ANOTHER Political Quiz

You didn't address this part:

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What you could have would be a debate on the internet with facilitators trained to work towards a consilience of opinions. People could follow and then decide on the merits of the arguments.

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This could operate in the fashion of the Occupy Movement General Meetings to arrive at a consensus rather than simple up\down majority vote approach.And then there are conventions where laws could be discussed and then voted on, similar to

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Article V

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The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

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Which is an argument for clean simple bills with no frills and loopholes. Which two of the three are both?Sometimes life is simple, and I like to go with Thoreau: simplify simplify simplify.Enjoy

Sorry - can't resist making this flippant rejoinder...RAZD writes: Then why didn't he just say "simplify"???

In Oregon we can vote on bills from initiative petitions if they get enough valid signatures and bills that are referred by the legislature. We also get laws that are passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor. I am not sure what decides whether it goes to the people or just the legislature. The legislature seems to mostly make decisions about budget items.In the past their we some bills passed by the people that clearly were unconstitutional and cost a bunch of wasted tax money to have repealed.The bills are screened more closely now for obvious flaws but some still slip through. There are usually a few really stupid measures on the ballot and they usually get voted down, but not always. We have had more than our share of the discriminatory anti-gay measures, it seems to me.We have had some that really turned out great and have stood the test of time. Our bottle bill and the public beach bill are 2 that I like. The Oregon coast is all public land. There are no private beaches.Oregonians have have voted down sales taxes something like 9 times and also self-service gas pumping.Occasionally we will have two opposing bills on the ballet and it creates a real mess when they both pass. At least when that happens we all get a good laugh.It does seem to me that on some of the major issues (like health care, Social Security, the future of publicly funded science, etc.) that will affect the whole country, maybe for decades, that some form of referendum should be passed to the voters. I feel this should especially happen in cases where Congress is going against the will of the people by a large margin.Maybe, as polarized as the whole country seems to be right now, we would end up being just as grid locked and angry if the people were voting directly as we are with the assholes in Congress.

What? You can't pump your own gas?

We mostly look at it as we don't have to pump our own gas. It provides quite a few jobs. Our prices don't seem to be higher than neighboring states where you have to pump your own.

So, its illegal to pump your own gas?I wouldn't like being unable to pump my own gas when I wanted to, and I'm against criminalizing it.But I like to bag my own groceries too.

I have no objection to the part I didn't object to. Sometimes you don't need to fly; we build aircraft for the times when you do need them.Whether Thoreau thought life "should" be simple and whether you agree with him are not particularly relevant. There are people who see complications (whether there are any or not) and there are people who like complications. The democratic system has to accomodate those people too.

You can't pump your own gas in New Jersey: a common bumper sticker says, "Jersey Girls Don't Pump Gas".I haven't found any other limits.

As I remember, I have voted several times on this and every time I imagined my elderly mother having to pump her own gas in the winter in Bend, Oregon.

Tanypteryx writes Just wondering what a lengthly exposure to gas fumes means for the job worker over a lifetime - do they have the equivalent of Black Lung Insurance?It is very good that they got the lead out, however.
Yay.

I don't know about that. The pump nozzles have a rubber gizmo the seals against the gas tank filler hole that helps limit the fumes.It used to be that it was mostly high school kids working part time pumping gas, but the guys at my favorite gas station started working there in high school and are still there 30 years later.

Parts of it, yes.But even as it stands, the 14th Amendment is not interpreted literally right now. If it were interpreted literally, there would be no point to either the ERA and the issue of gay rights would have been settled long ago.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Maybe not grid locked. It seems to me that the public is going to make some call if there is a referendum.

Perhaps the best option is a mixture of representation and direct democracy.Representatives do the brunt of day to day businessReps are subject to recall votes as a direct check\balance on their votingPay for reps decided by direct votesBTW -- why are reps in US congress paid by the Federal Gov't: shouldn't they be paid by the states they represent?

Maybe they shouldn't be paid at all. They're almost all millionaires--if not when they take office, shortly after.They mostly buy the office, anyway, then make a profit. We the People should get a cut.I find direct democracy a terrifying notion. At least our representative democracy often slows things down enough for the fever of the day to pass.My view mirrors Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry, "Agent of the Terran Empire": Bureaucracies are often chiefly useful for their inertia. Efficiency can be dangerous.