Federalism and Uniformity

There's a bit of discussion about in conservative- and libertarian-leaning segments of the blogosphere on whether administrative decentralization (i.e., "states rights") means anything other than Jim Crow. I suppose there probably is. Approaching things from a different angle, however, Ezra Klein notes that under the American system of government "for all its federalism, there's precious little variation. The most generous cities display only a couple degrees of difference from the least. Santa Fe may have a living wage, but it doesn't have single-payer health care, or paid maternal leave, or massive job retraining. We hear talk about the genius of the states, but they all tend to work on basically the same problem, in basically the same way, leaving little room for brilliance to burst forth."

That seems about right to me. States seem to differ primarily in how they deal with some fairly trivial regulatory matters. Each state's rules governing alcoholic beverages differ somewhat from its neighbors, cigarette taxes and where (if ever) you're permitted to smoke indoors vary, but you don't see a ton of policy variation. No state, no matter how right-wing, has just voted to dismantle its public school system nor have we seen a state attempt single-payer health care. I wonder if this is parasitic on the fact that there's shockingly little institutional variation among American states.

US federalism is somewhat unusual in that the states have essentially total autonomy in terms of how they want to arrange the institutions of state government. The federal constitution only contains a vague requirement of a "Republican form of government" which seems to offer a lot of leeway. Nevertheless, 49 out of 50 states choose bicameralism. Zero states out of fifty opt for parliamentary-style governance where the state executive must maintain the confidence of the legislature. All fifty states, including tiny Rhode Island, implement a an interstitial country (or "parish") level of government between the state and towns and cities. All the states elect their legislators on the basis of single-member constituencies. You'd think that some state, at least, would try something different along some of these dimensions and see how it works out.

Comments

"That seems about right to me. States seem to differ primarily in how they deal with some fairly trivial regulatory matters."

To some extent, perhaps, although I think a closer look would reveal significantly more variability than it "seems" to you. Also, the argument from the federalists would obviously be that the reason States don't differ very much is because the Feds have preempted State regulation in most areas; smaller Federal government would lead to greater experimentation for the States, etc.

Posted by PW | January 2, 2007 2:47 PM

I'm fairly certain that Maryland elects their Lower House with Multi-Member districts. But it would be interesting to see more variation between the states.

Posted by mike | January 2, 2007 2:48 PM

"No state, no matter how right-wing, has just voted to dismantle its public school system nor have we seen a state attempt single-payer health care. I wonder if this is parasitic on the fact that there's shockingly little institutional variation among American states."

It is also reflective of the fact that states don't have sovereignty over their borders.

If New Mexico were to implement a generous single-payer universal health care policy, folks with expensive chronic illnesses from the other 49 states would have immense incentive to move to Albuquerque, with significant adverse impact on New Mexico fiscal condition.

Posted by Petey | January 2, 2007 2:49 PM

What Petey said with a variant -- Oregon under Governor Kitzhaber attempted to develop the Oregon Health Plan into a possible vehicle for universal healthcare and the attempt has run aground (among other reasons) amidst a lot of outside financial intervention from the Dick Armey and Howard Rich organizations -- although they rather got their clock cleaned in the most recent election.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | January 2, 2007 3:04 PM

A small nit. If I'm not mistaken, Connecticut has eliminated county government.

One area where there is a relatively wide variation in the form over governance, if not policy substance, is education. Some states, like Maryland, have county-wide districts that sweep alot of different communities under the same governing structure. Others, like New Jersey, rely much more on direct local control. Little New Jersey, which ranks 47th in terms of size, has over 600 school districts. Yikes.

Posted by mert7878 | January 2, 2007 3:09 PM

this is related to the extreme ideological compression that we see in the poltical discourse and the party platforms here.
by comparison to the variety of political viewpoints on offer in most european parliamentary systems, our mainstream parties run the gammut from a to b, as the old joke goes.

Posted by kid bitzer | January 2, 2007 3:10 PM

Canadian provinces have greater variation in policy than US states. Government-provided car insurance in BC, Manitoba, Quebec. Government-provided daycare in Quebec. And most famously, government provided medical insurance started off in Saskatchewan, then spread across the country.

But a lot of the variation can be found in Quebec alone. The English-speaking provinces are much more similar.

Which suggests that maybe the reason American sub-national units are so uniform is because Americans are so uniform. You've independently come up with exactly the same policies! Annex Mexico -- that'll give you variety.

