Federal Science Gets More Politicized 567
amigoro writes to let us know about the noise a group of scientists is making to call attention to Executive Order 13422, going into effect today, that gives political appointees final say regarding science-based federal agency regulations. The Union of Concerned Scientists wrote a letter to two Senate committee chairs urging that questions about this executive order be asked at the confirmation hearings for the nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. "UCS urged the Senate committee to ask [the nominee] Mr. Nussle how he would ensure that political appointees would not interfere with the work of agency scientists." Late last month the House voted to prohibit the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from spending federal money on Executive Order 13422. Democrats called the order a "power grab."
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fine with it... (Score:1, Insightful)
Chances are, though, this executive order does absolutely nothing to hold Bush's administration members responsible for their actions.
The problem is........???? (Score:4, Insightful)
I see this as a good thing. Many times Government sticks their noses in at the wrong time and end up making a problem much worse. This will allow the private sector to fix the problem before hand. And believe me, this is an incentive because the last thing many folks want is the Government coming in.
On the other hand, if we're going to talk about the mining industry (and other like them who get a free ride on the backs of the tax payer) and how they count on Government coming in to clean up their mess, I would want some penalties against the private sector when the Government is required to come in. It's just not fair for the American Tax payer to clean up the mess that the private sector causes and allow them to go away free and clear.
oh, how many books I read...... (Score:5, Insightful)
when do we start calling a spade a spade?
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
The most dangerous facet of this administration has been their certainty in every single thing they do, and their machinations to give that certainty free reign in every way possible.
Re:white house edits (Score:2, Insightful)
Your point is well taken, but replace "political officer" with "scientist" and see if it sounds any better. Remember that unlike Soviet Russia or a dictatorship, in the US, "political officers" are elected directly or appointed by someone elected. Elected officials are beholden to the electorate and the Constitution. Scientists are not elected and have taken no oath to the Constitution. So while I don't trust politicians either, at least I can hold them to the Constitution or vote them out of office. I have no such power over scientists.
Why do I get the feeling... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway -
I don't know, maybe because a lot of slashdotters are anti-republican and anti-bush (and also anti-congress lobbying by the RIAA,anti-bipartisan and anti-big brother)?
Just because we're nerds doesn't mean we don't care about politics. In fact, we SHOULD care.
Optimist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:voting on reality.... time to move (Score:3, Insightful)
You'all know what "G.O.P." stands for, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oubliettes
and
Pollution
(Thanks, Joel!)
Screenwriter and comic John Rogers wrote a great polemic called "I Miss Republicans," [blogspot.com] ruing the disappearance of practical, technocratic Republicans in favor of the screwball ideologues:
Sorry, folks, this isn't "business as usual" or "a pendulum swing" we don't have to worry about because it will swing back. It's the Wedge Strategy. It's Lysenkoism. It's the Ministry of Truth. It's 24 year old college drop-outs micromanaging NASA scientists' press activity.
Get government out of science (Score:1, Insightful)
This type of interference with science was always possible under government-funded science; it has simply become more common and obvious in recent years. Even if you replace the current crop of crooks in Washington, the politicians who control the money will still be a threat to the process.
And as long as it's our tax money, it's right they oversee how it is spent, in accordance with our wishes -- even if our wishes are irrational. Our money should not be spent in the pursuit or correct over incorrect, accurate over inaccurate; it should be spent however the fuck We The People want it, integrity and scientists' opinions be damned. Government must work that way when it comes to our involuntarily-paid money, or we're screwed.
And yet, that is incompatible with science. Science unlike politics, isn't about what we want or what is fair; it's about how things are.
The only resolution that is compatible with the needs of science and the needs of fair politics, is to stop spending tax money on science. Give your money to a private foundation instead of the tax man.
Tax man, stop collecting it. We'll decide what scientific pursuits are worth funding on our own, without guns to our heads. And yeah, we'll probably all go in different directions. It will be wonderful.
Re:white house edits (Score:1, Insightful)
huh? We're in the U.S. we're all equally bound by the constitution whether janitor or senator. It really matters not, scientists shouldn't be making decisions about public policy but they certainly should be making their recommendations unaltered by publicly elected officials.
I see no reason to change how this works as that's pretty much how it exists today. Unfortunately that means the publicly elected officials invariably listen to corporate wants more than what is best for the most people. It's the price we pay as we can elect somebody else if our representative is bad enough to warrant a change. Of course with political parties mucking up the whole thing the issue gets more complicated with seniority and affiliation affecting appointments to committees.
