How a Bill Becomes Kielbasa

Jesse Walker | October 5, 2004

The Boston Globe visits the sausage factory.

[Via Designated Semiotician.]

Comments

|10.5.04 @ 11:56AM|#

From the article:

"The House is frequently finished by Thursday afternoon. Lawmakers then tend to go home to their districts, missing opportunities to develop personal relationships that could foster greater bipartisan cooperation on legislation, as in the Senate, where the minority party has considerably more input.

For example, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, is close friends with Republican Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, and both say their personal relationship has helped them work together on legislation."

Shouldn't we be happy the present clusterfuck no longer helps relationships like Kennedy/Hatch get off the ground in the House?

|10.5.04 @ 12:45PM|#

Russ, whatever you think about Hatch, as a western conservative, he is able to articulate the point of view of the people liable to get screwed by Kennedy's initiatives. And vice-versa.

The point of a deliberative body is to make members with Really Big Ideas that couldn't possibly go wrong aware of factors they hadn't considered. It's a break on govenrment overreaching.

The leadership has been discouraging it's party's members from getting too close to those across the aisle, on the theory that doing so will lessen their resolve to enact their radical, unpopular legislation. Well, it's working, and we're all worse off for it.

|10.5.04 @ 12:54PM|#

Go back and read a little history. The sausage-making is just like it was at the beginning. Or did you think that the 3/5 rule in the constitution was what everyone wanted? The Globe is just about as reliable as the NYT/Bullcrap Gazette.

Jesse Walker|10.5.04 @ 1:09PM|#

Jack, the sausage-making is not "just like" it was at the beginning, or even just like it was 10 years ago. Sleaze and power struggles have always been with us; the present arrangement of sleaze and power is unique to this particular time. If you would "go back and read a little history," as you condescendingly put it, you'd know this.

I thought the Globe piece was an interesting report on the way power is being exercised in Congress right now. If it was substantially wrong about any details, I'd be interested to hear about that. Simply declaring that it's unreliable doesn't cut it.

Finally -- not to state the obvious or anything, but the 3/5 rule doesn't have anything to do with any of this.

|10.5.04 @ 2:46PM|#

I dunno, there's a sausage making company down the street from me that has a kitchen that looks clean enough to do heart surgery in. Maybe we need a new metaphor here.

|10.5.04 @ 5:59PM|#

"Sleaze and power struggles have always been with us; the present arrangement of sleaze and power is unique to this particular time."

I'll just ask this for clarification - when do you believe "this particular time" began?