Post coffee morning political rant. Of 535 voting members of congress, early numbers indicate that 15 congressmen were fired this election. So a congress with a gallup poll approval rating of 16%, the lowest ever heading into a midterm election was only given a 3% disapproval rating when it came down to it. These numbers dont make sense. I see 3 layers disfunction Id like to rant about. 1. Americans dont know how / dont want to affect change in their government through voting. Neil deGrasse Tyson was right. You cant blame Americas governmental problems solely on the people inside the government if the American people dont know how to pick their leaders. 2. The priorities of a career politician are not the priorities an elected representative should have. It is my opinion that the #1 priority of a career politician is their political career and in the same breath their accumulation of personal wealth, #2 priority is the preservation of the government they work for itself, and a distant #3, possibly a #4, #5, #6 or beyond is what is in the people of this countrys best interest. Its human nature to make self preservation, survival #1, so Im not going to argue that it shouldnt be. Thats why I think there shouldnt be a such thing as a career politician; theres no career to preserve. Incumbency shouldnt exist. We would have a more perfect democracy without it. The strongest argument Ive heard against this idea is that we need our elected representatives to be experienced and they need time, years, to accumulate that experience to be effective, which leads me to disfunction 3. 3. The fact that we need career politicians to have a functional government. That statement begs the question. Do we have a functional government? Our creditors dont seem to think so. 84% of Gallup pollers dont seem to think so. The surviving families and friends of the tens or hundreds of thousands of dead, innocent collateral damage of our bombing campaigns and clandestine rebel weaponizing worldwide probably dont think so. A more perfect democracy wouldnt need politicians to spend their lives in politics in order to be effective. However I do recognize that I know of no precedence elsewhere in space and time of a no-reelection representative democracy. But this is more than just a rant. Im willing to put my neck on the line and propose solutions open to criticism. And Im more than happy to hear criticism so I can propose better solutions in the future. Proposed solution to disfunction 1. Invest heavily in education, HEAVILY. Spend more time in the formative years on how government works, philosophy, economics, and law. Give people the knowledge they need to enable them to participate more effectively in this democracy. This will net us better voters and better representatives. Proposed solution to disfunction 2. End Incumbency. 1 term limits in congress. Id be willing to compromise at a number higher than one. Anything is better than infinity. As a lover of math and physics I hate infinities and try to eliminate them. Proposed solution to disfunction 3. Change the role of a representative. Make the role more close to what it was originally supposed to be. Campaign finance reform. End the bribing of politicians. End corporatism. They may be tax payers but they are not people and do not deserve the rights afforded to them. We have the communication technology to totally eliminate the role of congress if we really wanted. The whole country has the capability to vote on such issues nowadays, unlike the days when this government was modeled. Maybe eliminating congress altogether is extreme but I think lowering the decision making capability of the representative and raising the role of the citizen through modern technology would go towards a more perfect democracy. /rant
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 13:15:42 +0000
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