I think we agree on this issue though in that scientists are not the right people to be making decisions about public policy but their voice is certainly worth hearing along with the people adversely affected by the proposed changes. Change is hard, and in my mind, it should be.
Oh that's insightful (Score:3, Insightful)
OOOOh! Scary! Our taxes are controlled by the Power Elite! (whoever they are, you know, the all purpose Bad Guys. The Man!) So all taxes are bad because they never do anything good for The People, only for the Power Elite. And all government is bad because it runs on taxes! Therefore (let me guess) Libertarianism is the only way to Freedom and Justice! Am I right?
You know, there are actually cogent arguments against our form of government, and against a system of taxation enforced through the threat of violence. Not saying I buy them, just that in comparison to your argument, they're decent and well thought out.
Re:Surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
-- Thomas Jefferson^W^WMyself (What, you only listen to quotes if the person has long since passed away?)
Impeach the Criminal Tyrants Already (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that until now, the outcome has not been controlled by the people who control the money; it's been controlled by people hired by the people who control the money, and given the authority to do as they see fit.
This is a lesson that every businessman worth his salt learns early in his career: don't micromanage. Just because you pay the bills doesn't mean that it's appropriate for you to tell your employees how to do their jobs. Hire smart people, make sure they understand the overall goals of the organization, and give them a free hand. If they screw up, that means you hired the wrong people; it does not mean you should try to control every detail of how the job is done.
And it's a lesson the US government learned too, once upon a time -- but now, under our MBA President, is busily unlearning, like just about every other lesson on good governance which history can provide.
Re:Surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's fair enough to assert that control has to be exerted somewhere in any exchange of money, even where that money is being used for the good of all. But I think this stance assumes far more than that - I think you're assuming that ANY administration of ANY government using ANY tax system is inherently going to be ultra-biased and spend that money to promote their own causes at the pure cost of everyone paying taxes.
Science has value. Value that doesn't tend to happen without public investment. Value that doesn't promise a financial return - only more questions.
Governments matter. When they quash an environment of open scientific inquiry for their own petty goals, they crush that value that can come from science.
Also, bias isn't really the issue - a person can be as biased as they can be, so long as their data and circumstances can be openly reproduced by others, and they don't act to cut off the results other get in any way.
Costs are inevitable in life. You can live on your own resources in a harsh world paying for every person you need to interact with, or you can cooperate with others to build roads and an environment you can all live in. Taxes are the imperfect result of what humanity has done to build a world for itself. Science is our shared resource for what reliable evidence we have for how the world works. It ends up being a drastically lower cost to everyone to cooperate on many resources, than it is for everyone own their own slice of everything - especially when it comes to the evidential truths of the universe.
Dismissing the loss of science, because you disagree that any government should pay for it sounds like me like a man disingenuous man complaining that the rest of the world wants to cooperate to paint a (evidence based) larger picture for everyone. The reason? You don't like to see them wasting paint.
Ryan Fenton
Private sector (Score:3, Insightful)
Climate Change v Car Industry & Exxon
Evolution v Some Christian Fundy "private" research organisation
Effect of Torture v Halliburton
Saying that you have to prove where private research has failed is just offering those corporations a blank cheque to perform dodgy research. Federally funded research on things like Smoking, Asbestos, Drugs and more have consistently held private corporations to account specifically because they could start research on the basis of questioning data rather than having actual proof of failure.
It takes research to disprove a theory, unfortunately this is effectively about invalidating the scientific method. By requiring people to demonstrate failure of a theory BEFORE THEY HAVE DONE THE RESEARCH quite neatly makes sure that corporate research cannot be questioned.
Astonishingly dreadful
Re:The group that politicized science complains... (Score:3, Insightful)
A bunch of really smart people whose job it is to study the world in careful detail through the analysis of data notices that the data tend to support Democratic positions over Republican ones. Imagine that.
Re:Slashkos aka kdawson the political hack (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm serious, drop the "oh, everyone thinks their party is great and hates the other guy" bullshit. It's crap. If you don't realize that Bush's administration is running on pure ideology and letting not a single fact get in their way, you're just not paying attention. If you care about what party they are in, then you're a partisan stooge. If you don't care, you're just ignorant. I don't care which is the case -- wake up, and stop saying "the other guy is just as bad, so this guy is okay". That's a lame and meaningless excuse. Start looking at the actual person, the actual decisions being made, the disconnection from reality that is by now well documented, the continuous stream of former officials saying they didn't know jack shit. I suppose they all just hate bush because he's a republican too. Or maybe, just maybe, what the evidence seems to say is actually true: The country is being run by idiots who think ideology trumps reality and thus reality can be ignored.
