78% of Americans are dissatisfied with the federal government.

Attention US Federal Government: YOU'RE FIRED!

Constitutional Convention FTW!


http://abcnews.go.com/...tus-quo/story?id=11570169

and 90% of those don't vote.

This is interesting and do not disagree but they should be equally dissatisfied with their state and local governments that are rarely run any better than the federal government. Last I looked a week or so ago, believe there were only two states that had their financial houses in order.

Must agree with Marshall tho in that 95% of incumbents are re-elected, at least in the past, and who is to blame for that???

Re: those who do not bother to vote, they have no right to open their mouths about the situation.

78% of Americans are also retarded (I am an american :-P)

Retarded, no, will not accept that, but far too many refuse to realize how rapidly the world is changing and do little to nothing to equip themselves to deal with those changes.

People are content with saying if the government would just get off our backs and cut our taxes, everything would be fine. Sorry, that is simply not the case. There are so many things that we need the government for, like it or not. Always find it amusing when people say cut government spending but do not touch the government spending that I benefit from.

I am dissatisfied for sure. The republican obstructionism and lack of democrat cohesion has failed to effectively overhaul the damage from the 8 years of Bush. It is quite sad how the republicans are trying to drag this country through the muck in order to regain power. If only they actually cared about America... The worst part is the tactic actually seems to be effective... It is pathetic how sabotaging your opponent is more effective than having any merit unto yourself in this country...

The problem is your first-past-the-post election system I believe.

Demonrats aren't suppossed to be cohesive, they're supposed to be put in mazes and taunted into fighting for food.

Qzjul: One thing that made our system of government great at its inception was that we had good geographic representation [Remember that one of our "battle cries" was 'No Taxation Without Representation,' referring specifically to the fact that as British subjects our only representation was from MPs sympathetic to the causes of very far flung and remote parts of the Empire, far from the people they were accountable to].

Unfortunately, much has changed that has directly undercut something that was once our strength. Among these, the direct election of Senators by the people and Gerrymandering congressional districts have played significant parts.

However, the biggest detriment to our system of government has been the increasingly mobile life our country has led. As rail, auto, and plane travel has expanded, our geography has been less of a boundary. It is to the point now that geographic representation is an anachronism. This geographic representation prevents us from having true ideological representation, such as is present in many parliamentary systems of government.

Other countries have to have multiple parties banding together to form a coalition government. In the United States of America, our political parties are our coalitions.

No, I'm pretty sure the problem is that 78% of americans are retarded

Detmer, the repubs have no ability to obstruct in any branch atm. What are you talking about there? Dems have TOTAL, ABSOLUTE control, and everything they have done has made our economy worse. This is not opinion, it is objective fact, look at the data.

Republicans are no better. Their only saving grace is that they pretend to want tax cuts, but they are just as big spenders, and that is the key. We need some representation that is willing to bite the bullet and scale back government spending. As a % of GDP, fed spending should be well below 10%, not the bloated 45% levels we are currently experiencing.

Quoted for truth.

hate speech

viceroy makes a point, and this issue is also a problem here in Australia.

Where a party (here the greens), can get 13-14% of the vote and only get 1 out of 150 seats in parliament, due to the geographical nature of representation.

I also attributed the failure to a lack of cohesion.
That is not a fact - the economy has improved. Look at the data. EVEN if it were still getting worse, it would be much less precipitous than how Bush was destroying it.

Here is a start to show you how drastically things have improved.

http://stockcharts.com/.../historical/djia1986.html

If you do any basic amount of research you will see that the economy is improving. It was not destroyed overnight and it will not be fixed overnight either.

Yeah Vic our economy is actually improving. I'm not sure what facts you look at.

How about rising unemployment to the tune of 9.7% atm?

It's the economy stupid! Oughta be the cry of the freedom party! Which I as a drunk idiot just made up! Join it!

Unemployment is mainly rising because states and cities, maybe counties as well are laying off people because they have been fiscally irresponsible as well.

