Hypocrites All

Concise critique of all governments throughout time immemorial...

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Margaret

http://lotterymegamillions.net

Also curious, the number of people who have such deep compassion for those in need, but insist they be helped with Other People's Money.

Why do we pay congressmen and women an annual salary? I think it would bring a bit of humility to Congress if we returned to the citizen-legislator model and just dismissed Congress without pay for six months each year. We'd save a bundle, defuse the lobbyist industry and put a crimp in the D.C. economy. But, on balance, I'm willing to bet we'll get more efficient representation for less money.

Why can't we put Congress on commission?

Let their pay be based on a percentage of the surplus.

Ike, think about that for a minute - unless I don't understand you.

I have thought about it.

Currently, lawmakers have a tremendous incentive to buy our votes with our dollars, either appropriated through tax or borrowing. However, they are given a pass for the results because there is no clear signal that they've acted in their own best interests.

Under my system, if they want to pander and spend, they can do it at a loss. Feel the pain on the front lines.

If they instead vote for a massive tax increase, there is a direct correlation to their own largess and it would be easier to vote them out.

In other words, let them go to DC on bread and water, and make them earn sirloin through delivering value to constituents. That's an incentive system that works for all.

Is this idea as fleshed out as it could be? No. But it's clear the incentive/punishment system we have now is completely out of whack and has been horribly gamed.

Here's another idea I've tried floating - the Congressional Telecommunication Act.

Ike, you want them to run a budget surplus and get paid on the size of the surplus? Why cut taxes? Seems inefficient.

I'm all for reducing their incentives to tax and spend, but how about if we ding their salaries for spending and subject any airplane orders, pay raises and other special treatment to a public referendum instead of letting them decide?

I agree, it is a concept in progress.

Did you check the Congressional Telecommunication Act?

Why not just do what a science fiction writer proposed years ago.

Implant all politicians with an explosive charge in their chest that would kill when it goes off.

Rig that charge to a detonator that receives signals from a communications tower, and set the detonator to go off when the politician's approval ratings dip below 50%, as measured by real time polls conducted via TV, radio, and communications networks. Every deed a politicians does would be reported and an instant poll taken.

Elections would have multiple candidates for each position, selected as option #1, #2, etc., as one gets blown off the map, the next one is pushed into the position.

Politicians either please the public or are history.

Why would anyone run for office? They don't, they are volunteered by their neighbors. LOL, oh sweet it would be.

Yes, I read it. However, I still think the bigger problem is that power is for sale. That is, that they have so much power to sell. Lobbyists will always find a way to buy power as long as it is available to the congressmen to sell. Flying around the country is no big deal to a lobbyist.

Plus, I don't think lobbies are the problem. They are often the only real link to your elected official. Mine won't even hold a town hall meeting (well, in truth he decided not to show because the seniors showed up with pitchforks to the one he scheduled). As long as they can make their case but don't have any power to buy, I don't think lobbies are all that terrible.

Nice blog, btw.

Because it's the congressmen responsible for passing those laws.

Remember that old tv show "Queen for a Day"?

Here in the U.S. we have king and queen for a term.

Gee, if it were only one term. Pelosi has been ensconced since 1987. We need term limits.

What do you expect? It's a Tullock lottery.
It's unfortunate that most people don't realize how much they are being Fleeced. Some are starting to recognize, but the chattering class is hard at work to label them as "un-American." It's sickening.
Welcome to DC politics done Chicago style.

Wait a minute... the "chattering class" is labeling people who speak out against the Obama administration as un-American????

Are you sure you have that straight?

Are you really that obtuse?

Not only Pelosi and Hoyer, but also my Sen. Blanche Lincoln called anyone that doesn't agree and protests against the Great One's Health Care Plan as "Un-American."
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/08/unameric...

