(07-05-2022, 04:01 AM)copycat Wrote:

(07-04-2022, 10:18 PM)mikesez Wrote: A quote from the middle section of the Declaration of Independence, listing the failures of King George:

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
  ...
  
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
  
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
  
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
  

From the beginning of the colonies, the colonists had the ability to elect their own legislatures.  The colonies always had some independence.  The first and primary complaints of the Declaration of Independence are that the King was trying to neuter or dissolve these legislatures.  
The founders viewed the legislative power as primary, as most important.  The legislative branch needed to be the most powerful, as they saw it. Our legislative branch today is still the most powerful of the three branches, in theory, but it is the least effective.  Because it does not do its work, the things it was supposed to do are instead done by the other two branches.  Presidents try to give executive orders to re-animate old statutes, and judges after long consideration either go along with it or turn it down.  It was not supposed to be this way.

I have my own opinions about this, but first I welcome yours.  When did this change?  Why did it change?  Who changed it?  How can we change it back?  Are the members of Congress elected today actually villains, or would they do their jobs more effectively under a different incentive structure?  Would term limits help? Would nonpartisan primaries help? Would ranked choice voting or approval voting help?

Money changed it all.  Our elected representatives sold their souls to the lobbyists and that is who is running the country.  All it would take to change it back is single issue bills.  No riders, no add ons.  Just single issue so the people can see what they are actually voting for.  No more hiding multiple issues and massive pork buried in a 5000 page bill.

I would also love to see single issue bills.  The problem is, it's hard to get single issue bills passed because of the horse-trading that is an inevitable part of politics.  
A congressperson would say, "I'll vote for your thing if you vote for my thing."  Then the other congressperson says, "Let's just put those things together in one bill. That way, if my thing passes, your thing passes."  
That's how you get omnibus spending bills.  If you want money to expand Mayport, for example, the only way to get that passed is to put it into the big omnibus spending bill, because no one is pushing that except our local congresspersons.  Our congresspersons don't represent the whole country; they represent Jacksonville.  If Jacksonville wants something, they need to do some horse-trading.  There's no way around it. 
In a republic, you have politics, and that's how politics works.

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