O Really wrote:It's getting ridiculous the extent so many people are trying to "normalize" Trump. And the number that ignore what's in front of their face to say "well, let's give him a chance." He gets a chance and new chances every day. He gets to appoint cabinet members and he appoints a Secretary of Education who has a long history of opposing public education. He appoints as Secretary of Energy a guy dumber than a bag of rocks, who has no idea what the Department of Energy is responsible for even though he wants to eliminate it. He gets to practice being President, so he twitter-attacks private citizens over their First Amendment rights. At what point can normal regular US citizens say Trump is a really bad choice and most of what he does is not going to be in the best interest of the US or its citizens. Do we have to wait until Wal-Mart shelves are totally empty because he ruined trade relations with China? Do we have to wait until schools are closed for lack of funding or Social Security and Medicare turn into tax credits? At what point can we say the man has bad ideas, makes bad hiring decisions, seeks advice from dangerous people, is by any number of objective business measures a poor manager, and ignores the counsel of those knowledgeable in technical matters?
I can't speak for everyone, but in my case it's not sour grapes that Hillary didn't win. Hell, I said before that if one of the clown car riders was going to win I'd probably have Trump than, say, Cruz. But looking at it just on specifics, without considering ideology (which he has none anyway), the man is already making a big mess and he's not even in office yet.
And besides, isn't anyone going to tell him and his fans that "draining the swamp" hasn't been considered a good thing to do for decades? And that most real swamps that were drained have turned into ecological disasters one way or another?
Another frightening prospect that seems like a good idea on the surface is congressional term limits, something Trump and his supporters are supposedly hung ho for, that has all kinds of unintended detrimental consequences, especially given the current state of the executive branch.
Philosophical arguments aside for a moment, now more than ever do we need our experienced congresspeople to take the leadership helm and provide guidance and push back against unsavory acts and decisions by Trumps rogue executive. A legislative branch filled with newcomers ever few years would not bode well in resisting an overly strong, potentially corrupt executive.
Luckily congressional term limits are unlikely to occur.
The reason Congressional incumbents keep getting re-elected is that they're elected by a relatively small population that, particularly with gerrymandering, can be pretty homogeneous. So one might think 434 members of Congress are drooling idiots, but only gets to vote on one of them - and that one he likes because, for example, he brought in some contracts, got funding for a new road, or introduced a bill to hand out free AK's and have open season on abortionists. People tend to say, "all Congressmen are corrupt idiots - except mine, who is fairly decent." Or even if you think yours deserves to be run out on a rail, you still don't get to vote on the other 434. People want term limits on Congressmen for other districts - not their own. So if it comes to a vote, it won't pass. It would be interesting to see what would happen, however, if all 435 were on the ballot and everybody got to vote keep/fire on all of them. That would be fun.
2009-13: Steven Chu, former Nobel Prize winner, professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley. BA math BS physics Rochester U, PhD physics Cal Berkeley.
2013-16: Ernest Moniz, MIT Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, MIT Director of the Energy Initiative, MIT Director of the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, former undersec of energy. BS summa cum laude in physics Boston College, PhD in theoretical physics Stanford
2016-?: Rick Perry, BA in Animal Science TAMU (2.0 student), Gov of Texas, Dancing with Stars contestant
You aren't doing it wrong if no one knows what you are doing.
Yep, plus aside from self interest banni makes a good case against them. When my former state enacted term limits it increased the lobbyists' power relative to the less experienced pols.
Mr.B wrote:And that is my stance as well. If you're going to have term limits, ban lobbying.
Keep in mind that when a corporation holds a $1000/plate campaign fundraising dinner for a politician and gets a couple hundred executives, friends and their spouses to attend, it's not, legally, lobbying. Not when they're not openly tying it to any request.
Sure, they can talk about how wonderful it would be to allow coal mining in parks or to have a government-enforced monopoly on delivering cable and internet in an area, but even at the dinner that's just free speech.
Enron letting Dick Cheney campaign on Enron jets was worth a fortune, but it wasn't lobbying. They were doing it out of the kindness of their hearts.
"Lobbying" isn't the problem. Bribes, err, "contributions" are much more of the problem. But it takes money to run, and if there were no contributions, only people eligible to be in Trump's cabinet could afford to run. And if all elections were publicly funded, you'd have every Harry Dick and Tom trying to get elected. So that brings us back to limited contributions - what a novel idea. Too bad the Supreme Court didn't agree.
O Really wrote:"Lobbying" isn't the problem. Bribes, err, "contributions" are much more of the problem. But it takes money to run, and if there were no contributions, only people eligible to be in Trump's cabinet could afford to run. And if all elections were publicly funded, you'd have every Harry Dick and Tom trying to get elected. So that brings us back to limited contributions - what a novel idea. Too bad the Supreme Court didn't agree."
Too late to change it now, but the "system" was originally meant for any properly elected 'Harry, Dick, and Tom' to have a voice in Washington. Wealthy, career pols are the scourge of our law-making government.
O Really wrote:"Lobbying" isn't the problem. Bribes, err, "contributions" are much more of the problem. But it takes money to run, and if there were no contributions, only people eligible to be in Trump's cabinet could afford to run. And if all elections were publicly funded, you'd have every Harry Dick and Tom trying to get elected. So that brings us back to limited contributions - what a novel idea. Too bad the Supreme Court didn't agree."