Geez guys - am I obtuse because I don't religiously follow Pelosi's public statements? I think she's way out of line - how much more clear do I need to be about this? I don't particularly like Pelosi. I'm not sure why there's this baseline assumption that I'd take her side on an asanine comment she makes. It was wrong!

But as far as being called un-American, all I have to say is welcome to the club. It sucks. It hurts your feelings, it's been hurled long before Pelosi.

Daniel - are you deliberately trying to be facetious? Pelosi actually said that the protesters are un-American. So what does that make the anti-war protesters from the previous 8 years? Good Americans?

No - not trying to be facetious at all. I just hadn't heard that out of Pelosi. She's dead wrong.

I just had to laugh when I read what you wrote... I've had the double pleasure of not being considered a "real American" - AND not being a "real Virginian" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGCQfCZo8DE) for the last year or so. Any labeling game like this simply because people are protesting something is stupid and petty. I just haven't heard it quite as often out of Pelosi's side of the aisle. But just because I haven't heard it as often doesn't mean Pelosi isn't wrong for saying it.

Oh yeah, Dan. That video is TOTALLY like the speaker of the house calling people who oppose this bill "Astroturf" (I guess you're only a community organizer if you're ACORN) and accusing town hall attendees of carrying swastikas - although not a single camera has caught any. Our public servants have the temerity to call us Nazis. Amazing.

And, of course, we're not supposed to get upset when the president declares that he doesn't want to hear any opposition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jifjRVLVjzA

And of course, citizens expressing their anger at their public servants is an "angry mob", according to the DNC's TV adds. Although, if they're organized by the community organizer in chief or ACORN, then they're freedom fighters.

Okay...you're free to go on a long and convoluted diatribe about how that's "like totally NOT what they're saying" by saying exactly that.

Did it completely fly over your head that I agree on Pelosi? What convoluted diatribe do you expect out of me? I agree! What is this desire to constantly be convinced that I disagree with you on everything???

The original point was about accusations of "un-American". That's usually the accusation you hear from Republicans. That's all I was laughing about.

Also - there was a picture of a guy at a Tancredo rally with Michelle Malkin, holding a sign with a swastika. However, his hand is covering the a large part of the sign in the shot. The sign itself accuses Obama of being a Nazi. So it LOOKS like he's just carrying a plain old swastika, but in reality he's not identifying himself as a Nazi - he's accusing Obama of being one. I think that was the source of the Pelosi comment - a picture did exist, but it was misleading because half the sign was covered.

And, in case you need me to repeat this one more time - that guy was an idiot for calling Obama a Nazi and Pelosi was an idiot for calling the protesters Nazis.

What convoluted diatribe do you expect out of me?

Just your usual.

I think you're confusing my usual pro-Pelosi Hitler-accusation rant with my usual pro-Barney Frank Stalin-parallel rant. They're very similar. I understand the confusion.

that must be it.

Maybe we ought to extend "taxation without representation" in the other direction.

Those who earn government paychecks should not have the right to vote.

Once enough people are earning directly from the government, they can form a voting bloc that is entirely within their self-interest at the expense of the community at large.

Somehow, I think this makes me a racist. That's what I think my teachers were trying to tell me.

"
other direction.

Those who earn government paychecks should not have the right to vote
"

Got it!
*No representation with negative taxation.*

As self expanding public sector crowds out tax generating private sector USA reaches PTB,*Peak Tax Base*. Is there life after PTB? The industry of tax explorers fan out across the world looking for more opportunities for preemptive invasions into countries with tax base until finally we have reached GPTB, *Global Peak Tax Base*

At the point of GPTB the banking system near collapses, goes on life support of economic stimulants, and announcements of economic stimulants that can never be implemented without a tax base or someone to buy public debt, someone who now no longer breaths. Massive stench of death floats in the air as gaming derivative gurus who have no training in how to brew their own coffee now slowly waste into oblivion.

And the glaciers grow fat.

if you want to reduce health care costs in the USA, there appears to be some low hanging fruit :

"University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, [her salary] jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office. "