Republicans vote 151-85 to crash the economy and raise taxes on the middle class. Democrats vote 174-16 the other way.
AP reports vote was “bipartisan.”
Basic fact about the fiscal cliff bill:
Aye  No
D 174 Â 16
R Â 85 Â 151
Why can’t David Espo and Alan Fram at the Associated Press get that basic fact into a 38-paragraph story, instead of blandly and misleadingly reporting that the vote was “bipartisan”?
If there’s no price to be paid for irresponsibility, no wonder there’s so much of it going around.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
I would advocate that only bills that pass with a majority in each party be deemed “bipartisan”. It’s a simple mathematical criteria, without subjectivity.
I’d agree with that, it’s about time we stopped calling Democratic bills like McCain/Feingold “bipartisan”.
There’s an old staying that journalists get everything right, except for anything you have personal knowledge of. After half a century of reading newspapers, I’ve had to conclude that several decades ago the news industry up and decided that their job description didn’t involve informing people anymore. But instead supposed their job to be something which too much information might actually get in the way of.
I will watch the journalistic profession, or anyway the joke it became, go the way of buggy whip craftsmen, with great delight.
If you want something closer to real bipartisanship, you need a common enemy (someone like Ron Paul) to introduce an amendment [1] seeking to restore constitutional compliance to a bill re-authorizing unconstitutional warrantless government intrusion into citizens’ private communications. That’s when you’ll see plenty of bipartisanship. I see no price being paid for this irresponsibility, do you? But go ahead and fiddle over the perception that some reporter didn’t give your tribe enough credit for voting to avert a self-imposed artificial “disaster” while the Constitution burns.
[1]
SA 3436. Mr. PAUL (for himself and Mr. LEE) proposed an amendment to the bill H.R. 5949, to extend the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 for five years; as follows:
At the appropriate place, insert the following:
SEC. __X. FOURTH AMENDMENT PRESERVATION AND PROTECTION ACT OF 2012.
(a) Short Title.-This section may be cited as the “Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act of 2012”.
(b) Findings.-Congress finds that the right under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures is violated when the Federal Government or a State or local government acquires information voluntarily relinquished by a person to another party for a limited business purpose without the express informed consent of the person to the specific request by the Federal Government or a State or local government or a warrant, upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
(c) Definition.-In this section, the term “system of records” means any group of records from which information is retrieved by the name of the individual or by some identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular associated with the individual.
(d) Prohibition.-
(1) IN GENERAL.-Except as provided in paragraph (2), the Federal Government and a State or local government is prohibited from obtaining or seeking to obtain information relating to an individual or group of individuals held by a third-party in a system of records, and no such information shall be admissible in a criminal prosecution in a court of law.
(2) EXCEPTION.-The Federal Government or a State or local government may obtain, and a court may admit, information relating to an individual held by a third-party in a system of records if-
(A) the individual whose name or identification information the Federal Government or State or local government is using to access the information provides express and informed consent to the search; or
(B) the Federal Government or State or local government obtains a warrant, upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Doesn’t bother them, as with all government power grabs, they expect their own people to be exercising the power, which makes it ok.
I guess they heard you!
“House Democrats voted by an overwhelming 172-16 for the agreement, which was crafted over the weekend by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Vice President Joe Biden.
But Republicans tilted against it 151-85. It is rare for leaders to bring a bill to the House floor that will be opposed by most lawmakers from their own party, and the decision underscored the pressure GOP leaders felt to approve the legislation.”
Now paragraphs 10 & 11.
As John Judis noted, Republican opposition to the deal was regionally specific. The Y-N-NV percentages for Republicans from outside the 11 former Confederate states were 49%-48%-3%. That’s pretty close to the overall total of 59%-39%-2%. It’s only among Republicans from the former Confederate states & parts of the interior West who sat on their hands. Among the former Confederate states, the Republican breakdown was 14%-85%-1%. Coastal Republicans were closer to the median Democrat than to their ex-Confederate co-partisans.