Posted by Ikram | January 2, 2007 3:12 PM

It's worth noting that some of the institutional uniformity you see here is the result of the Supreme Court decisions in the second half of the 20th century: multi-member districts have been rendered impossible to consistently defend after the Voting Rights Act and accompanying caselaw; the one-person-one-vote decisions have destroyed a great deal of diversity in state and local representative government, and so on. This doesn't necessarily negate the point that states are now kind of similar (although compared to what?) but does suggest that your reference to the Republican Form clause probably doesn't explain what's really going on.

Posted by William Baude | January 2, 2007 3:17 PM

There are some fairly substantial differences when it comes to corporate law, which leads to the rediculous number of Deleware corporations out there.

My wife, who's from Switzerland (which is highly federal relative to the rest of Europe), is always amazed/horrified at how much is left to individual states when it comes to the laws that most folks encounter day-to-day.

And I'd echo what PW said. If the federal government took a more limited role, you might very well see something major like single-payer healthcare take off in some states and not others. (Actually, now that I think about it, didn't Tennesse try something pretty ambitious in this direction?)

Of course if something is a really a great idea, you'd expect that most of the other states would follow suit sometime thereafter, with the result being that most of the states have fairly similar laws on major topics, with some level of experimentation when a) the issues are small (blue laws) or b) the current system is broken (healthcare).

Posted by TW Andrews | January 2, 2007 3:20 PM

Someone ought to mention the 14th amendment as being absolutely crucial to understanding the lack of variation amongst the states...

Posted by Petey | January 2, 2007 3:24 PM

In support of TW Andrews' statement, you have state policymakers getting a lot of their ideas from organizations like the National Governors' Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Education Commission of the States. I worked at ECS and a large part of what we did was identify ideas we thought worked well in one state and share these ideas with policymakers in other states. Probably the most frequent question from state policymakers was "How are they doing [X] in other states? So it's no surprise that there are lots of commonalities across states.

Posted by Jumbo | January 2, 2007 3:28 PM

"All fifty states, including tiny Rhode Island, implement a an interstitial country (or "parish") level of government between the state and towns and cities. "

Virginia has independent cities, such as Alexandria that are not part of larger counties.

Posted by m g | January 2, 2007 3:30 PM

Ummm... Prop 13 (was really the crest of the conservative anti-tax wave that's been washing across the nation since then) and pollution controls in California? Gay marriage and universal health care in Massachusetts? A dizzying array of gun laws across states? Education experiments, etc.

I think the full faith and credit clause to some extent restricts how wildly different a lot of laws can be, but as TW pointed out the laws around corporate laws diverge wildly. And with the big elephant in the room, health care, the migration issue really is important. But I think, although the systems are very similar, they're similar for the reason that they're basically little federal governments, that is, they've taken their cue from the functioning example, which in turn took its cue (but refined) from already functioning colonial governments. If every state had the same government that was wildly different from the federal government, now THAT would be weird...

Posted by Rick | January 2, 2007 3:31 PM

Some states have no death penalty. That's no trivial regulatory matter.

And for the record, Rhode Island counties (like Connecticut's) are geographic units. There is no county government.

Posted by Bob | January 2, 2007 3:36 PM

How much state spending is dictated by federal law and mandates (including the vast multitude the Constitution has nothing to say about one way or the other)? How many state laws are effectively over-ridden by federal law?

Posted by Linus | January 2, 2007 3:38 PM

It is also reflective of the fact that states don't have sovereignty over their borders.

If New Mexico were to implement a generous single-payer universal health care policy, folks with expensive chronic illnesses from the other 49 states would have immense incentive to move to Albuquerque, with significant adverse impact on New Mexico fiscal condition.

Oh, please. It's quite easy for Americans to move to Canada, and yet folks aren't clamoring to get their socialized health care. Moreover, if New Mexico's health care were too generous that it attracted too many people, then they could be less generous.

As I noted on Ezra's post, it is so telling that even SF is not willing to go for Canadian-style health care. If you can't even get the left-wing extremists in SF to implement Canadian health care, you know it's awful.

Posted by Al | January 2, 2007 3:41 PM

Actually to be a little more precise, while there is no county government in RI, the counties are used as the basis for organizing the Superior Court. Most of the Court operates out of the main courthouse, in Providence County (which includes Bristol County). The three other "outcounties" run smaller operations. Kent has a fair number of judges, but Newport and Washington, no more than one civil and one criminal judge at a time,

Posted by Ken | January 2, 2007 3:44 PM

"Oh, please. It's quite easy for Americans to move to Canada"

Say what?

