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Ok fine, but can we at least fire people who lie to Congress and then admit it? What is the point of Congress asking questions if you are allowed to testify in
by latj 13y ago
Ok fine, but can we at least fire people who lie to Congress and then admit it? What is the point of Congress asking questions if you are allowed to testify in the least untruthful ways?
- twoodfin 13y agoPresident Obama can fire anyone in his administration any time he would like. That's how accountability works in our system, particularly when no clear-cut crime is committed. If President Obama doesn't sufficiently share your outrage, fundraise, campaign and vote for someone who you think would.
- Silhouette 13y agoIf President Obama doesn't sufficiently share your outrage, fundraise, campaign and vote for someone who you think would. Why, so you can stop President Obama being elected for a third term? To me as an outsider, this is a puzzling part of the US political system. The President has a huge amount of concentrated power within one branch of government, yet approximately half the time, the President of the day is effectively a lame duck with nothing to lose by behaving almost any way they like. Other parts of the government can make that President's job harder, but short of impeachment everyone is basically stuck with whoever it is until their time is up. I increasingly feel that giving the electorate an absolute power of recall if an elected representative angers enough people during their term would change politics for the better at almost any level. Otherwise, any term of office that is sufficient for reasonable medium- to long-term planning is also sufficient to allow serious damage to be done with relative impunity if the wrong person won the election but the voters only learn that after the fact. As a side benefit, this also balances the tendency for major elections to be fought on a tiny number of headline issues, with little if any incentive to represent the electorate's interests in all the other significant-but-not-dominant areas, because if you annoy too many small groups of the population, collectively they can become powerful enough to trigger a vote.
- twoodfin 13y agoDemocracy is all about giving the people what they want, good and hard. I'm sorry they got it "wrong" from your point of view last year, but in three years they get to try again. I don't think your version of "serious damage" from this issue matches most voters. Even if this were a parliamentary system where sufficient public outcry could force new elections, or a "do over" recall was available (a terrible flaw in the state constitutions where it exists, IMHO), you'd still not be getting the U.S. administration you seem to want. You need to convince the public and then win elections, that's how change happens.
- Solarsail 13y agoWhy, then, is the president limited to serving two terms? There's essentially squat keeping the president doing anything at all resembling what he said he would do during his second term. (Said by a non-American, who views this aspect of American constitutional law as distinctly anti-democratic.) I'm also completely ignoring the degree to which voters are paying attention, how much the debate is swayed by powerful people to meaningless issues while the politicians run amok of everything etc. etc.
- Silhouette 13y agoPlease note that I didn't express any opinion on the specific situation in the US today. I was just commenting that the checks and balances you implied in your previous post, where a senior individual in the government can choose to fire more junior individuals, don't seem to be very reliable if the senior person themselves has limited motivation to act in the interests of the people they are supposed to represent. This lack of direct motivation is a systemic weakness in almost any electoral system that involves fixed terms of significant length, and it applies more generally than just the need to choose appropriate subordinates. What you described just happens to be one ineffective case that is relevant to the current discussion.
- rayiner 13y agoI contest that elections are fought over a "tiny number of headline issues." NSA spying is, for most people, the headline issue. The stuff that elections get fought over: Medicare, Social Security, taxes, etc, the big-ticket items of policy. Look at it this way: how much do you think the average person would pay to get rid of the NSA program?[1] You think it's anywhere near how much money is on the line from Medicare/Social Security/tax policy choices? Or heck, even so-called "wedge issues" like gay rights or abortion rights? [1] This is, of course, one easy way of valuing the negative utility of any given thing, by asking how much people would pay to avoid it.
- sachinag 13y agoThe other scary part of this is that all three signatories are Democrats, the same party as the President. If this becomes a partisan issue - and I fear it will despite occasional work by Issa and others in the GOP House delegation - then we're just royally screwed.
- latj 13y agoI'm not convinced that the president, congress, or the courts have the spy agencies under control. And I'm not convinced it matters much which representative of elite class gets elected. The important decisions are held in board rooms amongst people who are not democratically elected. They send the orders down to washington and, yes, there are conflicts between various elite groups, but it doesnt change much in the day to day life of an average American.