- Joined
- Apr 19, 2009
- Messages
- 3,049
- Reaction score
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- Location
- Cypress, TX
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- Political Leaning
- Conservative
The advantages that incumbents have, in seniority-based power and fundraising capacity, are such that challengers rarely succeed.
Term limits would level that field a bit and give someone else a chance.
Politics is NOT like everyone else's job, because they run the country. We don't need people who think of themselves as part of the professional ruling class, above the common herd.
I would almost rather pick Congress at random, out of a hat, than what we currently have in DC.
Well, how does the hat prevent corruption from seeping into Congress?
How do you vote?
My vote - Eliminate them entirely. Put term limits on everyone. As long as the law limits their terms, then they will be limited as to the amount of damage they can do as a result of believing that they are better than the rest of us.
Limit the franchise to veterans. Heinlein had it nailed.Agreed with Harry. A compulsory political aptitude test is needed.
Term limits don't solve the problem.
We must eliminate universal suffrage. Implement a sound way to filter out the crap from our stock of people to make a limited supply of eligible voters.
Yeah, we've already tried that before, it didn't work out so great.
I was working out quite well in fact.
Government growth was almost exactly tied to inflation, that is until women were finally included.
Not that I think all women shouldn't be included but some of both men and women should be denied.
Things were great back then... given that you were a wealthy white male.
If only certain people can vote, they will vote for their own superiority over the non-voters.
The founders were extremely critical of democratic anything precisely because it allows groups of people to confiscate unearned benefits from the public treasury.
That is what is happening now, limiting voting has nothing to do with "rich white males" and everything to do with preserving negative rights.
We used to be a country where the rule of law was most important and democracy has brought us the rule of man, a crass, unsavory existence that will fail us.
Then why did they found a democratic government?
That's the theory, which is much different than the reality. The reality is, there's no way to stop the few who can vote from voting themselves benefits which the non-voters cannot have.
We used to be a racist, sexist, classist society, and now we're not.
They didn't, they founded a republic.
Requirements to voting would be, You cannot vote if you receive any form of payment, subsidy, favor, privilege outside of voting itself.
That includes employees of the government.
You must be a tax payer to vote.
Following these two Constitutional requirements anyone who votes themselves benefits from the government will have the privilege of voting removed.
All parts of the rule of man, if we can eradicate that we should be able to clean the gross amount of ignorance from our voting stock.
Limit the franchise to veterans. Heinlein had it nailed.
A democratic republic. You'll notice that voting is mentioned in the Constitution, but limits on who gets to vote is not.
Voting for your own superiority doesn't just mean voting yourself money. See Jim Crow laws.
Oh by the way, living in NOVA means knowing a lot of people who work for the government, including within my immediate family. They're no different from any other people. Why they shouldn't get to vote is beyond me.
Isn't our whole government based on the rule of man? After all, it's "We the People", not "We the Few".
I'm quite serious, actually.Are you kidding me!
Sounds like the makeup of a sham-democracy.
You can limit what the government can do, or you can even alter ellections with the ellectoral college, but one person-one vote is the only way to go.
If you can limit some people from voting (except from limited cases of people in prison, which is still bull****) then it can grow to take out whoever society feels like it.
There is no way to only have the "best" people vote, if that was possible, then we wouldn't need democracy. Only a near-universal consensus of people can have any just government.
The protection is not of the people who get to vote for their representative, but the people who don't get to vote and are affected by the choice anyways.
For example, when a state elects its Senators, those Senators make decisions that affect the whole country. In a perfect world all Senators would be equal, but this is not the case: the more someone stays in the Senate, the more power they have. Now, a state is going to want to grab all the power it can get, so it re-elects and re-elects its Senators, however crappy they are. The only way to stop this cycle is to put term limits on the Senate.
I understand that, but I think they believed that eventually everyone would be informed enough to were them voting wouldn't be a detriment.
Unfortunately that hasn't come to pass yet.
Again voting yourself any privilege of benefit will disqualify you from voting.
Having greater rights over another will disqualify you.
People who are employed by the government have a direct advantage of keeping their employment even if it's beyond useless.
They can form their own voting block and politicians will pander to give them greater benefits much like teachers unions do.
Our government is based on "leave me alone to do as I wish as long as I don't hurt anyone else."
Equality under the law, the law is supposed to be unemotional and impartial.
The law doesn't cry because Johnny has more than Sally. As long as Johnny doesn't steal from Sally.
Senators are elected to support their state.
It is completely appropriate, in that context, for them to do things that will help their state and constituents.
They need not worry about others...not why they were elected
Hmmm...are you all saying that it is important to consider the federal government in this, not just the states?
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