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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat do you think of Congress?
I had a discussion with a friend this week, in the wake of the Gun Bill going down - he's a gun owner, but I had taken us to be on the same page - which I guess we are technically. We both want to keep guns legal for those who use them appropriately while strengthening background checks so that those people who shouldn't have guns, can't get them.
Our difference is that; he believes that Congress is so dysfunctional that any attempt to do this will probably make matters worse, and lead us inexorably on to banning guns. In theory he would like to see the background checks beefed up - in practice he opposes them because they would automatically lead to more problems. I pointed out that this kind of implies he would oppose any bill ever proposed by Congress, which he readily agreed was the case.
He then pointed out that the Government had been torturing people (he didn't mention the drone strikes but he might well have). Now, those are both from the executive branch; but it's not like Congress has opposed either policy significantly (individual members have of course). He might also have pointed out corporate regulation - what are the odds that Congress in any configuration that we are likely to see is going to effectively regulate Corporations? Or is it more likely that any bill passed by Congress is going to be for the benefit of corporations against the people?
Bryant
FreakinDJ
(17,644 posts)Did anyone catch the GAO report on the Wall St Kick Backs to Congress. From the House Leader to the lowleist page. they are ALL peddling Legislative information for Insider Trading Information.
And it was barely a blurb in the News Cycle
SamKnause
(13,037 posts)What do I think of Congress ?
Very little.
What do I think of the government of the U.S. as a whole ?
Very little.
I don't think the citizens of the U.S. have any government representation.
I think the 1% have the best representation their money could buy.
11 Bravo
(23,922 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)spanone
(135,630 posts)What a waste of our money.
ananda
(28,781 posts)As little as possible.
Mark Twain pretty much speaks for me. See:
http://www.twainquotes.com/Congress.html
The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there.
- Mark Twain's Speeches, "The Weather"
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues.
- Notebook, 1868
...I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.
- "Foster's Case," New York Tribune, 10 March 1873
LWolf
(46,179 posts)Congress is corrupt and will not serve the people until the system is cleaned up.
I think that in order to clean up the system, all private money needs to be taken out of the political process; all candidates to run on an equal amount of public money, with an equal amount of equally neutral press time, and authentic debates that give candidates equal talking time, each to answer the exact same questions.
Add to that IRV, and possibly proportional representation, and you might get a Congress that would serve the interests of the nation.
That's what I think of Congress.
Freddie
(9,231 posts)It's built into the Senate but "the people" don't have true proportionate representation in Congress either, thanks both to gerrymandering and the artificial 435 limit to the House. Adapting the "Wyoming rule" would help. I've heard that one of the Democratic Party's problem is that we're "too concentrated in urban areas"; why should that be a problem?