“Your prime responsibility is to the people living in it, not money.” @ragingloli
“Nope. Neither should anyone be able to get rich from politics.” @tinyfaery
“It’s just a sad reality. The absolute best person for the job is probably barely making ends meet.” @Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One
“It is a ’...government by the people, for the people.’ Not a government by the dollar, for the dollar.” @kritiper
“No one with a lick of sense believes that this is a government by and for the people.” @stanleybmanly
And why is it no longer by and for the people? Could it by any chance be how our whole electroral process has evolved into a process weighted away from the people? Can the way lobbying is conducted in our national and state capitals have anything to do with the reason our elected “representatives” no longer represent the will of the people they elect but the desires of those who pay for their elections? Why don’t we have third parties like most other democracies? Why aren’t other parties included in the national debates? Can we change the process? Do we have a choice?
How about this:
Let’s start with our representatives in Congress. If the goal is to have a genuine citizen legislature, make a seat in any of the 50 state legislatures a full-time job paying, say, $125,000 a year, freeze pay in the US Congress at 191,000 per year. But prohibit all outside income. Require members to place all their financial holdings in a blind trust. And ban any member from the House or Senate from engaging in any form of lobbying for at least five years after leaving office. These people are in the House or Senate to serve us and not to pad their present income or their future careers in lobbying, and they should do so full time, at the exclusion of everything else. It is their duty while in office. We’re not asking them to give their lives for their country for chrissake, we’re only asking to be served properly.
A system such as this would attract more teachers, nurses, small business people, more low and middle income people, more minority residents, more everyday people who could afford to serve. Isn’t that what a representative form is government is supposed to look like? What a democracy ought to look like?
We need to reverse supreme court decisions such as FEC v Citizens United and level the playing field between we the people and our corporations that operate in our democracy under our good graces. We need to open debates to other parties. I’d like to see Jill Stein up against some of these guys. I think America would be impressed, but as it is, nobody knows who Jill Stein is because she can’t get into the debates without getting arrested. We need to do a lot if we want to get our democracy back.
We need to decide what we need to do to fix this, then simply do it as a citizen’s united front, or soon it won’t matter if you are conservative or liberal or moderate. It won’t matter because none of us will have any voice left at all. It will just seem like it.
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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