The Glade 4.0

Last night I received a phone call asking me to participate in a Telephone town hall with My congressman, overall it was an interesting experience.
The primary topic was Health care (obviously) the were a lot of question asked, and imo candidly answered. I'm not going to start a whole new thread on health care though.
Overall the Town Hall provided an interesting forum for discussion, it appeared that participants were randomly selected and the questions were minimally screened as questions came from both sides, and some of the comments bordered on vulgar and threatening. Yet through even with the worst ones he maintained decorum and was willing to engage them in a discussion of their topics. The average time he spent with someone was 4 minutes. This phone town hall lasted till well past 9:00pm Arizona time

One the other topics that came up was Term limits, Jon Shaddegg is big proponent of term limits, but there is an aspect to that he brought it that is often over looked. Congressional Staffers, the real power behind the scenes, these people make a career out of their influence often times changing jobs as those in office change. They have the power to make or break a bill, often times the decide if a bill we get reviewed. He suggested that term limits are a great idea but something also must be done to limit the employment term of the staffers, who can wield as much power as a career politician.

So should these professional bureaucrats who serve our elected officials, be limited in the time they can spend in that position?

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

That is a very interesting question. If we got away from professional staffers though then who would be there to ensure continuity of government?

If the staffers were attached to the congressman or senator then we'd be back to the spoils system.

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I can't say I'm convinced that discontinuous government would really be a bad thing.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I would say that a full-blown revolution every election-cycle and policy 180 would create be the definition of chaos. Efficiencies dictate that those who are most knowledgeable about a topic should have their opinions carefully considered.

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Anybody who doesn't believe that staffers are career politicians as much as the elected officials who employ them is incredibly dense.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Our society wouldn't collapse into anarchy. What's more likely to happen is that we'd see deliberation on new laws grind to a halt every election. That's not something I necessarily see as bad.

I think, "No," should be a valid vote in a presidential election, too. Furthermore, I think if the winning president is unable to garner the approve more than 50% of the total U.S. population (not the people who bothered to vote, not even the registered voters, but 50% of the actual population), then we should go the next four years with no president.

We have state governments. We don't need the federal government to "get things done."

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Nor did many of the founders, based upon their writings.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

how about a proposal the limits staffers to a 10 year limit as serving as a congressional aide, staff member or any position within the congress and senate. They can chose to leave the GSA or transfer to other administrative positions, at other agencies, Elected members of congress/ senate can recruit staff from any agency.

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

Seriously? Congress should get to pass laws with no check? And what if we need to go to war, who gets to command the army?

Xequecal:

Congress cannot pass laws without a President. He must first reject the proposed law before they can override the veto. And Congress cannot override a drawer-veto as it is.

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Shadegg kicks ***, man. Definitely one of AZ's best. Without professional staffers, I'm sure you'd see an increase of the states' role to bridge the perceived gap in governance. That would be a good thing.

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The Dude abides.

As Khross has pointed out, you need a presidential signature to pass a law, or else you need the president to veto it before Congress can override with a 2/3 majority. No president = no law. In the case of a war, what do you think generals and admirals do?

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yes we do. The states would be unable to effectively defend themselves without the federal government to coordinate them. It wouldn't be just a bunch of state National Guards as they are now; they'd be a bunch of little banana-republic militaries, and possibly the larger ones would gobble the smaller ones up.

The existence of a national military of a nation of the size, population and wealth of ours (and no snark about the state of the economy or whatever; in terms of actual physical assets we have plenty and the country cannot be confiscated by creditor nations) is what enables us to so thouroghly protect ourselves from enemy attack. Without this national-level effort, there would be no massive Navy keeping us utterly safe from invation, no major nuclear deterrent preventing us from being blackmailed and dominated by the Russians or Chinese, and no advanced technology that makes all the various nations stick to low-level conflict for fear of having to confront the U.S. Army or Marine Corps.

The idea that everything would be hunky-dory with no national government is absurd. We'd live in a completely different world and not a pleasent one. In fact, there probably would be no Constitutional freedoms to worry about the government imfringing because someone else would have rolled in here and taken over long ago. In fact, that almost did happen in 1812, and that probably would have been the luckiest we would ahve ever gotten in terms of a foriegn takeover.

As for generals and admirals, they do not decide national strategy. They may advise on the military aspects of it, but there is more to war than the movements of ships and tanks. At that level its just as much politics as combat. Generals and Admirals are great for operational-level and tactical-level matters, but someone has to integrate the military aspects of war into an overall national plan. After all, the war is going to end at some point. Then of course, someone has to get theose generals and admirals on the same sheet of music, and generally you don't want that person being a general or admiral becuase they'll usually have some bias towards their own branch and its aspect of the fight, often to the detriment of the whole.

A perfect illustration is the Inchon landing in the Korean War. The North Koreans were very good alnd fighters but essentially they forgot that Korea's land is a peninsula. Sea control and understanding of how to apply it completely changed the land fight by allowing an amphibious envelopment maneuver that sent the DPRK packing, at least for a while.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

From a purely literal perspective you're right, Congress can't present a law to a nonexistent person, but not having a President at all is also strictly unconstitutional, so it would depend on whatever side the Supreme Court takes. I'm pretty sure they'd vote to allow laws to be passed.

False.



If the president tables a bill it is promulgated after 10 days, provided Congress is in session.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Article 1 Section 7 says a bill becomes law if the President takes no action for 10 days after it's been presented to him. Since you can't really present the bill to a nonexistent person, from a strictly literal perspective you can't invoke the 10-day rule.

If you're being literal, then you can't not have a president, either.

I'm not being literal in that sense then, just pointing out that the president doesn't have to sign a bill for it to become law.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Baby-steps. You have to try not having a president before you can experiment with not having Congress or a Senate.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

If there were any actual reason to do either, that might matter.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

John Shadegg takes baby-steps!

[youtube]a9y9lgu8PTI[/youtube]

(Sorry, couldn't resist the easy joke).