Forum Post: So, what form of government do you want?
Posted 11 years ago on May 19, 2012, 8:27 p.m. EST by afarmer
(65)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Please watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KFXuGIpsdE0#!
I ask, "What form of government do you want or like best?"
I doubt it matters unless you have an electorate that is willing to stay informed and participate.
I agree, scares me to think of people voting without knowing anything.
yep, one person one vote........some are informed many are not
we need to educate people
Exactly.
Yes education is seriously lacking - it does not help to have BS corporate Media spinning their propaganda.
The dumbing down of America includes the Media.
The MSM = the left wing media. They claim that they're unbiased, but they are . They cover for obama.
obama isn't left wing, and neither is MSM
obama is so far left he's off the chart. the msm is too. in fact the msm is an arm of the current administration.
David Rovics "If Only it Were True"
Everyone is biased, so what? With the internet we get all kinds of different views on any topic. Most politicians are corrupt, the only difference is what they use to scare their voters with.
You still think there's a difference eh? Sounds like you're suffering from sheeple syndrome, no worries, a very common & easy to treat illness (take a strong dose of occupy wall street, and call me in the morning) :)
They are corporate and they will spin whatever and whoever to get what they want. Period.
So newbie - are you for real or were you recently banned?
Just curious you need not answer.
Your contributions will make it apparent in time.
demand elections be national and state holidays
Maybe, hard on the hourly worker to take a day's pay cut, harder still to force small businesses to pay for work not done. Some states are doing early voting, so you have a week or more to go to a location and cast your vote on whatever day you have off.
anyone that works on Voting Day should receive double time
small businesses rarely pay for any holidays
what states are doing early voting ?
More then half of them. Only 15 states still do the one-day-only-need-a-good-reason-for-absentee-balot type of voting. Here's a map of them.
http://www.ncsl.org/legislatures-elections/elections/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx
It's a better solution then me loosing a days pay or trying to get business to pay double for a day when you only need a couple of hours off to go vote.
no
the routine of work must be suspended for people to consider their government
In a majority of the states you can sit on your day off and consider to your heart's content, then go vote or mail in a ballot. Why make the impossible and unnecessary demand that we create another paid holiday? There are things that simply can't be shut down anyhow.
we have holidays all the time
Yes we do, what's the point you're making? You want something new and either working people have to go without pay or businesses must pay for workers to stay home. Either way you're asking for someone to pay when there has already been a way of giving everyone the time to consider the issues and then vote on their own time scale. Without hurting anyone financially. Instead of asking for financial support in some way go try to get your state to initiate early voting.
"There are things that simply can't be shut down anyhow." suggested that we can't afford holidays
but we do
just pay essential workers double
Why? Because people are too lazy to vote on their day off? Seems like an expensive solution to a nonexistent problem in the majority of states.
people don't have a day off for voting. they should.
Maybe but it's not likely to happen, especially when in most states you can vote early on your day off. No need for the added expense of paid days off.
a day off doesn't cost anything
Indeed, but the system is sort of rigged to produce this result.
I don't see anything as rigged, people in general get lazy and just don't bother staying informed. The corrupt don't have to sneak in, the ignorant hold the door open for them.
I didn't postulate on how the "rigging" happened (I'm willing to say it could have been inadvertent, the sort of thing that just snow balls over time), but nonetheless, if people are uninformed, it could be a byproduct of how society is arranged. In a participatory democracy, those who participate, by necessity, will have to be informed. This aspect of the underlying ideas shaping this movement ... is something that requires a culture shift to remedy (it's not the sort of thing that could possibly be imposed from the top down).
Perhaps, but in my mind it's just as likely you'll get large segments of the population that won't participate. It's not like full participation is going to end any of the hot button issues we face that divide the nation literally and figuratively in half. Spending on the military, spending on social programs, gay marriage, abortion, these things aren't going to go away with direct democracy.