Re:The group that politicized science complains... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it is NOT reasonable for political considerations or the favor of particular individuals and industries to affect scientific reasoning. I also reject the notion that every organization should support Republicans and Democrats equally. If you are anti-abortion and that is an important issue for you, you would be unprincipled to support most Democrats. Likewise, it appears to me a pro-science citizen should lean toward the Democrats more often than not. Between evolution, climate change, AIDS, and sex education, and several other issues I could name, frankly, it would be hard to pick a worse party than the Republicans.
It is silly to think that "fair" people should always be split 50% between Republicans and Democrats. It all depends on the issue at hand.
Re:white house edits (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine that: politicians in government.
The directive, according to TFA, "bans any regulation from moving forward without the approval of an agency's regulatory policy officer, who would be a political appointee."
Uh, isn't this a good thing? The alternative would be some guy hired for the job by some random person. This guy would have no accountability to anybody but his boss, who could also have little accountability.
This new directive will make politicians who appoint these people responsible for the actions of the department.
Regulation shouldn't move forward unless our elected officials say so. I'm shocked this wasn't in place before. I really hope they don't have any more agencies where this is necessary.
I mean, imagine a person writing regulations that affect your life who aren't even accountable to the person you voted for. Yes, it's bad to give the president more power, but if there's regulation happening, I want it under someone directly or indirectly accountable to the people. Having them appointed by an elected official is good enough. If it were up to me, I wouldn't even have most of these agencies, but since everyone loves government these days, I'll settle for accountability.
I think this group who wrote the article (UCS) is pretty obviously writing this article because they fear Bush (and specifically Bush, look at their site [ucsusa.org]) will use this power to further bring this government away from environmental protection. That's a valid concern, but you can't have it both ways: either the government can regulate the environment, or they can't.
If you want to grant the government the power to mess things up, you have to accept that the people you elect may use that power.
Re:The group that politicized science complains... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they (UCS) didn't just "lobby against SDI". Instead, they very specifically pointed out that: (1) SDI as proposed is unworkable and (2) it's technologically impossible to implement anything that achieves stated goals of SDI without some radical breakthroughs in our understanding of physics. That is pure science. If Dept. of Energy suddenly decides to fund "perpetual motion" machine, opposing that won't be political either.
Re:The group that politicized science complains... (Score:4, Insightful)
claim that science favors the Democrat position on everything...even when last year "science" opposed the same position because the Republicans were pushing it
Examples, please?
Also, what exactly is "the Democrat position?" I assume that what you're trying to say is "the Democratic position," but like many Republicans you seem to be having trouble with the "i" and "c" keys on your keyboard. You might want to get that fixed.
Re:Surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe they are crimina... er... 'perfectly legal' masterminds, coldly going about their well thought out plan, and letting nothing stop them.
They only seem like idiots if you actually believe their hearts are in the right place. They are acting perfectly rationally, and with great cunning, when you take into account that they are, well, I'd call them evil. That is what I call people who are willing to kill for money, again and again.
They knew many people would die in Iraq, they knew they were lying about their motivations for going to war, they knew they had to act fast while the population was scared enough to believe them, and they knew they could get away with it. A fall guy gets sentenced here and there, sure, but you don't win a chess match of this magnitude without loosing a rook or two.
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush isn't unlearning anything.
He is doing exactly what you said, with one caveat.
He is also changing the "overall goals of the organization".
In the past, the goal was to provide policy based on sound science.
Now, the goal is to provide policy that jibes with the White House agenda.
Re:Surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's see, would this be the "ketchup is a vegetable" Reagan or the "trees cause 90% of pollution" Reagan. I can only assume, since the topic is science, that you didn't mean the "I did not trade arms for hostages" Reagan.
Re:Get government out of science (Score:1, Insightful)
You mention the USSR, but it looks like you're the one with some kind of agricultural Five Year Plan drawn up in Washington.
To answer your question..
What does any of this have to do with government-funded science, comrade?