Private industry is where the slow, and admittedly it is slow, is growing.

Also have read in quite a few different places that there are jobs out there but the workforce does not have the skills to do them.

re: the Democrats having total control. Nope, not true. They might have a majority in both Houses but the Reps are able to stop any legislation with the filibuster which requires a 60% majority vote, which the Dems do not have.

http://abcnews.go.com/...ess/wireStory?id=11551430

If we take one thing for granted there - that the unemployment rate is basically steady now (not rising as you are under the impression that it is) - that is much better than the rapid crash before things were stabilized.

MM, they did have 60%, which I assumed he was referring to. (maybe there is a reason there is a well known saying about assuming though...)

No, they lost the 60% in the Senate when Ted Kennedy died and a Republican won his seat. Ted has a fatal flaw in his background BUT the man has paid and paid dearly for it and worked his bum off in the Senate--both sides of the aisle had nothing but praise for him, political scientists agree he was the most effective senator of the 20th century. He didn't deserve his seat to be lost to a Republican.

Private sector jobs are rising a little bit as compared to the private sector job loss. But it's really bad in states, etc. because they are laying off teachers, police, garbage collectors, etc. Some should have been laid off years ago--so many were friends or relatives of office holders who did next to nothing--how I remember waiting, waiting, waiting for service and the county and even state workers are goofing off--but still they losing their jobs and that makes the unemployment figures look as if there's not much movement.

No what? Yes, they had 60% and now they don't... I agreed with you on that =P

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Look at that, unemployment appeared to "level off" at a mere 9.5%, but is on the move back up again. 9.6% in August. Awesome. You might note on that graph that the "rapid crash" you mentioned earlier really picked up steam after we passed a bunch of stupid stimulus bills and the dems took over washington. It is well known among small business owners that people started planning for dark times in advance by downsizing their workforce, cutting costs and looking for ways to hide their profits from the government.

This chart will show you the real problem. Look at spending as a % of GDP, the last column, as we get closer to now. Also note the deficit spending in almost every year.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/...isplayafact.cfm?Docid=200

You are right, I misspoke about repubs not having a filibuster power, scott brown slipped my mind, but don't insult us with this trash about ted kennedy being a great man. He was, I am ashamed to say, my senator when I first reached voting age. A more corrupt, wasteful, evil person is hard to imagine. You can see here (http://blackgenocide.org/negro.html) that Planned Parenthood was a trap to wipe out negro populations, and Margaret Sanger was one of the primary movers behind the scenes of getting abortion legalized in America. Planned Parenthood centers were then "strategically located" near negro neighborhoods to eugenicize America. Guess whose cause the champion of the underclass, teddy kennedy, rallied to? That's right, the racist black-baby-killer, sanger.

God, I could go on at length about hte depredations of that ass. Please don't make it necessary.

I won't make any more remarks on that other than to say that Ted Kennedy did promote Planned Parenthood but not because he was a racist. Just not up to arguing this now plus it seems your mind is already made up.

Wow, a .1% fluctuation in a dynamic which clearly has .1% fluctuations regularly (you do notice the curve isn't perfectly smooth right?) is your justification that things are heading for the worst?

The stimulus bills have shown to improve the economy compared to what it was predicted to be without them. All evidence suggests that they were successful. Saying that they were not helpful since things still got worse is like me saying that the reason my neighbor was sick today was because it was raining today. He contracted the illness in the past and is just experiencing the worst of it today. If he took medicine he should get less worse and eventually get better and be back to full strength. Just because he isn't completely better tomorrow or even if he is worse than today doesn't mean the medicine isn't working. That assumption is absolutely ridiculous.

Not all that harder to do better than the predicted: OMG THE WORLD IS GONNA END CAUSE THE ECONOMY HATES US

Its a shame I will no longer be living in the U.S. when the Depression really gets going. I'm taking my mattress full of money and going on vacation!

