Kick The Bums Out!

[Foghorn]

There is absolutely nobody on Washington Hill that needs to still be there.

 

This movement died out a while back, but if resurged, might get the message across that we are sick and tired of grid lock.

[Foghorn]

Tired of your elected officials? Do you even know who they are?

 

I'm guessing their voting record might elude most of us too.

 

Yes, sadly I never paid a lot of attention either but....

 

Is about time we all did. by not paying attention we lose the right to complain, eh?

Edited October 31, 2014 by Foghorn

[Buffy]

That's actually a problematic issue: In general people think congress totally sucks and we should vote them all out...except for their own congresscritters who they think are just fine.

 

Which is why the bums keep getting re-elected.

 

I actually like my senators, one of whom goes all Washington DC establishment sometimes (Dianne Feinstein), but still way better than the people who they run against. But I moved this year into a much more conservative district in Orange County and am finding myself even doing some volunteer GOTV to try to up the nay vote against the idiot who represents me, even though he's pretty much a shoe-in. 

 

You have to do something, even if it seems futile if you want to participate in change. Sometimes change has to be approached as a war rather than a battle and every little bit helps.

 

 

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race, :phones:

Buffy

[Eclogite]

Is about time we all did. by not paying attention we lose the right to complain, eh?

If there were a way of enforcing it I would make it illegal to express an opinion on any political matter if you had failed to vote in the previous election. I would also apply a higher tax rate for non-voting individuals.

[pagetheoracle]

Speaking as a foreigner (Englishman), I find it horrific that Republicanism seems to stand for the deluded, leading the deluded or ego getting in the way of sense (Government by the stupid, for the stupid or as we say in The UK, the lowest common denominator).  It started with GW Bush, moved onto Sarah Palin and she has now been replaced by the pig farmer from Borgen.  The Democrats seem to be nice people who do nothing but the alternative is those who can't seem to stop interfering in what they don't understand*:  WWIII anyone?

 

 

* Guantanamo Bay was down to Bush not understanding that torture doesn't extract any intelligence worth having but then he doesn't have any intelligence worth having does he?

[Buffy]

The interesting thing about the Republican party is that its popularity is primarily driven these days by, well, "tribalism." There are low-information voters across the spectrum, and what we saw in this last election is that toward the left, if they don't like what they see--and they didn't like the fact that the Democrats were saying nothing about what they were going to do about their stagnating middle class existence--they just stayed home, while on the right, they happily saw no contradiction between voting for that "nice Christian white lady who castrates hogs" and voting for gun registration, raising the minimum wage, freer abortion and legalizing marijuana even though those are well-staked out positions of the Democratic party. That is, conservatives trust people who are "like them" and don't trust that Obama fellow because he's, well, a Muslim and probably foreign according to what little they've heard.

 

What's little understood about elections in America is the huge difference in turnout between Presidential election years and what are quite correctly called "off-year" elections. This not only shifts in absolute numbers (this year was the worst in 72 years) but has a huge effect on who votes:

 

Source: Cook Political Report

 

Older folks skew much more conservative, younger folks more liberal, thus the wild swings in our elections over the past few decades. This in combination with the fact that for a variety of reasons, the vast majority of seats up this term for the Senate were held by Democrats in states that were not reliably Democratic, giving Republicans a large opportunity for gains, with only 3 pickups required to win control.

 

This meant that for most of us political junkies, it's been pretty obvious since early October that the Republicans were going to take control of the Senate: it wasn't really a surprise.

 

Americans as a whole actually aren't that bad, it's just they need to turn out for elections, and they really need to hear a story that they like. An awful lot of moderate citizens want the economy fixed, but with most of those "Purple State" Democratic candidates running on platforms that were basically "Republican Lite" they just stayed home.

