
House Republicans Vote to Strip Independence from Ethics Office - miles7
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/with-no-warning-house-republicans-vote-to-hobble-independent-ethics-office.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
======
woodruffw
This is nauseating, and the fact that it was done with a secret ballot [1] is
indication that those behind it are entirely aware of its repulsiveness.

[1]: [http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-
gut-...](http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-their-
own-oversight-233111)

------
saboot
Okay I'll pretend to give a benefit of the doubt here.. what's the possible
upside or positives for doing this? I'm having a very hard time conceiving of
them.

~~~
ars
It was a very confusing news article.

The best I understood from it is that they were not happy at releasing reports
of someone who was ultimately cleared.

And I can kinda see their POV on that. If they are cleared they are cleared,
releasing the full report after that seems intrusive and implies that they did
something wrong even if cleared (which may be true, but if that's the case
then don't clear them).

~~~
naasking
> The best I understood from it is that they were not happy at releasing
> reports of someone who was ultimately cleared.

Releasing reports of government activity and investigations into elected
officials seems perfectly reasonable to me. Government should be transparent.

------
hackuser
> Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the
> majority leader, spoke out during the meeting to oppose the measure, aides
> said on Monday night.

Let's not take this at face value. It's an easy way for them to keep their
cover as serious people and blame the insurgents.

~~~
DrScump
How do you figure that? If this proposed rule change ever comes before the
full House for a vote, that vote is public.

~~~
jacalata
It will come as part of a bundle that nobody expects any Republicans to reject
- [http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/back-to-the-auction-
hous...](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/back-to-the-auction-house)

> Now, here's the good part, as it was with the DeLay Rule, the vote is
> secret. Why? Because this is a caucus vote, i.e., not an actual
> congressional vote. Let me digress for a moment and explain just one more
> bit of detail. With each new Congress the majority puts together a bundle of
> rules that will govern how the House works during that Congress. Mostly this
> just puts the old rules back in place. But there are always a few changes.
> All those rules get bundled into one bill and it's the first thing or one of
> the first to get voted on. That bill gets approved on a party line vote,
> just like the Speaker gets elected. If the caucus votes for it, it's a sure
> thing. So even though this was just a secret caucus vote, in effect it is
> binding as law since all Republicans will vote for it in the official vote.

------
rev_bird
First of all, it looks like it's not a done deal quite yet:

>The full House is scheduled to vote on Tuesday on the rules, which would last
for two years, until the next congressional elections.

That said, I'm absolutely baffled about how anyone can support the Republican
Party these days. I'm not talking about tax policy or spending or surveillance
or any of the big issues -- I disagree with their positions in many cases, but
I can _understand_ them.

What I can't understand is the bizarre, nightmarish attacks on what seems to
be... well, democracy. Regardless of how you feel about abortion or foreign
policy or the social safety net, there's a party that:

* Advocated the invalidation of big chunks of the Voting Rights Act, then passed voter suppression efforts (North Carolina, among several others) so brazenly targeted at minorities that even red-state courts stepped in to stop them.

* Pushed gerrymandering to an almost comical conclusion in states like Wisconsin, where legislators aren't even _pretending_ to have a reason for doing it other than to disenfranchise Democrats. They're adamant enough that it's probably going to end up in the Supreme Court.[0]

* Holds an unannounced vote, with no debate, by secret ballot, on a day federal offices are closed, to gut the congressional office assigned to hold them accountable for corrupt behavior. If you didn't read the linked story, the move basically puts the House Ethics Committee in charge of the investigations, which means Congress is voting to put itself in charge of monitoring the ethics of... Congress.

Republicans are whining about how the current system can be abusive, so their
answer is to give a House committee more power over the process? The same
House that spent years investigating Hillary Clinton over anything they could
think of, _insisting_ it had nothing to do with her running for president? The
same House that then dropped all the investigations immediately after the
election? More importantly than that, the same House that has had more than a
dozen[1] members convicted of federal crimes since 2000?

This whole thing is already waaay into "inappropriate rant" territory, but I'm
so, so saddened by these developments. This isn't a question of political
opinions coming into conflict, like with health care or climate policy or
banking regulation. This is breaking the _system_.