I constantly lament the fact that the hermetic lifestyle is out of vogue.

Wow.....this thread made me think of that Mel Gibson movie where he was a wacko conspiracy theorist for some reason, just without the being proven right in the end part.

Might I ask where these numbers come from?

The only source that I can find which seems to put US Federal Spending anywhere near 45% are some crudely drawn graphs on Wikipedia. Most numbers that I can find are around the 25% mark. CIA World Factbook agrees with this (https://www.cia.gov/...rld-factbook/geos/us.html).

As for the 10% number, I can only find a couple of nations with a reasonable standard of living which have a number that approaches that. They're all really small industrialized nations (like Singapore) which have extremely low infrastructure spending requirements. Knowing that, what information set have you taken into account to extrapolate 10% of GDP as the ideal size of the US budget?

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

The never ending train of ridiculous partisanship is what's killing America. If you are in EITHER party and have one view different then whatever the hardline purists have in that party they will run someone against you. All of the reasonable moderates are being run out of town by the crazies on both sides so that they can have their ideological war. Kinda sounds like the prelude to the Civil War in many respects.

What we need to do is simply abolish parties, stop recognizing corporations as PEOPLE (for instance corporations as an entity should not have a right to free speach via campaign spending) and have a candidate based electoral system rather then a party based system so that in order to get anything passed these morons have to actually fluffing talk to one another and convince each other of their positions to get a majority vote.

Agreed.

I am an american and served my country during the Vietnam war although I was in the navy. I've paid my taxes, did jury duty and voted every time I should have for almost 40 years and I'm not satisfied with the corrupt government we have. Corporations have been afforded constitutional rights as if it were a citizen, been given tax breaks, small business loans and contracts that an ordinary citizen cannot get. I've seen our rights taken from us one by one till we have very few, none in some situations. NO.... I'm not satisfied with our government! I love my country and hate politicians! GO AND VOTE THE INCUMBENTS OUT! Get our county back from the corporations! :)

GorGo: Voting the incumbants out dosn't help if you're voting INSANE Tea Partiers in to replace them.

Confirmed. Vote out the crazies. Vote out the people who support the insane corporate rights. Do not vote out an incumbent on principle.

As a for example. I'm all about voting Harry Reid out. Harry Reid is a total moron who has a very selective spine and is a complete shill for the Democratic Party. He needed to be voted out a LONG time ago.

However replacing him with Sharon Angle is insane. Among other things Sharron Angle advocates complete withdrawal from the United Nations, that certain cities in America are being administered under Sharia Law, that humans have no effect on global warming, and that she believes gun stores are low on ammunition because Americans are stockpiling weapons to start a revolution if the Tea Party dosn't win. Unfortunately by comparison to batfluff insane positions like that Harry Reid is probably a better candidate.

And so it begins. the longer times stay bad, the more extreme things people will vote for. And there are plenty of examples to prove my point beyond the obvious pre-ww2 references.

I'm not sure how direct election of senators is an issue? But I agree that gerymandering is a problem. This is why proportional representation is much better imo at least for something like congress. Also lack of political choice on the left and the right is a problem. TBH PR solves many more issues than it creates.

Also ignorant people in positions of power are very dangerous. It's not a question of left vs right. If you don't have a basic understanding of how things work you have no hope of doing anything constructive weather it be cut taxes to reduce the roll of government or go on a social program spending spree.

Eff proportional represenation martian. We need geographic based representation. We just need a candidate based system instead of a party based system. Parties, even in proportional represenation are horrible.

Fed spending in the USA bellow 10% of GDP when the military spending is over 800bi USD? hahahaha.

anyway, gripping about deficits during a recession is stupid. It is also stupid to compare microeconomics scenarios (how to run a business) with macroeconomics problems (how to fix the country`s economy).

Last but not least, now you in the USA will pay the price of electing incompetents and electoral frauds to run your country back in 2008.

