🚀 go-pugleaf

Written in article <5808@optilink.UUCP>
    by cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer):

> In article <38510244@hpindda.cup.hp.com>, alanm@hpindda.cup.hp.com
> (Alan McGowen) writes:
> > 
> > You forget that modern democracy was also once just an idea.
> 
> Now it's a living hell of special interest power and ignorant
> voting.  (How else to explain the absurd situation of California
> voters overwhelmingly approving term limits for state legislators,
> and the same voters overwhelmingly re-electing those same 
> legislators?)

There is a logical explanation for this.  Voters, typical of humans
everywhere, want restrictions on "them," not "us."

Each voter re-elected _his_ rep.s because of the special favors and
breaks and bennies _he_ receives, but voted in term limitations so that
_those_ rep.s will _stop_ giving special favors and breaks and bennies
to _them_.

"Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree!"

It's a fundamental problem in our form of government.  It will remain so
as long as we get to "vote" in bennies for one district at everybody's 
expense.

We naturally reward our rep.s for providing _our_ district with bennies,
and he'll remind us at election time of those nice bennies he got us.
(Conveniently forgetting, of course, all the bennies won by other rep.s.)
The minor detail of each of our nice bennies eventually spending us all
into bankruptcy is a problem for the _next_ administration.

Sometimes I'm not sure if our collective rep.s aren't, in actuality,
just trading bennies with each other, so each will have an accomplish-
ment to take home.

Who cares if the taxpayers can't afford the aggregate?  So long as we
maintain our "club" at the status-quo?  What bennies can I bring _my_
district so _I'll_ stay employed?  What bennies must I sacrifice to get
_those_ guys to vote for _my_ bennies?

That's one reason I voted for the term limitation.  Maybe with the hope
of perpetual employment gone, or at least reduced, our rep.s will use
more rational thot processes in their decision-making.  Or at least a
_different_set_ of thot processes.

I doubt it, tho, but one can always hope.
--
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asylvain@felix.UUCP                        uunet!hplabs!felix!asylvain