Oh, FFS. Don't you people learn anything?

Just saw on the news where incumbents are winning primary elections all over.

What? No, really. What?

What are you people thinking?

From what I've seen, popular opinion sez:
- You're not happy with the Healthcare bill as passed. PASSED BY CURRENT HOLDERS OF OFFICE.
- You're not happy with the economy as it's running. AFFECTED BY CURRENT HOLDERS OF OFFICE.
- You think the "economic recovery" isn't working, the "economic stimulus" programme isn't doing anything useful, and the whole TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Programme) was a silly notion. PASSED BY CURRENT HOLDERS OF OFFICE.
- You think that banks that were about to fail should have just been allowed to fall over - and we emerge from the other side "leaner and meaner." You don't see that Federal funds (essentially, OUR money - NOT the government'!) should have been used to bail out these outfits. But, TARP and the stimulus passed. PASSED BY CURRENT HOLDERS OF OFFICE.

Granted, these weren't derived from any scientific polling - just my day-to-day interactions with people all over. I talk fairly regularly with people all over the nation - and, in fact, all over the world (God bless the Internet.) I tend to keep track of what people are thinking - and the people I talk to overseas think that the TARP/stimulus programme is even sillier and more useless than we think here!

Now, recall your high school Civics class. What is an "incumbent?" It is an individual who holds a particular office, that is seeking re-election for that office.

What did I call out in ALL CAPS for each point above.

Now, could someone tell me please how keeping the same jackasses in office will actually help? Flush 'em out and start over!

The. Incumbents. Are. The. Problem. I don't know how to say it any plainer than that.

I don't want to overthrow the government - I want to fire them! Terminate with prejudice, and don't let them have retirement benefits, either (they shouldn't be in office long enough to get them.)

I'm tired of elections proving the short memory of the American voting public. I'd like to propose an alternate system (it's not really my idea - but I think it's a good one. Kevin, if you're reading this, your idea is getting exposure... I'm adding my own twist, but the basic idea is still yours.)

According to Lord Acton, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." What the estimable Lord Acton failed to mention was that, "Power attracts the corruptible."

What does this mean? Simple - the ideal individual to wield anything like supreme political power at any particular level is the man who does not want it. Easy.

So, let's eliminate the idea of voting. Let's get rid of the Electoral College entirely. Retain the current qualifications for holding office - but I'd like to add one: In order to hold political office, an individual must have: 1) Become a stable journey-level tradesman, 2) Completed a term or a career of military service satisfactorily, 3) Raised children to adulthood without accepting any sort of public assistance, or 4) as a reinstatement of the "Pauper's Oath," he may not be on any sort of public assistance. Further, if he had accepted public assistance, he must have been off of it for the five years prior to being selected.

"Being selected?" Yeah - we're not voting for people anymore. All elected offices will still serve their terms as before, with the singular exception that they are selected by lottery, without regard for political opinion or views, entirely at random. Service of a term of office renders you ineligible for another term of office for a like period of years (if you get a six-year Senate term, say, you now may not hold office at any level for the next six years.)

President and Vice-President, or Governor and Lieutenant Governor, or any other "Primary/Secondary" office level, are to be selected separately. This is a nod to the "good old days" - when the President was the man who got the most votes, and the Vice President was the first runner-up in election (none of this "running mate" crap anymore. If you know that your second-in-command doesn't share your viewpoints on various issues, it makes you more likely to temper your own opinions.)

Further, sitting judges at all levels will be instructed to include the precept of "Jury Nullification" when they instruct juries prior to deliberation. This is something else that's fallen by the wayside - you've probably never heard of it.

What is "Jury Nullification?" In the event that someone is being tried, it's possible for the jury to render a verdict of "Guilty" (yep, you did it!) "Not Guilty" (it wasn't proven to us satisfactorily that you did it,) or "Annulled" (the law you're being tried under is stupid, and we're getting rid of it.) While this shouldn't apply in all cases - anything that is considered malum in se shouldn't be stricken - it would give us the opportunity to handle so many of these asinine malum prohibitum laws that keep getting thrown at us. Jury Nullification was meant to be the "final check and balance" on governments - an opportunity for direct involvement by the People to put the brakes on the legislative process.

Of course, something else will have to happen - the entire process of jury service will have to be revised so that people quit trying to get out of it (if you don't take part in the system, you don't get to complain. If you are legally able to vote, do so. If you are legally able to serve on a jury, do so. Quit trying to dodge your responsibility!)

Lemme give ya a f'r instance:

As it stands now, when you get a jury summons in CA, you essentially have to put your life on hold while you're finding out whether or not you're even going to be called. And they wonder why people dodge it so much! You call in back and forth for the whole damned week, just trying to find out if you have to actually show up. If you show up, you end up sitting around waiting to find out what's going on next (I've been through this a couple of times. Didn't get selected tho - they didn't like my opinions.)

