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| Rasmussen: If you think it's bad now, wait till Congress gets back in session |
| 2010-09-11 |
[Washington Examiner] Sixty two percent of the respondents agreed that "no matter how bad things are, Congress can always make them worse." Majorities agreed with that statement in all demographic and partisan groups, with even Democrats showing a 53 percent agreement figure. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #7 Time to replace our joke of a political class. Here's a start: 1) forbid any relative or spouse of an elected officeholder from running for office-- for life 2) replace closed with open primaries 3) ban on all lobbying by any officeholder for not less than five years after leaving office 4) provide public funding for all candidates, thereby encouraging non-career pols to run-- esp people who have real jobs to which they expect to return after public service, eg doctors, small business owners, farmers etc |
| Posted by: lex 2010-09-11 10:10 |
| #6 "Under no circumstances should someone who wants to rule, be allowed to do so." Read that somewhere years ago. The problem with our congress (and president) is that they want to rule. In fact they desperately crave it. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2010-09-11 09:58 |
| #5 As a start you could ban ANY air conditioning within the Beltway. Somehow the republic survived 170 years without there. Not so much since. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-09-11 09:45 |
| #4 The Texas State Legislature meets only every other year for 140 calendar days, although the governor may call special sessions of not more than 30 days. We like to think this limits the damage... |
| Posted by: Sgt.Mom 2010-09-11 09:31 |
| #3 Is it just me or does it seem like the country does much better when Congress is out of session or the president is on vacation? If something costs a million bucks, the government will somehow figure out a way for it to cost 100 million bucks. If this is true, is this not a good argument for small government? |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2010-09-11 09:04 |
| #2 Water Modem: You have been selected through a secret algorithemic formula to move to Bisbee, Arizona (or other site as you see fit) and begin the task of building a new governement. Unfortunately, no relocation allowance is provided. The hand-off date has been established as 2 January 2011. President Obama has been notified. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2010-09-11 06:27 |
| #1 Also, voters are evenly divided as to whether a group randomly selected from the phone book could do as good a job as the current Congress. my take: Deep down inside... okay maybe not that deep.... I believe the way we practice electing people is fundamentally flawed. It is designed so the worst possible people make it to the top and are owned by the top 100 or so richest jerks and companies on the planet. Think about it. Anybody that seriously believes they are the one to lead a nation as large as us is either seriously insane or a crook. Our current parties are a joke and serve as an opiate to the political masses and are despise by the rest of us. Why do you think only %27 or so show up for a vote. Nobody is addressing the issues of the rest and the media seeks to turn them into barbie doll idiots... Shades of the book Fahrenheit 451.... Now we have a party's dirty tricks actively squelching political discussion on the internet. Identifying it with companies like Cyveillance and then ruining the parties by misusing the legal system with scum like Righthaven. So back to my original surmise. Only the insane or crooks. So.. on the average insane or crooks have spent years in training learning the ropes to get to their beautiful position where they can wreck their maximal harm. That means compared to the average idiot off the street these individuals, there owners and their parties will always fleece us blind no matter whom wins. So... there is a better system. The original democratic election: "The Blackball". You know the poor Joe stuck with the black ball and then the up or down vote. (see ancient Greek history) I would suggest an update.... 1) Outlaw all political parties. 2) As is done for a jury select some subset "n" (say n=10) people randomly from any given electoral domain of registered voters. Next, no opt outs. Then, publish everything from any and all databases and other records (including sealed ones) as official bio's on these folks do a 1 to n proportional vote. then a run off of the last 2. NO Campaigning at all permitted (for or against) after running once they are out of the selection pool for that position. They have fulfilled their duty to the country. So why a random person? Well, for one thing chances are that they have not learned how to game the system and will be rank amateurs easily caught. That means its unlikely they can cause as much damage as our current party trained jerks. So before day one you already have a more responsible government. Next..... Aides.... Aides should only be able to serve one term with the elected official and need to revert to private practice afterwords. That removes a party and corruption back door.. The next problem is bureaucracy and civil service (or dis-service as the case may be). The agencies are bloated pondering beasts..... I suggest that leaving them in D.C. and playing musical chairs as we currently do with mid and lower echelons accomplishing nothing positive... If every, say 10 years, an agency was moved to a different city far away AND no moving expenses were offered employees at any level... then you would only have dedicated employees moving with the bureaucracy. Most would not. So every 10 years an agency could be born again in a new city from a new pool of workers and not polluted with full time bureaucrats.... Rebirth is a good thing.... |
| Posted by: Water Modem 2010-09-11 01:59 |