No matter which party you support if you don't vote against the incumbent you are voting to have yourself abused. We have let this system go far too long so the members of government don't even have any shame when they look you in the face, or the camera's lens, and just flat out lie.
They are so entrenched in their corrupt elitist system they have absolute contempt for the rest of us and believe it when I tell you it doesn't matter which party or which congressmen or senator it is. If they are in office today they have screwed you over yesterday and will do it again tomorrow because both party's thrive off of a corrupt foundation.
Scumbag Kerry and his elitist attitude will preach how we little people need to suck it up and pay higher tax for the good of the country....
Why won't you people wake up and throw the bums out?
You vote for them to do this to you so shut up...or put up!
Moderators: Tunnelcat, Jeff250
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Will Robinson
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Tunnelcat
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Oh, don't worry Will. One of my esteemed Senators, Ron Wyden, a democrat by the way, is never going to get my vote again whenever he comes up for reelection. Helping with that turkey of a health reform bill and kissing health insurance and pharma corporate butt to give them what they wanted pretty much sealed his fate for me.
I'll buy that. Now convince me that it isn't true of any name that was able to get their self on my ballot.If they are in office today they have screwed you over yesterday and will do it again tomorrow because both party's thrive off of a corrupt foundation.
The odds are, if I've heard your name, you have paid to have me hear your name. Maybe with your own money, or maybe with someone elses....but either way, your loyalty isn't to me.
Many corporations donate to both sides. They will donate to whoever we lay our eyes on. And the person who receives that financial edge, will win....and then begin to pay the favors back.
61.7 Percent showed up in 2008, and of those, how many of them do you think got all of their political information from campaign ads?
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Heretic
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Ever heard of Alvin Greene? Well no one in South Carolina did either. Alvin Greene came up with the $10,440 filing fee. He didn't even have a job. Ran no campaign to speak of and yet got 59% of the vote. Greene was also facing felony obscenity case and still got the vote. There still a lot of questions about who this guy is, with the some of the Democratic party accusing him of being a Republican plant. Yep this is really going to be an interesting November.
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Will Robinson
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Re:
Maybe their loyalty isn't to you maybe it might be as much given to you as to any other entity though if they are elected by the GOOOH process and just think what message it sends to either party in every race where a candidate is elected or even just runs strong on the platform/criteria/selection process that the GOOOH system provides?Gooberman wrote:I'll buy that. Now convince me that it isn't true of any name that was able to get their self on my ballot.If they are in office today they have screwed you over yesterday and will do it again tomorrow because both party's thrive off of a corrupt foundation.
The odds are, if I've heard your name, you have paid to have me hear your name. Maybe with your own money, or maybe with someone elses....but either way, your loyalty isn't to me. ..
It means the candidate is saying 'I reject the good old boys and the status quo and I indict the incumbents of both partys as being guilty of corrupting our government and I offer myself up as fresh choice to rid the government of those practices.'
Tell me it isn't an improvement to nominate someone on those grounds as opposed to trying to decide which one of the lying two-faced representatives offered up by the lying two-faced one-party-disguised-as-two!
Read the GOOOH web page and think it through...how would that play out...how would any momentum of a movement like that impact the public discourse regarding elections and politics...how would the partys react to try and save their power base...
Whatever the specifics to those answers are for you I can't believe it would be a bad thing.
I don't think the GOOOH method is the end all be all solution, if you merely voted out the incumbents it would help but the grassroots aspect of a bipartisan electorate revolt that had vote the bums out, no more status quo as it's primary focus would be much more powerful so I lean toward it over just recommending you unilaterally vote your own incumbant out and leave it up to the media to report why it happened, they have been known to spin results they didn't anticipate as something other than what it was....
I see it as the single most powerful thing we can all do and it requires we think as citizens first before any ideology or party loyalty. It's fine that you lean liberal or conservative but before you can do the right thing with your vote, whatever that is from your perspective, left or right, you need to help clean up the system that your vote will be used in!
This is like everyone coming together to fight WWII or everyone lighting a candle on 9/12/2001...this is worthy of citizens banding together with a save the republic first from a deadly disease then debate amongst ourselves the logistics and tactics of future endeavors!
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BlueFlames
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Okay, nobody else has had anything else to say about it....
Remember that the power-switch in Congress in 2006 took twelve years, and the Republican Revolution of 1994 was an affair that took four-decades to come to fruition. Ousting Ted Stevens took over forty years, and he wasn't actually voted out, despite being one of the most reviled characters in the Senate.
All politics are local, even if the polls you read are not. In Knoxville, you will find that Jimmy Duncan, Lamar Alexander, and Bob Corker are revered for appropriating federal dollars to worthy projects in the Second Congressional District and Tennessee as a whole. It's those other 532 bastards who are wasteful porkbarrel spenders, who need to be hefted out of their seats in Congress with a prybar. Replace names of people and places as appropriate for whatever locality you are in or researching.
