Debate Now Money & Government

[Sun Devil 92]

Most of you are probably familiar with the Bell City scandal story which broke in 2010. Bell City is a relatively poor area of Los Angeles with a population of 40,000 to 50,000. The city council, utilizing some recent state legislation, managed to vote itself huge salaries (I mean some pretty good stuff). Robert Rizzo, the city administrator was making in the mid 200K a year and received a salary increase to over 400 K per year. Additionally, his pension payment (if I understand it correctly, was going to be almost 1 million per year. All of this funded by the 40 or 50 thousand residents of a fairly poor city.

These members of the city council are not supposed to be partisan. And nothing I've read gives any indication they ran for office in a partisan fashion.

You might know Duke Cunningham as a pilot who flew F-4's in Vietnam and was part of a very famous air engagement.

You might also know him as the guy who spent eight years in some form of incarceration for bribery charges in Souther California. Cunningham was convicted on charges of steering lucrative contracts towards select contractors in exchange for bribes. Cunningham was a Reepublican.

there is the William Jefferson story that would follow. That got Jefferson serious jail time. Jefferson was a democrat.

Now you have stuff going on at DIA. I stress that these are only allegations. However, all of this concerns me and has for many many years.

While I like the idea of government doing some things that far right wingers don't, I do have concerns about the availability of money that can be used to improve ones own standing.

I wonder about controls.

We see this at the federal level in so many different ways.


QUESTION TO BE DISCUSSED:

Do you believe we have a good federal government in terms it's honesty and integrity ?

Do you believe your state government has a managable levle of illegal activities ?

Do you believe the amount of money that flows through the system is just to much temptation ?

Do you believe there are sufficinet controls on our government ?

RULES FOR THIS THREAD:

1. Stay on topic.

2. Define your metrics. But keep in mind it is not necessary to only discuss legal issues. Moral issues are fair game.

3. Provide links for any "information " you wish to provide.

4. Sound logic is welcome.

 

[RedTeamTex]

"The genius of representative democracy is that is rounds up the worst trouble-makers in the land and exiles them to the same city where they keep each other occupied." (c)

If our system of politics relied on virtuous people in politics, we'd be in trouble. Fortunately our founders instead implemented a system where human nature could be counted on to do some of the supervisory work for us.

This served us well for a long time, but we've gradually fiddled with it for so long that the trouble-makers dog-fighting each other have collapsed into a singular planet of self-interest (at the expense of ours, the governed.)

Capital-L Liberal political theory instead tells us that centralized government is our best and most potent reservoir of collective virtue.

FDR's unbridled expansion of multiple executive redundancies at the level of government least reachable by voter influence put us on a path where we can't trust the trouble-makers are checking each other half as much as they should. (I particularly enjoyed the memoirs of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson Present at the Creation and his observations of FDR's managerial indulgences. However, as much of the blame belongs to those who followed him.) We now have a system where a burgeoning bureaucratic city calcified in waste and self-interest entrusted with trillions of dollars per year that is somehow supposed to be supervised by just 536 accountable through elections by 300,000,000+. This is of course ludicrous. Human nature ensures it. Those hypnotized by the pied piper's song/(civic religion) of "government goodness" vastly misunderstand that human nature--and hopelessly under-weigh its vices in government against those of the governed they believe need government intervention to change.


If it's important for government to do, then it should be the local, maybe state government doing it. Then it's within reach of the people to oversee and affect with the power consumers of such 'service' deserve. (If Liberals had really cared about the success of all those policy agendas, they'd have insisted on the same thing a long time ago. Instead, for some reason their retort is always the same thing: we just need federal government to be a little bigger and then it'll all turn the corner.)

The 536 people elected to federal responsibility should have a prayer of doing a manageable job...managing only what the federal government should be doing--and not quite so outnumbered by smooth-talking lifers in the bureaucracy.

 

[candycorn]

1. Do you believe we have a good federal government in terms it's honesty and integrity ?

I think the scope of multi billion dollar budgets gets into an area where you cannot reasonably expect a single person to exercise understanding for each expenditure much less control for each expenditure be it ordering office supplies or smaller programs a field office may have started because it makes sense in Pensacola and may not make sense (or have a need for) in Pittsburgh.

1. Do you believe your state government has a managable levle of illegal activities ?

Not sure what you mean by this one. I grew up in Texas and South Carolina. I can say without hesitation or qualification, I trust the Federal government miles further than I would trust either one of those governments.

1. Do you believe the amount of money that flows through the system is just to much temptation ?

No. Otherwise, you'd see this in every government.

1. Do you believe there are sufficinet controls on our government ?

Yes. I'm one of those who thinks that we get the government we deserve. We hve the vote and we need nothing else. We just need a more engaged electorate.

 

[Rambunctious]

We have watered down the electoral process in our nation. We have a system that allows anyone in our country to vote. They can be totally literate but yet they may still vote. We have an ever increasing ignorant voting populous.
This will always attract scoundrel's and self promoters to attempt to win public office.
This isn't a very popular concept but we would all be better served if we had limitations to just whom may cast a vote in America. At one time in our history one must have had to own a business and or own property to be able to vote. I'm not arguing for that to return but we should at the very least have to pass a basic civics exam.
I hope I haven't gone too far astray from the OP's debate topic but I just feel that there is a flaw in our voting system and if we want the cream of the crop ie a Jimmy Stewart type to fill the vacant seats of government then we all need to wise up.