Too late to change it now, but the "system" was originally meant for any properly elected 'Harry, Dick, and Tom' to have a voice in Washington. Wealthy, career pols are the scourge of our law-making government.
Who knows what was originally meant, but Congress has always been filled with mostly economicially advantaged. Actually, there is a wider variety now than in the First Congress... http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2012 ... -congress/
Question: why is ok for accounting to be a career, law to be a career, medicine to be a career, truck driving to be a career, but politicians should be amateurs? What is there about politics that makes some people think anybody can do it? People expect some degree of training and experience in their pizza makers. But not those who make the laws that affect them? Explain the logic there.
O Really wrote: "Question: why is ok for accounting to be a career, law to be a career, medicine to be a career, truck driving to be a career, but politicians should be amateurs? What is there about politics that makes some people think anybody can do it? People expect some degree of training and experience in their pizza makers. But not those who make the laws that affect them? Explain the logic there."
That's an excellent question. A career has to start from scratch; nobody is self-made. My point was that terms were meant so that anyone who is interested in the "running" of this country can get an opportunity to do so through the election process. Having some sort of experience probably wasn't in the minds of the early leaders who most likely didn't envision the need for politicians in the future to be smart .... and they were right; because now they're mostly rich. The longer their money can keep them in, the smarter they get.
Clearly, we need both lobbying and campaign finance reform, by constitutional amendment for the latter if necessary. Bernie sure proved that one can raise money effectively without reliance on personal wealth, corporations and fat cats. If Trump adheres at all to his campaign theme he will work on this, but it'll end up being yet another thing that he lied to his oh so gullible Trumpettes about.
O Really wrote: "Question: why is ok for accounting to be a career, law to be a career, medicine to be a career, truck driving to be a career, but politicians should be amateurs? What is there about politics that makes some people think anybody can do it? People expect some degree of training and experience in their pizza makers. But not those who make the laws that affect them? Explain the logic there."
That's an excellent question. A career has to start from scratch; nobody is self-made. My point was that terms were meant so that anyone who is interested in the "running" of this country can get an opportunity to do so through the election process. Having some sort of experience probably wasn't in the minds of the early leaders who most likely didn't envision the need for politicians in the future to be smart .... and they were right; because now they're mostly rich. The longer their money can keep them in, the smarter they get.
The main reason most members of Congress are wealthy is that people who aren't wealthy are too busy making a living to be able to afford the risk of running and losing the election. They're also almost always people who have some success in the community and their pre-politics career. And a lot of them are pretty decent people - even after years in office. A lot get ruined by being in a gerrymandered district that is non-competitive and they no longer have to pay attention to the electorate as a whole.
Term limits don't really increase "opportunity". In a country of 325 million we only have 537 elected national offices. In almost all cases term limits would just replace someone with experience with someone very similar without experience.
Mr.B wrote:. My point was that terms were meant so that anyone who is interested in the "running" of this country can get an opportunity to do so through the election process.
...
Having some sort of experience probably wasn't in the minds of the early leaders who most likely didn't envision the need for politicians in the future to be smart ....
Term limits come in the form of elections. If a congressional district is happy with their representative, they'll continue to vote them in. If they're unhappy, they'll vote them out. Instituting congressional term limits is undemocratic, in my opinion. For the presidency term limits make sense, since the presidency has much more power concentrated in a single individual versus a single congressman or senator.
In the Federalist papers, one of the arguments against congressional term limits is that it leaves us with an inexperienced legislature. This is detrimental to the functioning of the country because it leaves the legislative branch especially weak in comparison to the executive as senior members of congress, whom often outlast the presidency, act as a counter to the executive in which power is concentrated in a single individual. Also, as in business affairs, networking with others and building a rapport is important in negotiating and getting things moving. It simply takes time to learn how to do any job. Hell, it takes new employees at least six months to even be able to get started on the system I work on. I'd imagine congress is much more complex. Plus, a congressperson that's forbidden by law to seek re-election is no longer accountable to their constituents.
You aren't doing it wrong if no one knows what you are doing.
It's a (mostly) con distraction to imagine that changing the individuals is more important than changing the system, especially since national term limits will be nearly impossible to ever enact. Pols, whoever they are, have relatively little wiggle room. Rather, real change will only happen if we reduce the role of money in politics and reform our anti-democratic districting system. Not that those will be easy to achieve, either, but at least they'll make a difference if we do get there.
You've all made very positive arguments, and I say, I have to agree with you all, especially JTA's comment about having to train a new employee. It brought me back to my days when I was a trainer, and many of the difficulties I encountered when I hired a new employee.
I was thinking back to senators Kennedy,Thurmond, and Inouye who served longer than any other senators; often in controversial situations.
I suppose that it would be best to continue on, because I would hate for a greenhorn to be faced with a decision involving military conflict.
“What is laughable and ridiculous is that you have individuals with no law enforcement, national security or intelligence experience calling into question the credibility and integrity of career intelligence professionals. Creating a dispute and undermining the trust between the incoming administration and these intelligence officials is problematic because this administration will rely on these professionals as they seek to make critical decisions in the future.”
-- former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow
“There must be big smiles this morning at the Kremlin. It's unprecedented that a president-elect should be denigrating CIA, refusing to read their intelligence and disagreeing with them on a major substantive issue even before he is inaugurated.”
-- former White House cybersecurity official Richard Clarke
What kind of idiot pol picks such a dumb fight with the CIA? That Trump is really representing Putin is looking more and more likely.