0 - [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/wisconsin-
redistricting...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/wisconsin-
redistricting-found-to-unfairly-favor-republicans.html)

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_polit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_politicians_convicted_of_crimes)

~~~
hackuser
> Pushed gerrymandering ...

In 2012, Democrats won 1.2% more votes nationwide for House seats, but the GOP
had a 234-201 majority in DC. [Edited to correct an error in my prior
statement.] [0]

Also, don't forget the other ways they've seriously undermined elections: The
Republicans on the Supreme Court removing the barrier to unlimited, anonymous
election spending. Republicans on the Federal Election Commission blocking
almost all enforcement action. Republicans in Congress threatening,
intimidating, and investigating the IRS into ceasing campaign finance
enforcement actions

\----

I don't mean this in a partisan way; I embrace some conservative ideas and
wish the Republican Party provided excellent governance, great ideas and
policy, and the best possible choice for voters. However, that is not the case
right now. The hypothesis that seems to predict the Republican's behavior to
me (and which I invite others to test and challenge) is that it is a scorched
earth ideological war against anything 'liberal', good or bad.

* By "ideological", I mean these are the definition of dogmatic, extremist idealogues: Truth, facts, and human welfare are not the tests of statements or policy, ideology is; consider climate change, as an example, or all the extremist, clearly false statements by Republican candidates, including the President-elect - acceptable because they fit ideology, not truth or good policy. In fact, I believe any discussion of issues is a distraction from the ideological steps they will pursue regardless.

* By "scorched earth", I mean regardless of the harm it does to the country and world - burn down the institutions, economies, and ruin the people - again, think of climate change.

I think it's so extreme a problem that people naturally doubt it can be that
bad, but I think it is: The current Republican Party, since 2001, is a serious
threat the U.S. and world. The Democrats are complicit by their passivity - a
dereliction of duty, even cowardice - which has allowed this behavior to
become acceptable, even a norm.

\----

Consider, off the top of my head, real-world examples of the scorched earth
ideological campaign:

* Climate change: Rejected because it's a 'liberal' idea

* The embrace and encouragement of torture, war, and violence.

* Undermining elections, as described above.

* The criminalization of opposition politics, with their voters accused of fraud, and their leaders impeached (Clinton), his legal legitimacy questioned (Obama), or investigated endlessly and threatened with imprisonment (Clinton), and the widespread demonization of them.

* Undermining the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches, regardless of the damage, through record filibusters and obstructionism: As examples, shutting down the government multiple times; seriously threatening bankruptcy of the U.S. government and causing its credit rating to be reduced; refusing to vote on a Supreme Court nomination for the first time, leaving the judiciary unable to act in some cases; nominating a clearly unqualified candidate for President who may even be cooperating with a foreign enemy.

* Damaging the news media and the cause of an informed public with an endless flood of ideological propaganda campaigns.

\----

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2012)

------
bratsche
Some good news - [http://www.npr.org/2017/01/03/508043376/after-trump-
tweets-c...](http://www.npr.org/2017/01/03/508043376/after-trump-tweets-
criticism-house-gop-drops-weakening-of-house-ethics-office)

------
saboot
Why was this flagged/dead? I'm not sure how the voting system works here, and
saying "it's political/not relevant to HN" is not a good reason, considering
the anti immigration article on the front page from
theamericanconservative.com

~~~
grzm
It currently does not have a '[flagged]' tag from what I see, though user
voting may have changed in the time between the posting of your comment and
mine. What gives you the impression that it's flagged?

~~~
saboot
I had to "vouch" it, something I haven't done before. Previously it was
dead/flagged.

~~~
grzm
As to why it was flagged, the submission has no direct tech link, and while
it's politically relevant and of interest to some, it wouldn't surprise me
that some users _have_ flagged it, seeing it unlikely to produce a
constructive discussion while producing a lot of flames and uncivil behavior.

As to why some posts are flagged, and some to the point of '[flagged][dead]',
from as much as I've witnessed it's not all that dissimilar to why some posts
or comments get up-voted and others not. Certain occurrences of flagging will
catch our eye based on our own perspectives.

I haven't been convinced strongly enough that there's anything nefarious afoot
to warrant diving into looking at the post statistics (though I do think it
would be interesting to do so). From your initial comment I might assume that
you think this might be the case. If so, I encourage you to do such a study
yourself. The HN APIs will likely give you enough data to provide enough data
to dig into it.

\- [https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API)

\- [https://hn.algolia.com/api](https://hn.algolia.com/api)

