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Originally Posted by spence
I'll certainly agree that those in positions of public authority should be held to a high standard. Congress has the ability to legislate away potential conflicts of interest which doesn't have any real value for their constituents.
But again the real issue here isn't privacy but policy. Interesting new Pew poll on American's opinions.
-spence
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As far as policy being "the" issue, Congress has much power over policy, so should not be exempt from the same scrutiny as presidential candidates. But policy is not only the purview of all our governments from local to federal including all the branches of those governments, even their judiciarys, it also requires the participation of The People in and their influence on those governments. That participation and influence was originally intended to be more direct on, and closer to, those governments. It has progressively become more distant and indirect, almost to the point of subservience. We seem to lack the will, desire, or "time" to devote to the more constant participation that is demanded to preserve the power that once was bequeathed to us. We are hearded into polls structured to elicit responses which can be used as evidence to support "policies" concocted by distant, unelected bureaucrats--quite as Woodrow Wilson, one of the fathers of progressivism, said must be done to influence us in the direction of the will of the administrative state.
The Pew poll that you link doesn't impress me with a rational meaning to exist. What is the purpose of a poll of the opinions of a basically uninformed, uninvolved (except for personal gain) selection of people. You asked previously in this thread in a response to Sea Dangles "So we should run the U.S.A. on the basis of share holder value?" One might ask, in response to your linked poll "So, should we run the U.S.A. on the basis of polls?"
Was a poll like this done in 1800, or 1840, or 1875, 0r 1900, or 1932, or 1960? Would average American opinions of the rich been appreciably different in the past?
If it has any meaning, it is a blue print for waging class warfare. If polls show a "majority", or "most" Americans believe that the wealthy or Republicans "favor" or "will benefit" the wealthy if elected, then government by polls demands that we never elect a rich person or a Republican. And, after purging the rich and Republicans from government, we find that politicians still get wealthy and there is still disparity in income and wealth among the people, even though the income gap would have narrowed due to policies of middle class and poor politicians who favor the middle class and poor and which would have dwindled the rich class and its creation of wealth, there would obviously be more work to be done. The middle class, having more opportunity for education, employment and wealth (decreased as it might be) would by dint of greater intelligence and wealth than the poor, have more access to the seats of government, and by downsizing the economic scale due to the suppression of wealth, there would be less opportunity for the poor to rise out of poverty, so the income gap would again grow and the public opinion polls of the now greater numbers of poor would begin to resemble your poll, with the middle class now being the wealthy who could not be trusted as much as the poor, and who would be seen as greedy, and who would be viewed as favoring the middle class over the poor. So, by public opinion poll, the middle class would have to be purged from the functions of government, and the poor would rule, becoming more plentiful as wealth and greed, and dishonesty were removed from the seats of power, and what wealth remained, would be distributed to the poor, by poor politicians who favered and benefitted the poor. And the poor would multiply so that virtually all would be poor . . . and equal . . . so class warfare would no longer be necessary.
So, Spence,how should we run the U.S.A.? Might it be better to run it by a system of individual freedom to pursue individual dreams garanteed by immutable laws and inalienable rights? Or by the opinions of shifting majorities discerned by polls and an administrative system that directs the opinions to respond to such prefabricated polls?
Communism has been tried and been found very wanting. Socialism seems to work better for a longer period of time but then degrades in the direction of communism. Neither system satisfies the human potential and desires of disparate natures, of those with different inherent capabilities and the ensuing dreams of realizing those capabilities.
I know you've professed a desire for "fairness" and "responsibility" in government, but haven't stated how those would be achieved, nor even what they mean. So, Spence, how should we run the U.S.A.?