Do we really need Congress anymore? I mean really…
What with all the hoo-ha over the stimulus, the cap and trade bills and now the universal health care/insurance debacle, our men and women in the Beltway are coming unglued. The Washington Bermudan Triangle is home to a bunch of people who lack ethics, responsibility and common sense.
It’s spend, spend, spend and spend some more. To prove how disconnected the Beltway is from the rest of us suffering on Main Street, they slip in spending for private planes. They can give themselves raises in a failing economy (no raise here), fatten up their Cadillac health insurance packages (mine has a $10K deductible) and eat Wagyu beef (I can only dream about such gastronomical delights) in private conferences and then dare to dress down auto, insurance or Wall Street execs about their pay packages. Not that I’m supporting outrageous CEO compensation, but talk about kettles calling the pots black.
For three weeks, I’ve been searching for a local town hall to voice my opinions. I’ve got plenty of thoughts and am not afraid to speak. I was dismayed to learn Rep. Dingell hosted his a few weeks ago, Democrat and invitation only. After viewing the verbal lashing other lawmakers throughout the country have received, the rest of the Michigan delegation has skittered away like rats under the floorboard.
Some of them are cowards, and some don’t give a flying flip what their constituents think (I’ve been told as much by a couple of mine). They’ll vote whichever way they want with no concern for investigating the other side or other options.
Which leads me to think, why do we even need these people anymore?
Back in the early history of our country, it was necessary to subdivide our land to make it manageable. Even at thirteen colonies, our country was huge and communication took hours or days. So we elected people from our districts that would best represent us and sent them to the capitol to work for us. Good start.
But it’s all different now. Consider in the gleaming 21st Century where just about everyone is wired to the Internet and we can elect to get our news 24/7. We are able to watch wars unfold before our very eyes or follow a celebrity’s cold, dead corpse as it makes its way to the hospital. Or, we could spend hours on CSPAN and watch how government really works, which is my new hobby. This generation is wired by a legion of Blackberries and netbooks. If anything, interest in current events has skyrocketed to mammoth proportions.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy
Isn't it cool Joanne, that when someone comes up with an idea to get rid of the unneeded idiots and institute governemt by referendum - the direct democracy supposedly enjoyed by a few thousand Athenians 2500 years ago - everyone shuts up?
The political philosophes here, the stink piece writers and sophists and alleged sophisiticates from all ends of the spectrum, the kneejerk jerks, from all ends of the spectrum are suddenly - silent!
That's because governing oneself is responsibility, Joanne, not a spectator sport where you holler that the pitcher "throws like a girl".
I'd love to see such a system instituted here in Israel. We could get rid of the American instituted dictatorship in about a week or so. And all the Israelis who didn't "love it" - could leave - to enjoy the gentle mercies of Jew-haters round the world.
2 - Andy Marsh
What's to say? No arguments from me on any of these ideas! Except maybe I think you're being a little to generous on their retirement packages...Give them what they give me after twenty years and retiring as an E-6. I would imagine it's less than your father gets.
3 - Cindy
Let’s face facts. We the People are being ruled by a motley crew of self-serving automatons who do not care one whit about the people who elected them. They’re just lining their pockets so that they’ll have some scratch for when the world suffers its final financial collapse.
They have no respect for us, but demand respect from us.
...why do we even need these people anymore?
Great stuff, Joanne. I like it.
4 - handyguy
The problem with turning over decisions to the people is that entirely too many of them are even less well informed than Joanne Huspek, who is by her own admission "no genius."
Tarring all 535 members of Congress with the same brush, and claiming that they are all, every damn one utterly unresponsive to their constituents, is populist poppycock. Bull puckey. Balderdash. A poor excuse for actual reading, writing, and thinking -- and then daring to admit that most problems and situations are pretty damn complicated, and not subject to dumb one-line prescriptions.
5 - Joanne Huspek
Handy, psst, hint, hint... Satire???
I may be no genius, but I'm smart enough to read legislation. Heck, I'm smart enough to find it. I'm starting to believe I'm smart enough to run.
I must have taken too much pain meds...
6 - roger nowosielski
I happen to agree, Joanne, though Handy will hate me for it: they're all sellouts.
As I argued in my last article, we don't need no stinking experts, technocrats or lawyers running this country, but ordinary people with judgment, like you and me.
So yes, you'd definitely make a better congressperson than any of the jokers we have in there. You have my vote.
7 - zingzing
while i agree with your idea in principle, there's a glaring flaw or two in it. #1, who's to run this thing? and #2, given that you could find someone to run it, the potential for fraud, both on the internet and in the resulting bureaucracy it would take to quantify and implement "the voice of the people" is staggering. you'd have a country run by hackers and an all-powerful group that simply reports whatever they want to.
the logistics of what you propose would result in a government far more bloated than what we have today. and that's sad, because it is a nice idea.
ruvy--you might want to wait more than a few hours before insulting everyone. thursday evening and friday at 5 am are not peak hours around here, you know.
