Saturday, March 24, 2007
Congrats to the Democrats
For playing politics with the troop withdrawal bill. Thanks for adding $24.6 billion in pork to get your bill passed. What does it say that you have bribe congressman to pull out the troops? I am frustrated that the political game is being played with this war. This is serious business and to play games like this makes me ill. Maybe there should be a law that says no pork on war related bills.
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9 comments:
I eagerly await Darwin's denoucement of the Democractic leadership using taxpayer money to win votes in the same way large corporations use campaign contributions to inffluence politicians.
Wait for it.......
I agree, and I'd just like to thank you for waiting until your republicans were safely out of control of the senate before getting mad about missapropriations related to the war. Ignoring your principles for all those long years while therepublicans were being corrupt must have been difficult- but you made it, and now you get to criticize the democrats with a clean conscience. Congratulations
I have no issues getting mad at republicans if they did the same thing. Unfortunately I was not paying close enough attention back then. If they did this now I would be pissed.
Still waiting to hear about the difference is Steve's argument.
Whats also interesting about this is the fact this nicely illustrates how congress can aovid the problem of the people's will. Since the people's will was not to bring an end to the war, the democrats had to find ways to get the congressman to go against the will of their people by providing ancillary funding to pork projects.
Darwin always argues that congress is under better control than business because you can vote politicians into office but you can vote businessmen into companies. I think this shows very nicely how elected officials can ingore their constituents reflect on how difficult it can be to control government.
???? what? When overall public opinion was in favor of the war, we elected a congress that favored the war and they kept voting to keep it going. Now public opinion is more against the war, we elected many more representatives who are against the war, and legislation to end the war is now in the works. What are YOU talking about?
You took that one hook line and sinker. You’re going to love me after this one.
You argue that we can trust government more so than business primarily because the people can control government decisions by voting in those politicians that represent their will. Thus, if you interpretation is right, then the congressional decision on any given bill should be an accurate reflection of the people’s will on that bill. This is an assumption you explicitly state in your most recent post.
In the context of the current argument, congress was unable to gather the votes needed to pass legislation placing a timetable on the Iraq war. You will recall that the democrats failed to gather the votes for the bill and offered pork to certain members in order to change their vote and acquire the majority. Therefore, by virtue of your own argument, we can conclude that the political will of the people is to not place a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq. Acknowledging this point leads to the conclusion that congress has failed to represent the will of the people and in turn means we enjoy no more benefit in controlling congress then we do corporations.
Of course, I’m quite comfortable with this conclusion. The fact that our current congress used my hard earned money to pay for votes I oppose to acquire the political power needed to express the ‘will of the people’ when the actual will of the people was not enough to pass the legislation is, from my perspective, politics as usual. But then I don’t harbor any delusions about having more control over congressional will then the control I have in deciding what companies and products to spend my hard earned money on.
Steve, again: when the public opinion was against a fixed time table for withdrawal from Iraq, we didn't get one. Now public opinion is in favor of it, and we're getting one. The sytem worked. Obviously there's a lot of corruption built into the system - which I want to reform in a number of ways you're against- but it still has accurately reflected the public will in this situation.
You think democrats weren't offering bribes to get a withdrawal timetable passed a year ago? And they weren't able to. This time they were.
Did you read my argument? A vote without pork would fail. If its the case that congress is an accurate reflection of the people's will, then it quite clear its the case that the people do not support a timetable for withdrawl. Unless your contention is that a bribed congress is a more accureate reflection of the people's will. In which case, whats your probelm with bribing congress.
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