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I do. I absolutely do. If they weren't idiots, the war would be going better. You think that wouldn't serve them? The American people would be pleased as hell to let our troops stay in Iraq for years while Halliburton builds huge army bases and all the defense contractors suck up billions of taxpayer $s, if the war were going better. They'd have their non-Saudi middle east military bases, their oil reserves locked up where our troops are close by, and a friendly government right next door to what they wanted to be their next adventure, Iran. Instead, they've botched everything up, more and more Americans are demanding we leave lucrative base-building contracts be damned, and they lost their pet Congress that was allowing them to get away with all this crap. No, no, if they were smart, they could satisfy whatever their desires are without all this blow-back. They have simply fucked up majorly because they never had any idea what they were doing.
I used to think that they were smart but duplicitous. Then mistake after mistake after mistake after predictable mistake. When we found out that the administration had been taking most of their cues on Iraq from an Iranian agent, I knew they were fucking clueless. He told them exactly what they wanted to hear, and they believed it whole heartedly. They ignored any military adviser who told them something they didn't want to hear, such as that Rumsfeld's fast & light military strategy was retarded. They just didn't want to hear it, even though if they heard it and acted on it then their goals would have been better served. That means they're stupid.
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I put it into three separate sentences, but it still shouldn't be that hard to understand the one complete thought.
Re:Mad Science: Where's the line? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument is basically science fiction, each logical leap broader than the last. It depends on scientists as a whole being completely amoral and being given carte blanche. Organ transplants have been done for decades in this country, yet we have yet to see the poor rounded up and harvested for parts as had been predicted. When rumors arise that this sort of thing is happening to political prisoners in other countries, it is roundly condemned. It is a much, much smaller step from organ donation to organ harvesting than it is from stem-cell research to Logan's Run-like prediction, but it is still not a step that has been made.
In any case, the other side of the slope is just as slippery. At what point does legally enforcing 'respect for life' become the enforcement of 'respect for God's grand plan?'
Re:Surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Open mind" does not mean "all things are equal". That's an ideological viewpoint that ignores reality. History doesn't repeat, it rhymes. It might be easy to say "Bush is not unique" and of course when you put it in absolute terms like that it's true, but that's also meaningless because nevertheless his actions stand out as an outlier, and history shows that quite clearly.
Re:Surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
Kind Regards
Re:Surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone else? They're probably pretty smart in general. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt until the prove otherwise. This administration has proven they are idiots.
Re:Optimist (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, 'cause voting counts for anything anymore. We're trapped, and he's going to seize all of the power and make himself emperor. And, yes, I still vote. I just don't see the point anymore. I don't get to vote FOR anyone anymore, just against.
Re:Taliban in US (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush is Freest President In Decades (Score:3, Insightful)
a) By continually deregulating everything, Bush gives the small business owner and entrepreneur more rights, whereas Democrats would take them away. Bush has made it easier for people to use their land as they best see fit, and made it easier for business's to hire whom they want, when they want. Democrats, on the other hand, would make it harder for a person to use their land the way they want, harder for businesses to hire flexibly, and harder to adjust to market conditions for wages.
b) George Bush has reaffirmed the right to revolution by changing the Justice Dept stance that 2nd Amendment implies an individual right to keep and bear arms, and backed that up by letting the assault weapons ban lapse.
c) George Bush's tax cuts have allowed people to keep more of their money, and, more importantly, his cuts on the death tax allow people to decide what their life's work is for, not the government.
d) Although the execution was botched, while Democrats and liberals bemoan dictatorships around the world, George Bush put 200,000 boots on the ground to try and bring about democracy in a severely troubled part of the world.
By contrast, Democrats argue for MORE laws about how we use our property, for a wide variety of pet causes, call for more TAXES, not less, call for an end to the idea that the USA should intervene against dictatorships, and call for increased regulation in general. Sure, you might like what the Democratic vision offers, but at the end of the day, Republicans will give you more freedom than you can ever want, leaving you to the chaos of the marketplace, whereas the Democrats inevitably argue for less freedom in favor of social stability!
So please, knock off the double think that the left wing has instilled in you. You can't be free if the government takes more of your wealth and makes more laws.
We did, we like this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh so wrong. (Score:2, Insightful)
The reality is, most people don't know who Albert Gonzales either. There was a very funny Sean Hannity skit, where he had one of his guys go to a left wing "impeach Bush" rally, and asked them some basic questions:
a) Who is the vice president
b) name 4 justices on the supreme court.
