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That's because we've outsourced enforcing government's accountability to The People...to government. See the problem?

by acct1771 9y ago

mulmen 9y ago
Can you elaborate on this? I don't follow.
- ramses0 9y ago
  Go back to High School Civics. Oh. Your High School dropped Civics (and Citizenship) from curriculae? How unfortunate that you didn't learn of the 3 branches of government, the 4th estate (media) and the Power of the People(tm). That's very unfortunate it was skipped in your High School Civics class. It's a wonder that any High Schools still even _have_ civics classes (or U.S. Government), as that would certainly be detrimental to the involvement of the general populace in their own self-government. I wonder why The Government decided it was better to not have the Public Education System teach Civics to Potentially Concerned Citizens. Certainly much easier to get people excited about attacks on Net Neutrality (if they care) or just slowly accept that the voice of any one person of literally millions thinking the same thing is just another tweet-stream to drown out with internal or external propaganda. Let me know if it's not clear, or if you'd like further unsourced opinions on the topic. Click LIKE and SHARE if you AGREE!
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 9y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  One of the root causes of New York's government dysfunction (though not the only one) is that New Yorkers reliably vote in the democrat candidate regardless of pretty much any other consideration. It's what in the UK would be called a "safe seat". Politicians in safe seats are theoretically accountable but due to the partisan nature of the electorate can in reality do whatever they like. Regardless of how badly they perform, they or their allies will always get re-elected. In the UK there are some seats like that and they're usually associated with the most hilariously incompetent politicians. Diane Abbott became famous in the last couple of years for all sorts of useless and bad behaviour, like this famous exchange in which she went on the radio to explain a new policy of hiring more police, but repeatedly gave nonsensical and inconsistent numbers for how many and how much it'd cost: http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/diane-abbotts-agonising-interview-over-policy-cost/ http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/diane-abb... e.g. she claimed hiring 10,000 police would cost only 300,000 pounds and when it was pointed out that'd mean paying them 30 pounds a year, she just invented another number on the spot that was also an order of magnitude away from anything that could possibly be correct. She also routinely posts racist and sexist stuff on Twitter, skips important votes and generally fails at basic politics but her share of the vote went up in the election - because she's Labour. No competition? No accountability!
  - IronKettle 9y ago
    > One of the root causes of New York's government dysfunction (though not the only one) is that New Yorkers reliably vote in the democrat candidate regardless of pretty much any other consideration. Er, what? That's not really true. Bloomberg was an independent and his predecessor was Giuliani. Over the last 40 years, the mayor has been a democrat less than half the time (18 years over Koch, Dinkins, and now de Blasio).
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      We're talking about New York State, not New York City. GP isn't quite right that New York is a single-party state, but he is right that most districts aren't at all competitive. There are certain districts that are deemed Democratic territory and others that are Republican territory, and the two parties have gentleman's agreements with each other not to compete in each other's turf.
brylie 9y ago
What are some well-established initiatives working to on governmental accountability and reducing corruption? E.g. promoting a constitutional amendment against conflict-of-interest or corruption. The closest I can think of is The Rootstrikers campaign, started by Lawrence Lessig: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootstrikers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootstrikers
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > What are some well-established initiatives working to on governmental accountability and reducing corruption? E.g. promoting a constitutional amendment against conflict-of-interest or corruption. The closest I can think of is The Rootstrikers campaign, started by Lawrence Les New York doesn't have ballot initiatives like some states do. Constitutional amendments have to be proposed by the legislature, and they're going to be pretty unlikely to vote to take away their own power.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  Represent.Us and this weekend the big UnrigTheSystem conference in Louisiana. Represent.Us has been focusing on passing state level anticorruption acts until we fix congress enough to pass federal ones. To show just how corrupt things are, they got one passed in South Dakota and the powers turned around and did this https://www.salon.com/2017/01/25/south-dakota-republicans-state-of-emergency-is-a-brazen-political-coup-against-anti-corruption-law/ https://www.salon.com/2017/01/25/south-dakota-republicans-st... Personally I have spent a long time thinking about these issues and I think at the federal level both parties are so corrupt that my 2020 campaign will be based on taking the majority away from both parties, and uniting independents, libertarians, constitutionalists, the green, and other parties under a coalition dedicated to actually representing their constituents.
- acct1771 9y ago
  > What are some well-established initiatives working to on governmental accountability and reducing corruption? In the not-so-distant past, there was a pretty successful initiative where people would occasionally end the lives of people who blatantly stole from them, or egregiously misrepresented them, while holding a position in representative government.