Posted by Petey | January 2, 2007 3:45 PM

Left unmentioned, of course, is Louisiana, which is quite a bit different from every other state in many ways, from its reliance on civil law to its open primary system.

Some states have no death penalty. That's no trivial regulatory matter.

It kinda is, given that many states "have" the death penalty, but carry out essentially no executions. Propensity to actually execute is much less trivial, but is not reflected in the political structure or particular legislation of the state government, to my knowledge.

Posted by right | January 2, 2007 3:47 PM

Matthew's best example is the structural uniformity. Why aren't there any parliamentary states, with the governorship subject to votes of no confidence? Why no proportional-representation states?

I think it's because Americans are basically very conformist, frankly.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 2, 2007 4:02 PM

I beg to differ. Certainly no one would say that Mississippi and Alabama haven't developed unique local forms, and many believe that these two states could provide the other forty-eight with a valuable and useful model. Some of their successes require local cultural factors and thus are not exportable, but we all still could learn a lot by studying their example. Indeed, if we are not to descend into a Scandinavian hell, it is imperative that we do so.

Posted by John Emerson | January 2, 2007 4:02 PM

Say what?

Either Al has some serious dough and assumes everyone else does or he doesn't know what he's talking about again.

Posted by Ed Marshall | January 2, 2007 4:14 PM

Are you kidding?

Corporate law. Death penalty. Land use. Income taxation. Homestead exemption. Right to privacy. Extent of civil rights protections. Just a few of the areas where state law varies wildly across this country.

As for government, compare the relative power of the Governor of Texas to that of the Governor of New Jersey. Or the New York Attorney General's relative power to anyone else's.

In Louisiana, there's no common law. In New Hampshire, no state income tax. In California, a flurry of citizen referendums.

Yes, on the surface the states look uniform. But they're not. I'm not saying they're great labs of democratic experimentation (or whatever the cliche is), but they're not uniform. Or even close to uniform.

Posted by klam | January 2, 2007 4:24 PM

Nevertheless, 49 out of 50 states choose bicameralism.

The answer is Nebraska.

Posted by Tom Hilton | January 2, 2007 4:26 PM

In terms of structural differences in government from other states, California has all of its direct democracy features, such as the propositions and popular recall of state officials.

Posted by Michael Sullivan | January 2, 2007 4:26 PM

Here's one way to think about it:

States can't differ that much in terms of how they treat relatively portable things like people and businesses. You can't have a generous single payer health insurance plan in one state or all the sick people would move there. You can't have a $15 minimum wage in just one state, or lots of businesses would leave.

On the other hand, states can afford to differ a lot in things like land use regulation because land isn't portable. This has huge cultural effects down the road because states with more expensive land and, thus, less affordable family formation have later marriage ages and fewer babies, which has a big impact on how residents feel about "family values" issues. That's why Bush was victorious in the 26 states with the least home price inflation since 1980. Kerry triumphed in the 14 states with the most:

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2005/05/08/affordable-family-formation-the-neglected-key-to-gops-future/

Posted by Steve Sailer | January 2, 2007 4:43 PM

klam beat you to the punch by two minutes, Michael Sullivan. You've gotta develop a quicker trigger on the Post button.

Posted by Petey | January 2, 2007 4:49 PM

The states simply modeled their bicameral governments on the federal constitution, there just wasn't any good reason at the time to go around inventing new crazy forms of government. And once you've got a constitutional government you're pretty much stuck with it. The federal constitution, on the other hand, came up with bicameralism in order to alleviate the concerns of small states about proportional representation.

Unfortunately, bicameral governments have one really ugly feature: conference committees, which is why Nevada ditched theirs.

By the way, I never understood how the voting-rights-act-type decisions were compatible with the constitution given the Senate. There aren't many black people in Wyoming.

Posted by miguel | January 2, 2007 4:54 PM

Unfortunately, bicameral governments have one really ugly feature: conference committees, which is why Nevada ditched theirs.

Not Nevada, Nebraska.

Posted by Tom Hilton | January 2, 2007 5:11 PM

The whole concept of parliamentary government involves a centralisation of decision-making authority quite at odds with American concepts of government.

Posted by otto | January 2, 2007 6:16 PM

In the last 15 years my parents lived in US for 5 years, then Canada for 3 years, then US for 4 years, and Canada for the last 3. If your employer will sponsor you (my dad is a middle manager), it's not really a big deal to move back and forth. Lot of annoying paperwork, though. (Both my parents are US citizens.)

