The proper way to fix the US Government is to simply eject ALL incumbents for the next 3 Election Cycles. At that point you will have eliminated the "Good Ole Boy" Network and replaced them with people who understand that "FAILURE TO PERFORM" is punishable by "firing".

Of course, this would require the voters to "Pay Attention", which is something that we (Americans) seem to be singularly bad at.

hah! eject the incumbents? Do you have any idea what re-election rates are in the US congress? It's worse than the politburo used to be.

That's because they can retire with full pay and benefits for the rest of their lives. WTF would you do with that sort of benefit?

Spend it on hookers and blow. Worse as in, 95%. You cannot defeat incumbents. The problem is the general philosphical attitude of the American people. Everyone wants something for free, everyone wants someone else to pay for the things they want and politicians are all too happy to kowtow to special interest groups if they think it will play in their favour. There is no way to reform the state. To understand the role the state plays in society you must understand it's origin. As Oppenheimer points out in 'The State' the origin of government is in the conquest and subjegation of one tribe by another. The state was born through conquest and exists as a form of exploitation - extracting tribute from the subjected people. Instead of reforming the state we should abolish it.

The problem is that while no one likes Congress, everyone likes their own Congressman.

Kaziswin, you're a MORON!

You have not obviously read ANY of Thomas Jefferson's writings.

You are basing your opinion on some faulty information.

The US Government is supposed to be based on the US Constitution.

This is the problem, the US Government is NOT following, or even trying to follow the constitution, they are deviating from the plan devised by the founding fathers of the US. Makes me SICK!

As Lysander Spooner once wrote, 'The Constitution has either authorized the government such as we have today or been powerless to prevent it arising' (not exactly verbatim). Jefferson himself was an awful hypocrite, who talked a good game but as soon as he was president went about encroaching on the liberties of others (see whiskey rebellion). And what sort of believer in freedom owns other people? disgusting. Still I do think article 1 section 8 was a pretty good idea - but here's the problem, when you give an organization (like the state) a monopoly on violence, decision making and arbitrage it is impossible to keep it in the neat little box of limited government. Imagine if I had a monopoly on arbitrage between you and me. We make a deal that you will pay me $10 and I will mow your lawn. You give me the ten dollars and the next morning discovery your lawn is not mowed... now remember I am the judge of disputes between us, so I can rule anything I want. For example I can rule that I was supposed to mow your lawn 50 years from now. There's nothing you can do. So when you give the government this special status, it is impossible to keep it limited, because the government decides what the governments power should be. And people love to aggrandize their power. Thus rather than attempting the naive ideal of limited government, we should, as Thoreau pointed out, argue instead

'I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe— "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.'

unfortunately the members of the parliaments usually reflect the way the people are. We have a lot of people who complain about the greedy politicians who only think about themselves. But if a new party rises, then their members usually adopt the ways of the older parties rather quickly.

I think voting out all the incumbents would work, but it won't happen. While I've strongly disagreed with Kazi on most of this stuff, he's right on the fact that the rates of incumbents winning their re-election is ridiculously high.

Here's another impractical idea that would do a lot to help the problem: Term limits for each House of Congress. I'd suggest 12 years max for each. That's 6 terms for a Congressman and 2 terms for a Senator. So someone who's wildly popular could potentially win both and spend 24 years in Congress.

Right now, that would boot out 18 Senators with 2 more that would be done after finishing their current term. It'd also get rid of 42 members of the House of Reps with a handful more being done at the end of the current terms. Ultimately, I think if the guys who have been in for term after term after term were booted out and new blood got in there, I would hope that some of the problems would go away.

Probably not though.

Hey wats up

Ban all corporate money from elections.
Limit sources of donations to Candidates to their own constitute.

Then Maybe the person that could vote might have some meaning instead of the foreigner who is buying a puppet mouth piece.

Hard to do, and can still be bypassed with promises of jobs from foreign entities.

Pulling business out of a congressional district is just as effective in eliminating a congressman or senator that won't play ball.

likewise adding new business to a congressional district can make a new congressman who plays ball look like a hero.

No campaign money is needed to achieve either of these goals, and is much harder to track and prove. Meanwhile those with the new jobs would be screaming bloody murder if an investigation threatened their livelihood.

being business friendly get you elected...

