I know that is shocking. I was going to post a series of charts and graphs about the actual drivers of debt, but instead, I am going to leave it up to Chris Hayes....
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Yeah that about sums up my feelings on the issue. You could probably lump the balanced budge amendment claptrap in with that as well...
-Cheers
2 comments:
Thanks for the insightful video. I agree with everything he said (more-or-less), however, it scares me when he says he prefers to put more power with the people. My reason is two-fold:
1. The average U.S. citizen is, how can I put this delicately, ill-informed and uneducated.
2. In my experience, the greater the number of people involved in making decisions, the less gets done.
If I be so bold, I argue that we need a president that is willing to sacrifice the chance to get re-elected by doing radical and possibly unpopular things. Imagine if you will a president that would veto ANYTHING that came across his desk that didn't have the 2/3rds majority vote from both houses of congress that would be required to override his veto. This would in effect force bi-partisanship or bring Congress to the brink of insignificance. People really need to start thinking outside the box.
Brad,
1) I agree with you on that sir.
2) Well, democracy is the worst form of government excepting for all the others! :-)
I do disagree with you on the 2/3rds majority idea. That is recipe for gridlock sir. Or worse absolute stasis. It would remove any ability of the government to respond to a crisis. The thing is you can not "force" bipartisanship through legislative tricks. The only way to enforce that is if the polity does not reward obstinate behavior. As long is there is a political gain to obstruction, it will be done. And personally I do not put a priority on bipartisanship. If two people agree to enact a bad idea, it is still a bad idea. I want good policy regardless of whether both sides think it is good.
That is just the wrong metric. Sometimes one side will be incorrect in its policy descriptions. The best example I can come up with is this sir. If you are in an argument with your wife about dinner, and you suggest Chinese or Italian. While she says, "No, we should eat sawdust, nails and cardboard and I will except nothing else!". Reaching a compromise in that situation is nigh impossible.
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