[gtycomb]

Politicians are not at all stupid in general. The problem we have is in their selective listening after we elect them.

If a legislator is not technically up to speed, considerable tax payer money goes towards hiring people in government to do the research and the explaining. Some high level advisers may come from organizations with a private agenda and after a few years of working within the goverment these experts pop right back to their industry jobs and we don't hear of them anymore.

Ultimately its the same need in whatever form of government we want – we need people we can trust.

[TaylorAlexander]

This is why people have advocated for bottom up governance, where local groups make decisions and select rotating representatives to take those decisions as made by the group to larger regional councils, etc. In this way no individual has any real power. This is called democratic confederalism and is in progress in Rojava now but could be done in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcndZ0nZ0mo

[DollarGuru]

Along with the vote in process there should be a vote out process. The public should be able to force a vote of their representative at any time during their term and equally vote in their replacement.

The intention being that politicians are aware that they must be consistent with their words and actions throughout their term otherwise they will lose their seat.

[gtycomb]

Hope we find a way to vote some of them out fast.

Some months before the last big bail out legislations, in my state we had a US Senate candidate who was new in our political scene, appeared as a local man with a law degree from our state university, and he spoke about how the working people struggled with unemployment, delinquencies etc, as he knew middle class issues and can change the ways of Washington. PBS featured him and I still remember the interview they aired from his kitchen in a middle class home. I am among the people who voted him in.

A few years after this election I checked his voting records by chance and I realized that he had voted almost always in favor of the bailout system. I wouldn’t have known this by just reading the news or watching cable. In the next election cycle he won handily, this time supported by organizations with cash to blanket our news with favorable lines for him. That’s how life works I guess.

[o-__-o]

Everyone bitched at me for not voting the last election. To every person who asked me, I asked who they voted for our states railroad commissioner. They all said “oh I don’t know I just voted all blue”. I asked them if they knew what our railroad commissioner did, they did not know. So I proceeded to enlighten them on how the RR commissioner controls everything around our state’s oil fund and that they all just voted for the equivalent of donald trump to manage our oil rich state.

Of course he did not win because the other candidate was much better qualified and rural voters knew him en masse (he’s the one that signs checks for all the citizen stewards of oil fields), but I found it hilarious that people would flame me for not voting for a figurehead (president) but be a-ok to vote in some no name hack to manage our schools because of big money advertising in elections