American Government

I think think we need to have a more moderate base. Conservatives becoming too conservative and Liberals are becoming too liberal. The anti gun or anti gay platforms need to go away and we need a middle ground in congress more often. Thanks to people like Sarah Palin we have a tea party which believe in no working across the aisle and I personally believe that the tea party is destroying the Republican party and luckily many tea party candidates have been defeated this year and they are toxic to getting anything done. We don't need any more Ted Cruz's in Congress.

I don't agree with term limits because there are people want a leader they can trust and sometimes having the same person having your back for forty years is a good thing. Democrats are way better at staying in office longer in my view and that is sometimes they are good at. I understand wanting to get Grandpa Politicians out of office thought and as time goes on the far right part of Republican Party will die off with them because every generations is becoming more open minded.

We obviously are at risk of losing the senate to Republicans this year but my hope is that we will persevere and win a few tight races especially in Kentucky.

 

Have any of you heard of Wolf-pac by any chance?

 

still convinced a benign dictatorship is the best way to go... many people defend democracy as this amazing great idea but it'd only work if people werent morons with personal goals...so fuck it, if you can find me a benign dictator that is intelligent and morally correct enough to lead us into a utopia then give him here

 

I agree with you on this one. The super rich rule this country and it's killing wage growth and stopping our economy from recovering. Nobody in congress will do anything to help the average american citizen until the super rich stop the buying everyone off.

 

Have you ever listened to Stuff You Should Know? They have a podcast on trickle down economics. Josh thinks up this economic theory about taxing the hell out of dead rich people's estates. All because their children are more likely to sit on their inherited money (if it's a shit ton of money). If the kids get 10 %, they aren't just going to live off of that much money for very long, and that's enough for them to start their own business. I really can't explain it well.

 

As a socialist I'm inclined to think our system is pretty screwed up.

 

What I see are situations like with Dianne Feinstein, where she has been a part of Congress for decades. She has become hell bent on pushing ridiculous gun control while simultaneously exposing her gross ignorance of the matter. She has occupied a seat when we could have had a different legislator there making USEFUL contributions and actually getting things done. These "Lifers" just sit there and do nothing, cruising by the elections on their name alone and their tenure in Congress. John McCain comes to mind here as well. He identifies as GOP but has flip flopped so many times and betrayed his party to compromise that the GOP officially censured him. He has past his prime in my opinion and now just hogs his seat in all of his lame-duck glory. We could have a fresh Congress every few years with young politicians who identify with the current society and who have a fresh outlook on the current pressing issues.

Current public approval of Congress is dismal. They've proven themselves inept. Therefore, term limits would prevent this stagnant blood from remaining, and force useless lame ducks out of office in favor of new legislators.

Hopefully before the candidate runs for office, they're already very familiar with the issues at hand and are fully briefed on the resolutions at hand. Why would you run otherwise?

 

Yeah, there are many idiots in Congress, but it would be even worse if there were term limits. Congress does a lot of little things that keeps this country running, and they along with their staff have got to be knowledgeable, particularly the latter because they do most of the work. What we really need is an increase in congressional allowance, so members of Congress can pay their staffers more. It would make MC's at least somewhat more competitive in terms of keeping skilled staff members against lobbying firms. That's where many congressional staffers go to "cash in." As for McCain, he's got some crazy foreign policy views. But I really respect him for compromising. When you have extreme polarization in Congress as we do in the public, it makes it even more difficult to get anything done. Compromise should not be a bad word. At all.

Congress has always had low approval ratings, yet people still re-elect their representatives at a 90% rate. Why? Because they typically like their own representatives but not the other reps. It's been that way forever, so looking at overall approval ratings is kinda a waste of time.

The bolded part would be nice in theory, but it's really just not possible. While many MC's have law degrees, they come from many different backgrounds and careers. So it's pretty difficult for them to have a firm grasp on comprehensive policy details on some really obscure things. I mean, during the housing collapse a few years ago, almost no member of Congress - or average people, for that matter - know the little details of derivatives and their impact on the housing crash. Many of them run for office because they truly feel they can make a difference, but that doesn't mean they've got in depth knowledge of public policy going in. The congressman's campaign I'm working on right now is a perfect example of this. He's owned his own business for a long time and is pretty smart, but that doesn't mean when he was first elected he automatically had a good handle on everything that a veteran representative has on policy. By working for a U.S. rep's federal office and campaign, I've learned that it really takes a lot of work to be a representative and congressional staff are crucial to making it more easy for the reps. I don't think many people get that.

 

What I wish the U.S government can do is to be able to dissolve our congress or enact term limits. Four terms for the house and two terms for the senate. Votes of no confidence could come in handy to kick unproductive house speakers and party leaders out of their roles.