Cerberus, you hit on it when you pointed out that the US government is supposed to be based on The Constitution. 90% of what Congress does today has no constitutional validity, and unfortunately we have a Supreme Court that seems content to let Congress take almost any power they want (not exactly anything new here) Changing the actors won't change that fact, unless the new actors know that they will be ousted unless they start passing amedments to clarify and solidify what The Constitution says. We have allowed politicians to twist The Constitution into something it was never intended to be.. we've knocked down almost all of the obstacles to tyranny over the last 100 years.

Our founders understood that power corrupts almost all men, which is why they made it so hard for government to actually do anything. Unfortunately, WE, the people, have stood by and watched as the protections they left to us have been destroyed. Educate your fellow citizens about the original intent of the US government, or any purging of Congress is doomed to be replaced by equally corrupted men.

T.

What powers exactly have Congress taken that aren't theirs?

I know Congress passes a lot of laws that take away power from the state, but they're never officially taking powers away from the state, they're simply dangling federal subsidies out there if you play by Congress's rules.

States have every right to opt out of a LOT of what Congress does (not everything, but a lot of it)

i agree with all that is said :D

Well if we're doing education about the "original intent" then I would like to point out that the government, including Congress, existed before the Constitution. The Constitution is the byproduct of a compromise between political (although they wouldn't call themselves that) factions, ergo why the Bill of Rights was in a Constitution rather than simply as law. Really you had a fight between what we would call states rights vs federalists (anti-federalists vs federalists), northern v southern over industrialization/tariffs, location of the capitol, etc, and over the form of government (some arguing for a tri-part oligopy, some single chamber legislative with no executive, etc).

Anyway, moving back to the question at hand, I disagree entirely Cerberus. The two biggest changes you could make that would drastically alter the system are entirely non-partisan and computerized redistricting and reasonable pay for Congressional staffers.

I don't presume that a Member of Congress (MoC) there for a long time is a problem. I actually think that helps them acquire institutional knowledge that lets them ferment change. How many freshmen have put forward bold paths to fix long-term debt problems? Seriously, how many? Now, contrast that with someone in the system in his sixth term, Chairman/Rep Paul Ryan. He learned the ins and outs of defense, SS and Medicaire to recognize the scope of the problem and the fix rather than complaining about the cost of one earmark somewhere (and earmarks, as long as they're transparent, really aren't bad things).

What we need is more competitive House seats. People complain about money in politics, but if you take all of that money and divide it over 474 races (435 House, 6 delegate, 33 Senate...won't be 34 until 2016 elections with class iii) or even let's say only half of them end up competitive after redistricting, 237, you will find the influence of money wanes incredibly. More importantly, it will make representatives more reflective of subset communities within various districts. Aka, you won't be 60% urban and 40% rural or vice versa.

The second point is important because you're asking to have qualified people advising these MoCs. In any one topic alone there is way too much knowledge to absorb so typically you have LAs covering 2-4 topics each, which is still a ton. These are usually mid-20 somethings with a graduate degree. Often they come in hoping to change the world and suddenly find they're underwater in so many issues with so little time. Despite these long hours they're making maybe $35,000 (right around the city's poverty line) if they're lucky in an expensive city. It's no wonder they do a year or two and then leave to go home, go through the 'revolving door' or go work somewhere else in the government for double the pay and half the hours. Can you blame them? Teachers make the same amount and at least get their summers off and a decent pension. So this leads to a huge knowledge gap filled by various members of the advocacy community or not filled at all. I've said it numerous times, but if you pay them a liveable wage then you retain a huge brain trust and vastly improve the system.

These are little things. In the end, voters will have to be pissed off enough to start demanding real change before anything will ever happen. And, I'm not optimistic about that. People don't want to give up their entitlements because they don't see them that way. Look, I want a mortgage deduction for when I buy a house in the next year or two, but I also realize it costs a fortune. People will not vote to cut their own benefits. Instead they will see a villain that is either too small to be a problem (earmarks, domestic federal spending, etc) or too small/hard to fix the problem (tax the rich, regulate more, etc). So, anyone under say 50 now, is pretty much screwed.

The ejection of incumbents for a period of time to reseat the legislative branch would work wonders providing that the next electee will provide proper attention to the needs ot the country and not his/her own financial prosperity, or face being booted out with only one term under their belts.

This thread

The Supreme court should be decentralized. They, at the end of the day, are the arbiters of what the constitution means. Congress can make whatever silly ass law they want, but if the Supreme Court thinks it's ok then it passes, otherwise it's eliminated. Decentralize the Supreme Court's enforcement of the constitution to the state supreme courts at least, and you'll see citizens having a body of law governing that more closely resembles what they want.