Right, but I'm not suggesting these things would go away with participatory democracy. The real benefit of participatory democracy is you reduce the probability of corruption and undue influence by monied interests. For the record, I do not believe that civil rights should be a matter of popular opinion, and in this sense, I suppose we have to admit that we're really endorsing a modernized hybrid of anarchism (not exactly how it was conceived in the 19th century); but I don't see any problem with that.
it assumes human by nature are more violent than peaceful
Just the nature of power, greed and governments.
people like to help each other out else civilization would not exist
it is why humans are successful as a race
It would be nice to have the same voting power as someone in Ohio... GET RID OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
It's a rediculous idea who's time has passed
Socialist democracy
Do you believe in 'National Socialism" or do you think socialism in your state only, where our Constitution allows it?
Socialism for your state and for national,in the past and still RP and there media, associated the word Socialism with communism to scare the people away
Something doesn't seem right about that video. It's like they aren't being persuasive at all, and are relying on the assumption that someone who watches this will not object to a single point or do their own research.
It reveals its intent quickly in the beginning.
So true.
This vedeo anther slap in the face is made by Republican propaganda good job afamer
A republic, of course. Democratic processes are great and there should be more of them but Pure Democracy is not a functional political system. Look at the General Assembly. It's a joke.
Have you read Plato's Republic? It explains the different kinds of communities of humanity by explaining different kind of people in those communities. It's very applicable to today.
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None.
Need good multi-party representative government with proportional voting in short public financed elections, with ALL money out of governance. No revolving door for Congress, office holders upon losing their seats take government jobs, for the rest of their careers, staffers prohibited from private sector jobs for five years, work in government jobs upon leaving staff positions for three years (AmeriCore, military, Peace Corp., foreign service etc. think tank. No lobbying ever. no political consulting)
Public service programming from all commercial media outlets with fact, truth and partisan ship standards.
Strict ethics for Supreme Court Justices, 10 year terms, then retirement to speak, write or teach, held to commitments made in confirmation. judges and lawyers sworn to tell truth, in all trials.
Beyond all this (most of which I agree with, although with some slight nuance), term limits are vital. While we were debating our Constitution (way back in the day), one of the biggest issues, was term limits. We abandoned the idea as pretty much a compromise solution, but the idea was, a robust rotation would both constantly infuse the process with new blood, and also reduce the probability of corruption (a hypothesis that I would opine ... is consistent with the outcome).
One of the arguments against term limits is institutional memory. That is a valid consideration when it includes knowing the nuances of the process and the entities that are addressed. The main problem is the corruption of the individual over some time. I think my idea of keeping them in the process while passing the power to someone else, fixes part of the problem and term limits fixes the rest?
Right, but I'm not talking about a six month term limit, more like a 10 or 12 year limit. But anyway, I can see the argument against this sort of thing. I mean, ultimately, reform won't accomplish much, but term limits would at least chip away at a good chunk of the corruption in our system (at the moment).
Having lived in states with term limits I have found it to be a thin soup. I also live in a state in which the state constitution is easy for the electorate to change. But in the citizen's infinitesimal wisdom, they have passed three separate amendments that taken together works as a ratchet to lower property tax which is offset by sales taxes and income taxes with huge loopholes as enterprise zones etc. Taxes can't be raised without a constitutional change. They also passed the requirement to have all amendments have a single subject (tax reform is too broad.)
The Legislature does a horrible job ducking their responsibility to do a major restructuring with a convolutedly linked package of amendments.
They have term limits (and they duck the issue until until they leave.) and the situation gets steadily worse. Education funding is a levels like Alabama and Mississippi and the citizens hate it.
So, we have a lot of the solutions that those who haven't experienced, believe are panaceas.
Reform must accomplish a lot or their is no point doing it. Overlapping band aids really don't help.
good call to keeping the judges outside of political pressure
Thanks, I really believe with some effort we can devise ways to keep corruption out of government for the most part, but it takes work, competent and competitive media.
