“I can’t tell one airplane from another. To me, they are all just marginal costs with wings.” —-Alfred Kahn, Jimmy Carter’s Father of Airline Deregulation. Its been bankruptcies and deep down cycles ever since.

 

the bill to extend to age 65 was introduced and sponsored by house democrats and both the house and the senate were controlled by the dems. The house even had the same speaker as sits there today, so to imply that just because a republican president signed it into law that it was solely due to a republican Sitting president is a fallacy.

you say make a change, yet the people who are running the house and senate on both sides have been in Washington for much much longer than a President elected 4 years ago and yet they have kept the status quo for far too long. And don’t nominate a man who has been in both the senate and the executive branch for the better part my life and now all of a sudden claims changes need to happen in Washington.

IF you really want to change the country, flush out the house and senate (both sides) and vote in people who actually remember what being a normal American citizen is like.

IF you really want our government to function again, force your state legislatures to vote for a convention of states to enact term limits for the senate and congress, restrict them from spending more than they take in, and prevent companies from being able to lobby them so they can serve their purpose of representing the PEOPLE and not business.

IF you actually give a **** about how the next 10-20-100 years of this country will go, force an end to the two party system where they pander the far extremes and forget about all the people in the middle.

Most importantly, remember none of these elected officials in the house and senate are our LEADERS. They are not supposed to be part the elite and revered by the common man. They are not supposed to make a career out of fleecing the American population. They are supposed to be our voices and should be doing what WE THE PEOPLE elected them to do, represent us!

 

great post!

 

I agree, unfortunately it’s all about winning as opposed to compromise nowadays. People like to deride politicians “doing deals” over steak dinners at Charlie Palmers but if it moves this country forward more than three inches a year, I’m all for it.

 

Where did I imply that?


The "change" achievable in this election is the choice of continuing with a divisive President who is questioning the very foundation of our democratic process with his continual assertion that if he loses the election it can only be the result of fraud OR we can elect a president who seems to, at the very least, belief in our democratic process.


Agreed. But I also want to know who the "normal Americans" are. I'm not going to vote for Q-Anon nutjob just to remove a career politician.

I agree in principle but appreciate the irony that we are in the middle of one of the largest lobbying efforts in airline history to encourage another few billion in handouts to our industry. We are lock-step, hand-in-hand, with management to get it done.

Hmm. Not sure how I can "force an end" to this. About the best I can do is vote for third party candidates.

Nature of the beast.

 

Read The Federalist. The framers intentionally structured the government to make it hard to do things. The fear (correct in my opinion) was that if it was easy to "move forward more than three inches a year" one side or the other would take power and completely change the structure of things to the detriment of the other side. The intent was a super majority to be necessary to make structural changes.

 

I didn’t word that correctly, I meant more than three steps a year because BOTH sides compromised and agreed on the result....not that one side rammed it down the other side’s throat.

 

I would like to add that we already have term limits. The House every 2 years and the Senate every 6 and the President every 4. It’s pretty simple. You don’t like your representation vote them out. Simple as that.

It’s the way the elitists who founded this country intended it. It’s written on the constitution. Oh and make no mistake you speak badly about the elitists who are in our government now, who do you think founded this country? It sure as heck wasn’t a bunch of rough and tumble farmers and blacksmiths. It was the richest of the rich. It was George Washington, who hid it well by placing most of his assets in his wife’s name, Two of the top 5 richest were Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock. Robert Morris, who was the richest, helped finance the Revolution and Stephen Girard and he financed the War of 1812. My point is the framers of this country were the elite, they were not the common man. They got their financing by appealing to the other elites and framed the constitution to their benefit. Why is it 200 and some odd years later you want to change it? If you like the economic history of this country you should want to keep it status quo. You speak like the inadequacy you see now is something new? Like you didn’t know the richest of the rich started the revolution to avoid paying the rightfully due tax to the King for protection during the French Indian War.

Related I always like going to an experienced mechanic for my car. Preferring one that has worked on my type of car, than trusting some new guy that just hung up his sign. I’m not saying the inexperienced guy is bad, just saying the experienced one statistically has a better chance of fixing my issue the first time. Sure the experienced one may charge me more for his experience and he may be able to fix the issue in 10 minutes and charge me the book rate of 2.5 labor hours but that’s part of the process and I understand it. Just saying this analogy says a lot about how I feel about politics.

 

The only problem now is that progressives found a way to more easily do thing without congress by instituting the executive bureaucracy and activist judges who legislate from the bench. Those are other reasons for the states to call for a convention.



Yeah, and the presidency also had a term limit every four years until 22nd amendment. You know what he meant, enacting similar amendment for congress or any other lifetime appointment.

Also, its preposterous to compare the founding fathers to today’s political elite. For one thing, the elites of our founding actually had careers outside government before seeking office. Today, we have someone running for president who hasn’t had a non-government elected job since 1970. And there are many more like him, career politicians who have spent more than a generation in elected office.

Next, the revolution wasn’t started by rich wanting to avoid taxes. If you read the declaration, and not just the first two of four parts of it, but also the third part that list the grievances. It’s a long list, not just rightful complaints of taxes. Besides, the same “elites” that took office in the new government have enacted taxes.

Lastly, as for experience, read the document. The only experience required for congress or pres/vp, is age (and citizenship). And the reason why is because unlike technical crafts like mechanics, elected office only requires the experience of living long enough in the country bounded by the laws enacted by government. You don’t need technical training on rules of order or how to write a bill. That’s done by congressional aides anyway. It’s the polices turned to bills that come from regular people who have earned a living under the laws passed by congress that is the only experience required to what to pass or not pass. It wouldn’t be any different than you or me deciding what is best for the country. We don’t need technical training for that, only experience in living within the country bound by the laws passed. So you comparison is absurd. Right now we have elected people who pass laws who feel they don’t have to abide by them, like getting hair done, buying jewelry, going to their lake home, going to the gym, etc. They’ve been there so long they either forgot what it was not to be an elite or never have had any other job!

 

this thread is now lowering our collective IQ