The Moral Repugnance of Politics in America

[UpperWestside 6,136]

22 minutes ago, slorch said:

yet they meted out the foundation of the greatest country in the history of the world.   LOLz

Very repugnant.

Please stop with the tired trope of American Exceptionalism. We are no better a group of human beings in this country than what resides in any other. Trying to claim any superiority over others is mostly a sad indictment on those who share that worldview that you used. 
 

And also being a grown-up who uses LOLz on most of your messages is just odd. 

[Wulaw Horn 18,980]

2 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Very much this.  Rs are going to run with "packing" instead of expanding and it's another disingenuous bullshit spin on their part.

Bullshit. It’s been written in just about every history book, since FDR attempted it in the 1930’s, as court packing. That’s literally the usage of the word since it first came about.  

[wildcat09 29,253]

36 minutes ago, slorch said:

yet they meted out the foundation of the greatest country in the history of the world.   LOLz

Very repugnant.

Look man if you’re gonna masturbate do that shit in private.

[formermav43 4,599]

2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  The problem is us.  A large percentage of "we the people" are really shitty, really stupid, or often, BOTH.  The ship of state is never going to sail well with that giant-ass anchor dragging the bottom.  We can't fix shit because enough of us don't want to fix shit, or are so easily distracted from anything practical, that it will never get fixed.

Thus, no real reason for long-term optimism.

That’s not an “us” problem. That’s a humanity problem. 

[washparkhorn 9,935]

38 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

Politics was every bit as nasty and superficial as it is today.

Chernow on Hamilton is excellent.

Difference - The Founders were fond of the Enlightenment and they were attempting to out-Enlighten their political foes (when not engaging in duels). 

Today is a race to the bottom.

[David Dennison 18,657]

1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

I support abolishing the Senate. 

This.

I also support jurisdiction stripping.

[WhatTheBuck 28,711]

The short answer:

The long answer:

 

[Neonmoon 38,127]

Term limits

no political appointments to institutions like CIA, DOJ, FBI, Post. These need to be non partisan career jobs.

Too much problem with corruption otherwise 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,356]

Term limits isn’t going to solve the problem you want.  The special interest will just buy the next guy in line and probably get him elected. Rinse repeat with no institutional wisdom. 

You need to outlaw a lot of other shit pertaining to lobbying practices, revolving doors, and trading stocks while in office.  Cut off the money influences, not the representative. 

[We’reTexas 1,468]

9 hours ago, immamac said:

This is just a pretty bad take all around. One of the reasons that our political system is fundamentally broken is the brazen grift that is happening for stuff that has nothing to do with anything other than winning office. Imagine if the donations that went into political campaigns and PAC's went into actual causes that they are pushing for instead of a bunch of bullshit career politicians? There isn't a need to run political ads like crazy and have all kinds of shit just be blasted at us from every direction. We hear enough about it without any paid advertisements. Wanna doomscroll twitter? No one paying anyone here to fucking push any ideas about Trump or Biden. Funny how that works without any cash changing hands? Money is always going to be in Politics as long as we make Politics about Money instead of governing. 

Politics is about the interaction between a government and it's people that it governs. It's turned into a game where people are voting for their financial interests instead of their interests as a whole. If Money is the only thing that matters we are doing a pretty fucking horrible job at making sure everyone has a bunch of it, and that's because the "ruling class" is leveraging the money they already have to snowball into more money, which they extract from the masses who are creating productivity of the likes the world has never seen.

Name me a legislator who is held accountable and is experienced? I'll let you name me 1 that got things done simply because they were "more experienced" at being a legislator. 

Good policy isn't written by the legislator, it's written by their staff and by having  groups get together that know what the law is, and how the law needs to change so that it can be conducive to an outcome. That doesn't require any "legislative" experience. The fucking rules for making new legislation are so well known they are damned near carved into stone tablets. Matt Fucking Gaetz is a legislator. To tell me that you need "experience" to help govern the people of this country just shows how disconnected you are. 

I disagree. Money, through whatever form it flows, will buy influence. Its obviously a problem, but I don’t think it’s governable. As for examples of the value of experience? Mitch McConnell. Nancy Pelosi. Chuck Schumer. I used to work on the Hill (both Senate and House) and can attest to the value of experience: experienced legislators build strong brands and in turn attract top staff talent and build high performing offices. Ted Kennedy, for example, was probably the most lucrative Democratic office in the 2000s. And it takes time to ascend through the party: consider the 20 year or so it took John Boehner to ascend to power. His tenure served his district, and Ohio, well. Oh, and sometimes one can actually learn be an effective legislator - see Robert Byrd.

