(no subject)

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Comments

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

If we could get politicians on both sides to just spend say 10% more of their energy trying to solve a few problems, I could ignore the constant campaigning for re-election on single-issue nonsense.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

That would require them to do something akin to real work...

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Apparently there's some Constitutional reason they can't be docked pay or reclassified "part time" so they lose their benefits like everyone else.

[catlin.livejournal.com]

Yep. Apparently they are not allowed to make changes that effect the current sitting congress, just the Next election cycle, to prevent them from increasing their own pay and benefits.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

No, it would require them to stop dialing for dollars every free moment, and then do some work.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

That's why no private contributions to political campaigns should be allowed, having each candidate funded by the government if they get a sufficient number of people to sign a petition to that effect.

[i.livejournal.com]

false equivalency bullshit.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

The single-issue nonsense is designed to distract you from the ways they're mutually fucking us.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

When one side fundamentally believes the government IS the problem, that won't happen.

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

But it is the problem- at least, in the sense that the entire political system is designed to benefit lobby-bought-and-paid-for career politicians and a two-party system...

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Exactly. We need fundamental election reform, starting with instant run-off voting for single seat elections and proportional representation for parties at the level of the House of Representatives.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

No, the "problem" is that the system is designed to get little done, and there's a segment of the population that still hasn't quite grasped that.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

So failing to properly staff judicial benches, resulting in case delays and work overloads, is a feature, not a bug?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I believe so, yes, but a lesser feature than what we're talking about.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

How is overloading judges the government functioning properly.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

It isn't, because government just doesn't functional properly, but cannot function properly, since there is no legitimate function for government.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

It's more of a symptom of the government doing too much.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

So it's not a "feature" of the system, then. Glad that's cleared up.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

...judges are hearing too many cases?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

With respect to judges, what do you feel the government is doing too much of in this circumstance?

[oslo.livejournal.com]

To be clear - and to remind others of the actual argument behind this summary assertion, which you're not reproducing here - it's a system that is designed to require a broadly-geographically-dispersed consensus to get anything done. That's true. But it's not a system that is designed to require, say, a majority of the majority party's caucus to be on board, or more than 50% of the Senate to be on board.

When, as it happens, we do have a broadly-geographically-dispersed consensus for action - as we do, say, when a minority of the GOP in the House agrees with a vast majority of the Democrats in the House and the Democratic majority in the Senate on a course of action - it goes against the system's design to allow factional interests to block action. That threshold of inaction is not part of our system's design.

Basically, it's specious for you to assert, as you have done, that the current difficulties trace to our system's design, since what is actually happening to block action now has nothing to do with the system's design.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

There were lobbyists before the 1990s, and things got done. If you are fundamentally opposed to the notion of federal government, taxation, social contracts, well, it doesn't help.

[op-tech-glitch.livejournal.com]

Stage 5, Profit!!!!

(But not for you, peasant, so get back to work.)

[trog.livejournal.com]

Does no one else think that 313 million and counting people of every possible demographic are simply too many to be ruled under a single federal government?

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't think that. I think we need fundamental election reform, both in funding and the actual election process. Turning the US into the Balkans only means you create greater opportunity for tiny tyrants.

[trog.livejournal.com]

So you think maybe one government to rule all 8 or 9 billion people or whatever would be best then?

[404.livejournal.com]

Statists hate the idea of devolution of power.