Nancy Pelosi's proxy voting designed to dilute power of rank-and-file lawmakers

Washington Times ^ | 5/31/20 | Michael McKenna

[Libloather]

In 561 BC, Peisistratos dissolved the Athenian “Ecclesia” (“Assembly”) and seized power in Athens and Attica. The Ecclesia, made up of all adult male landowners in the Athenian city-state, would not rule the city again for more than 50 years.

In 1258, Simon de Montfort, in a bid to maintain his shaky control over England, convened the precursor to the modern Parliament (from the French for “a place or occasion to talk”). In the subsequent years, kings and parliaments would joust for supremacy, with the parliament ultimately winning - primarily by executing Charles I in 1649. Across those four centuries, one of the most used and useful weapons wielded by monarchs against parliaments was to dissolve them and send them back to their shires.

On May 20, in a similar way, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi essentially dissolved the House of Representatives in a bid to reduce the power and authority of most of its members and increase the power and authority of its leadership. The given reason for doing this is to restrain the progress of the coronavirus, but the actual purpose is to accelerate the steady migration of decision-making power from rank and file lawmakers to leadership, its lieutenants and staff.

That migration has been ongoing for decades and can be seen in the obvious (the pervasive use of closed rules) and the grotesque (bills so large that no one but staff knows what might lurk in them). But the notion of proxy voting is a step change because it, more acutely than anything else, removes from House members the thing that distinguishes them from the rest of us - their ability to draft, deliberate, amend and vote on legislation.

[Libloather]

Wow. RATS are really gonna be torqued off when they hear this.

[MtnClimber]

Under the guiding guiding hand of progressive communism you will be told what to think.

[Skywise]

Why Pelosi hasn’t been attacked and pilloried in the press for playing rich privileged white woman while subjecting everyone else to the dangers of Covid-19 is... well typical these days.

How come tens of thousands of protesters have no problem congregating but Nancy has to usurp the power of the USA for her own means?

[butlerweave]

so Pelosi is the one hiding in a Bunker

[Mobilemitter]

Nancy and the swamp creatures want to be totally hidden, removes from the masses and the possibility that they will in fact be held accountable for their various abuses of the law and selling off the American dream to the highest bidders.