It's a round-about and not-altogether-ethical way to do it, but Volkswagon factories and bridges to nowhere buy a lot of votes in a reelection bid, so the incumbency rate stays high. A Hoosier doesn't see the benefits of a tax-break to Volkswagon for building a factory in Tennessee or an appropriation to build multimillion-dollar bridges to remote Alaskan islands, so people in Indiana disapprove of these appropriations. People in Kentucky disapprove of these appropriations. People in Washington disapprove of these appropriations, etc., etc., etc. They feel as though they're getting screwed, even though they may be benefitting from the same kind of dubious activities on the part of their own Congressional delegation, thereby screwing everyone back.
Why does it continue? Because it's always the other 532 people on Capitol Hill at fault. Congress won't alter a system that allows its members comfortable reelection, and the rules of Congressional appropriation are governed by none but Congress. (The Supreme Court might be able to overturn a rule, if a member of Congress sued, but the problem is a lack of rules in this particular area.) The executive branch briefly demonstrated some power to curtail such spending, for the period in which the President had line-item veto authority, but that power won't be coming back without a Constitutional amendment. Would Congress draft such an amendment? Would three-quarters of the state legislatures approve it? Would anybody, save a future President even call for it, and if such a President did make that request, would it not simply be shot down as a power-grab? Key: no, no, no, yes
So Congress has built itself a brick house of incumbency, and you can huff and puff, and build a typhoon of national-level dissatisfaction, but you won't blow that house down (or strain that metaphor any harder).
For what it's worth, that's not a defense of the existing system; just a realistic look at why INTERNET RAGE® isn't going to bring it down, even on the outside chance that enough incumbents are ousted to force the majority party out. I, for one, have been voting against the incumbents of Tennessee's Congressional delegation for the last eight-ish years, but this area has been what you might call 'reliably red' since about the time the Civil Rights Act got passed.
tl;dr - All politics are local, and career politicians write laws to extend the length of their careers.
[/drive-by posting]
National approval ratings for Congress do not equate at all to local/state-level election results. Sub-25% approval ratings for Congress are nothing new, but then, neither is the 80-90% incumbency rate. Start looking at individual Representative's and Senator's approval ratings exclusively among their constituents, and the tapestry of Congressional upheaval you've woven in your mind will unravel.At 11% approval rating for congress I expect a lot of incumbents to be given the bums rush.
Remember that the power-switch in Congress in 2006 took twelve years, and the Republican Revolution of 1994 was an affair that took four-decades to come to fruition. Ousting Ted Stevens took over forty years, and he wasn't actually voted out, despite being one of the most reviled characters in the Senate.
All politics are local, even if the polls you read are not. In Knoxville, you will find that Jimmy Duncan, Lamar Alexander, and Bob Corker are revered for appropriating federal dollars to worthy projects in the Second Congressional District and Tennessee as a whole. It's those other 532 bastards who are wasteful porkbarrel spenders, who need to be hefted out of their seats in Congress with a prybar. Replace names of people and places as appropriate for whatever locality you are in or researching.
It's a round-about and not-altogether-ethical way to do it, but Volkswagon factories and bridges to nowhere buy a lot of votes in a reelection bid, so the incumbency rate stays high. A Hoosier doesn't see the benefits of a tax-break to Volkswagon for building a factory in Tennessee or an appropriation to build multimillion-dollar bridges to remote Alaskan islands, so people in Indiana disapprove of these appropriations. People in Kentucky disapprove of these appropriations. People in Washington disapprove of these appropriations, etc., etc., etc. They feel as though they're getting screwed, even though they may be benefitting from the same kind of dubious activities on the part of their own Congressional delegation, thereby screwing everyone back.
Why does it continue? Because it's always the other 532 people on Capitol Hill at fault. Congress won't alter a system that allows its members comfortable reelection, and the rules of Congressional appropriation are governed by none but Congress. (The Supreme Court might be able to overturn a rule, if a member of Congress sued, but the problem is a lack of rules in this particular area.) The executive branch briefly demonstrated some power to curtail such spending, for the period in which the President had line-item veto authority, but that power won't be coming back without a Constitutional amendment. Would Congress draft such an amendment? Would three-quarters of the state legislatures approve it? Would anybody, save a future President even call for it, and if such a President did make that request, would it not simply be shot down as a power-grab? Key: no, no, no, yes
So Congress has built itself a brick house of incumbency, and you can huff and puff, and build a typhoon of national-level dissatisfaction, but you won't blow that house down (or strain that metaphor any harder).
