Great question but not many good answers

 

We The Insane
[Via Blog Maverick]

Why do we  allow our elected officials to do the same things over and over again. You know the definition of insanity ? Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.  We as a country are absolutely insane for thinking that another committee of politicians is going to be able to do anything different from what they have done before.

A quick history:

First we had the :

National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010.

It consisted of 18 members, all but 4 were current or former politicians. They came up with a proposal that was presented in December of 2010.  It was shot down after reminding the 23 people who read it that the economy was shitty and our future was worse . It was shot down because those same elected officials and the people who give them money  couldn’t agree on whether this particular plan gave us a roadmap on who our  economic problems should be addressed.

Then in July of 2011 as the drop dead date for the expansion of the Debt Ceiling approached, knowing our economy sucked and the future looked worse, we once again watched our politicians procrastinate, postulate,  posture and protect their election hopes rather than address our nation’s economic problems. When the deadline reached the final hour they did what all politicians of our era love to do, they pawned it off.  In this case they put it in the hands of another committee.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction

So lets review where we are on August 17th, 2011.

In early 2010, knowing the economy sucked and the future looked cloudy because of huge federal debt and problematic tax and spending policies The President created a committee composed of 18 individuals, 14 of whom were politicians. They spent 7 months working to come up with a bi-partisan solution which was then shot down after its release on Dec 1 2010.

Eight months later knowing that the Debt Ceiling needed to be expanded and knowing the economy sucked and the future looked cloudy because of huge federal debt and problematic tax and spending policies The President created a committee composed of 12 individuals, all of whom were politicians. Its called the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

You see what is going on here ?

We as citizens must be insane if we let politicians continue to try to solve a problem that they have demonstrated time and time again that they are unable to solve.

[More]

Cuban asks what could be done and, as can be seen from the responses , not a whole lot.  I do like the idea of increasing the number of Representatives in the house tremendously to something like 1500 members. The number of citizens per representative would drop and it would become much more expensive to control the House by special interests. Maybe they could all teleconference and vote from home so we would not need a new building.

Of course, the real problem is the Senate. All it takes these days is to buy off 40 Senators, representing perhaps 10% of the population, to gum up the works.

Perhaps, as one person suggested, we should just move to a parliamentary system, as it is the most popular form of representative democracy int he world. Perhaps for a reason.

But all of these would require tremendous changes in our Constitution and I just do not see that happening at all.