What do you believe is the fundamental problem with [American] government?

What do you believe is the fundamental problem with [American] government?

  • I don't believe a government should exist. That society would be better off without

  • Poor creation/execution of legislation

  • Incompetence/Inability/Ineptitude

  • Corruption

  • The authority of government: Executive orders v. Addressing Congress

  • The size of the government: Big v. Small

  • Efficiency of government

  • Racism/sexism/classism/other/etc.

  • Capitalism*

  • Other

Results are only viewable after voting.
Fogdog

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Lucky Luke said:
Australia had a female PM. Julia Gillard.
I must say the majority of our Politicians have to speak well.

Give it a listen if you have time.

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nope, never heard of her. What language was that?

Lucky Luke said:
No we vote for a party. Our PM can be sacked by their own party through leadership challengers. They would still keep their seat in Parliament of cause.
From 2008 - 2018 we had 7 Prime Ministers.
www.businessinsider.com.au

Australia has now had seven prime ministers in just 10 years -- here's who they are and how long they were in office

Scott Morrison has just been named as the 30th Prime Minister of Australia. It comes after a leadership spill was called on Friday and former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull resigned from parliament. The Liberal Party voted on three candidates — Morrison, backbencher (and former Home Affairs...
www.businessinsider.com.au www.businessinsider.com.au
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Ok, so, the Parliamentary system only elects intelligent, witty and well spoken people.

Like Boris? And AU's current PM? And Victor Orban in Hungary?
 
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Lucky Luke

Lucky Luke

Well-Known Member
Roger A. Shrubber said:
isn't a bogan an Australian hillbilly? Outback trailer trash?
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We don't really have the hillbilly trailor trash that America has. We do have Houso's which may be close to them.

Bogan is Australian and New Zealand slang for a person whose speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour are considered unrefined or unsophisticated. Pretty much all the new millionaire tradies are Bogans. Eric Banner is a Bogan
It used to be a derogative term but now its embranced. People who wear a mullet are loud and proud bogans.
 
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Lucky Luke

Lucky Luke

Well-Known Member
Fogdog said:
Ok, so, the Parliamentary system only elects intelligent, witty and well spoken people.
Click to expand...
Of course not but its encouraged. So is a sense of humor and broad shoulders.

This is the type of man America needs. He was a Labor Prime Minister and before that the Australian Treasurer under Bob Hawke (Another Labor Prime Minister). He gave us Employer paid superannuation. Protected and grew our Medicare, pensions and family payments. Huge believer and protector of a livable Min wage. He transformed our financial system and economy. He dealt with Murdoch well and ill supply a quote under the video. Perhaps America needs a working mans party.

from SMH 2007.... “Shortly before flying to Australia, Keating rang (Tony) Blair (British PM) inviting him to stay at his official Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, and offering advice about Murdoch.
"He said he had a few things to teach him about how to deal with Rupert," Campbell wrote in a diary entry dated July 8, 1995.
"He said Murdoch is a hard bastard and you need a strategy for dealing with him."
When Blair and Campbell met Keating eight days later, the prime minister passed on his tips.
"Keating was everything I expected - charming, tough, funny, totally at ease on the surface though probably a real furnace when he got going," Campbell wrote.
"On Murdoch, he told TB: 'He's a big bad bastard, and the only way you can deal with him is to make sure he thinks you can be a big bad bastard too. You can do deals with him, without ever saying a deal is done. But the only thing he cares about is his business and the only language he respects is strength'."
 
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Fogdog

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Lucky Luke said:
Of course not but its encouraged. So is a sense of humor and broad shoulders.

This is the type of man America needs. He was a Labor Prime Minister and before that the Australian Treasurer under Bob Hawke (Another Labor Prime Minister). He gave us Employer paid superannuation. Protected and grew our Medicare, pensions and family payments. Huge believer and protector of a livable Min wage. He transformed our financial system and economy. He dealt with Murdoch well and ill supply a quote under the video. Perhaps America needs a working mans party.

from SMH 2007.... “Shortly before flying to Australia, Keating rang (Tony) Blair (British PM) inviting him to stay at his official Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, and offering advice about Murdoch.
"He said he had a few things to teach him about how to deal with Rupert," Campbell wrote in a diary entry dated July 8, 1995.
"He said Murdoch is a hard bastard and you need a strategy for dealing with him."
When Blair and Campbell met Keating eight days later, the prime minister passed on his tips.
"Keating was everything I expected - charming, tough, funny, totally at ease on the surface though probably a real furnace when he got going," Campbell wrote.
"On Murdoch, he told TB: 'He's a big bad bastard, and the only way you can deal with him is to make sure he thinks you can be a big bad bastard too. You can do deals with him, without ever saying a deal is done. But the only thing he cares about is his business and the only language he respects is strength'."
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Thank you for the advice.
 
Bagginski

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
Lucky Luke said:
I know. Its like the world is moving on and America is stuck in the 50s with no free to end user healthcare, slow and archaic banking system. Huge and growing gap from extreme wealth to very poor. Huge homeless population. Good to see some movement on min wages. Embarrassed due to how your country handled/handling covid, insurrections, retreating from yet another war you illegally started and the slow decline as America as the dominant super power. trump was and will forever be such an embarrassment.
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“Funny” the way we talk about the homeless…as if the Bush mortgage meltdown hadn’t resulted in an actual collapse of private homeownership - and the pressure has never been OFF those who lost their homes in that fucking mess. Millions of them have struggled hard to regain ever since, but have only managed to hold on, just barely. There’s an impending wave of foreclosures and evictions in the wings, the result of which will be millions more families left destitute, to join those who would like to regain a rock to stand on in their old age, who are left over from the ‘07 debacle.

