretty much.
Also, on the subject of felon disenfranchisement, what djw said:
“I’d recommend that anyone who finds this line of thinking persuasive read this old Matt Welch piece. Central to his argument is that, when we take a closer look at the laws, most of us are probably unprosecuted felons. It’s much more helpful to think of the disenfranchisement of felons as the disenfranchisement of a subset of felons–those who live in populations where felonies are agressively policed, and who commit felonies we choose to actually enforce.”
With the added stipulation that is clearly implicit in his post, but really needs to be shouted loudly: the populations which suffer from this policy are overwhelmingly and disproportionately racial minorities. And it’s not exactly a coincidence.