politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
We need an amendment where campaigns are government funded, and offering money to or accepting money as a politician while in political office that isn't that office's salary is treated with the same life imprisonment severity as treason.
We won't get it, but we need it.
If we're going to wish for the impossible, lets wish to fix the root problem with our utterly, completely captured wall street owned zombie government. It's why we have Alito. It's why the Federalist Society, an extremist group of the affluent, owns all of our asses with no recourse now.
Judges also need to be recognized for the politicians that they are. They are not impartial.
This is a much harder problem than you realize.
We have a situation where big interests that can afford to treat supporting certain politicians as a business decision control our governance. That's bad. You want to move to a situation where the unelected contingent within government will be able to control the political direction of the society that is governed by the state, which is also very bad. A noble attempt to solve a problem, but it causes other problems that are at least equally bad. And this is why noble attempts that treat the problem as very simple often lead to worse outcomes.
So what's another solution. No campaigning at all? Just publish your platform online, let people vote. Good idea? Well, no, because people want to be excited, they like to be emotionally manipulated. You create a boring political process and hardly anyone will vote. You wind up in a situation where the only people voting are those business interests. Also, you push campaigning underground, it already partly is, but you wind up in a situation where "regular people" canvas and protest and "grass roots" and all that, which is usually covertly funded. Still, very bad.
The real problem here is the nature of power. There is no political solution to the Pareto distribution. Real power exists, it is undemocratic, and no amount of rules can fix those problems, all you can hope for is a system that leverages the natural incentives and propensities of power distribution such that it gives you a Nash equilibrium, a social optimum, the best we can do. That will necessarily still involve power imbalances, unforseen outcomes, some amount of corruption, because the actors in all these systems are people, and the beneficiaries are always people, even when the actors are not people.
I don't know what the solution is. i don't think very many people do.
Jimmy Carter gave up his peanut farm to avoid the appearance of conflict.
Abe Fortas left the Supreme Court after serving only FOUR FUCKING YEARS to avoid the appearance of conflict.
Compare these two people to the current justices or trump cutting hush money checks WHILE IN OFFICE…
Basically there is no evidence in this country that being moral will keep you in power. There is no public incentive for the gov to do the right thing. Republican voters have now insured that’s not necessary. It’s pretty clear from now on the GOP approach is to outright steal what they want regardless of how bad it appears.
Hence Supreme Court justices telling you to get fucked if you care about their independence, trump saying in a court house how the US is basically bullshit, and Fox News nodding their heads.
Alito also needs to report to prison, but that ain't happening either.
He and Thomas will only resign if Trump wins in November, so they can install two more young super conservative judges to fuck us over for decades to come.
Which is why we need to give Democrats the power and mandate to expand the court so that the crooks on it can be powerless.
It's not going to happen but our entire system of government needs torn down and rebuilt
Let's start with the police and work our way up.
Maybe if I ask nicely and show up with cookies?