8 - handyguy
Roger, you're too smart to actually believe what you wrote in #6.
Look how easy it was to get people to believe utter nonsense and fiction about the Democratic health proposals.
A majority of the public believes that the legislation provides free, taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants; that it will provide free, taxpayer-funded abortion on demand; and that it will raise their taxes.
None of these provisions is in the bill. [And saying 'the bill' is inaccurate too; there are already 4 bills, soon to be 5; but all the comments are about one, which happens to be the most liberal, and is unlikely to be the basis for what is finally passed.]
As I've said before, it's really easy to sit on your ass and proclaim on the Internet that 'they' are all assholes and 'we' know better.
It's much harder to actually admit the complications and gray areas in nearly every issue and try to discuss them in a valid way.
9 - roger nowosielski
Handy, that was only a comment about politicians in general. You just happen to hold them in greater repute than I.
10 - handyguy
Yes, it was a demonstrably false comment about politicians in general, as if, say, Barney Frank and James Inhofe, or Susan Collins and Jim DeMint, are really all the same.
You may be successfully blowing off some steam and frustration, but don't pretend you are accurately describing or analyzing anything.
11 - Cindy
If you grow an apple tree, everything on it is going to be an apple.
12 - Cindy
Some apples may taste better, but they're all still apples.
13 - Cindy
All the politicians you named are alike in that they are politicians. They will impose their own ideas on the rest of us. Every last one of them. Also, they will be most focused on their own career, their own security, their own retirement, their own personal welfare, their own happiness before they even begin to worry about anything or anyone else. They will do what is in their own personal interest and act according to their own personal beliefs and they will force those beliefs on other people, whether they like it or not. That's what they do. All of them.
Some of the do even worse things.
14 - roger nowosielski
Handy,
You can't just say that the state of the nation is the result of the previous administration and that this one all of a sudden is going to correct all our ills. This has been piling up for generations, through slow but sure accretion, and now it had finally come to a peak. And you surely can't argue that our politicians haven't been the accomplices - both parties. So my view really is - the system is broken. Consequently, my understanding of the kind of problems we're facing go beyond this little reform or that, plugging in the holes, fixing this or that. The entire ship I believe is sinking, and that's what I'm frustrated about and what I'm addressing.
We've had professionals and experts and lawyers and accountants running this government, and with what effect. I don't trust technocrats or the bureaucrats and the kind of people that populate Washington and the corridors of power. And I don't see why should you. Wherein do you base your confidence, unless you're being so overwhelmed by the complexity of the problems facing us that you're just giving up and made a decision to delegate your powers to these people.
The position I'm expressing is not an idiosyncratic one but is being shared by lots of analysts of modernity as being increasingly more and more dominated in all facets of governance and administrative tasks by technocrats and experts. Visionary people have been warning us about it (Jacques Ellul, for example) and it's surely coming to pass. I don't want to say anything more about it now - subject of my next series of articles. It's just to let you know that the dissatisfaction I'm expressing has deeper underpinninggs. At the same time, I didn't want you to feel you don't deserve a response.
Roger
15 - handyguy
Cindy, the United States [and the European Union, and China, and just about every other place] will always have a government, in your and my lifetime, and in the next generation's lifetime.
So your vision of a world without government is a hypothetical fantasy, and your criticism of the real world is based on this alternative universe, one that does not and will not exist.
If you can come up with a way to actually apply these ideas to the real world, I'd be happy to hear about them. Until then, your comments border on Lewis Carroll, without the wit.
And the 'all politicians are part of the same web of deceit' stuff is certainly not a new idea. It's just an idea that has not yet found a practical outlet or application. It's hippy-dippy, graduate thesis soft-headedness.
16 - handyguy
Roger, I rarely mention Bush, and contrary to popular belief, I don't think Obama is perfect. I just try to defend him against silly and unfair attacks, which occur about every 20 seconds on here.
But I'll put the same question to you as to Cindy:
How does this squishy [and wordy] stuff you expound apply in the real world? How do you bring it down from airy-fairy dreamland to actually select leaders [or alternatives to leaders] that you can believe in?
I just don't buy it. I think it's all idealistic, academic hot air.
17 - roger nowosielski
I suggest, Handy, start reading some French thinkers, like Michel Fouccaul or Jean-François Lyotard, or Umberto Eco, before you so quickly dismiss the idea of a web - not in a sense of there being any conspiracy but in a much more sinister and dangerous sense - so nonchalantly.
We are dealing with apparatuses of power, many and diverse and at all kinds of levels, and politicians are part of if - witting or unwitting accomplices. And it's even more scary if they're not being aware of it.