I see no problem with particular federal laws being enforceable in some states and not others, and the only laws that would be subject to this would be questionable laws to begin with.

Remember that we already have a patchwork of laws similar to this in state laws, so it's no big change.

Incumbents, who needs them , we can just outsource their jobs, I really doubt some foreignor would be willing to fund half of the stupid fluff these fools fund

WHILE BOOTING INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE WOULD BE A GOOD START, IT WOULD NOT ULTIMATELY SOLVE THE ROOT PROBLEM. THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE POLITICIANS THEMSELVES. IT IS THE FAILURE OF WE THE PEOPLE TO HOLD OUR GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABLE, AND TO OUTRIGHT DEMAND THAT THEY WORK WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK THAT IS THE CONSTITUTION. YOU COULD BOOT BOTH PARTIES OUT OF OFFICE, REPLACE THEM WITH TWO NEW PARTIES, AND WITHIN A FEW YEARS THE REPLACEMENTS WOULD ALL BE CORRUPTED BY THE POWER THEY WIELD. AS SOMEONE ELSE ALREADY POINTED OUT HERE, EVEN SOME OF THE FOUNDERS WHO RECOGNIZED HOW EASILY POWER CAN CORRUPT, WERE NOT IMMUNE TO TAHT CORRUPTION.

WE HAVE STOOD BY AND WATCHED MOSTLY SILENTLY FOR NEARLY A CENTURY AS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAS GONE ABOUT DISMANTLING THE BARRIERS TO TYRANNY. AS LONG AS THEY PROMISED TO FIX SOME TERRIBLE CALAMITY - REAL OR IMAGINARY - WE HAVE OVERLOOKED THEIR MARCH TOWARD EVER MORE CENTRALIZED POWER.

GET RID OF INCUMBENTS, YES, BUT YOU MUST ALSO EDUCATE BOTH YOURSELF AND YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS ABOUT THE ORIGINAL INTENT OF THIS NATION AND HOW WE HAVE STRAYED FROM IT.



KAZ, I BELIEVE WE HAVE SEEN SOME IMPROVEMENT IN THIS AREA VERY RECENTLY. A NUMBER OF REPUBLICAN INCUMBENTS WHO SEEMED INVINCIBLE LOST THEIR PRIMARIES THIS YEAR, BECAUSE THEIR CONSTITUENTS FINALLY WOKE UP AND REALIZED THAT THEY WERE BEING PLAYED FOR FOOLS. IF BOTH PARTIES CONTINUE TO BANKRUPT OUR POSTERITY, I DON'T THINK IT CAN BE LONG BEFORE DEMOCRAT VOTERS BEGIN TO WAKE UP AS WELL.

Fix it

technically, we just have to wait for the baby boomers to um, pass on. or pass some kinda law which would prohibit people with dementia from being allowed to vote.

When you have more people voting for American Idol than our elections, it's a clear indication that our two face system is failing us!

I doubt there are actually more people voting for American Idol. There may be more votes cast, but many of those are repeat voters.

And I'm purposefully leaving out the voter fraud jokes that could be made here.

The problem as I see it:
1. Campaign contributions = bribes.
Imagine if I 'contributed' to jury members or the judge
It's not 'free speech' by a jury / judge, so it's not free speech as protected by the Constitution. The Supreme Court got it wrong.

2. We think we have a very free society. We don't for most things. People coming from other countries don't think so, we're mired in millions of regulations. Every time you come to a red light at 2am and there's no cars coming for miles, and you wait, you're being disciplined, marching at the orders of your masters.

3. Borrowing by the Fed. By having an infinite supply of money, the Fed has taken power and left the tax payers / property holders the bill.

4. Illegal immigration. Yea, I'd do it, too, if I were stuck in some Marxist Spanish country. But we shouldn't let it happen because it devalues our people. It's destroyed the Black community by taking their niche jobs of maidservice and janitorial work, and it's taken away many of our jobs for our entry-level teenage workers (especially the Black teen who will now go for years, after high school, and not have employment at that most crucial time, and each and every one of us is devalued because the 500,000,000 people flooding the workforce.

Not only is it my opinion, I'm right.

TL;DR

Limit all elections to one term.

'Draft' Candidates.

De-institutionalize the party system.

Employ John Howard as President, problem solved.

Trick question.