Let's shift things around a bit. There are forty working hours in a week. Select, say, four hundred people for that week. Divide into tens - 1-10 shows up at 0900 on Monday, 11-20 at 1000, 21-30 at 1100, ... You can shift it up a bit - but it still results in ten people showing up an hour. You can call in on Sunday night to find out which hour you show up for - this simplifies your planning.

On the off chance that they manage to empanel all of the juries for that timeframe, you just put up a message at the end of the day that says, "Thank you for your service, you are no longer required." You call at the end of each day (sometime after, say, 1730 - give 'em time to record the message) and see if the whole show has been called off. If it has, get on with your life. If it has not, your reporting time hasn't changed - if you were on for 1100 Thursday morning, you plan on showing up at 1100 Thursday morning unless you are cancelled.

Isn't that much easier? Of course, there are still reasons to be excused (primarily for reasons of hardship,) but we can raise the bar a bit on those to make sure that jury service would cause a genuine hardship (how many people lie to get out of it?) Medical excuses can be readily checked - just give them your doctor's card.

Who was it that said a jury trial isn't any good because "your fate will be decided by twelve people who were too stupid to get out of jury duty?" Change the system - we can get intelligent jurists.

Juries would be selected from the same pools as statesmen, under the lottery system. Could make for interesting reactions to the summons - "They want me to be President again! Dammit..." (but you don't get out of political service. Since it's a "job" at that point, you'd continue to make the same money - up to a certain point - just that your paycheques now come from the US Treasury.

NB: Under the lottery system, anyone who would actually want to run for office would be automatically disqualified. Anyone who has been previously elected to political office would be automatically disqualified (and no-one get "retirement benefits" from political service anymore. This includes those who had been previously elected. If all you've got to sell is jawbone, you'd damned well better get trained in something productive...  Pushing an idiot stick or working as a gandy-dancer comes to mind.)

Something I've often said - I don't want to hold office, despite the number of people who would like to see me in the Oval Office. I really don't. I'd probably have to kick my own ass on a daily basis just to keep myself honest.

However, if it was given to me, I'm not going to turn it down. I still don't want it, but I'm more and more inclined to think I can do a better job than most of the others have of late. Just get used to seeing me in working clothes or issue fatigues - it's to remind myself (and anyone else around me) that I'm there to work. I don't want to hold office, but I want even less to be one of those pols that creates problems and then "solves" them to show how useful I am - I want to solve the problems that my predecessors left, since they're the bigger issues.

If elected, I'm not going to campaign for a second term. If you think I'm still needed, you can re-elect me. If you want to save my second term for later, fine. I've got other things I'd rather be doing than book tours (at least for my memiors. I'm working on technical books - and I enjoy doing that more...) and speaking engagements. I hate politics, I despise the political process, and I'd likely drill the whole political system a new arsehole from the inside out, given half a chance.

Things I'd like to do, if I could?
- Rescind 26CFR.
- Eliminate the "Progressive income tax."
- Institute a "flat tax."
- Eliminate many of the fees and taxes we pay for no good reason.
- Streamline the government.
- Get rid of the annual trade deficit with the Pacific Rim (not by using tariffs - but by balancing trade. "You want us to buy from you? You've got to buy from us in return.")
- Rescind the National Firearms Act of 1934 in its entirety.
- Rescind the Gun Control Act of 1968 (and other "Crime Bills" that have followed/augmented it.)
- Rescind the "Crime Bills" that don't have anything to do with crime.
- Decriminalise marijuana (it wasn't made illegal because it's a drug - it was made illegal about the time DuPont Chemical released Nylon, because it was competition. The lobbyists simply played up the narcotic aspects of the plant - through history, it was used more for fibres than narcotic purposes anyhow.)

Given a chance, I'm sure I could find plenty of other things that will want doing. The primary thrust of all of this would be to make America - and Americans - more self-sufficient. Knowing that the government has no duty to protect the population as individuals, I wish to restore their ability (and the choice!) to secure themselves effectively. Knowing that the economic health of a nation is critical to its security, I wish to reduce or eliminate the annual deficit we're all saddled with. Knowing that some level of social welfare is necessary for the economic health of the body politic, I wish to adopt much more closely the model posited by Thomas Paine when he wrote Common Sense.  You get the idea.

There are going to be those (primarily Gen-X, Gen-Y, and assorted Yuppies) who will have a huge issue with this sort of thing - simply out of a misplaced sense of entitlement. Allow me to borrow from Samuel Clemens (bonus points if you can give the pen name of this author...) "The world does not owe you a living. It doesn't owe you a damned thing, it was here first."

This should tell you just how long this sort of thing has been going on.