We have been neglecting the influence of money on judges. We also need to have a way to increase and protect rights that isn't tainted by the prejudices of the people. Can't vote for rights.
Justices may be outside of the governments reach for very good reason.
But they should be in the public's reach for removal from office.
The people should be able to make the determination of whether or not the justices are doing their proper job.
The government can't touch them and that is as it should be.
The People should as we can see corruption and bias. This is OUR country after all The Peoples. All of these officials are supposed to be working for us through supporting and defending the Constitution.
Danger in having the people remove judges because the bigots win. You can't have a system that is fair when groups can remove rights from minorities. History proves the point.
We have corrupt judges now that neither the government nor the people can remove. Citizens United?
There has got to be a measure to apply. There has to be some way to insure that the job is being done in good faith to the Constitution and the office.
Agreed. I have thought about a large panel of retired judges/lawyers. They are knowledgeable, less prone to influence, protected by secret ballot of a significant number of peers.
I don't know that this is the best solution. It is easier to set criteria than to figure out a system that will get the result without being corrupted.
It definitely needs thought.
Currently the justice department is turning a blind eye on wallstreet and the Supreme Court is not being very helpful to the people.
I forgot about the academics in the field of law, I know that they argue these issues with students for years, decades, and may have converged on solutions I haven't even thought of. I am confident that we can do better than we are. It isn't always the smartest guy who has the best answer after all, it was a child who recognized the emperor had no clothes.
The argument to granting a patent often is, "But that is obvious." Which is countered by, "If it were, someone would already have the patent."
Nice.
I was just thinking about common sense.
Why is it not common?
Do people think that it is to simple and must needs be more complicated to be correct?
One of my favorites has always been - K.I.S.S. keep it simple silly.
Look at the operation of government and the couple thousand page legislation. Tell me that is not way to complicated and messy.
Common sense is itself very complicated. It come from a great body of experience from which a very large number of abstractions are drawn, correlated, analyzed and really are rapid matching of facts and factors in the catalog to provide what is called an intuitive conclusion, in which the intermediate steps are taken subconsciously.
Given a little time, the one drawing the conclusion can retrace the steps, because they are after all in his/her mind. The people with the best common sense have spent a lot of time observing and consciously analyzing situations to develop those patterns.
Lazy minds are deficient in common sense. Just because it is quick doesn't mean it is easy. You only have to observe what a poor job people do in keeping themselves informed, understanding complex issues and coming to rational conclusions to see why it is uncommon.
Einstein said approximately, "Everything should be be as simple as possible, but not simpler."
One of the reason bills are so complicated is a large portion of them is references to other legislation and explaining the relationship of this paragraph to that one, in a certain bill. This sometimes requires a history of multiple previous bills that have dealt with the same detail.
The more history we accumulate and more the legislation that is passed, the greater the number of related references. That is why little pieces are left hanging when a bill overlays a previous n bills that overlap and something dumb is left in effect. These are the ones always in the news that convince people that government doesn't work. When you spend much of a session posturing then rush to incorporated amendments at the last minute, mistakes are made.
But you know how inept lobbyists can be when writing legislation for a Congressman. After all many of then are ex Congressmen.
Distributist
Could we start with one that isn't bought and paid for by the wealthy and corporations?
Amen, Beautifuworldl, but unfortunately governments always get corrupted along the way, usually leads to collapse. Our Founding Fathers understood this, that is why they tried to create a government in federal form, made up of republics, where the national government isn't more powerful than the state. That's so if you live in a state that becomes corrupted or abusive, you can move out of the state. But if your national government gets too powerful and gets corrupted, then where can you go? Thomas Jefferson said, "We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans: we are all federalists." I prefer federalism over nationalism.
Go Green … For a Change
http://julesdr.blogspot.com/2011/04/go-green-for-change.html
the green has that philosophy
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/policies/.../2010manifesto_government.html
I can reach this page
maybe due to someone having root control of my computer
can you view it? (revive local government)
I don't know. I don't think the problem is federal vs. state. It's more a corrupt government in general vs. the people.
