…. but really….

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/01/climate_change_causes_prostitution/

I suppose on the bright side since there is more supply prices will drop. However again, maybe it won’t work that way in a warmer world.

Luckily the US government does not have any other pressing issues to worry about and can spend time on this.

To be fair, the bill was introduced by a Representative from California.

Well yea

If not I would have been very surprised.

Well I'm an ignorant Democrat, and it doesn't make sense to me either.

Dude, it doesn't matter which party you belong to right now. Most congress people are a bunch of a-holes. If they weren't, my wife and I wouldn't be worried about how we're going to deal with a couple weeks of furloughs.

How can you have such a low opinion of our dear elected representatives? Why just look at the results of this Gallup poll, and you'll see that everyone most lots some OK, a very few Americans think they're doing a good job.

I knew that I had become a grumpy old curmudgeon when, about 10 years ago, I realized that I could not think of a single decision made by any politician at any level from dog catcher to president that I agreed with.

I can't remember the last time I voted for someone in an election; I just vote against the incumbent. Not that it seems to make the least bit of difference.

tanstaafl.

I guess when there're grid-locked they’re not making any dumb desiccations. However they need to do some things to keep the US running, don’t they?

I imagine the libertarians are making out good with all this government hate.

Thats the problem. Everyone assumes we only have two parties, then votes against people instead of for people. I made an even stronger effort to vote for people in the 2012 election. That meant research into every person on the ballot, not just the two from the major parties. If I didn't like any of the choices, I didn't vote for a particular seat.

Election reform, from both how we vote, and the money in the system is the key to political reform in this country. It's why I'm a supporter of the American Anti Corruption act. Does it have a chance of passing? Who knows. I'm not going to be a curmudgeon and sit on the sidelines, I'm going to try and make it happen, and make it very clear to the people who represent me that this is my top priority. They lose my vote if they go against it in 2014.


Gridlock is a natural and intentional part of our government, by design. It's how ideally it stays limited. However the current state of affairs is dire in that the basics aren't even being taken care of. Instead of gridlock over differences of opinion on new items, it's gridlock for gridlock sake to try and sway the next election. Congress is constantly campaigning, instead of doing their jobs. Due to also the above mentioned 2 party system, the extremists are in control of much these days, and they have helped turn words like moderation and compromise into dirty words. Same way Nixon's administration helped turn liberal into a dirty word.

Also a good demonstration of how the American Anti Corruption Act can help if passed. (Fancy HTML 5 site, scroll down to advance it)

http://letsfreecongress.org

Well, if prostitution can be blamed on global warming then I’ll blame the internet for gridlock.

As you mentioned you did a lot of research on the candidates and that scares the hell out of the politicians who are constantly campaigning. Before this www thing it was a lot more difficult to see a candidates voting record. Now it’s just a couple clicks away. Everything is easily accessed now and the politicians are scared to do anything that might piss anyone off. So they do nothing. Maybe we should adopt a truly democratic government and have everyone vote for everything on-line. We really don’t need politicians to represent our interests anymore.

They aren't scared of my vote either way. They are scared of pissing off the people lobbying to them. The internet is enabling some to be better informed, while also making it easier to misinform. The Tea Party is a great example of the power of the internet and modern media to misinform. It's not a grass roots moment as most think, it's a organized action by the cigarette lobbyists, and sadly it worked well. For every informed voter, there is likely a handful of misinformed voters, tricked by groups like the Tea Party. Same tricks that have gone on in the past, just much easier to spread and reach more people now.


I don't agree with this, as a true democracy is quite dangerous. The checks and balances in the design of our system are done so to ensure the needs of the minorities aren't easily stomped out by the majority. I suppose if we replaced only the house with a direct democracy, we could preserve the checks, while making redundant the largest part of our elected officials.

One additional challenge that goes against some of the core beliefs of this country, how do you force proper democracy, of which would require the people to vote. We barley get 50% of the voting population out during the big presidential elections.

The problem here is that the AAC act will make it more difficult for politicians to get re-elected, so they won't like it...and they (the politicians) are the ones who have to put it into law. How likely is that?

Maybe I'm overly cynical, but I really, truly believe that the absolute prime motivation for any action taken by any politician is to advance his chances for re-election. Nothing else takes precedence over that.

[curmudgeon hat]When I get to be King of the World, there'll be some changes made, just you wait and see![/curmudgeon hat]

tanstaafl.

I mostly agree with your cynical statement. And indeed that is a core of the problem, politicians see their job as a career in most cases. And it shouldn't be like that.

The reason I support the ACC is because the organization behind it not only has the act, but a plan to get it passed that could work. But it will take a lot of work by people in all areas to get the message out, and fight past the curmudgeon views of things can't change. The reason I see some hope in this is because of how many ex and a handful of current politicians agree with the need for the ACC. It's driven by people that know the political game well, and can help guide it to a possible ratification.

Pure Direct democracy implies, in practice, that citizens are constantly involved with politics, making decisions on topics, from trivial to critical, they cannot possibly be always familiar or expert on. While every citizen has ultimately the right to judge and evaluate decisions made by politicians, they cannot know all the technicalities of a political decision making process. Just as a senator will hardly have a clue of how to cure a cavity, what string theory really is, or when a VPN Tunnel is needed.

But, worst of all, pure Direct democracy implies that Citizens ultimately give up their freedom to be doing something different that Politics. One basic, simple reason for representative democracy in modern, complex societies, is that a Citizen may want to (and, for the common good, should!) be a farmer, or a dentist, or a scientist, or a software engineer, or a lawyer, or a teacher, or else, and not necessarily a politician.

I just want to make it clear that I didn't say there were only two parties. I said it didn't matter what party you're in, because congress is a cluster-f***.


I couldn't agree more. I've believed that for some time now, and it's the main area where I've rooted for McCain. He seemed to be working on that, but I honestly don't know how on earth we reverse that whole problem when the only people who can do so are the ones who are entrenched in it already...