That's because we've outsourced enforcing government's accountability to The People...to government. See the problem?

mulmen 9y ago

Can you elaborate on this? I don't follow.

ramses0 9y ago
Go back to High School Civics. Oh. Your High School dropped Civics (and Citizenship) from curriculae? How unfortunate that you didn't learn of the 3 branches of government, the 4th estate (media) and the Power of the People(tm). That's very unfortunate it was skipped in your High School Civics class. It's a wonder that any High Schools still even _have_ civics classes (or U.S. Government), as that would certainly be detrimental to the involvement of the general populace in their own self-government. I wonder why The Government decided it was better to not have the Public Education System teach Civics to Potentially Concerned Citizens. Certainly much easier to get people excited about attacks on Net Neutrality (if they care) or just slowly accept that the voice of any one person of literally millions thinking the same thing is just another tweet-stream to drown out with internal or external propaganda. Let me know if it's not clear, or if you'd like further unsourced opinions on the topic. Click LIKE and SHARE if you AGREE!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 9y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
peoplewindow 9y ago
One of the root causes of New York's government dysfunction (though not the only one) is that New Yorkers reliably vote in the democrat candidate regardless of pretty much any other consideration. It's what in the UK would be called a "safe seat". Politicians in safe seats are theoretically accountable but due to the partisan nature of the electorate can in reality do whatever they like. Regardless of how badly they perform, they or their allies will always get re-elected. In the UK there are some seats like that and they're usually associated with the most hilariously incompetent politicians. Diane Abbott became famous in the last couple of years for all sorts of useless and bad behaviour, like this famous exchange in which she went on the radio to explain a new policy of hiring more police, but repeatedly gave nonsensical and inconsistent numbers for how many and how much it'd cost: http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/diane-abbotts-agonising-interview-over-policy-cost/ http://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/diane-abb... e.g. she claimed hiring 10,000 police would cost only 300,000 pounds and when it was pointed out that'd mean paying them 30 pounds a year, she just invented another number on the spot that was also an order of magnitude away from anything that could possibly be correct. She also routinely posts racist and sexist stuff on Twitter, skips important votes and generally fails at basic politics but her share of the vote went up in the election - because she's Labour. No competition? No accountability!
- IronKettle 9y ago
  > One of the root causes of New York's government dysfunction (though not the only one) is that New Yorkers reliably vote in the democrat candidate regardless of pretty much any other consideration. Er, what? That's not really true. Bloomberg was an independent and his predecessor was Giuliani. Over the last 40 years, the mayor has been a democrat less than half the time (18 years over Koch, Dinkins, and now de Blasio).
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    We're talking about New York State, not New York City. GP isn't quite right that New York is a single-party state, but he is right that most districts aren't at all competitive. There are certain districts that are deemed Democratic territory and others that are Republican territory, and the two parties have gentleman's agreements with each other not to compete in each other's turf.

brylie 9y ago

What are some well-established initiatives working to on governmental accountability and reducing corruption? E.g. promoting a constitutional amendment against conflict-of-interest or corruption. The closest I can think of is The Rootstrikers campaign, started by Lawrence Lessig: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootstrikers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootstrikers

chimeracoder 9y ago
> What are some well-established initiatives working to on governmental accountability and reducing corruption? E.g. promoting a constitutional amendment against conflict-of-interest or corruption. The closest I can think of is The Rootstrikers campaign, started by Lawrence Les New York doesn't have ballot initiatives like some states do. Constitutional amendments have to be proposed by the legislature, and they're going to be pretty unlikely to vote to take away their own power.
arca_vorago 9y ago
Represent.Us and this weekend the big UnrigTheSystem conference in Louisiana. Represent.Us has been focusing on passing state level anticorruption acts until we fix congress enough to pass federal ones. To show just how corrupt things are, they got one passed in South Dakota and the powers turned around and did this https://www.salon.com/2017/01/25/south-dakota-republicans-state-of-emergency-is-a-brazen-political-coup-against-anti-corruption-law/ https://www.salon.com/2017/01/25/south-dakota-republicans-st... Personally I have spent a long time thinking about these issues and I think at the federal level both parties are so corrupt that my 2020 campaign will be based on taking the majority away from both parties, and uniting independents, libertarians, constitutionalists, the green, and other parties under a coalition dedicated to actually representing their constituents.
acct1771 9y ago
> What are some well-established initiatives working to on governmental accountability and reducing corruption? In the not-so-distant past, there was a pretty successful initiative where people would occasionally end the lives of people who blatantly stole from them, or egregiously misrepresented them, while holding a position in representative government.