We are all in the same boat, just blaming different people while the powerful laugh at us. The problem with demanding a new form of government, is that the corrupt people in government will still be in power (they have the guns to), but we won't have the protection of the old Constitution or Bill of Rights. We have got to find a way take away the power from the most power people, who are in bed with our national government. I say, we can do it Constitutionally in the courts, without bloodshed and hardship. We must ask our states to pick up their slack and take back their powers that were granted to them. The we must keep an eye on our states more so than Washington. Here's blog I wrote about this:http://from1776toeternity.blogspot.com/2012/05/from-1776-to-eternity.html
Complete agreement about us being in the same boat and just blaming different people. One concern about all this “new government” talk is the interim period while the old way is dying and the new is evolving the will be very hard times for the masses.
What I mean by “hard times” is probably a severe depression. And possibly a bloody time of American fighting each other. The gut wrenching hate between the conservatives and liberals will not allow any reasonable discussion.
During the evolution of the new “system” people will be more worried about feeding their families than political ideologies. They will support whoever can provide jobs and security.
However, I don’t see this happening very soon, It’ll probably be more like death in slow motion. Probably at least ten years away from any real change. That may allow time for some better solutions.
"Those who make Peaceful Revolution Impossible...Will make Violent Revolution Inevitable" -JFK
who's making peaceful impossible ?
Who the Hell needs a new form of government?
We just need to remove the corrupt.
Every time that they appear.
DK, You're right, we don't need a new form of government, we need accountability. You're approach to removing the corrupted ones is a tricky, IMO. Legally, you can impeach them or vote them out. Impeaching them is hard, because they have to break the laws and they make the laws. Voting is the best way. here's Milton Friedman explaining a very important concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ac9j15eig_w
It is why we must pray for Wisconsin and their recall election.
They may be the future of what we The People need to push.
could the election be made a state holiday?
I think if it goes well it won't matter as they will likely have a party anyway.
poor people don't party much
Poor people know how to party - they share.
Your blog is interesting. I just think our problem is greed, greed that has leeched into every facet of our society. So, I'm thinking Federalism, while set up to balance power, isn't going to eliminate the greed that is ubiquitous. Unfettered capitalism has taken control of our government at every level. What we should do is Occupy the Supreme Court to overturn Citizens United.
Campaign funding miniscule compared to government budget
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php
the US budget is about 3.7 trillion dollars
so
205e+6 / 3.7e+12 = 5.54054054 × 10-5
Super PACs will spend about .0055% of the budget to get their hands of the government pie
that's insignificant money by comparison
further
I would suggest that publicity has more to do with news station coverage than campaign spending
one might argue that those well financed usually win but the campaign may be well financed due to news publicity
You make the point as to why these wealthy people and corporations fund campaigns in the first place, because they then get to control the whole budget.
seems like the government could fund campaigns with a shrug
or as I stated candidates get campaign funding due to publicity
Same as media having to broadcast emergency alerts - only make it political education during campaigns. Equal time for all candidates gratis. No juggling of time slots either. Prime time.
Yes. It would be no big deal to fund campaigns publicly, now I see your point. LOL! And, I agree about publicity.
Nope, we will never eliminate greed or power, just try to keep it close and control as much as possible. There's no perfect government, not even a benevolent dictator, he dies.
Yep.
Corrupt government in the pocket of Corporations and WallStreet.
The people need to stand-up and take back government - kick the corrupt to the curb.
Let us all pray for the people of Wisconsin to stand-up and be successful in the face of corruption and greed.
This is a land of the people.
People.
