What effects do you think the following three restrictions (not really the word I'm looking for, but whatever) would have on our political system in the US?
1. Remove all money involved in campaigning. No private donations from citizens or corporations, no needing to spend the money on advertisements or any of that s***. 2. Term limits on Senators and Representatives, doesn't need to be super restrictive, but something like 12 years. 3. Mandatory retirement ages on Senators and Representatives on any committees involving technology. Tieing in with that, not being able to be willfully ignorant while on a committee.
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1. No effect on elections, extremely negative affect on freedom. Also completely and totally unconstitutional. 2. Excellent idea, would decrease corruption and incompetence by a lot. 3. Stupid idea, basically age discrimination.
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From: SmartMuffin | #003 1. No effect on elections, extremely negative affect on freedom. Also completely and totally unconstitutional. 2. Excellent idea, would decrease corruption and incompetence by a lot. 3. Stupid idea, basically age discrimination.
Smuffin, term limits deny my freedom to vote for the same guy over and over. And his freedom to represent me.
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3. While the idea sounds nice, get all the old stubborn ignorant people out of Congress, like Smuffin said, it IS discrimination. Most of the old guys ARE ignorant, but there are plenty of dinosaurs that are smart and adaptive to changing politics and technology.
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Smuffin, term limits deny my freedom to vote for the same guy over and over.
You don't really have "freedom to vote" as voting is inherently an artificial man-made concept. By this argument, there should be absolutely no restrictions on running for any office of any kind.
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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/
I'd almost be in favor of making it so the more political power you had, the less money you'd be allowed to use. Like, make it so senators or whatever have to live on 50k a year and no more. Or something.
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I basically agree with smuffin here, but we do need to do something about ignorance of tech,just not that 1 seems to make it so that whoever has the most personal wealth would win. a lower income person has no chance without donations
1. Would benefit candidates who are working with smaller budgets immensely. Would actually probably have minimal effects elsewhere though. However, if this carried over into like congress and legislation effects would probably be seen quickly.
2. I can see no real downside to this at all.
3. I don't really agree with this, but I would like some sort of competency thing or have them require to bring in experts etc. Its not just technology that congress tries to regulate without knowing anything about it. They will try to fix everything without having a clue.
From: gotspork | Posted: 1/26/2012 12:25:57 AM | #009 1 seems to make it so that whoever has the most personal wealth would win. a lower income person has no chance without donations
I guess that's a side effect, but I kinda don't want money involved at all, in other words, someone who was penniless could still run provided they could get their name on a ballot, and then all advertisements would be covered and not come out of pocket. Obviously this wouldn't work, since it would mean higher taxes and that every tax paying citizen would be backing every candidate via taxes.
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12 years for Reps might be alright, but 12 years for Senators would mean 2 terms, that's it. Sure, it's the same as the president, but the president is more influential, and doesn't have a fraction of the power of one branch, but the whole power of one branch.
The reason that there aren't term limits for Representatives and Senators is because they simply don't have as much power. I'll remind everyone that term limits for presidents are less than 100 years old, constitutionally speaking. If someone is really good at their job as a senator, why limit them? Presidentially speaking it makes more sense, because the balance of power could shift enough in 8 years to do some serious damage, but for one member of congress? Doubtful.
1. Impossible to run a campaign without money. If it's taxpayer funded, how do they decide which candidates get the money? If a million people decide to run, there's no way they can all get enough money to be able to run a decent campaign. Our current donation system solves that problem by allowing anyone who can convince people he's a strong candidate to receive their money and campaign.
2. Don't really like it. I don't think the lack of term limits is the problem.
3. No, the problem is: who gets to decide what is related to technology? As Thomas Jefferson argued: Congress has the power to establish a navy. A navy needs ships. Ships need copper. Copper needs mines. Mines need a mining company to operate them. So the government should have the power to regulate mining companies. He lost that argument, and of course today Congress gets away with passing off almost anything as constitutional by saying it affects commerce.
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I already yielded that the first option would never work, that's been laid to rest. The second option is more to get new blood and new ideas into congress, also 12 years is a long f***ing time to get something done or at least started. I kinda see where you're coming from on the third, but I'd still like some way to make sure they know what the f*** they are regulating with these laws.
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Anyway, the main reason I asked this is because I'm trying to flesh out my political views, and figure out what is and what isn't a viable view.
I never really cared for politics (still don't,) but my apathy is unacceptable to me now with the state of the world. I just need a sounding wall for some thoughts since my father always brings up religion and he and I don't exactly see eye to eye. If you must know what brought me to my change of heart, it was the instant that I realized I had more faith that the military could run this country better than the US government. And that scared the s*** out of me; that is not something I want to see happen.
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It is pretty deplorable how bad Congress is at legislating. The strange thing is that Congress as a whole continually gets record low approval ratings, but individual Congressmen do just fine in their district. That might be the problem. Maybe we can change the voting system for the House of Representatives to something where every rep is voted on by the whole country.
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From: red sox 777 | #017 Maybe we can change the voting system for the House of Representatives to something where every rep is voted on by the whole country.
Wouldn't that defeat the whole point?
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And maybe change the filibuster rule to make it easier to break a filibuster. Something like: the quorum is 40, senators must remain in the Senate and actually speak to maintain a filibuster, and senators who have left a debate may not return until the debate has ended.
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Not really. The House was always supposed to represent the will of the majority. The Senate would still be there to protect the interests of each state. I'm trying to think of a way to actually implement this though- obviously we can't have hundreds of names on the ballot. The most obvious way is to have votes for parties, not individuals, but we want reps to think for themselves, not toe the party line, so that wouldn't work for us.
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Funnily enough I don't see the point of term limits for the president or any other nationally elected candiate, since such people exist at an equilibrium for popularity where the mistakes they make lead to another suitable candidate rising up to take other the post. However, I do think they'd be useful for representatives, since in some cases they can be pretty much assured an arbitrarily long term due to the politics of the state lining up well with a particular party nationally.
Alaska almost sent a felon back to office, that's how strong this effect is.
There's currently way too much money in political races, but I suspect the better way to regulate it is to do something about the campaigning itself. Limit the amount of money that can be spent, and you limit both the advantages the rich have and how beholdent candidates are to corporate/union/special interest support, which strikes me as a good thing. Of course your laws in this regard need to be looked at regularly as loopholes will inevitably sprout up, but so it goes.
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You need term limits to stop people like Putin and Mugabe, but we're probably not in serious danger of that kind of thing happening here, at least yet.
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