Impartial Redistricting> 5 Big Ideas
Americans must really love their representatives in Congress. Why else would they have reelected 98.2% of the incumbents in the house representatives in 2004? (Only seven incumbents, of 399 running, lost their seats.) Our country sure is doing great! Super duper! Way to go! Neato gang!
Actually less than 40% of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job. Americans aren’t that happy with our government. So why do incumbents get reelected at such a high rate in the house? There are several factors including a big advantage in campaign financing, good PR from local pork barrel projects and of course naturally some areas are much more likely to vote for one party than the other. These factors would be difficult to change.
One factor we can change is congressional redistricting. Gerrymandering is a huge part of our electoral process and it shouldn’t be. Read this, this and this to get an idea of the problem and some possible solutions.
A call for nationwide impartial redistricting would be supported by just about everyone. This should be a completely non-partisan issue and there can’t be any deep seeded ideological reasons behind our current system other than career politicians not wanting to be held accountable for their job performance. I don’t expect such an unselfish act from the house, but if the Democratic leadership could grab this issue and get the party to adopt it as a platform we would come out smelling like roses. If the republican congress voted down bills for such a plan they would look really, really bad. As a side benefit we would be spreading Democracy and freedom, a favorite activity of our current government, however in this case we would be doing this in our own country.
posted by Larry Beethoven @ 5:33 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
you know the largest factor in democracy is participation.
lack of participation is failure to act. lack of action leads to inaction as the term would imply. inaction is a sign of inattention caused by indifference. indifference occurs as a product of complacency and indifference. indifference is an aversion to interest in the same system that lends itself to belonging to the constituent.
american's are a wonderful example of an autocratic democracy. 10% of the people do 90% of the work. sure, but the "boys' club" needs a membership fee, and while joe merchant is selling huang chi's goods in a store he rents from mr kennedy, while his taxes are subsidizing mr huang chi's product, who we all know is made below cost in a factory paid with american tax dollars during the MFN years of Bush senior, mr joe knows that made in china products give him the largest revenue.
what joe doesn't know is that huang is making a killing over in china where emissions aren't a problem so long as the delaware congressman whoe graduated from yale, under his dad's signature of course, keeps making the annual visits to china with his family. because even though joe's tax dollars pay for the vacation, the congressman appears on local tv and cnn speaking of the growth of china and the jobs it will create in his home state.
what joe doesn't tell his family when he's mixing that last can of sloppy joe for his kids because his wife is working a third shift at the downtown hospital, is that walmart is taking those huang chi products and selling them way below his cost.
so in april he pays his taxes which buried in some bill, allocated millions of dollars in aid to huang chi to pay his electric bill. the products receive a subsidy when entering the united stated which joe and his wife pay in their FICA taxes every friday afternoon. and by the time the product ends up on his shelf, he's paying rent to a landlord who's golfing with the senator trying to negotiate a tax bill on business real estate becuase the country's in a recession.
in the end, joe doesn't wear a suit well and doesn't have the time to put everything aside and find page 456.0450-55A paragraph 2-1.2 subpart C section 3 in the internal revenue code to find the tax break he needs to buy that extra can of sloppy joe for the coming friday when the inlaws are coming over.
so every morning he reads the paper and smokes his cigarrette, which $1 goes to the federal government to apportioned for the senator's expenses in dealing with every day business. all he can do is sit in that same park bench with the others that have to be at work when the #56 bus comes by. they talk about what they would do and how things could be better, but when #56 comes, they simply stare out the window and watch the flag fly out in front of the bank of america where their next check will bounce, and thank god for their lucky stars things aren't as bad here as the pictures in the newspaper coming from overseas.
these are the people that celebrate the 4th of july. this is the system we call democratic. it might be about sloppy joes, but there's a joe on every corner....
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