 

It's going to be an interesting two years, but a lot of us are not too worried: the Republicans have spent most of the last week puffing about how they're all getting ready to stop Obama even more than they have been, which probably just means twice as many votes to repeal Obamacare, which now instead of being stopped in the Senate will simply be stopped by his veto pen (and the frantic calls of all those Health Insurance industry lobbyists starting to tell the conservative Congresscritters that if they cut off the 10 million new accounts the insurers just signed up, that the Insurance companies will put all their money on the Democrats in 2016).

 

 

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful, :phones:

Buffy

[pagetheoracle]

 

The interesting thing about the Republican party is that its popularity is primarily driven these days by, well, "tribalism." There are low-information voters across the spectrum, and what we saw in this last election is that toward the left, if they don't like what they see--and they didn't like the fact that the Democrats were saying nothing about what they were going to do about their stagnating middle class existence--they just stayed home, while on the right, they happily saw no contradiction between voting for that "nice Christian white lady who castrates hogs" and voting for gun registration, raising the minimum wage, freer abortion and legalizing marijuana even though those are well-staked out positions of the Democratic party. That is, conservatives trust people who are "like them" and don't trust that Obama fellow because he's, well, a Muslim and probably foreign according to what little they've heard.

 

What's little understood about elections in America is the huge difference in turnout between Presidential election years and what are quite correctly called "off-year" elections. This not only shifts in absolute numbers (this year was the worst in 72 years) but has a huge effect on who votes:

 

Source: Cook Political Report

 

Older folks skew much more conservative, younger folks more liberal, thus the wild swings in our elections over the past few decades. This in combination with the fact that for a variety of reasons, the vast majority of seats up this term for the Senate were held by Democrats in states that were not reliably Democratic, giving Republicans a large opportunity for gains, with only 3 pickups required to win control.

 

This meant that for most of us political junkies, it's been pretty obvious since early October that the Republicans were going to take control of the Senate: it wasn't really a surprise.

 

Americans as a whole actually aren't that bad, it's just they need to turn out for elections, and they really need to hear a story that they like. An awful lot of moderate citizens want the economy fixed, but with most of those "Purple State" Democratic candidates running on platforms that were basically "Republican Lite" they just stayed home.

 

It's going to be an interesting two years, but a lot of us are not too worried: the Republicans have spent most of the last week puffing about how they're all getting ready to stop Obama even more than they have been, which probably just means twice as many votes to repeal Obamacare, which now instead of being stopped in the Senate will simply be stopped by his veto pen (and the frantic calls of all those Health Insurance industry lobbyists starting to tell the conservative Congresscritters that if they cut off the 10 million new accounts the insurers just signed up, that the Insurance companies will put all their money on the Democrats in 2016).

 

 

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful, :phones:

Buffy

 

Politics across the water isn't much different, except the left wing tend to be more working class (even if their leaders aren't) and the right come from public schools (which are really private schools for the elite).

 

George Bush is an obvious hypocritical example of what you're saying about the Republicans - in other words a supposed Christian (in wolf's clothing), who's only interested in materialism:  If it wins votes I'll pretend to be anything I'm not.

 

As for Obama, he's got nothing going for him as far as the right as concerned, he's black, he's foreign (Is he really Islamic?) and worst of all he's intelligent with a conscience - an accusation you could never aim at a true Republican!

Edited November 17, 2014 by pagetheoracle

[pagetheoracle]

Buffy you're point about The Republicans lying; this is typical sociopath activity as written about by Chad Varah, the founder of The Samaritans in the UK (suicide prevention organization).  He said in his autobiography, that they would say anything to get what they wanted and try to manipulate whoever they were facing, in a relentless search for weaknesses.  Personally I'd call it Attention Addiction.

[pgrmdave]

There is absolutely nobody on Washington Hill that needs to still be there.

 

This movement died out a while back, but if resurged, might get the message across that we are sick and tired of grid lock.