Here's one of things Gov Walker did to get corruption out of Wisc's government and is saving the state millions - the unions! read this : http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/07/wisconsin-schools-buck-union-cut-health-costs/115972
33K new jobs in Wisc. in Gov. Scott Walker's first year. http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/16/walker-points-to-new-survey-showing-net-gain-of-33k-jobs-in-first-year/
Yes. What's the big deal of State vs. Fed? I'm not getting that. We have so many bigger problems.
It is two components of the same problem. Both require the same answer = The People taking charge. This is the starting point. This is where we finally get white collar criminals prosecuted. This is where we put an end to outsourcing work to foreign sweat shops because it is cheap. This is where we require green technology for power and transportation. This is where we implement real help for impoverished lands buy buying and selling USA goods and services to help rather than send money. This is where we create free education through college graduate school technical school.
Regaining government makes all this possible. The people must own their system.
Right, the whole system must be in the hands of the people, not the wealthy and corporations.
The will of the People not the greedy.
I like the form of government where people govern themselves. One in which we do not rely on a nanny to hold our hand and take away our rights--because 'it's in our best interest' of course.
Spoken like a true libertarian.
"I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own." – Billie Holiday
I'm not a libertarian I don't even live near a libarry.
“I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” —Benjamin Franklin
Anarchy is NOT the absence of government. It is self-government. It is the belief that people can function under equality where no one is above or below, but on the same level. No Gods. No Masters.
During the Spanish Revolution in the 1930's some parts of Spain flourished without government for three years. Their production doubled and they had a very organized society.
We need to reconsider what we have been lead to believe by popular culture. We need to question things that we have never questioned before if the world is to grow and be better. Equality over Inequality. Responsibility over oppression.
"What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice." Ursula LeGuin
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I like the way this system is structured. You can see a diagram labeled Government 2.0 in the middle of this page:
http://osixs.org/Rev2_menu_commonsense.aspx
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I'd like a double order of Free Democracy http://occupywallst.org/forum/free-democracy-amendment/ with a side order of American Prosperity, hold the bicameral and partisan systems, please...How much?...What? Personal and collective responsibility? Are you kidding me??? I'm an American! I'll never pay that!!!
Benjamin Franklin stated that, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.". Franklin and other founders knew that democracy, which essentially means majority rules, was better than an oligarchy and dictatorship, but still incomplete and potentially just as dangerous. So, how do you protect the lamb? Franklin responded "Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.", though I agree that bearing arms is one way, but what happens when the majority votes to a ban all weapons? Our founders answered this by recognizing that the lamb has inalienable Rights, such the Right to bear arms, and better yet, a Right to exist. This way, the smallest minority (lamb in this case) is protected from the majority. This is republicanism, described today as inalienable Rights, or individual Rights. This is why we are not a true democracy, but rather, we are a democratic republic, or more accurately, a constitutional republic. http://from1776toeternity.blogspot.com/2012/05/from-1776-to-eternity.html
Where the hell did you dig up this definition of republicanism? The term simply means non-hereditary government (it has nothing to do with the idea of inalienable rights, an idea that dates back to Aristotle and Cicero, echoed by enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, etc.). For a full theory of republicanism, there's the work of Niccolo Machiavelli (who wrote fairly extensively on the topic); but republicanism does not require or even imply any sort of natural law theory.
Let me guess, Texas schools?
Francis, Classical republicanism, as founded by Machiavelli has morphed throughout time, the basic concept is true: "means non-hereditary government" as you stated. With monarchies and dictatorships laws seem to change when kings and rulers change (sometimes quite drastically), so in order for laws not to change with anyone's fate or will, the ideas of having laws that could not change came to mind, which in the Enlightened years morphed into Natural Laws. Margaret Thacher said, "Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."
Democracy and republicanism are not mutually exclusive terms, they both exist in varying degrees.
any time an official is voted in by democracy
Labels don't help anything, it just confuses the issue. And assumptions are made. Right/Left or all the -isms, i don't care. It's pointless to talk about labels. I don't care how the best possible society is called.
That video doesn't help simplify the issue, it simply adds another definition to existing labels.
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