Our wonderful political system (1 Viewer)

Rx_

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Political graft, election fraud, Zombies voting...
Its all an American Tradition.
That American Dream is the people who thought it was ever fair in the first place.
in this last election, just like the last dozen...
The Banks Won
 

Rx_

Nothing In Moderation
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Denver Colorao passed every tax increase from sales tax to providing a Nanny for adults.
I live 4 houses outside of Denver. No new taxes. The California immigrants moved inside the city of Denver.
We also got our first openly Polygmist Governor.
The media claimes he is openly gay. OK fine. His political advertisements show his wife and children. He he has more wives, just because they are male still makes him a Polygmist. .... Right!
In Memory of Stan Lee and his humor
 

jeffreydavidson

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There is a reason why a divided congress gets nothing done, that's the way our founders planned it. They did not want any one party to be able to run over the other with just a slim majority in one house or the other. Just like our county is divided, it is probably best changes not be made until there is a greater consensus. However, what has cause most problems is now activist courts that try to legislate from the bench instead of interpreting law they make law which lets legislatures off the hook of coming together. If that would stop then perhaps there would be more negotiating.
 

The_Doc_Man

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Jeffrey, you are not wrong about the intent of the founding fathers. The USA was supposed to be a country run by consensus government.

I see the problem with the courts as perhaps a LITTLE bit different than you described. (Not totally so, just a little variant.) The problem the courts have is that we (and they) must deal with the political equivalent of tectonic convergence zones. We have had MANY cases where freedom of X and freedom of Y converge from opposite directions - and it causes a political tremor.

Case in point: The privacy implied by the Due Process clause vs. the government's mandate to provide for common defense. With the advent of encrypted communications available in a hand-held device, it becomes possible for foreign agents and domestic interstate criminals to operate in such a way that a simple wire-tap is no longer adequate. Hence the government lawsuits and mandates regarding "back-door decryption." This collision of constitution issues lead to the massive "privacy vs. security" debate over smart phones with built-in high-quality encryption.

Courts find themselves trying to discern ways to help police and national law agencies get past some very effective encryption while providing protection against due process violations. The FISA courts are another part of that problem related to espionage rather than domestic crime.

It is the collisions of rights that drag the courts into situations where even wise men, experts in the field, can honestly have different views on the issue. The reason there is no law IN SOME CASES is because there is no clear consensus among the population, so how can THEY advise their congresspeople which way to vote? But if the case comes before the courts TODAY they need a solution TODAY.

I agree that the courts have appeared to become activist. But we have to remember that with our current system, courts don't make an activist ruling without a case having first come before them that was followed by some kind of "civil rights" appeal. So the courts have the case NOW, before the people have reached consensus. I don't envy the judges for a heartbeat.
 

Galaxiom

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The concept of democratic representative government was that the politicians would represent the people they governed. It worked quite well until political parties became dominated by career politicians who represented their own interests.

The only way out seems to be when parties self destruct because the politicians become completely self obsessed and lose all sight of what is supposed to be their primary purpose.

We are seeing this in Australia right now as the Liberal Party (actually a conservative party, despite the name) is going into meltdown.
 

kevlray

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I plan to move to Missouri after I retire in a few years. They just booted out a corrupt governor. Who knows what will happen in a few years. :)
 

Steve R.

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However, what has cause most problems is now activist courts that try to legislate from the bench instead of interpreting law they make law which lets legislatures off the hook of coming together
The progressive left has been extremely successful in advancing judicial activism. Though I am not a lawyer, it appears that the progressive left has established a new legal concept, that of "disparate impact". Essentially it holds that if a case can be made that a certain group of people will somehow "suffer" that the court can invalidate a law.

As one thematic example, the progressive left insists that every vote be counted, an admirable goal. However, when laws are implemented to clean-up the voter roles and/or require voter identification these laws are immediately challenged in court as having a "disparate impact" and in many cases the laws have been invalidated (overturned). The Washington Times reported: "Fla. Dems sue to extend voter registration period as hurricane approaches". Sounds reasonable at first blush, after all hurricanes are very disruptive. However, it is not within the purview of the court system to "modify" a law simply based on potential hurricane impacts. The appropriate solution would have been for the legislature to convene an emergency session. Extending the voter registration period is only within the purview of the legislature. Fortunately, this lawsuit was tossed out.

The progressive left is also demanding through the court system that a citizenship question be deleted from the US Census despite the fact that this question has been historically on the Census. In this case, the progressive left is demanding that the court system interfere with a decision of the Executive Branch of government. CNN reported: Supreme Court to hear case related to census citizenship question . Again this is an inappropriate use of the judicial system to interfere with operation of the Executive Branch.

In conclusion, both the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branches are having some of their decisions interfered with through (inappropriate) judicial activism. Of course, I need to end by acknowledging that we do need to have a judicial system that uphold the rule-of-law for this country.
 

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