Same goes if Michelles tomato plants dont bloom in the veggie garden this spring.
That would mean that you didn't teach your folks as well and you deserve to lose...lol
flies overnight from SFO to Boston in time to vote for Scott Brown.
It's a total repudiation to the socialism that Democrats swear they do not support, but they lie. I swear to God, I will never, ever vote for a Democrat so long as I live again. My father was right...Dems are evil! And he was a Reagan Democrat...voted for Truman to Johnson, then voted for Nixon and the GOP until his his death in 1999. Me, I voted for Reagan and all Repubs since,
except Clinton in '96. But given the jack-ass party of today...no.
GOP needs to win in Mass...that gives the minority party enough power to stop the BS the jack-asses are trying to ram up our asses! And that's a good thing...Dems in power maybe think about the economy instead of ramming through their pet projects that the majority does not support?
then enact a direct democracy.
You want checks and balancing, start demanding campaign reform and term limitations. We like need ethic reform, and better ethic panels that lack partisian ship or cronnism.
Our politicians are not accountable to us. They are accountable to the lobbyist and fundraises that really get them elected (both parties).
We've seen so much campaign finance reform happen already, and nothing changes for the better. The reason for this is because you're asking the fox to make new rules governing how the henhouse door should work. You'd have a better chance of getting Congress to vote to eliminate their paycheck than limit what lobbyists and campaign contributors can do.
That's why we need a direct democracy to keep our represenative democracy in check. The only way to get real campaign finance reform is get the voters to put it into law themselves.
And really, if you enacted the kind of direct democracy I'm talking about, campaign and lobbyist reforms wouldn't even be necessary.
One of the obstacles is that the "folks" don't have the mechanism to introduce legislation, only Congress can do that at the federal level. So, unless you can persuade your legislator, it won't happen. And even if you suceed at this, then you have all the internal Congressional rules to deal with that give power to the Speaker or Majority Leader to squash anything they don't like.
Direct Democracy doesn't help because you are still faced with the same old crap that we already have... Bunch of liars convince an uneducated public to go vote for what they say because it sounds good to them even though, as we see with OB, it is most likely just lies.
Nope, I think the real solution to getting some honesty in Washington will only come through strong legal challenges in the courts. Most will probably fail, but some are likely to get through. Once we get a few of these idiots in jail for the fraud that they perpetuate, then others will take notice... at least I hope... lol
Getting a direct democracy is possible, but you're quite right that no mechanism is currently in place. However, there are proposals out there to make this happen. The National Initiatve for Democracy is one of them.
What makes more sense to me is that we enact a constitutional amendment that creates a third body of congress, which consists of the entire US citizenry. Such a body should have the power to veto congressional legislation, have veto power over any decision made by the government, has the ability for people to write and enact their own laws by majority vote, and be able to recall (remove) any sitting government offical.
This can be done, and it can be workable. When we can use our phones and the internet to vote for who our favorites are on American Idol and make bank transfers, then we can do this to vote as citizens, and not have to wait until election day to get things done. Instead, we can vote whenever we like for whatever we want.
This would be a very serious game change. The tricks of old that uses misleading information to fool the public into voting for lousy candidates won't work because if the people make a mistake, they can fix it whenever they want.
In fact, I think that if something like this was implimented, then every political party would quickly die out. There would be no more fights between democrats and republicans. Instead, politicans would be reduced to simple pencil pushers who are doing the detail work that we don't want to concerns ourselves with. And if they screw up the details in a way that people don't like, then we can fire them at the drop of a hat.
No, this is the only solution that will solve things. Getting honesty in Washington is a lost cause. It will not happen. There is no untapped pool of honest politicians in this country. Politicians are by nature power hungry, and power hungry people are not trust worthy. Even if you manage to find the rare breed who is, then the institution of government will quickly corrupt him. This is why every politician is crooked. It's a system that naturally filters out decent and honest people.
Therefore, the only solution that I can see is enacting a direct democracy to keep our representative democracy in check.