For what it's worth, that's not a defense of the existing system; just a realistic look at why INTERNET RAGE® isn't going to bring it down, even on the outside chance that enough incumbents are ousted to force the majority party out. I, for one, have been voting against the incumbents of Tennessee's Congressional delegation for the last eight-ish years, but this area has been what you might call 'reliably red' since about the time the Civil Rights Act got passed.
tl;dr - All politics are local, and career politicians write laws to extend the length of their careers.
[/drive-by posting]
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Will Robinson
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Re:
All true except it used to also be true that there was never an American revolution until the king pushed a little too far...then there was one....BlueFlames wrote:Okay, nobody else has had anything else to say about it....
National approval ratings for Congress do not equate at all to local/state-level election results. Sub-25% approval ratings for Congress are nothing new, but then, neither is the 80-90% incumbency rate. Start looking at individual Representative's and Senator's approval ratings exclusively among their constituents, and the tapestry of Congressional upheaval you've woven in your mind will unravel.At 11% approval rating for congress I expect a lot of incumbents to be given the bums rush.
Remember that the power-switch in Congress in 2006 took twelve years, and the Republican Revolution of 1994 was an affair that took four-decades to come to fruition. Ousting Ted Stevens took over forty years, and he wasn't actually voted out, despite being one of the most reviled characters in the Senate.
All politics are local, even if the polls you read are not. In Knoxville, you will find that Jimmy Duncan, Lamar Alexander, and Bob Corker are revered for appropriating federal dollars to worthy projects in the Second Congressional District and Tennessee as a whole. It's those other 532 bastards who are wasteful porkbarrel spenders, who need to be hefted out of their seats in Congress with a prybar. Replace names of people and places as appropriate for whatever locality you are in or researching.
It's a round-about and not-altogether-ethical way to do it, but Volkswagon factories and bridges to nowhere buy a lot of votes in a reelection bid, so the incumbency rate stays high. A Hoosier doesn't see the benefits of a tax-break to Volkswagon for building a factory in Tennessee or an appropriation to build multimillion-dollar bridges to remote Alaskan islands, so people in Indiana disapprove of these appropriations. People in Kentucky disapprove of these appropriations. People in Washington disapprove of these appropriations, etc., etc., etc. They feel as though they're getting screwed, even though they may be benefitting from the same kind of dubious activities on the part of their own Congressional delegation, thereby screwing everyone back.
Why does it continue? Because it's always the other 532 people on Capitol Hill at fault. Congress won't alter a system that allows its members comfortable reelection, and the rules of Congressional appropriation are governed by none but Congress. (The Supreme Court might be able to overturn a rule, if a member of Congress sued, but the problem is a lack of rules in this particular area.) The executive branch briefly demonstrated some power to curtail such spending, for the period in which the President had line-item veto authority, but that power won't be coming back without a Constitutional amendment. Would Congress draft such an amendment? Would three-quarters of the state legislatures approve it? Would anybody, save a future President even call for it, and if such a President did make that request, would it not simply be shot down as a power-grab? Key: no, no, no, yes
So Congress has built itself a brick house of incumbency, and you can huff and puff, and build a typhoon of national-level dissatisfaction, but you won't blow that house down (or strain that metaphor any harder).
For what it's worth, that's not a defense of the existing system; just a realistic look at why INTERNET RAGE® isn't going to bring it down, even on the outside chance that enough incumbents are ousted to force the majority party out. I, for one, have been voting against the incumbents of Tennessee's Congressional delegation for the last eight-ish years, but this area has been what you might call 'reliably red' since about the time the Civil Rights Act got passed.
tl;dr - All politics are local, and career politicians write laws to extend the length of their careers.
[/drive-by posting]
My intial reaction to GOOOH is that its requirement for participation is too high. We can't even get three out of four people eligible to vote in the country, to show up and vote.
In this process, it seems to me, that a large number of people would go through several tiers, several weekends with their families lost, to in the end just go home.
The goal seems to be to allow people whom have a sense of eachother, to pick eachother. Realistically, that group should be no more then 100 people, otherwise then we get into the advertising regime and the point is then lost. With 100 people, in a country of ~ 300,000,000: that would take quite some time. I'm also not convinced that at Tier 3 or so, the whole point doesn't get lost. These people then have no idea who eachother is.
For a farming community, the idea could work, for a major city -- I don't know, perhaps there is something I am missing.
In this process, it seems to me, that a large number of people would go through several tiers, several weekends with their families lost, to in the end just go home.
The goal seems to be to allow people whom have a sense of eachother, to pick eachother. Realistically, that group should be no more then 100 people, otherwise then we get into the advertising regime and the point is then lost. With 100 people, in a country of ~ 300,000,000: that would take quite some time. I'm also not convinced that at Tier 3 or so, the whole point doesn't get lost. These people then have no idea who eachother is.
For a farming community, the idea could work, for a major city -- I don't know, perhaps there is something I am missing.