As a long-time political junkie, this sounds *terrible*.  You want a government almost entirely staffed by people who are completely inexperienced when it comes to the legislative process?  The problem isn't that we have too much old blood, it's that the new guys don't understand how to deal with washington.  They don't know how to compromise, they don't know how to deal, they don't know the nitty-gritty of the rules and how to use them to their advantages (the Senate is especially fun in that regard).  

 

In truth, nobody wants the government to just "do more" or "be more effective".  They want the government to "do more (of what I want)" and to "be more effective (at passing legislation I support)".  There are a lot of problems with the legislative branch right now, but "throwing the bums out" does nothing more than rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic.

[pagetheoracle]

What I find interesting about murder cases in the UK is how even though there is blatant evidence that someone is guilty, they still maintain their innocence:  Chad Varah mentioned this about sociopaths in his autobiography about the setting up of the Samaritans and it seems to apply equally to psychopaths.  As long as you are in denial, it seems you feel free to continue committing the same crimes and politicians are no better it seems (power hungry addicts at their worst, decent failures at best). :zip:

[CraigD]

… There are a lot of problems with the legislative branch right now, but "throwing the bums out" does nothing more than rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic.

Voting most of the members of Congress out sounds good to me if the replacement Congresspersons being voted in are people I like, who will make decisions based on the best available science presented by people acclaimed by the preponderance of their peers to know it.

 

My current “throw the bums out” sentiments are not as strong now as they were in 1995, when Congress threw out the agency it created in 1972 to supply them with such science, the OTA, under the pretense that it was unnecessary and a waste of money (though its annual budget was only $21,900,000).

 

I don’t believe there’s any credible doubt that the 104th Congress, which was controlled by Republicans (53/100 Senators, 230/435 Representatives), notably then House Speaker Newt Gingrich, closed the OTA because they did not want to use science to make decisions, and worse, believed that good science contradicted their decisions.

 

In short, I think the 104th congress was ruled by people similar in their attitude toward science to people we now call anti-scientific internet trolls.

 

Then Democratic President Bill Clinton’s didn’t veto or force changes to the 104th Congresses law closing the OTO (H.R.1944/Public Law No: 104-19, I think), even though Senate Republicans lacked the 2/3 majority needed to override a Presidential veto.

 

You want a government almost entirely staffed by people who are completely inexperienced when it comes to the legislative process?

I have no problem with Congresspersons inexperienced in the legislative process, because I don’t believe the process is difficult to understand and learn, and because they can rely on the help of experienced staff.

[pgrmdave]

 

I have no problem with Congresspersons inexperienced in the legislative process, because I don’t believe the process is difficult to understand and learn, and because they can rely on the help of experienced staff.

 

So, two things about this.  First, I would totally agree *if* I thought that everybody in the legislature wanted to collaboratively work together to find mutual solutions to problems.  However, we have a wide diversity of opinions as to how to fix problems.   As such, legislative processes are important for both the minority opinion and the majority opinion to be able to have the type of balance we've striven for over the centuries.  Too often we have legislators (and voters) who think that you can ignore the rest of Congress and just up or down vote based entirely on how you feel about an individual bill's entire contents.  But that's an inefficient way to get things done - compromise is *important*.  Counting votes is *important*.  Why bring a bill to the floor that you want to pass if you know it doesn't have the support it needs?  You rework it, you tweak it, and you negotiate for votes before you bring it to the floor for a vote.  The same thing goes for a bill you want to fail, though that's normally more of a political thing than a legislative thing.

 

The other thing is that laws are complicated and interact in strange ways sometimes.  Jurisdiction is complicated.  Congressional authority is complicated.  I want my legislators to know and understand things so that they don't end up accidentally adding or closing loopholes, or making things strict liability when they really shouldn't be (lookin' at you, Migratory Bird Treaty Act).  I don't think that every legislator needs to know things through and through, but I wouldn't want to completely replace those who do (or, probably just as bad, leave *just* enough legislators in place that they're able to take advantage of the newbies).