And the vast majority of these peace protestors flunked.
The reality is, most Americans don't give a shit about most left wing causes, really, and honestly, they don't even really care that much about the war. What they do care about is the stock market, the real estate market, and the price of gasoline, and as long as one of those is screwed up, then, they think the economy is doing badly.
If the price of gas were 30 cents a gallon, Americans would have re-elected Republicans easily, despite the war. As it is, the real estate market is soft, gas is expensive, and they are pissed off at both parties. Bottom line is, we have to get some black gold out of our Iraqi prize (I mean, liberated ally in the war on terror).
Re:Oh so wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Never confuse TV pundits with journalists. The latter need to have scruples and a respect for truth (and not just some preconceived notion of "fairness") to fit the definition, and are a dying breed in mainstream corporate media because of it; the former will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes, right along with their corporate masters who would rather fight the inevitable than give up the game and find the ethics they threw away so long ago.
We are the corporate masters (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time you shop at Walmart, or buy something made offshore, you indirectly encourage other corporations to do the same. I'd be more than willing to bet that the vast majority of Democrats , that's right, Democrats, are as heavily invested in the likes of McDonalds, Walmart as are Republicans. I'd be even more willing to bet that the vast majority of Democrats, that's right, Democrats, would invest in a company that dumped nuclear waste on children in the 3rd world while making adults convert to Christianity, if that company had an annual rate of return of more than 30%.
There's no conspiracy. There's no fingers to point or people to blame except that the ones we see in the mirror in the morning. There's no country to "take back". We've got it! The so-called powers that be spend billions of dollars trying to figure out what we want, from Amazon with its data mining, to all the spyware, to all the web, tv, and radio demographic surveys, from opinion polling, cross selling, it is all about what WE WANT.
We have invented the most perfect democracy in the world, and also the laziest. We don't even have to protest to get what we want. We just live out our lives as normal, and whoever wants to get rich, will do so, but only if they sell us what we want. The whole illusion of power in Washington or in the corporate boardroom is just that, an illusion. We are the power. And, if we don't like the society that we have, its only because we are doing it to ourselves.
Re:I don't think it's that simple (Score:2, Insightful)
As to your point, wikipedia's explano [wikipedia.org] seems as good as any:A far cry from plastering the label on anything and everything that one doesn't like. Each side is never going to like what most of the other side does when they're in power. But one side consistently goes off-kilter in the verbiage department. The Right doesn't like Pelosi or Reid or a whole host of other left-wingers and what they do and say, but they're not called "evil", or compared to Hitler.
Re:Optimist (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't seen the death of the 22nd Ammendment yet, so no way he can run again. Getting a Constitutional ammendment rammed through Congress takes time, more time than what's left in his administration, even with zero resistance from the 'opposition'. This being the case, I don't see how he can legally suspend the elections next year to avoid a transfer of power. Even in a state of emergency, it isn't legal or even constitutional to suspend elections.
Personally, I'd like to see some real candidates for a change. None of this nonsense of voting for the 'lesser evil', the problem is, the lesser evil is STILL evil.
Re:Bush is Freest President In Decades (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not happy with the Dept of Homeland Security or USA PATRIOT, but, even with those issues aside, I could make the argument that in total, Bush has done more to EXTEND freedom to the American people than Democrats would have.
This is hilarious. Even while pointing out the evidence of Bush's attack on the Constitution and our fundamental freedoms, you grasp for the opposite conclusion. Better yet, your automatic assumption that a Democratic administration (regardless of the character of those staffing it) must certainly be worse belies the very partisan bias you would accuse others of. I can only assume you are joking, that this is a parody of some sort. Nevertheless, though I come to this thread somewhat late, I think I must respond.
a) By continually deregulating everything, Bush gives the small business owner and entrepreneur more rights, whereas Democrats would take them away. Bush has made it easier for people to use their land as they best see fit, and made it easier for business's to hire whom they want, when they want. Democrats, on the other hand, would make it harder for a person to use their land the way they want, harder for businesses to hire flexibly, and harder to adjust to market conditions for wages.
The current climate of deregulation mostly benefits the largest corporations to the detriment of most small business owners. The best example I've run into is deregulation of the telecom industry wiping out many smaller phone and Internet companies, resulting in fewer choices, higher prices, and worse service for consumers. As a consultant and small business owner working in this industry, I've witnessed it first hand. You can find many similar examples in the energy sector, agriculture... almost anywhere you care to look.
