BonzaiDuck
Lifer
- Jun 30, 2004
- 15,880
- 1,550
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Generally your remarks and those of others here contribute well to the discussion.If there's one thing this "administration" has shown me it's that the POTUS has too much power. The storied checks and balances aren't working so well. There's a second thing, too... we could use something better than impeachment to get a bad egg out of office, in particular the POTUS office. Yes, "no confidence" like they have in other countries.
I like the idea of having something other than a 2 party system. We don't have that officially AFAIK, but in effect more or less. More than 2 "major" parties would promote alliances, deals, factions teaming up to allow a no confidence situation and interim elections the way they do in other countries. Maybe we can get this going in the US. It would be destabilizing but the establishment is really corrupt here. We need to develop a way to freshen things up. Turmoil can be good.
I've heard a former classmate expound at length on his "direct democracy" ideas. As a Californian, I've also seen the troubles we've had with aspects of this which were created after Frank Norris wrote "The Octopus".
I have to think about something in a seemingly unrelated area -- statistical testing in industrial applications or accounting. There are two types of errors: Alpha and Beta. One type is a "false positive"; the other is a "false negative" or "failure to detect". And some folks here have mentioned how the process could be driven by purely partisan sentiment and abused.
My concern about our current impeachment process is that it takes too long, while damage is being done to our country daily.
About many things, I have reservations that a majority vote always leads to the Truth or the wisest choice. And I've seen many recent arguments dismissing representative government as a vestige of times when time and distance alone made it necessary. I see it differently -- our highly-charged partisan polarity is a result of too much blather arising on the internet of Facebook and Twitter.
So I'd rather see representatives further removed from their constituents, or I'd rather see them paying as much attention to minority letters written from their opposition constituents as they do to their partisan supporters. They were supposed to represent a "place" as opposed to simply the place's winning partisans.
That's why I favor impeachment over waiting for an election outcome. Did Trump do wrong things according to the Law? Then I'd rather see a smaller body -- legislators as jurors -- make that determination.
But it takes too long, and it is nevertheless a "political" process. On the other hand, allowing swift recall elections in a highly-divided partisan environment leads to the opposite type of problem.
