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In Waning Senate Days, Kyrsten Sinema Screwed Workers and Spent Campaign Cash on Stay at French Castle (theintercept.com)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 days ago (4 children)

How can we fix our political system so it no longer attracts the worst among us?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago

Make abuse of the position’s power a serious crime, and dedicate an entire wing of the DoJ to chase that shit down.

To be clear, this will never happen, because the foxes have not just gotten into the hen house, but are now in charge of it.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Make the job a chore. Treat it like jury duty. That way it's not a career choice, it's a genuine civic contribution.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Fuck yeah! Make them all live in the Big Brother house. Get it all on tape and then hire a couple reality TV directors to CSPAN.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Omg MTVs real world only it’s congress. I’d pay to watch that!

But they all should wear nascar or ski racing style jackets where all the sponsors logos are listed from big to small based on how much money they’re being paid to shill for.

This feels one step closer to idiocracy…

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Pretty sure that was an original Star Trek episode

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You’re describing the original Athenian democratic system, Sortition. People were randomly selected for government, and as a result policies were truly representative of what people wanted. It was effective.

It was tried later in Venice and Florence, and it failed because it only selected from nobles, not everyone.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Get money out of politics. Oh wait, corporations are people but better and can give unlimited amounts of money as part of their Free Speech+ package.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I'm reminded of the opening of one of Kurt Vonnegut's books (Hocus Pocus maybe?). A detail that is easy to overlook is that the book starts describing that the US just elected it's least popular president ever, and in the inauguration day riots a few SCOTUS justices get assassinated.

It then moves on to a wild tale about a guy that takes care of church bells.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Positions need to pay competitive but not too much. Regular people need to be able to live off of elected positions. If it is too little, only the already rich would be able to afford to. If it's too high it will attract people in it for money. The most important part in my opinion is, citizen united. Get the ultra rich money out of politics. All money involved needs to be equal. Campaigning on equal terms, debates etc. Money is winning, money always attracts the worst. The hard part is to stop the agenda driven "news" organizations. They are doing crazy misinformation damage and Im not sure how to stop that. Maybe reinstate the fairness doctrine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Positions need to pay competitive but not too much.

I've always wondered how different things would be if Congressional pay was tied to the median income, calculated at each census.