Consequently, you're mistaken, Handy, of accusing Cindy of naïveté. (If anything, she's guilty of idealism, but that's another thing.) It is in fact more sophomoric to keep on propagating the political ideology which which we grew up and accepted as gospel truth rather than questioning it. And conspiracy theories are just as naive and offer no escape.
So yes, we are caught up in a humongous spider web - each and every one of us - much deeper than you thing. And it's no "hippy-dippy, graduate thesis soft-headedness."
18 - Clavos
Anyone who really believes that government-run health care won't raise everyone's taxes is naive.
It doesn't matter whether or not there's a "provision" for it in the (or any of the) bills, if the government takes over the health care responsibility for all Americans, taxes will go up.
When obama denies that, he's lying.
19 - Clavos
Umberto Eco's Italian.
20 - roger nowosielski
Correct - I should have said European.
21 - Cindy
"It's hippy-dippy, graduate thesis soft-headedness."
No it's not, Handy. It's people who I've heard tell children to grow up and join the real world, who are out of touch with reality. people sort of like you. You accept an insane world. You are a change stopper Handy, by saying just what you said above. Hippy-dippy soft-headed graduate students, and children 'who need to grow up' know more about creating a sane human living arrangement than crazy people willing to accept the status quo. It's people like that who change things--those you ridicule. Between the Handys and the Andys, it's no wonder the world is a mess.
What about other things, would you have advocated accepting slavery since it took hundreds here (thousands elsewhere) of years to begin to change it? Same with unions, same with civil rights, suffrage for women, gay rights, rights of the mentally ill, child labor. Were those who struggled for those things living in a dream world too?
I think you would have been against slavery in theory, in your heart. But would you have been a part of the underground railroad? Or would you figure those people were risking their necks in a world where their goal was impossible.
Things take a long time to change. Does that mean they're not worth striving for? Shall we just accept whatever is put on our plate and mush it around into the most pleasing shapes we can, no matter how distasteful the fare?
Since you're making assessments of people personally. I will offer my assessment of you. All you can do is vote for whomever someone else provides for you. You can't think or imagine beyond that. A world full of Handys would be a stagnant world. It takes people capable of vision and the Handys of the world don't seem to have that.
Change begins when one imagines it, then one must put forth effort toward it. What's right doesn't change because it doesn't exist on a large scale. What's right is right.
Perhaps human beings will be evolved in 10,000 years. That's my estimate, it puts my life in perspective (or like Mark says, perhaps tomorrow or next week). Humans will never get anywhere without people who are willing to act without the backing of the crowd. So, your ridicule is lost on me Handy. I tend to feel sorry for people with such shallowness of vision.
Paladin Heart's (a Greek Anarchist) saying fits well here. I love it and it's good to repeat it when fits.
"So what if we are mortal, we all hold some immortality in our hands."
22 - Silas Kain
Some apples may taste better, but they're all still apples.
Not according to Genesis and the Garden of Eden Fable.
23 - roger nowosielski
I apologize for having contributed to this exchange and let no one's spirit be broken, please. That's the most important thing.
I'm certain that Handy's use of the phrase wasn't meant as a personal remark - it was just a way of dismissing a position we think ridiculous for good or bad reasons. But in effect, it's no different from the kind of behavior we're seeing all too often from the Right as well - when people resort to name calling and some such things rather than dealing with a view they find unpalatable.
I just wanted to say we're all in this together if we are truly intent on making the world, and not only America, a better place, so we should be mindful of the fact. Handy's heart is in the right place, and that's more important perhaps than anything else. Agreement on positions comes later, sometimes way later, so long of course that we're all open to a discourse. And I do believe that all of us are.
So let's kiss and make up, OK?
24 - Cindy
How does this squishy [and wordy] stuff you expound apply in the real world? How do you bring it down from airy-fairy dreamland to actually select leaders [or alternatives to leaders] that you can believe in?
Silas, is Handy saying I act 'gay'?
I just don't buy it. I think it's all idealistic, academic hot air.
Okay, Handy. I guess you never saw any info I posted on the Zapatistas in Mexico or on the Argentinian workers' movement?
Here is a video on the Argentine worker-run factory movement and their development of a working community that is consistent with anarchism. The Take by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis, is now up on youtube in 9 parts. However, this short 8 minute bit will give you an idea how it works, if you do not wish to see the whole documentary.
I also saw Klein and Lewis, who hosted a panel discussion in NYC, as well as a man and woman from the Argentine movement and also from the Chicago Windows and Doors factory (which handled things differently and occupied but stuck with Capitalism). The goals of people like these and many others is to move the world toward worker owned and operated collectives.
25 - Silas Kain
Silas, is Handy saying I act 'gay'?
Could you be a gay man trapped in a woman's body?
Handy's diatribe sounds a lot like something Sen. Ensign would say. But, then again, after listening to him pontificate about his own marital indiscretions I am left wondering bout his own mannerisms (Ensign's - not Handy's).