Rolling back environmental regulations has certainly made it easier for many big real estate developers, but this often comes at a high cost to working people. In my home town a developer pulled political strings to build a massive subdivision of condos, destroying the natural watershed that would normally be protected as a wetland. After the inevitable flooding of neighboring areas, the taxpayers were stuck paying for a massive concrete and steel water management structure to fix the problem. It cost an order of magnitude more than the condo project.
And then there is the added medical costs we all carry as result of other environmental rollbacks. BTW, I am currently buying and renovating a Brownfield property [wikipedia.org], so I know a little bit about environmental regulations and business investment. 'Getting rid of government regulation' makes a great sound bite... but the attraction pales when the results turn up in your food or drinking water.
b) George Bush has reaffirmed the right to revolution by changing the Justice Dept stance that 2nd Amendment implies an individual right to keep and bear arms, and backed that up by letting the assault weapons ban lapse.
The right to bear arms is cool and all... but personally I'm a bit more concerned about my right to privacy, due process, and habeas corpus, all of which have been eliminated or seriously curtailed under Bush. Just recently in fact, Bush released an executive order saying he can seize the assets of anyone they feel are interfering with the administration's Iraq plans. No warrant necessary, no trial... gone. Yeah, I feel a lot more free.
c) George Bush's tax cuts have allowed people to keep more of their money, and, more importantly, his cuts on the death tax allow people to decide what their life's work is for, not the government.
Lower taxes are certainly nice, but never at the expense of higher deficits. That is unforgivably bad economic policy. Any benefit we might personally gain from those cuts is more than wiped out by the negative long term consequences (such as higher interest rates, inflation, and a weakening dollar... not to mention the obvious side effect that more
Re:We are the corporate masters (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, I won't deny my bias against the Republican's. Every time they attain power they've proven that despite all their talking points about big government, they run up debts and expand the role of government in our lives far more than any Democrat has ever attempted. Anyways, like it or not the Dems are too disorganized to play a part in any grand conspiracy theories.
Oh yeah, and I never buy from McDonalds or Walmart and I try my best to buy local. I know I'm in the minority, but some of us actually do give a shit about where we spend our money.
Re:Optimist (Score:2, Insightful)
Therefore, representative democracy is in the interest of business: representativity, because the people cannot be allowed to decide themselves, because bribing 300,000,000 people is harder than bribing 3,000. Democracy, because an emperor cannot be trusted not to turn on his masters, so he has to be switched out regularly.
What implications does this have to voting? Well, firstly, there will be no emperor, the system will continue as currently. But secondly, people realize that their vote doesn't count (or they actively endorse the current government). Thus, less and less people vote, until only intelligent people vote (i.e. voting is a necessary, but not a sufficient criterion for being intelligent).
And when the next president comes... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bush is Freest President In Decades (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, if it were balanced out by cutting pork barrel, and undesireable social programs spending, it would be a better idea. But, raising taxes slows down the economy, and lowers incoming revenue actually.
Taxes need to stay low, but, we also need to make the govt. fiscally responsible in their spending!
Re:We are the corporate masters (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, most public companies have A class and B class shares where A class votes FAR outweigh B class votes. Guess which class shares you have...
The playing field is fixed and it is fixed for those in power and have money.
Reality's liberal biases? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your central argument is that Bush's low approval ratings translate into hoards of conservatives and moderate republicans ideologically buying into what the Democrats are offering, and that's just absurd. National attitudes are not changing, as evidenced by the simple polls that show that the vast majority of Americans:
a) are against lifelong welfare
b) are in favor of private gun ownership
c) are in favor of free speech
d) are in favor of torturing probable terrorists
e) are anti-islam
f) prefer cars with big engines
g) are against a socialized economy
h) are against amnesty for illegal immigrants
i) prefer a balanced budget
j) remain against tax increases
The list goes on and on and on. Bush is in trouble yeah because of the war, but, if he had balanced the budget and kicked out all the illegal mexicans, he'd be more popular than FDR. Bush's problems are because he bought into the Rovian nonsense that he had to pull to the left to form a ruling majority, when the reality is, he needed to veer right.
America is a conservative country.
Re:How about just about anything to do with the (Score:3, Insightful)
So if you can't get an effective policy passed, it somehow justifies supporting an ineffective and costly policy instead? One more reason I will never be able to vote for a Democrat...