Most of our legislators are still from the baby boomer generation. We need more politicians that are from Generation X and Y to represent a larger chunk of the population.

You are right about John McCain. While I kinda like him due to the fact that he's a RINO and not so extreme, he's flip-flopped so many times. Like many politicians, he's filled with hypocrisy, especially during the Bergdahl scenario. One day, he was all for it, now he's against it.

 

This article explains perfectly what I said in my previous post: Congressional staffers, public shortchanged by high turnover, low pay - Washington Times

It all comes down to congressional staff and, in many ways, they're more important than the reps. they work for.

 

Fixed that for you. That is why I love Dianne Feinstein. Why conservatives are willing to let deranged lunatics mow down first graders just so they can keep that AK-47 is beyond me, but I care more about kids than the NRA and it's great that there's actually someone with the balls to do it. We need more Andrew Cuomos and John Hickenloopers, not less.

 

Yep. I've watch my fair share of the Young Turks on youtube as well. I kinda agree with Wolf-Pac's push for money out of politics and it kinda goes along with DMark69's remark about limited a person's contribution to a campaign at $1000. At that point, however, I almost feel like the already rich (i.e. Koch Brothers and many others) will inevitably find loop holes to fund their own campaigns. I can just picture a runner being like "hey, I'll give you $2000 to contribute $1000 to my campaign". The rich in this country have so much more power than the poor and I think this still would reflect itself, perhaps even more, with Wolf-Pac's mission plan. Something definitely needs to be done about the influence money has in politics but I'm not sure what the answer is.

 

Agreed. I happen to be a huge fan of Dianne Feinstein. And if you really want to talk about how someone is in congress too long, look at Thad Cochran, Mississippi's US Senator since 1978, and has done everything in his power to make living as LGBT in America worse. He has a 0% lifetime rating from HRC, Feinstein has an 88%.

 

actually Firephyz, I didn't say limit contributions to $1000. I said limit campaign spending to $1000. That is enough for a decent web site no more. It also opens up the possibility of almost anyone running for office. Most people could get that much on a signature loan if they wanted to. It would kill the power of the parties, and rich donors like Koch brothers and others on both sides.

 

Oh okay, must have misread your post. Yeah that makes much more sense. I think that would actually work pretty well now that I think about it.

 

Many dictators have started benign. But power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely..

Finding a good dictator wouldn't be easy, as he or she would need to be good in every subject of governing and know when their advisers are good or bad. How would you know that that dictator is morally correct and likely to stay that way? And who would choose this dictator?

A good government needs good people on all it's levels. But can one good dictator, appoint every person in his/her government on every level and still have time to rule?

 

The American federal government as it was originally designed in under the constitution was intended to suffer from gridlock so as to prevent it from becoming too powerful. It was meant to act only when the interests of the nation as a whole were involved so as to preserve the rights of its member states to rule themselves. Its proper functioning requires a combination of representatives with differing viewpoints who will group together to form factions so as to prevent one person or group of people having too much influence over the policy and day-to-day running of the country. These factions would only work together when the rights of the common citizen or the sanctity of the nation were put in significant danger. Unfortunately what we have now is two polarized factions that disagree with one another to the point that it prevents them from working together when cooperation needed. Two groups of idealists who are too consumed by their own vision for America that they are not willing to work together to face the realities of running a nation. There are individual members of congress who are willing to work together, but they are too few to get anything done on their own and their peers are to polarized to listen too them.

 

The policy of the current House was to start slow, then quickly taper off to doing nothing but pass anti-abortion bills, over, and over, and over again. They play only to their own choir to win primaries; they could care less about general elections or doing anything tangible other than reducing taxes on the wealthy and corporations, which they know they will never get by the Senate or Obama, since the people who vote for them do so as a motor-reflex, without thinking about the fact that THEY are not billionaires themselves, so they only lose by those kind of tax cuts. Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

 

I fixed that for you. But yeah, I'm sick and tired of the republican obstructionist mentality. However, it's more than likely to get worse starting in 2015 unless democrats actually show up and vote this time.

 

I still disagree. You think that the legislators get better with time, like aging a fine wine. I think they get WORSE over time. At a certain point, they are just stale, stagnant blood that does not jive with modern politics and sounds like a broken record with whatever agenda they have made it their mission to pass.

I don't respect McCain for compromising. I look at it as treason. He promises his chosen party to represent them and by choosing that certain party it is assumed his views align with the other members of that party. Then when it comes down to it, after he has the power to vote in Congress, he does a 180 and votes for something completely absurd in the eyes of his chosen party. It's stupid and very frustrating. It's not cool at all in my book, and when he ran with the NRA trying to pass compromised gun control nonsense he lost the last grain of respect I had for him. I understand he's a war vet and all that, but that isn't a ticket to being a great politician.