OT re Voting for Pelosi
This actually raises an interesting point about our multi-tier representative democracy. Presence on, and control of, various gatekeeping subcommittees enables a minority of Congress to veto the will of the whole Congress, by killing bills before they come to the floor for a vote. Presence on these committees is based on things like the party with the most members in the chamber, the length of tenure of the members, and so on. The upshot is that the influence of a state's representative in that chamber can have enormous or trivial power, further making a mockery of the one-man-one-vote principle so many believe should guide our nation.
The party politics and chamber rules serve to make the system less representative, by concentrating power further into an insider elite.
Perhaps the solution is to create an oversight mechanism that leads to a difficult-to-game forum like a public referendum. If Congress will destroy the nation's future mortgaging it for a couple of traded votes, perhaps the public is needed to effectively halt the horse-trading -- leading to legislation that must garner public approval or die a swift death. As it is, we're drowning in legislation that isn't popular, simply because fools in Congress traded votes to get their bad law passed.
I never voted for anyone running the major committees; they were elected by a political elite selected by someone in a totally different part of the country, and they exercised a power that isn't apparent on the face of the Constitution. Yes, passing rules to govern each chamber of the legislature is granted; however, the effect is contrary to the public oversight that present communications technology renders so feasible.
The fact we piss away trillions per year on broken systems is evidence that Congress is incompetent to exercise oversight in the matter of the public fisc. Refusing to pay for anything that can't get a majority vote of the public (as opposed to the vote-trading politicos) is a possible pressure toward budgetary rationalization.
Take care,
--Tex.
