RE-ELECT NOBODY!
Worthy of your time and attention . regardless of your Party Affiliation
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese -
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? He/She is the leader of the majority party. She/He and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like 'the economy,' 'inflation,' or 'politics' that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
__________________
You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of football team or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer. --- Frank Zappa
'04 MS/Blk - Z06Fest IV, V, VI, VII & VIII - WinterFest I "Bus Driver"
Line 'em all up, shoot every one of them, let God sort them out and then tell the next bunch....."We cleaned house once, we can do it again."
Most have the mindset that they are "above the laws they create for the people".
Hey what other job can you spend millions to get into office.....to work for the people.......and then spend the next 2-3 years working to get re-elected?? I know that far fetched and the extreme, but is it really????
Even were you to throw out that set and elect another, I don't think it would change much.
Anyway, I don't blame those few people. I blame the other 300 million of us. The government cannot take power and misuse it. We can only give it away, and let them.
The situation is also complicated by (1) the fact that once a randomly selected set of people is bigger than about 3, they'll never agree on how things *should* be, so what seems great to some is the height of evil to others. And (2) the fact that, generally speaking, human beings regardless of political beliefs are driven by greed, and are mostly not very smart.
Even were you to throw out that set and elect another, I don't think it would change much.
I agree with that completely. Unfortunately, 47% of registered voters believe in campaign slogans and catch-phrases. Can someone please explain what, "Change we can believe in", even means? What's gonna change exactly?
Even were you to throw out that set and elect another, I don't think it would change much.
Anyway, I don't blame those few people. I blame the other 300 million of us. The government cannot take power and misuse it. We can only give it away, and let them.
The situation is also complicated by (1) the fact that once a randomly selected set of people is bigger than about 3, they'll never agree on how things *should* be, so what seems great to some is the height of evil to others. And (2) the fact that, generally speaking, human beings regardless of political beliefs are driven by greed, and are mostly not very smart.
It's a highly overconstrained problem.
What should we do? What can we do?
I've tried wrapping my head around how the political machine works and I just can't grasp it. I guess the best we can ask for is a loaf of bread and safety from getting killed in the streets.
Purely benevolent governments are rare, since govts are composed of many people with differing and complex motives, and even benevolent ones can be incompetent. Ours could be a lot better. Could be a whole lot worse too. Our scheme of several opposed and bickering parties who more or less hate each other is probably better than having a single one in power for an extended time, for any arbitrary party you could pick.
My $0.02 is that making govt smaller, simpler, and more transparent would help - it's taken on something of a life of its own. Changing the voting system to ease off the duopoly might help. But a lot of the issues stem from... us. Our culture and human nature. I don't know of any magic fixes.
(Then, I'm a pessimist^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^realist at heart).
I guess the best we can ask for is a loaf of bread and safety from getting killed in the streets.
Are you aware the police have no legal obligation to protect you?
"A government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen." - Warren vs. District of Columbia.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jub jub
I think the moderators on this site could do a better job than what we have to work with at the moment.
Location: siberia or some place with similar weather
Posts: 253
Re: Reelect Nobody!
We'll never get good politicians, or politicians who even care about the US and its well being again.
Democracy is intrinsically brilliant for brief periods in history, but will always fail and fall apart. The reason it is inevitably doomed is socialism/welfare. Inevitably, democracy will become politicians offering free stuff for votes, and truly that is the campaign platform of many, many politicians these days.
The inevitable result of socialism in democracy is a shift in power away from hard working people who really care about their socieyt to freeloaders. Everybody has just one vote. In what organization of any kind does this formula work, or is this formula even applied? NFL teams spend most of their time and concern on 3rd string safeties while chastising the starting QB in the press and speeches all the time? Race teams spend more time on a kid that can't powerslide than on Michael Shumacher? A company is supposed to spend most of its time worrying about a guy that shows up 30 minutes late and cusses at the company than the go-getter that just invented the next big thing or negotiated a great contract? Thats all silly, right? Its exactly what our society does.
The average taxpayer in this country paid $5800 towards welfare last year per the calculations of someone in my office a week ago or so. And the return to society for those billions upon billions is what? nothing. At the start of welfare in the US the TVA GAVE PEOPLE JOBS , not free stuff. Can we at least put them to work? What economic boost could this country get if we kept giving out welfare, but made it for jobs? How about if we set up manufacturing lines in the prisons to compete with made in china?
None of that will ever happen, because the what? millions? of people getting a free ride in this country would rebel at the polls, the liberal component of society would have a field day with demonizing the politcians that tried to straighten things out a bit, and no politician would risk the backlash.
I believe the founding fathers slotted the right to vote to landowners only. Flash forward a couple hundred years and call it a right given to taxpayers who've paid 5 years in a row.
That simple step would change everything, and I mean everything.
All of the countries woes stem from the rpseence of socialism, they'd all dissappear if it went away. If it stays, watch the movie idiocracy, think long and hard about its premise and who's really creating the next generation of Americans, and there's your answer.
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