If you scratch out "2008" and pencil in "2000", I agree with Eric.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

well, 2008 is the price republicans paid for electing inept people back in 2000 (and 2004). I don`t disagree with you there either.

That doesn`t make the people elected in 2008 any less inept or an electoral fraud, though.

Eric171, I reject the notion that a country cannot be run as a business. There are many successful business models out there, such as those that exist for non-profit and charitable organizations, that I believe would be appropriate.


The last thing we need is a candidate based electoral system. There is a growing trend in politics towards favoring blank slates over successful candidates who have some baggage [Previously, that trend only really applied to heroes of military campaigns]. Bush and Obama didn't exactly have a wealth of legislative and executive experience to draw upon prior to their campaigns. They were personable, relatable, were handsome in their own ways, and had good communication skills.

A cult of personality is no better a basis for a system of government than strange women lying in ponds distributing swords.

The business model for charitable organizations is (typically): Convince others to donate money, then spend it in a manner which offers no direct benefit or service to those donators.

I'm sure that someone is cynically thinking that "the government does nothing to benefit tax-payers", we all know that's not actually true. They provide a huge number of services to the people from whom they get their money. They also don't rely on donations.

As a business model (and this isn't a judgement on the morality of it), the government is most similar to a protection racquet. They insist that money be paid in exchange for services that they provide to all within their sphere of influence, and punish anyone who refuses to pay.

This is why I don't want the government run like a business. I believe it to be likely that it would fall into the same pattern as the businesses who follow the model that it most closely resembles... and I don't want a government that runs the country like a protection racquet. If anyone does want to live under such a government, I can think of a number of third-world nations you may be interested in moving to.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

In the history of our world, all the great empires slowly died off

Amereica is no different..

one day our name will be added to that list

I believe the best days of our country are behind us(unfortunatly)

My guess is that a Canadian/non-American started this thread.
And Texhomo is a retard..,if he lives here.

There's a reasonably well known quote attributed to Georges Clemenceau in which he stated:

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization."

I haven't been able to find exactly when in his life he said this, but he died in 1929, so it's reasonable to assume it was some time before that. At the time, it probably seemed reasonable to say that America was in its "degeneration". But looking back at history now, its hard to find a reason to place America's pinnacle anywhere prior to Clemenceau's death.

I have no idea if "the best days of America" are behind it... that's something that's hard to judge while living through events. However, I do know that I consider the highest point in America's history (thus far) to have taken place in the last 20 years. To me, it does not seem that so much has changed in the nation since then that it is on some inevitable decline.

Of course, I also think that snawdog's belief in the manifest destiny of the United States is misplaced as well. There is nothing inevitable, in either direction, concerning the future of the United States. I certainly think that tex's belief that America's best days are behind it can be arrived at rationally... whereas snaw's expressed opinion that "Texhomo[sic] is a retard" is based purely upon ignorance and prideful blindness.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

I am somewhat stupified as to why the Canadians run here for health care,and the rest of the depressed world runs here to be free and live the dream....Someone plz remind me of why all these folks make these posts....

I understand that the phenomenon actually goes both ways.

There's a certain segment of the upper-class Canadian population who prefer to have make use of high-end private health institutions within the United States rather than the publicly funded Canadian institutions.

There's also a certain segment of the middle-class American population who prefer to use publicly funded Canadian health-care either because of the lower costs or the perception that superior results are achieved over what they could afford within the United States.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

Sorry Foog Man..don't get upset...but you kinna wrong,Canadians run here to have a medical procedure that will save their life that Oh Canada wants to wait 4 years to give them...
All we want here in US,is those cheap Perc 30's....Now does it make sense?

That's simply not the case. You have been fundamentally misinformed about the workings of the Canadian medical system. I've heard the same stories myself, typically from right wing political commentators voicing opposition to health-care reform within the United States.

It's about as true as the suggestion that 9/11 was an inside job, or that Obama is a muslim.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.