[Jhawkmvp 1,489]

Mandatory retirement age for all elected federal offices at the same age people can draw social security. If they are younger than that when elected they can finish their term, but cannot run again. We need to shift the age of our politicians younger so more people with decades of life to live are making decisions that will affect us far into the future and not those who will be dead before the chickens come home to roost. 

House members should get 4 year terms so they do less campaigning and more actual work. I'd also massively expand the house and require them to live in their own districts where they can experience and interact with their constituents on a daily basis. No reason at this time that all voting/meetings/etc. could not be done online except maybe for certain major events. Washington D.C. has become too disconnected from the rest of the country.

Limit the national election and primaries to two weeks each. None of this year plus of campaigning for the presidential candidates. Two weeks of ads, debates, getting bombarded on facebook, etc. Make election day a national holiday so people can easily go vote. Both of these are done in South Korea where I live currently and it is nice to have an intense period of politics then it is over.

Like Neonmoon said no political appointments to certain departments especially State and the DoJ.  These need professionals running them, not partisan hacks. Let the president choose the head from the top current officials within those key departments.

No or very limited foreign ownership of any news network and bring back the fairness doctrine. News networks should have very limited or no opinion shows. 

Honestly I know people are bringing up adding states, but I really think consolidating the less populous states would be more effective financially. Would also eliminate the cost of maintaining a state government for those low population states that are often struggling for revenue. The problem would be getting people to do it. Will never happen, but I think it would be better.

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Jhawkmvp

[Dnaguy 11,775]

7 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Term limits isn’t going to solve the problem you want.  The special interest will just buy the next guy in line and probably get him elected. Rinse repeat with no institutional wisdom. 

You need to outlaw a lot of other shit pertaining to lobbying practices, revolving doors, and trading stocks while in office.  Cut off the money influences, not the representative. 

This.

The corrosive nature of $ in our politics is the reason why shit is as bad as it is. 

It’s only gotten worse with other trends like 1.) Wealth concentrating more and more at the top and 2.) Citizens United and the limitless ‘speech’ that can be thrown in elections.

[Ghost of LL 15,492]

13 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

Chernow on Hamilton is excellent.

Difference - The Founders were fond of the Enlightenment and they were attempting to out-Enlighten their political foes (when not engaging in duels). 

Today is a race to the bottom.

I'm sorry, but no.  There wasn't anything enlightened about James Monroe releasing details of the Maria Reynolds affair.  Nor was there anything terribly enlightened about the Federalists repeatedly publishing jibes about Jefferson fucking his slaves. 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20,344]

8 hours ago, We’reTexas said:

I disagree. Money, through whatever form it flows, will buy influence. Its obviously a problem, but I don’t think it’s governable. As for examples of the value of experience? Mitch McConnell. Nancy Pelosi. Chuck Schumer. I used to work on the Hill (both Senate and House) and can attest to the value of experience: experienced legislators build strong brands and in turn attract top staff talent and build high performing offices.

 

Are you seriously pointing to McConnell, Pelosi and Schumer as examples of the value of experience?

 

[LCHorn 2,585]

51 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

 

Are you seriously pointing to McConnell, Pelosi and Schumer as examples of the value of experience?

 

What's your objection to his point?  I'd offer they are each fairly successful at representing their constituencies and have accumulated power so that they are in leadership positions (which furthers their reach to the benefit of either their constituents or their patrons).  THAT is representative government in action. 

I'd also expand that each of them appears to be reasonably prudent in areas for which there is no obvious partisan advantage or there's a consensus in ideas.  This, too, is the value of experience. 

[bad_teammate 13,132]

The term limits talk is often just punitive in nature. They solve basically nothing other than to punish people you don't like.

- Politicians are corrupt. This problem is actually unsolvable, just manageable. We should manage it.
- Our government is not representative of the voters at any level (president, House, Senate). We should reapportion.

[We’reTexas 1,468]

2 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

 

Are you seriously pointing to McConnell, Pelosi and Schumer as examples of the value of experience?

 

Yes, they will be remembered as some of the most effective people to hold their respective leadership positions - particularly Pelosi in her control of the Caucus during the House ACA vote  

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by We’reTexas