I think the clue is in the words.
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The prospect of having to run for reelection provides at least some measure of accountability to the voters. If everyone is a lame duck from the get-go then we lose one important system of checks and balances.
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I meant, right now nothing is getting done, so having a bunch of people who didnât know what they were doing I donât think would make one bit of difference to the amount of laws getting passed.
Maybe itâs not all about quantity, but to me it is shameful that appointments are not getting approved in a timely manner and that so few laws are being passed. The system is completely broken. Iâd rather they pass a few bad laws that no laws, which is what is going on right now.
Itâs probably better to measure legislation by something other than ânumber of bills passedâ because bills vary so wildly in absolute size, in degree of impact, and in where they fall on the scale from âpassing this one is what we do every yearâ to âWow, somebody just punched the status quo in the faceâŚâ
Someone who has a knack for proposing pointless softball stuff of the âresolution affirming the importance and goodness of something uncontroversial, America, and puppiesâ flavor can probably rack up a few without making the slightest difference to the operation of our republic.
The gimlet-eyed rules lawyer in the back, by contrast, might not have even ever been picked to co-sponsor something; but with a few adroit tweaks to the 350 pages of definitions in the effectively-certain-to-pass-defense-spending-reauthorization-act-of-something-something he can move mountains(or at least millions).
Iâd be much nicer if bills actually covered discrete topics and were broken down in some vaguely sensible way; but crafting a set of rules of procedure that encourages that has proven difficult at best.
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Sometimes everyone follows their own incentives perfectly, and as a result the system as a whole does something insane.
If you vote for a non-lizard, the wrong lizard might get in.
If they take time away from fundraising to try to fix the system, they might not get re-elected.
Moloch. Principia Discordia. Humans are really bad at resolving circular dependencies and multipolar traps, especially when large coordination problems are involved.
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Dianne Feinstein is as consistently and unapologetically totalitarian as anyone in congress, in either party, and I would not be particularly inclined to assume a benign motivation for anything that she does. The same person who just a year or so ago was royally pissed off that the CIA was spying on her staffers is now in the process of sponsoring a bill to make sure the feds can spy on all the rest of us.
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Thanks for that because I thought It was just me who hated my senator.
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The Chartists wanted annual elections.
Annual Parliament Elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since as the constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the ballot), no purse could buy a constituency (under a system of universal suffrage) in each ensuing twelvemonth; and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituents as now.
That all seems a bit naive in hindsight.
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As best I can tell, the Wicked Witch of the West does what she does because whoever wrote her character decided to phone in a uniformly unsympathetic villain. She doesnât even seem to have the decency to need to be bought.
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The trouble is that you donât âbuyâ the constituency; you just need the resources to successfully advertise to the constituency(which is why contemporary campaigns have really started to ramp up the importation of silicon valley user-targeting talent; and why a lot of the traditional political consigliere types youâd find standing behind successful career politicians had some mixture of work experience with or excellent connections to, advertising and marketing operations).
I canât argue with the âall seems a bit naive in hindsightâ conclusion, though.
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She isnât my senator, but I donât like her either.
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This seems like a bot.
Just wait for the musical revealing her backstory.
As it happens, the script is already available(in partial form; itâs like a dozen different felonies to actually perform it in full unless your theater is also a SCIF and the entire cast and crew are cleared for top secret//si//noforn): Thanks to a crack team of FOIA litigators, some misunderstandings among government information minions about the difference between âdeletionâ and âoverlayâ in common word processing tools; and several years of persistence; I can present the public exerpt that probably wasnât modified by CIA agents prior to release!
Doesnât it just provide a much richer and more nuanced picture of her character?
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[quote=âdaneel, post:6, topic:76425â]Campaign financing is broken, and electioneering needs sorting, but how do you get around the 1st amendment?
[/quote]
Recognise that corporations arenât people, money isnât speech and that campaign finance regulation had no trouble with the first amendment until the Republicans stacked the court with extremists who are into constitutional fanfic?
âŚand then stand well back while they explain to you just how stupid, fucked-up, counter-productive and harmful that system is.
I wonder if we switched to a system whereby people were choosing to give up 2 to 4 years of their life to perform a civic duty, which would negatively impact their families and businesses but not be long enough to be automatically MORE lucrative in the long run, we might actually get more serious representation. It wouldnât be about furthering their careers, it would be about serving the country.
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Like jury duty, but for public office?
Interesting idea but I donât know how well it would work in practice. Most jobs are done best when they are filled by people who actually have some interest in doing them, and who have some personal motivation to succeed at them.
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This might be the saddest thing Iâve read since that post about the Pure Deodorant poll nobody responded to.
