ANOTHER Political Quiz

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.

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.

Damned if I know. I once thought our founders did a pretty good job of it, but as things stand, maybe not so much.But I think the answer in any democracy lies with the voters. An electorate informed and involved enough for a just and effective direct democracy would do just as well at representative democracy, and vice versa.Demand transparency, rein in big money: the essential political reform of our time. But the voters who indirectly created the current SCOTUS would do no better seating them directly.I'm not inalterably opposed to national referenda, but the bar to launching them should be high, or we'll get knocked around like ping pong balls.

Barracks aren't so bad.Let 'em live in slums and feed themselves with the average allotment of food stamps.