We could be talking about ending up with ~1/3 of the population homeless.

“America in Decline”. What a sexy headline, everyone loves that. Could’ve been “America Faces Reality”, but we’ve been run from the shadows by the wealthiest and most ruthless for so long, that you just can’t convince folks there’s a hand up their ass: ‘specially not no ‘conservatives’ anyhow - and that, my friends, *THAT* is some high-end brainwashing. So the shallow end “pushes back” against the “decline”, and the deep end wiggles their fingers to get stuff done, while the patriotic song and dance goes on. The cover stories have been in place for centuries: the murder of The American Experiment(tm) at the hands of its most favored children - those with money, those with access, those with connections…as enacted by the inmates of the “GOP Voting Base” Asylum. They want it all. The people too. Own everything, be answerable to NONE, do whatever you want. The Marquis de Sade’s 120 days of Sodom as a strategy for governance. God’s own natural-born aristocrats, the divine right of the people with the most pull to have their way.

Of course, it boils down to money - and the basic economic laws governing slavery…and mastery. Slavery is the ultimate in commoditized labor: expense is minimized when disposal is cheaper than maintenance, especially when the cost of maintenance is forced upon the individual slave…who lacks means to maintain themselves. Industry profits go up, up, up; surplus population goes down, down, down…and at the bottom, everyone knows the rules - and knows their place. Ultimately, it’s only about race because blaming race works - and it’s easy. Rest assured, though, there’ll be plenty of room at the bottom for white folks, too.
 
Bagginski

Bagginski

Well-Known Member
We could be talking about ending up with ~1/3 of the population homeless.
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That’s a lot of “excess” people. America needs a permanent unpaid servant class…but it doesn’t need THAT many servants. Having SOLD US industrial capacity to China, the wealthy are free to focus on extracting different kinds of labor from the desperate (I know a lot of people want to blame China, Obama and the democrats, but it’s a 100% American corporate decision, started under the “loot the public sphere” Reagan era). Those industries will never come back without a radical alteration to how we run the economy…socialism or whatever, the rich are and have been eating us for 40-50 years (in earnest), they are the only ones who’ve benefited, and continuing along their road WILL BE our destruction.
 
Fogdog

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Bagginski said:
That’s a lot of “excess” people. America needs a permanent unpaid servant class…but it doesn’t need THAT many servants. Having SOLD US industrial capacity to China, the wealthy are free to focus on extracting different kinds of labor from the desperate (I know a lot of people want to blame China, Obama and the democrats, but it’s a 100% American corporate decision, started under the “loot the public sphere” Reagan era). Those industries will never come back without a radical alteration to how we run the economy…socialism or whatever, the rich are and have been eating us for 40-50 years (in earnest), they are the only ones who’ve benefited, and continuing along their road WILL BE our destruction.
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more like, the rich have been living off everybody else for past 10,000 or so years.

40-50 yeras ago things were better? Don't think so. It took about 300 years to get rid of rule by hereditary monarchs. It took that long because we don't really know how to live together in dense populations with so much destructive capability within easy reach. It took so long because we needed to develop alternatives to autocratic rule. We are such a young species. I wonder how people can be so certain that their answers are best for the rest of us. It's an egocentric error.
 
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Fogdog

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Bagginski said:
“Funny” the way we talk about the homeless…as if the Bush mortgage meltdown hadn’t resulted in an actual collapse of private homeownership - and the pressure has never been OFF those who lost their homes in that fucking mess. Millions of them have struggled hard to regain ever since, but have only managed to hold on, just barely. There’s an impending wave of foreclosures and evictions in the wings, the result of which will be millions more families left destitute, to join those who would like to regain a rock to stand on in their old age, who are left over from the ‘07 debacle.

We could be talking about ending up with ~1/3 of the population homeless.

“America in Decline”. What a sexy headline, everyone loves that. Could’ve been “America Faces Reality”, but we’ve been run from the shadows by the wealthiest and most ruthless for so long, that you just can’t convince folks there’s a hand up their ass: ‘specially not no ‘conservatives’ anyhow - and that, my friends, *THAT* is some high-end brainwashing. So the shallow end “pushes back” against the “decline”, and the deep end wiggles their fingers to get stuff done, while the patriotic song and dance goes on. The cover stories have been in place for centuries: the murder of The American Experiment(tm) at the hands of its most favored children - those with money, those with access, those with connections…as enacted by the inmates of the “GOP Voting Base” Asylum. They want it all. The people too. Own everything, be answerable to NONE, do whatever you want. The Marquis de Sade’s 120 days of Sodom as a strategy for governance. God’s own natural-born aristocrats, the divine right of the people with the most pull to have their way.

Of course, it boils down to money - and the basic economic laws governing slavery…and mastery. Slavery is the ultimate in commoditized labor: expense is minimized when disposal is cheaper than maintenance, especially when the cost of maintenance is forced upon the individual slave…who lacks means to maintain themselves. Industry profits go up, up, up; surplus population goes down, down, down…and at the bottom, everyone knows the rules - and knows their place. Ultimately, it’s only about race because blaming race works - and it’s easy. Rest assured, though, there’ll be plenty of room at the bottom for white folks, too.
Click to expand...
Religion had a much more powerful grip on people's lives 200 years ago than it does today.. I call that progress.

I'm not so pessimistic about people's ability to adapt to the new world we are making for ourselves. Not saying we aren't fucking up. just saying what you're doing is looking back and extrapolating existing trends forward. Humanity keeps changing and so the farther out your extrapolation goes, the more off the mark it gets.
 
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