Quote :

"Money is not what defines the worth of the position. Not even close."

but if the position doesn't pay what it's worth, you'll lose talent and you'll get people that are there for the wrong reasons.

^i'd rather make it easier for a newcomer to enter a race and have a fighting chance than kick everyone out after two terms.

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 2:40 PM. Reason : quote]

3/7/2010 2:38:42 PM

if, as you say, there are perks other than just the pay, such as a lobbying position afterwards, then it seems the "talent" for being a public douchebag will still be adequately attracted.

and you think it is currently "easy for a newcomer to enter the race?" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. you might want to look at the job security of incumbents these days, dude. The salary aint helpin with that. If you want to make it easier to vote out incumbents, then maybe we should fix the problem of gerrymandered districts and the bullshit McCain-Feingold incumbent insurance legislation

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 2:41 PM. Reason : ]

3/7/2010 2:39:57 PM

i don't. see my post about publicly funded campaigns. and by newcomer, i don't mean newcomer to politics necessarily. i don't think we should get someone who has never held political office to be in the senate or house (unless supremely qualified in other ways).

and i agree with you about gerrymandered districts. districts should not be made by the state parties. but that isn't really a federal issue. there are some states that do their districts pretty fairly.

[Edited on March 7, 2010 at 2:45 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2010 2:43:47 PM

and I don't think such a person would be too successful in the first place, then. Unless his name is Obama

3/7/2010 2:44:39 PM

yes. because obama wasn't in the illinois legislature before he went to the senate

3/7/2010 2:45:55 PM

there's a reason I ed

3/7/2010 2:49:25 PM

~

3/7/2010 2:50:02 PM

I don't know how the federal gov't could deal with the gerrymandered districts, though. I mean, they could do some stuff, but I'm not sure how comfortable I would be with that, much less how Constitutional it would be to begin with.

3/7/2010 2:51:37 PM

there was some western state that basically opened up their district drawing process to the public and then a committee would choose the simplest one (which also balanced the number of people per district in a fairly even way).

3/7/2010 2:54:24 PM

i mean, the closest thing I can come up with is "districts must be drawn along county lines" but even then, that would probably fail. doesn't NYC have like 5 reps in the House or something?

3/7/2010 3:04:06 PM

Drawing districts on county lines can be hard since the rule about equal/fair representation makes all districts roughly equal in population. I believe Wake and Mecklenberg, and maybe some other counties in NC alone are so heavily populated that drawing a line around those counties alone would be too many people per one district.

Drawing districts around county lines would look prettier on a map, but it could lead to pretty unfair representation.

3/7/2010 3:22:17 PM

I'm guessing by "unfair" you mean too many people in one county population-wise. which I kind of already hinted at

3/7/2010 3:41:33 PM

someone should write a program that optimizes congressional districts by total distance to a polling station when added for every voter.

3/7/2010 4:03:13 PM

wat

3/7/2010 4:06:25 PM

you have congressional districts optimized by distance to polling stations (or maybe distance to the center of the district?). it would take out the human element more or less.

3/7/2010 4:28:44 PM

Distance to polling places don't change since the precinct set ups rarely change. I don't see how distance to polling place will have much affect on district lines.

3/7/2010 10:01:10 PM

Districts should be fixed to whatever they were when the state was granted statehood. Gerrymandering sucks.

3/7/2010 11:00:51 PM

One problem is that we have allowed politicians to make gov't more powerful over the years. We can impose effective term limits by making the job less attractive to life-long politicians. Decrease their ability to "bring home the bacon" and concentrate more on national issues.

With a 90% re-election rate and our fed. gov't in the crapper, something isn't working right.

3/7/2010 11:17:04 PM

^^That would require a constitutional amendment and would no longer make representation equitable.

Did you think about that one for more than 2 seconds?

3/8/2010 8:37:51 AM

congressmen spend more to get elected than what the position pays, so the salary has nothing to do with why they take the position. Something nasty will get tacked onto this bill that normally wouldn't pass, because many congressmen would be afraid to vote against a salary cut in the current political climate.

we should just abolish their pension and health coverage after they leave office.

3/8/2010 12:27:49 PM