Posted by next big thing | January 2, 2007 6:23 PM

Another small point - I don't believe Alaska has counties either. They have "election districts" for the purpose of figuring out representation to the legislature, but no counties (unless I'm mistaken).

Posted by Sean Peters | January 2, 2007 6:54 PM

Re: Oh, please. It's quite easy for Americans to move to Canada, and yet folks aren't clamoring to get their socialized health care.

No it's not. While the Canadians let in American tourists easily enough, you cannot go there and live and qualify for their healthcare without a great deal of effort, probably more effort than it takes a Canadian to immigrate to this country. And if you have a chronic illness (which must be declared along with a great deal else in the immigration application) it is very unlikely you will be accepted, unless you are also bringing a great deal of money with you. And if you do fall sick while visiting Canada (and are unisured) and use Canadian healthcare you will be billed for it, and if necessary. pursued by collection agencies, just like here.

Re: You can't have a generous single payer health insurance plan in one state or all the sick people would move there. You can't have a $15 minimum wage in just one state, or lots of businesses would leave.

Two states that can get away with a bit more generosity are Alaska (state pays residents dividends on North Slope oil) and Hawaii (universal healthcare and a fairly high minimum wage.) But of course distance, isolation and (in Alaska's case) the climate does the work of border controls.

Re: In the last 15 years my parents lived in US for 5 years, then Canada for 3 years, then US for 4 years, and Canada for the last 3. If your employer will sponsor you

Key words at the end. Your father's employer agreed to be responsible for him and his family, including, at some level, his/your healthcare (probably the company paid some sort of premium to the Canadian government for coverage for its non-Canadian employees). Without an employer footing the bill though, Canadian immigration is tough and expensive (1900$ Canadian) to get through. By the way, Canada and the US used to have an agreement (not sure if this is still in force) that Medicare would cover all American citizens if they fell ill traveling by land in Canada between Alaska and the rest of our country.

Posted by JonF | January 2, 2007 7:41 PM

No one actually believes in states' rights. It's what you say you believe in when your position isn't the held by the majority and/or federal government.

Posted by david mizner | January 2, 2007 7:43 PM

No one actually believes in states' rights. It's what you say you believe in when your position isn't the held by the majority and/or federal government.

Posted by david mizner | January 2, 2007 7:43 PM

I've occasionally wondered this myself, why so many state govt's are modeled on the Federal. The Federal Constitution makes sense as a series of compromises between sovereign states who didn't particularly like or trust one another, but I just don't see this replicated at the State level.

It's not like Milwaukee, WI wanted to be represented based on population whereas Green Bay insisted on one-city-one-vote. Yet the Wisconsin capitol even LOOKS like the Federal one.

Chalk it up to inertia, and perhaps lack of imagination?

Posted by Jalmari | January 2, 2007 7:47 PM

Since someone has mentioned Louisiana not having common law, I should point out another major difference between states with a Spanish/Catholic legal heritage (California, the Southwest, Louisians) on tenure of real property between marriage couples, the institution of community property. It is said (I'm no expert) to be more advantageous to the couple, but I don't believe has spread to any other states.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | January 2, 2007 8:02 PM

1) Alaska has boroughs, which function like counties, but, as distinct from all other states, they do not cover the entire state. That is, a huge fraction of the state is not included in any borough. This the "Unorganized Borough," for which the state House serves as Borough Council if it chooses. I'm not sure that it is has ever done so, however. But Alaska is really just barely a state. More like a giant national park and mining zone, so it's not much of an example.

2) As someone already poitned out in passing, the states really do vary in their environmental and land use law. California continues to be a land-use disaster, but its cities looks different from Houston, because in California zoning is mandated by the state. Big pieces of California are still in agriculture or in low-density housing becuase of environmental review requirments that don't exist elsewhere, or that give anti-devleopment forces more traction than they have in other states. It ain't perfect, but its real.

3) New York's acceptance of fusion candidates--a voter's ability to, say, vot for Hillary on the OWkring Families line-- keeps threatening to make a structural difference. Hasn't really worked yet, though

Posted by just for the halibut | January 2, 2007 8:08 PM

All fifty states, including tiny Rhode Island, implement a an interstitial country (or "parish") level of government between the state and towns and cities.

