What stupid thing did the GOP say or do this time? Episode 3!

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
I'm honestly surprised no one's taken a shot at him yet, given how much trump hates him. You'd think some lunatic would have interpreted their marching orders by now.
 

Ironbite4

Well-known member
Citizen
If I had my way, I'd go back in time, slap Washington, Jefferson, and Addams, then add to the Constitution term limits for every single office. President gets 8, VP same, Senate 18 years, House 20, SCOTUS 20, everything.

Ironbite-then I'd go find out where baby Hitler was so I can stop other Time Travelers from being stupid.
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
Man; you just need to route time traveling einstein from killing hitler in at that cafe in 38. It'll save a LOT of problems.
 

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
We don't even know what kind of effect killing baby Hitler would have even had. For all we know it could have set off a chain of events that would have resulted in Henry Ford taking over North America and doing the exact same thing or worse.
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
We don't even know what kind of effect killing baby Hitler would have even had. For all we know it could have set off a chain of events that would have resulted in Henry Ford taking over North America and doing the exact same thing or worse.
*looks around*

I'm against killing people before they commit the atrocities, you know as a general rule... but really, I say we roll the dice.
 

Sjogre

Active member
Citizen
It was a Midnighter comic, of all things, that actually sent him back to a reasonable-ish time to kill Hitler; during WWI, so he was definitely a doucheknuckle but hadn't had time to start a political movement.
 

Nevermore

Well-known member
Citizen
Killing Hitler is too obvious. I say we just buy him a nice paint set and a couple of hookers, see how that works out.
Have a Jew befriend him and tutor him into becoming a respected artist so by the time Anton Drexler starts the German Worker's Party, Hitler the artist vehemently opposes the movement and uses his clout to prevent it from getting traction.
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
The real reason career politicians are a thing is that their constituents have little recourse to replace them with a member of the same party (or another party with similar positions), no matter how epically bad they are at their jobs. Enact ranked-choice ballots in all 50 states and that problem immediately goes away.

That said, I'd be OK with nixing the entire concept of reelection. Increase the term lengths and limit everyone to a single term. Regular turnover but with the added benefit that elected officials have nothing to gain from spending their time in office pandering to their district with pork-barrel legislation. Also, you can't run for one office while you're already holding another. Either resign or wait till your term is up.
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
You can also solve the problem by enacting a universal recall election, and making any criminal act punishable by immediate and permanent removal from office. You get caught littering: and before the ticket is paid they're already planning a special by-election.

Oh, and a complete removal of corporate money from campaigning and an end to lobbying.
 

MrBlud

Well-known member
Citizen
If you enacted term limits, you’d just increase the power of lobbyists because they’d be the only ones left with institutional knowledge and relationships.
 

Dekafox

Fabulously Foxy Dragon
Citizen
It's a fine line between regulatory capture and matter experts who work in the industry. It can be easy to tell apart in circumstances where there's a broad experience or plenty of stand-alone evidence across a given field, but in others where there's only a few small groups that actually understand the situation, how do you tell the difference between someone trying to bamboozle for greater profits and someone bringing up a legit point to people who don't understand it? Especially if both are equally true(which can happen if the profitable way is the right way).

Maybe some sort of declaration is required showing how the individual or those they have relationships with would profit from actions taken regarding the device, and have it audited by third party auditors. But then how do you audit membership of the auditors...
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
You can also solve the problem by enacting a universal recall election, and making any criminal act punishable by immediate and permanent removal from office. You get caught littering: and before the ticket is paid they're already planning a special by-election.
Trouble is, define "get caught." No one is guilty without trial, not even the President. Though I do think impeachments ought to be tried in the Supreme Court rather than Congress. That much should have been clear long ago.
 

The Mighty Mollusk

Scream all you like, 'cause we're all mad here
Citizen
The problem with that is that the Supreme Court is, as we've seen over the last year or so, very far from impartial.
 

Dekafox

Fabulously Foxy Dragon
Citizen
The idea of checks and balances was to mitigate that by playing the branches against each other... which as we've found doesn't work so well when you have the same group of people working together cross-branch.

One of those things that really could have been handled better if the people who wrote the founding documents were realistic about political parties existing rather than just expecting that to all go away with the new government... or if people had been able to amend things before it all got fully entrenched...

Not that I have any great ideas how you'd handle that other than maybe require different political parties to control each branch, but then you also need to keep those parties from allying, otherwise you'd have more than 2 parties, but all but two would be puppet parties for the most part.
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
Trouble is, define "get caught." No one is guilty without trial, not even the President. Though I do think impeachments ought to be tried in the Supreme Court rather than Congress. That much should have been clear long ago.
Agreed, but caught in some contexts is rather easy: cause when the cop has bodycam footage of the politico in question falling down drunk out of his car, and bystanders have footage of the cop shutting off his body cam... yeah...

The point being: it needs to be DRASTICALLY easier to not only remove from office, but disqualify from office. If you set the threshold low enough, most will more carefully choose their actions to prevent being ousted.

And of course, it needs to be supported with laws that make it impossible for politicians to write laws and statutes concerning themselves without public approval. No more voting themselves pay raises and benefits, no more removing their own oversight.
 


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