@Finn dAbuzz,
Quote:How did we end up with a government that is so willing to believe the worst of its citizens?
In theory the people are supposed to have some control over government via elections but that theory has broken down substantially of late. Having dems and independents choosing the weakest pubbie candidate in primaries clearly does not help.
What is needed, obviously and painfully, is a voters' bill of rights and the first item of such a bill HAS TO BE runoff elections or instant runoff elections for all public offices.
Nobody should ever fear to vote his first choice, at least on a first ballot, and nobody should ever hold any public office with less than 50% of the vote.
There should also be a None-Of-Above choice on all ballots for public office and if that choice ever wins, then the other candidates should be barred for life from holding any public office and the parties sponsoring them should be barred for at least ten years from sponsoring candidates for that particular office. The penalty for running dead wood for public offices should be severe.
That alone would likely have saved this last election. McCain and Oinquebama would be barred for life from running for public offices and the way would be clear for two new parties to field candidates for president.
Another item on such a voters' bill of rights should be something which would eliminate voting fraud for all time and if that means getting rid of the secret ballot or at least limiting it somehow or other, so be it, we're paying too high a price for it. Somehow or other it has to be possible to check up on votes when there are questions or evidence of fraud.
One last item on such a list would be a provision that when a president is impeached and removed, his VP goes out the door with him and the office is either vacant until the next election or an emergency election is held to fill the office for the remainder of the current term. Granted removing a president should be difficult but it should not be impossible and if we couldn't remove Slick, we'd not have been able to remove Hitler or Nero either.
What happened in 98/99 was that Trent Lott simply refused to hand the presidency over to Algor with a year to go on Slick's second term, for obvious reasons. The situation should not be possible.
There are a few other things you'd want but that's the main gist of it. There is also a question as to the extent the people should be voting on issues directly since we now have the technology to allow that while the founding fathers did not. You could get some of these evil social issues settled once and for all and out of politics, and you could limit the scope for corruption and bribery by letting the people themselves settle at least some kinds of issues.