Day: February 1, 2010

The Nation’s Biggest Joke

Yes, there is something that is funny about the conditions in the US….that is if the middle class circling the drain is not funny…..banks controlling everyone’s lives is not funny…..loss of many many jobs is not funny…..but there is humor in the US…….what could make anyone smile?  The Congress of the United States…..that is what deserves a belly laugh…..

Here is a group, elected by the people, or so we are told to believe,  that does nothing to help the very people they claim to represent….the Senate is worse than a dysfunctional family…..this group NO LONGER works for the common good of the country and the House is closing in on the same spot…..

Their sole functions, these days, is to bring the gears of governance to a grinding halt…..no longer are they the voice of the people but rather the voice of their own egos, interests and silly political loyalties…..no longer is theirs the voice of reason as it was intended from the start of the country……they are puppets with the hands of special interests up their butts working their mouths….

Gone are the days of the people, by the people and for the people……America is suffering and suffering badly, yet nothing is moving in Washington with the exception of the mouths of opposition and it is special interest opposition not something people are opposed to in any way…..

It seems to appear that the American people are waking up to the circus that is Washington and especially to the clowns that are the Congress….NO one wants to compromise, but that is what the three branches is all about…..NO one wants to compromise on behalf of the people that sent them to Washington…..No one wants to earn their salary as a Congressperson, instead they want to play at the theatrics of politics…they play to the camera….they play to the sound bite……if I do not produce at my job I am thrown to the wolves, but yet these ass clowns can play and go on retreats after working a week and they get re-elected……..what are you people thinking?

It is time to drop the curtain of the THEATER OF THE ABSURD……they had their shot and the critics are panning them……time to move on and find answers to problems….not create more problems for the problems…..

If you have had enough then DO SOMETHING about it!  You have a vote…USE IT!

Whose Idea Was It Anyway?

Inkwell Institute

Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  American History/Political History

Paper #1

Note:  In writing this piece I was confronted with a couple other things that need to be analyzed…these are Representative Democracy and Bureaucracy…..please watch for these posts also…..

There has been many conversations on whether the electoral college is still a relevant concept or not….and whether it is still necessary or not……

The Electoral College was the Founders last ditch attempt to keep the reins of democracy out of the hands of the masses…..they did not want the people to get an overdose of democracy that would prove fatal, in the minds of the Founding Fathers….

The Framers of the Constitution were fearful of direct democracy and the “tyranny of the majority” it might produce. Consequently, they created a complex “filtering” process known as the Electoral College which was intended to insulate the selection of the President from the whims of the people. The Electoral College is comprised of “electors,” individuals who cast the electoral votes for their states. Originally, electors were free to cast their votes as they chose. Today, electors are “bound” or “committed” by state law to vote for the candidate who received the most popular votes in their state. With the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska, states give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins a majority of votes in the state. (The procedure for electing the President is outlined in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.)

Each state has a number of electoral votes equal to the number of Senators and House Members it is eligible to send to the Congress. For example, the state of New York elects two Senators (as every other state does) and thirty-one Members of the House. New York, then, has thirty-three electoral votes. The total number of electoral votes in the Electoral College is 538–one for each of the one hundred Senators and 435 House Members plus the three allotted to the District of Columbia by the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution.

Electors are chosen by the political parties in each state. When voters cast their ballots in favor of a presidential candidate they are actually voting for the electors of the same party as that candidate. When a candidate wins the popular vote in a state, he or she wins that state’s electoral votes. Those votes are formally cast by the electors chosen to represent the winning candidate’s party in each state.

Under the original rules of the Electoral College, as established by the Constitution, electors cast separate votes for President and Vice-president. Whoever received a majority of electoral votes would be the President and the runner-up would become the Vice-President. However, a problem arose in the election of 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes. When no candidate receives a clear majority of electoral votes, the Constitution specifies that the House of Representatives shall choose the President. It took the House thirty-six ballots to finally select Thomas Jefferson as the third President of the United States. To avoid a repeat of such problems, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution provided for presidential and vice-presidential candidates to run as a team, not individually.  (thanx to thisnation.org for some of the content)

This plan put to rest the notion of the great unwashed masses ever controlling the government….and that was a major concern of the elitists that founded this country…..how to keep the people at arms length when it comes to the reins of government….they found a good direction and it began with the electoral college….

In my opinion, the electoral college has out lived its usefulness….As it is today it favors the two party system to the exclusion of any third party, whether a popular party or not…the EC assumes that the people are too stupid to actually participate beyond a normal election…unfortunately I would agree with that assessment, but not because of stupidity but rather a lack of education…….

Researching this post lead me to other parts of the political system that I feel compelled to add thoughts on…….

Next in the series will be Representative Democracy……….