Hawaii has only two levels of government, the state and the counties. There are no city governments (unless you count the City and County of Honolulu--all of Oahu--as a city).

Posted by DaveL | January 2, 2007 9:07 PM

Thanks to Matt for posting this and starting the thread. State and local government in the U.S. is one of those things in American politics that is just accepted, but is actually structurally strange and unsound. Other countries, including those with federal systems, change their state and local governments, and boundaries, every few decades to adjust to changes in population patterns and economies. Not so in the U.S., with a few anomolous exceptions.

Probably the best example of this inertia is what happened in the 1960s, when the Supreme Court said that the constitution required one man, one vote. Before that, many states did have systems where one chamber of the state legislature was organized by one county, one vote, or something equally undemocratic. The most logical thing at that point would have been to get rid of the upper chamber, as Nebraska did with no ill effects. Alternatively, they could have elected the upper chamber using proportional represenation, or some different, though still democratic method, from the lower chamber. Instead, every state but Nebraska now has an assembly elected from single member districts, and then a senate elected by the exact same method. THE EXACT SAME LEGISLATIVE CHAMBER IS SIMPLY DUPLICATED. How wasteful is that? Its like having two governors, but no one questions it.

Its instructive to visit Canada. Just like it seems that every U.S. state has a domed state capital with two wings, in some small replica of D.C. out in the boondocks, with an elected governor, a bicameral legislature, state bill of rights, etc., every Canadian province has its own replica of the Palace of Westminster in its largest city, and is run by the parliamentary system. But still there seems to be less inertia in Canada; for example they got rid of their useless and undemocratic second chambers, except on the federal level where it was just rendered harmless.

Posted by Ed | January 2, 2007 10:21 PM

There is one way in which states differ substantially, and that is how local government is organized. In the southern states, the county tends to be the main level of local government. In the northeast, the tendency is for counties to exist on paper only, with really micromanaging state governments and towns and cities with strong identiies. Southern California has large counties that cover entire metropolitan areas, then you have the plains states with their tiny counties (even in area), some with populations of less than a thousand.

You get extremes in the same area. New York City, which is actually five counties, is highly centralized, with a strong mayor and a weak council that is also small relative to the population. Each New York city councilman represents about 150,000 people. Across the Hudson, you have New Jersey with literally thousands of small local govenment bodies with overlapping jurisdictions.

You can make the argument that at the local level, government in the U.S. is too diverse. There is suprisingly little that a resident of New York City can do to affect the city government, which is may be why there is so little interest in the city in what it does. It is just too remote and centralized. I suspect the same is true in LA, where most of the decisions are made by five county commissioners, each representing over a million people. In most of the rest of the country, jurisdictions are probably too small to resist being pushed around by larger cities and the state governments. But I'm not sure if you can really have everyone equal under the law federally, but not locally. The relative lack of democracy in the country's two largest cities really should be more of an issue.

Posted by Ed | January 2, 2007 10:32 PM

The states simply modeled their bicameral governments on the federal constitution

Not Massachusetts. Our Constitution is older than the Federal one.

Posted by Bostoniangirl | January 2, 2007 11:10 PM

One Nation

The Constitution was written to paper over the differences between people who wanted one nation, and those who wanted 13 separate sovereign nations to merely have a sort of NATO over them to handle their relations with truly foreign countries. The "One Nation" crowd won, their victory sealed in the unwritten constitution of the unitary public opinion that had emerged in this country long before the Union victory in the Civil War made Art. IV, Sec. 4 a dead letter. No, I don't mean that states today all have the same political insitutions because they fear that Federal troops will impose this sameness by force. I mean that the North persisted, and the South eventually gave up, because no one really believed, even by 1860, in separate political instituions, or the complicated system of divided sovereignty hallucinated in the written Constitution. No force needed today, except the force of conformity, the fear of not being the same as the rest of the country. Different states won't try anything different for no better reason than the morbid fear of appearing stupid if they conduct their affairs in any way at all different from the "American Standard", and anything goes at all wrong, which it certainly will, "American Standard" govt or not.

We could get by even more readily, with much less risk of political disunion, and much more social benefit, if we had any will to maintain local cultural, as opposed to political, differences. But my grandparent's generation gave up a rich Creole culture, steadfastly maintained over four generations in the midst of the worst cracker cultural blight the Deep South could throw at it, practically overnight in 1921, in the flash-in-the-pan of the ridiculously stupid "100% American" hysteria. The work of centuries gone in a flash, and no one would go back to it for fear of appearing backward, and not with the unitary culture. A similar morbid fear of difference threatens Hispanic culture(s) in this country right now.

