RE: New Laws in Oregon - "Land of the Legal betatest"
Why do you want Congress to function? "The best government is one that governs least" (Who am I (mis)quoting?). If Congress doesn't do much, we're better off - especially if we had sunset clauses in every law... Assuming a government like ours, the problem I see with "eliminating 90% of the sitting legislature" is the question of who really rules? I favor term limits - only one term per position. I don't like the idea of professional politicians. But, where would the power reside? The bureaucracy and the political parties? -Sounds dangerous to me. Lee <standard disclaimers>
-----Original Message----- From: Ryan Anderson [SMTP:randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu] Sent: Saturday, June 21, 1997 10:07 AM To: roy@scytale.com Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net Subject: Re: New Laws in Oregon - "Land of the Legal betatest"
On Sat, 21 Jun 1997, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
How do you propose to deal with such things as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (which incidently included the CDA)? I can see a problem where one sentence or clause gets thrown out of a major bill (say a compromise budget, that someone screwed up one minor ammendment), and if you have that happen 3 times in 6 years, you've lost 90% of your senators! I'm not saying that your idea isn't without merit, just that it's got a few problems that strike me as somewhat major..
Please elaborate, as I can't see _any_ problem with eliminating 90% of the sitting legislature.
You've completely missed my point. This would be an on-going problem. Congress can only function with some idea of compromise in it. When you're passing budgets, especially the kind of budgets we have right now, they get big and complicated, I can't see that changing significantly, even with a massive turnover of members. But having no consistency in Congress at all, even for some "good" reps would be horrible.
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On Mon, 23 Jun 1997, Lee Gibbon wrote:
Assuming a government like ours, the problem I see with "eliminating 90% of the sitting legislature" is the question of who really rules? I favor term limits - only one term per position. I don't like the idea of professional politicians. But, where would the power reside? The bureaucracy and the political parties? -Sounds dangerous to me.
Well, with one term per position, you have a problem with turnover being a bit too high to give any consistency in government policy, and you (I believe) would end up with the bureaucracy of assistants running the show overall, with only minor adjustments for the current Reps. Term limits of some sort aren't a bad idea, though I do like the thought of punishment for passing too many unconstitutional laws. The proposed method has a few problems in it that no one has suggested how to reconcile. I'm at a loss for a solution right now, I'm kinda hoping someone else will find one. We've got a relatively decent style of government here. I can see some advantages in some aspects of parliamentary rule (actually, the tendency of such systems to have more political parties is better, but adapting that to us is more complicated.. Basically, Congressional districts would have to die, and be replaced with everyone in the state voting for X/2 reps, where X is the number the state gets as a hole (This might not work well, but some method of voting for all the reps as a state, and taking the best.. probably different math, but..). With this you'd have some more smaller party candidates winning, and parties would stay a little more focused. (You'd actually have a libertarian influence obvious in Congress, with the other traditionals, etc..) This is the only alteration to our current form that I can see making sense. A President who claims to come from one of a few large world-views is not a horrible thing, he/she tends to set a general policy, and it goes from there. The Congress gets to do all the real fighting, and there you have lots of compromises among different groups. Then again, this is where the Consitutionality/penalty problems arise, but it's almost a different issue.. Any thoughts anyone? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ryan Anderson - <Pug Majere> "Who knows, even the horse might sing" Wayne State University - CULMA "May you live in interesting times.." randerso@ece.eng.wayne.edu Ohio = VYI of the USA PGP Fingerprint - 7E 8E C6 54 96 AC D9 57 E4 F8 AE 9C 10 7E 78 C9 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
participants (2)
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Lee Gibbon
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Ryan Anderson