We need to press for term limits

.

Term limits is NOT a “progressive value.” If we had them, we wouldn’t have Henry Waxman, Charlie Rangel, John Conyers, Ted Kennedy, lots of others.

Every two years (in the House, every six in the Senate) we have an opportunity to enforce “term limits” on anyone we don’t like.

The artificial “term limits” operates under the fiction that Washington “corrupts” people if they stay for longer than X number of years. What bull!!! Some folks get “corrupted” in 2 years; others not at all.

Solution: send GOOD people, kick ‘em out if they stray.

This will help Waxman and Conyers greatly down the road as they dig into the investigations that need to occur. If we demonstrate we are open, transparent, consistent and ethical regardless of party ID, it will be not just the correct thing to do, but will lay the groundwork and arms us well when we start doing the correct thing to change course and holding the GOP and the Bush White House to account.

We need a system that is trustworthy, verifiable and understandable by anyone!! Any technology implementation of counting the votes is doomed to failure. Period!

The problem with technology is the leverage over information becomes much more concentrated into fewer hands. That will always be a problem. Those who want to steal the vote, to “count” it, will always be lurking; always be probing for a weak spot! Just look at the current situation.

The only good solutions for fraud is human involvement, vigilance and to disperse/distribute the accounting. Distribute it, into local people’s hands. If something is compromised, it will have a very small impact, and there are ways to deal with that:

* Paper ballots, hand counted, results released locally then rolled up.
* Use optical scanners, preferably not at the local counting precinct, to verify the hand counts.
* Record and allow publicly viewable rooms or web-cams to monitor all aspects of vote counting.
* Very severe penalties for maliciously compromising the vote; whether by counting or disenfranchisement techniques.
* Create enough precincts to make the counting manageable.

What technology would be good for here is confirmation and observation, not the original counting.

As a bonus, hand counting and having observable methods encourages involvement of people in their election system. We spend too much time making it as quick and painless, to the point of obliviousness. As for the vote counters and poll workers, pay them a stipend to do it, put the money wasted on these rube-Goldberg contraptions of privatized voting systems back into the local economy instead of corporations committed to republicans, or whomever they wish to manipulate to their own ends.

Regarding concerns about Lieberman’s good faith, I am hoping that a few more indictments of GOPers will open a few senate seats that can then be filled by appointees selected by some of the new Democratic governors around the country. Doing that, Lieberman becomes an afterthought and can be discarded with the trash.

That is my hope: more indictments and resignations followed by a few more Dem appointments in their stead. Lieberman’s blackmail position then falls to dust.

From your lips to God’s ear.

Lieberliar is a vindictive, spiteful, egotistical man who should not be allowed to have any impact on domestic or foreign policy.

And I love the way Schumer & others are coming out of the woodwork, two days after the election, making it clear that they were doing all they could for Lieberliar behind the scenes – while they stuck a knife in the Democratic nominee’s back. Schumer, Billary and the others all have blood on their hands and we know it. I hope they will end up paying for their shameful roles in subverting democracy.

I would like to know – who do they think bloggers are? Do they understand that we are of all ages – teens through 90? Do they understand that we perform a range of functions in society from students, to doctors, lawyers, educators, business people, etc.?

Do they understand that we are their constituents?

Get a clue Democratic leadership. Get a clue.

rwcole @
98
The dem “poll watchers” were mostly from unions- still providing the backbone that the dem party depends on to be competitive. Got me to thinking how few candidates really reflect the views, values, and culture of the typical union worker. Glad they stick with us.

Yes – I was soooo impressed by the union guys working with Lamont and all the other CT Dem campaigns. They certainly know their stuff when it comes to elections.

It makes me sick that Chuck and Rahm are so focused on the gravy train. I’d like to know, aside from minimum wage, what the Dems plan to do to help the working men & women of this country attain a better life?

Since it appears you have the speaker’s ear,
please report that, for lots of us, certain issues need to be addressed urgently. For example, once you blow the top off a mountain in West VA, you can’t put it back. Global warming also cannot wait. The libraries of data Bush locked up must be reopened to scientists and engineers.

I know environmental issues are a loaded subject, likely to stir up storms of controversy. But a few things are deteriorating too fast to wait for the next election.

Pass that on, will you?

HotFlash @
83

Global Yokel @
60

The Republicans are lucky they had the opportunity to gerrymander the electoral districts, or this would have been a REAL blowout.

Can this be undone? There must be a politically neutral way to apportion representation, for instance proportional voting? OK, not a first 100 hours thing, but something to keep in mind. There *will* be other elections (last week I was not so positive about that).

From what I understand, the next U.S. census is in 2010. The congressional districts are then re-drawn based on population changes. Whoever draws those boundaries gets to control constituency demographics. So Dems gotta keep this ship upright through 2010, if the republican gerrymandering is to be undone. Then we will hear republicans whining about Dem gerrymandering until 2020.

Actually, the Supremes said this year (in the Texas redistricting case) that they didn’t give a flying f*ck, as long as the provisions of the Voting Rights Act are more-or-less upheld.

Any state lege that wants to redistrict got a green light to do it.

BC

CHS..Please drop a word that Hoyer as majority leader would send the wrong message to loyal dems. Murtha is not progressive either but by God he stood up and did the right thing when it counted. The thought of Hoyer as majority leader makes me sick.

I couldn’t agree more. I wrote a letter to Speaker Pelosi today on exactly this issue. I would have also e-mailed her but as a non-constituent she doesn’t accept emails. Hoyer is exactly the face of KStreet corruption