The only hope on the horizon at this particular cultural and political moment, is that "American Standard" will be so generally perceived as having failed us so royally, that people, at least those not paralyzed by the failure of the standard, will finally have the courage and incentive to step outside the artificial bounds set by a now-discredited consensus. Not soon enough, not soon enough...

Posted by Glen Tomkins | January 2, 2007 11:45 PM

Right on, Bostoniangirl.

My impression was always that American bicameral governments were modeled on the British system, but since we lacked any aristocracy to comprise a long-winded, non-representative and arbitrary upper house, we had to invent some completely new kind of long-winded, non-representative and arbitrary upper house. Hence, the Senate.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 2, 2007 11:57 PM

States have almost complete autonomy over criminal law. This has a huge impact on the "War on Drugs". In fact some states have been able to decriminalize Marijuana, etc. Almost all interaction a person has with a government is with their state government. Yes, they're all pretty similar, but they do have a lot of sovereignty.

Posted by Chad Okere | January 3, 2007 2:23 AM

"All fifty states, including tiny Rhode Island, implement a an interstitial country (or "parish") level of government between the state and towns and cities. All the states elect their legislators on the basis of single-member constituencies."

Supporting Ed's comment, above, Vermont has counties, but few or no meaningful decisions are made there, almost nothing is administered at that level, and they collect no separate taxes, as far as I am aware.

And, contrary to what Matthew and some of the commenters have said, there are multi-member electoral districts in Vermont for both House and Senate. The Chittenden County state senate district has 6 members.

Posted by Kinetic Yankee | January 3, 2007 10:03 AM

Massachusetts has counties as a vestigial matter, but they have no political authority or distinction anymore.

Posted by phil | January 3, 2007 12:44 PM

About redefining boundaries and counties, ed 10:32
Everyone do it, just not the US ed. said.
In europe, every country has adapted the administrative boundaries of towns to the urbanization, except... France. There are still 36000 mayors in F, more than in the rest of the E.U.
Departments are unchanged since 1790, except the 2 bits the German cut once. And when back, they just stayed like that.

Does universalism goes on a par with lack of adaptibility?

Ok, I bet the swiss "Kantone" are the oldest. So US and F are not alone.

Posted by Immobilism.. | January 3, 2007 1:07 PM

Re: Just like it seems that every U.S. state has a domed state capital with two wings, in some small replica of D.C. out in the boondocks, with an elected governor, a bicameral legislature, state bill of rights, etc., every Canadian province has its own replica of the Palace of Westminster in its largest city

A number of state capitals do not look like this: NY, MD, DE, VA, OH, LA and NM come to mind imemdiately. Meanwhile in Canada I've seen two provincial legislature buildings (in MB and AB) which did have the American-style dome.

Posted by Jonf | January 3, 2007 1:32 PM

Federal law was always intended to supercede state law, but to do so only rarely, and only on those issuses that affected the entire country. In theory, so long as federal law prohibited discrimination on the basis of race (or any other factor) then the states are automatically constrained by such a prohibition whatever their own laws might say. Jim Crow could not return in such a situation unless the state were to deliberately defy federal law and the federal government were to indulge them.

However, Americans all over the political spectrum have made the federal government the battleground (and thus given it more power than it may ever have been intended to possess) specifically because of this - the desire to see disliked federal restrictions removed and favored activities kept legal, remade legal, or even subsidized - and the potential to exert power over Americans in other states.

If people in one state were satisfied to let people in other states live however they choose, there would be less of a problem. The fact that most politically involved Americans are not willing to do this is what drives the trend towards centralization and the expansion of federal reach and power. People in Alabama don't want people in California doing things they don't approve of and vice versa, and they only way either side can project their power beyond where they're the majority is through the federal government.

This is why the decisions of the federal government are no longer seen as being born of consensus and having the common interests of all Americans at heart: they really don't anymore, if they ever did.

People - even (and perhaps especially) conservatives - actually want an omnipotent, totalitarian federal government ... so long as it's under their control. When both sides want something, it's going to happen.

Posted by Ron | January 3, 2007 3:30 PM

Ron and others get the obvious: process is really meaningless. Everybody backs the system that will let them win more often than not. And when the other side starts on a streak, everyone wants to change the rules.

Posted by Henderstock | January 3, 2007 10:13 PM