The American Political Class - Setting Records For Poor Performance and Poor Approval Ratings

This seems to be a week for lists. On Tuesday we listed out the numerous ways Obama Care is doomed to failure from so many different perspectives. Yesterday, we listed out the myriad of bad economic news that has recently come out along with lists of denial and apathy examples from this administration. Today, we will list out the incredibly poor approval ratings Americans have for the current set of politicians running the government, specifically the U.S. Congress.

The basis of these low approval scores comes from the latest Rasmussen Reports survey. The survey was conducted on May 19 and May 20, 2011 and included 1,000 likely American voters. The sampling error is plus or minus 3%. The results are not anything to be proud of:

• Only 9% of those surveyed think Congress is doing a good job. This ties the record for the lowest approval marks ever in the survey.
• A whopping 50% of those surveyed ranked Congressional performance as poor.
• This 50% poor rating performance is up from 42% in February, i.e. we think that Congress is doing a significantly worse job from just four months ago, which was not that great to begin with.
• 44% of those surveyed believe it's more important for Congress to pass good legislation, 44% believe it's more important for Congress to block bad legislation from becoming law. Usually, passing good legislation is ranked more important than blocking bad legislation. Could it be that we have lost so much faith in our politicians that we are beginning to feel that doing nothing is better than allowing the political class to do anything?
• Only 16% of those surveyed think that Congress has passed legislation over the past year that will significantly improve life in America, 60% think that Congress has not passed legislation that will significantly improve life in America.
• 80% of those surveyed believe that members of Congress are more interested in their own personal political careers than helping average Americans. This is close to the highest level recorded over the past five years.
• 42% of those surveyed believe that most members of Congress are corrupt while only 32% believe that most members are not corrupt.

Other recent Rasmussen polling results have uncovered the following opinions:

• 51% of American adults think that when a company offers a government regulator a job, it's a form of a bribe while just 22% think it is not a bribe.
• 64% of voters say politics will become more and more partisan in the next year. This result has climbed steadily since Obama was sworn into office, from a low of 40% to a high of 70% last August.
• Most voters still want to repeal Obama Care but are about evenly split in their opinions of whether it will  ever be repealed.

Combine these results with the continuing erosion in the approval ratings for the President and we have a country led by people who are not trusted by their constituents. We do not think the politicians are doing a good job, more of us than not think that most of them are corrupt, we would rather they do nothing than pass new laws, and very few of us think Congress and the politicians sitting in office it have done anything of positive consequence for us over the past year.

Given such abysmal results, why do we continue to elect the same people over and over? Why are we continually forced to put up with people that we think are corrupt and selfish, who only care about their own political careers? Why do seem to constantly have to deal with illegal or immoral behavior from these people (Foley, Clinton, Rangel, Weiner, etc.)? Why do we allow people to continue to be in office for 10, 20 30, or more years even though we think they do such a lousy job?

The only answer is one that has been explored in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," namely we have allowed the political class to take over our political process and control who gets elected and who stays elected. If you control the political processes of voting and campaign financing, it is no secret that the political class has deployed a monopoly stranglehold on the nation's political offices, allowing them to perform so horrendously without consequences.

As voters and Americans, we are stuck with candidates that are no different from any other candidates, candidates that are the choices of moneyed interests and political bosses, not of the average American. When that happens, voting becomes a sham as does freedom.

How do we restore confidence in our political institutions? Einstein provides a clue of how to do so with one of his insightful quotes: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." We cannot hope that our political institutions like Congress will get better by themselves. We have no control over who gets elected. Thus, we need to start implementing the following steps form "Love my Country, Loathe My Government," steps that fundamentally change most of our political processes and political way of thinking, changes that restore freedom to America:

1. Step 6 - Allow only individual Americans to contribute to election campaigns. The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech to Americans, not to PACs, corporations, unions, etc. Americans should be the only entities that can contribute to election campaigns, it is the only way to take political bribery out of our election processes and legislative processes.
2. Step 7 - campaign contributions could only be made to campaigns that affect the individual American. For example, someone who is a resident of Kansas could no contribute money to a Congressional race in New Jersey. The affected people in that New Jersey Congressional district should have the only say and influence on who represents them.
3. Step 8 - strengthen the Federal Election Commission's (FEC) abilities to eliminate election fraud and corruption. Currently, the FEC is headed by appointees, much like allowing the wolves go guard the hen house. They are not much more than political  figureheads. The head of the FEC should be elected by the voters and should be a seasoned prosecutor who knows how to ferret white collar crime like campaign law breaking.
4. Step 14 - stop the illogical and self serving gerrymandering of Congressional districts which almost always allow the incumbent politician and party to retain the Congressional seat regardless of how poorly that Congress person performs. 
5. Step 17 - eliminate the Democratic party's "super delegates" since these politically connected people can override the will of the Democratic party voters in primaries and caucuses when the political bosses do not agree with the choices of the voters.
6. Step 34 - hold members of Congressional committees accountable for their committees' performance, removing them from their committee posts for failure to adequately execute the responsibilities of those committees. Proposals on how to accomplish a measurement of failure are included in the book.
7. Step 36 - require all members of Congress, and the administration, to take and pass a course on basic economic theory and practices so they at least have a basic understanding of how the world works and how their legislating, good or bad, might affect the economy and lives of Americans.
8. Step 37 - base annual pay raises of Congress on annual performance reviews by the voters by replacing the process today that grants Congressional members automatic pay increases regardless of how poorly the perform their jobs, individually and collectively.
9. Step 39 - institute term limits for all Federal politicians so that the term "career politician" disappears from our vocabulary and is replaced with a continually refreshed, new set of people, ideas, and leaders in Washington.
10. Step 45 - hold the political class to the same laws, regulations, and principles as the rest of the country as they apply to race/sex affirmative action quotas and behavior.

There, that was not so hard. