mike112769, December 15 at 10:18 am #

OF course! Why didn’t I think of that? Since our politicians have done such a great job screwing this country, let’s leave the ones that are best at screwing us in office! Brilliant!

Sarcasm and silliness is not a substitute for addressing the real issue. In reality experience is valued and sought after, and continually throwing away the most experienced folks is a guarantee of poor decision making and inefficiencies. Further such practice actually gives power to those outside of government, and I do not mean the electorate.

But then, I expect more sarcasm and frustration from you rather than clear and honest reasons for your position.

scotttpot, December 16 at 3:34 am

Your suggestion that we simply throw money at a problem is a problem.

Our elected representatives make less than the mail clerks at Goldman.
Their pay is Crap compared to a lobbyist. President Barack Obama,“The Most
Powerful Man in The World” is paid $400,000 per Year. A top CEO makes that
much in Two Weeks. A top CEO who makes millions thru exploitation is a target
of no daily barbs , death threats ,or Hitler mustaches superimposed on his face.
I suggest we Raise the pay of our Elected representatives so that they are less
tempted in Washington of treats and goodies from lobbyists.
We are not going to get or keep talented public servants if the private sector can buy and silence all the top talent .Didn*T Robert Rubin from Citi Group make 100 times what our president gets paid ?

>>f the avenue to riches was taken away what then?

Then they’ll be in exactly the same position as elected
officials in every other industrialized country. They
don’t have nearly the amount of corruption we have.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

>>let’s leave the ones that are best at screwing us in
office

No, if we take the money out of the process, only
people interested in doing something for the country
will stay in office.

Get the greed out!

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

OF course! Why didn’t I think of that? Since our politicians have done such a great job screwing this country, let’s leave the ones that are best at screwing us in office! Brilliant!

mike112769, December 14 at 4:23 pm #

Caro and Ardee: Throw out the most experienced politicians? Yes, we should.

Forgive me if I again say nay.

When a politician gets entrenched in office he no longer gives a damn about anything but his wallet. This has been proven by their voting records. Research where their funding comes from and compare that to their voting records.

You conflate two differing points here, in my opinion.
‘Yes the money necessary to wage a successful campaign means that the largest donors control a politicos voting record

and no, there are politicos who have stuck to their liberal guns through more than two terms in office. I say let the voter decide how long his or her representative shall serve. But let us do away with the power of money by making the election process free. That way we do not lose the most experienced, allowing, as Caro notes, the bureaucrat to flourish.

Caro and Ardee: Throw out the most experienced politicians? Yes, we should.

When a politician gets entrenched in office he no longer gives a damn about anything but his wallet. This has been proven by their voting records. Research where their funding comes from and compare that to their voting records.

ANYONE who serves more than two terms is in it PURELY for self-interest.

Politicians don’t (legally) make enough money to subject themselves to public scrutiny. They make their money under the table from kick-backs. Why else would you spend millions of your own dollars for a job that doesn’t pay a tenth of that?

Term limits would ensure that nobody stays in office long enough to make themselves wealthy. Look at the percentage of millionaires in office compared to the rest of us.

Government service is supposed to be about service to your country and the public, not how much you can skim from the tax-payer.

Anyone who thinks politicians should be allowed to have life-time appointments is either severely deluded or a politician themselves.

mike112769, December 14 at 1:27 am

I have always seen term limits as ridiculous. Where is the logic in consistently throwing those with the most experience out of the job?

In fact, as Caro notes, doing such leaves exactly the wrong people with the power.

>>The ONLY way to fix our country is with term limits

I disagree. What will happen if no elected official
knows the ropes of government is that government
bureaucrats will become the de facto experts, and
those more directly responsible to the people for
their actions will have to depend almost entirely on
them to develop legislation.

The only thing that will BEGIN to fix the system is
to take the money out of the election process. Public
financing, and ONLY public financing of campaigns is
what we need.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

The ONLY way to fix our country is with term limits on everything from dog-catcher on up. Any politician who runs for more than 2 terms is only in it for self-interest. Term limits are a MUST or America will fail.

@Samson

“Is Democratic Party operative D.Sirota starting to finally come around to the point of view that we have to start defeating Democrats to get real change?”

@drum4one4all answers your question:

” This same article could have been written a year ago”

but it wasn’t & these writers aren’t that gullible. the unspoken rule is the “liberal intelligentsia” doesn’t write articles like these during the elections season, only afterwards.

“Come Election Day, if there are no consequences at the ballot box for the politicians—Democrat or Republican—who legislated bailouts, supported these appointments and are now working to undermine proposed Wall Street reforms”

If I recall correctly, Sirota was still in support of the Obama administration from candidacy thru very recently, as he was interviewed on Bill Moyers. This same article could have been written a year ago, because Obama’s campaign rhetoric was all for bailouts and Af-Pak and immoral war.  Was it less morally hazardous to vote in a guy beating war drums than it is now that he has followed his campaign promises?

Are you kidding me? Ask Sirota how he would vote right this moment. Still supporting Obama?  Frankly, these journalists who allowed the wool to be pulled over their eyes, who encouraged the larger public to vote for their misguided President, CAN NOT, and should not be trusted.

Where was Sirota’s support for candidates who voted AGAINST the war, or funding the war, or against the bailouts back when it mattered? How dare he point his finger at the public, shaking it “moral hazard” next time.  What about the moral hazard from last time?  Where was Sirota’s article in support of a candidate who is against the wall street bailout or the ILLEGAL IMMORAL wars?  Where? 

I’ll tell you where…NO WHERE.  He supported Obama then and now. The finger he points is on a hand with at least 3 other fingers pointing back at him.  And no telling where his thumb has been or is now.

Bush remains unhanged.  Bankers have escaped the noose and the piano wire and the hunting rifle.  Nobody’s held accountable but the poor.

When psychopaths lead sociopaths death is stalking us.

I repeat.  Bernanke declared to a Committee that we certainly don’t want another AIG or Lehman (let them fail) UNLESS, of course, their failure would destabilize the entire system.  Mr. Bernanke, that’s the definition of ‘too big to fail.’

War is a business.  There exists no evidence in favor of our having spent even a first penny/first soldier on the Iraq war.  Reporting every example of malfeasance, one example at a time, enables journalists to make out like bandits—and with our soldiers still being the victims, and sometimes paying the ultimate price, same way they pay the real criminals.

What if members of the public, even only the public of other nations, were to challenge members of Congress to produce the evidence on which their war votes/pro-war stances have been based…and if those members of Congress responded by letting it be known that they are no more responsible for, or representative of, the sum total of the people’s knowledge at any one time than are journalists?  Members of Congress might add that journalists are, in fact, citizens (and constituents) before they are journalists.

You know who journalists are, don’t you? They’re that body of professionals who’ve lately been lobbying, fulmigating, for a special dispensation for themselves, which dispensation would be used by any of them when it came time for him to cite his sources.

“. Come Election Day, if there are no consequences at the ballot box for the politicians—Democrat or Republican—who legislated bailouts, supported these appointments and are now working to undermine proposed Wall Street reforms”

so we’re suppose to vote out the bad dem/reps and vote in some good dem/reps. didn’t we try this last november? i believe it was called “change we can believe in?”

>>Wall Street is so powerful that it is above the law
and above punishment

Only if we let it be.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

in other words, Wall Street is so powerful that it is above the law and above punishment

(how convenient)

These bailouts and endless wars are used to keep Americans
poor, scared, divided, undereducated ,violent and insecure. The corruption is not
unintentional and is not going to be fixed. It is our system.
With television and internet addiction it is impossible to rally enough people to
have any meaningful resistance. The disinformation spread by corporate media
have made facts quaint . Third Party is our only chance.

Toward the end of the Coen Brothers film “No Country for Old Men”, the Tommy Lee Jones character visits his uncle who tells him, “You can’t stop what’s coming.”  And what’s coming is the end of the ichiban phase of the United States.  We are in a precipitous decline from which there is no turning back because practically no one gives a rat’s ass.

Cole…, December 11 at 4:48 pm

Your suggestion that folks “infiltrate” one of the two major parties in order to change it shows me that you have no experience working within said party.

What you suggest is an impossibility I fear, and I say that from a position of having been active grassroots Democratic Party politics for decades. As it is a top down group, as decisions are made in secret and in isolation, as the orders come from above and suggestions from below are ignored completely, what you suggest without noting any methodology I might add seems more a pipedream than a reality.

Sooner or later, they have to face the voters, and then there will be much wringing
of hands and knashnig of teeth…

>>The greatest “moral hazard” of our time is how we
allow modern hi-tech science to be used—for war or
for peace.

Nonsense. Every decision made by our government is in
some way a payback to contributors. It’s legalized
bribery.

During the message board wars of 2000, one of the
things the right wingers used to say is that you
can’t trust ordinary people to make the right voting
decisions, because once they realize the treasury
belongs to them, they’ll vote to keep all the money
for themselves.

The monumental irony is that the same rich, right-
wing elitists who were putting those words in the
mouths of the bushbots were actually the ones who
have grabbed the treasury as though it belonged to
them, and are keeping all the money for themselves.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

Moral hazard while voting:

“And let’s be fair—it’s not just Democratic politicians who are creating political moral hazard. Many Democratic pundits, activists and voters continued cheering on President Obama while he stuffed his administration full of Wall Streeters—and many of these rank-and-file voices attacked as disloyal those progressives who raised questions. That told Obama he faces few consequences—and even defense—from his own base for promoting those who engineered the economic meltdown.”

That is the case for moving to the Green Party.  Just substitute “Democrats” for “Obama” and you have the whole thing.  The same applies to the wars, health care, and so on.

Let me put it another way:  progressives love to scold Congressmembers, especially, for “spinelessness” (a lame excuse for their betrayal, of course).  How can you expect your politicians to “grow a spine” if YOU don’t have the “spine” to vote your principles, or for a party that actually HAS principles?

Join us; we’re waiting with open arms: http://www.gp.org.

PS ... any grassroots campaigns that intend to challenge the big money candidates need to start organizing NOW!

It takes time to build a grassroots campaign. They always start small, then slowly build volunteer by volunteer.  We can’t run a two month campaign like the corporate candidates do by flooding the airwaves with negative ads.  We have to do politics ‘retail’, one meeting, one voter at a time.

Grassroots campaigns need to start early. Now is the time to begin. In fact, its probably just a little too late.  Not irretreivably so, but once you get going, you’ll wish you’d started sooner.  Start now.

Don’t wait on leaders. Don’t wait on someone to present you with a gift-wrapped campaign for change. When they do, it will be phony, like Obama’s.  You need to build your own local campaigns and movements.  And now is the time to begin.

Is Democratic Party operative D.Sirota starting to finally come around to the point of view that we have to start defeating Democrats to get real change?

“The only open question is whether the public at large becomes complicit, too. Come Election Day, if there are no consequences at the ballot box for the politicians—Democrat or Republican—who legislated bailouts, supported these appointments and are now working to undermine proposed Wall Street reforms, then America will have created the biggest moral hazard of all.”

David seems to be making some progress towards reality.  The next step is to openly admit that the best way to make these politicians pay the price is to start organizing independent progressive campaigns in their districts.

David is exactly right that we must start kicking some of these politicians out of office. That we must make them realize there is a price to be paid.  The key is to realize that the Democrats win on OUR VOTES. They mislead the progressive majority in this country into voting for them. That’s the only way they can win.

The best way to make them pay this price is to take back our votes.  We could just stay home, but they’d probably miss that message, or at least spin it some other way.  So, we need to make it as obvious as possible.  We must run our own candidates in the general election, back them, work for them and vote for them.  Then, next Nov, when these corrupt politicians lose, everyone can see that our votes went to our candidate instead and this is why they lost.

And there’s moral hazard in never apologizing for
helping to foist another right-wing president on us.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

There is no accountability anywhere.
Corporate MSM mouthpieces are spinning Obama’s war is peace preaching like we are all the amen choir, while Obama signs off on endless war and ongoing transfer of wealth.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout/print

This morning there was a story on CNN gushing over how the fierce independent tribes of Afghanistan were greeting the generous and charitable US armies as liberators, who unlike the Russian army, was there to assist and improve their lives.
  Where have we heard this before?
They were wrong before and they are wrong again but they are intent on picking the carcass clean. Like Bush, Obama will crash and burn for his cynical bait and switch, and it can’t be soon enough. Instead we will have to witness this chorus of fawning fabrication until the bottom falls out again.
After us, the deluge.

But consider this, President Obama is the biggest political sellout of all time..

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-harrison/matt-taibbi-on-obamas-big_b_388594.html

The unfortunate truth is it is easier to make money by cheating than by playing fair.  There were so many morally questionable actions during the meltdown and yet almost no one has been punished.  Given that greed and criminal activity are profitable (and unpunished) why would any sane person believe that Wall Street (let alone Washington) would change their ways.  Given the option of taking the easy (even if corrupt) path to power and wealth vs. the hard slog along the morally correct path, which one do you think most people will take?

I expect there will be many more meltdowns in the near future.  We are already seeing the commercial real estate bubble fracturing plus the credit card bubble is showing signs of weakness and our friends on Wall Street are already cooking up several more excellent stews which will eventually blow up.  We need to remember that money is made during upheavals in the financial markets ... both up and down.  Just look at how well Goldman is doing!

Such a thing is sometimes referred to by economists as a “perverse incentive.”  If you reward people for bad behavior, you will get more of it.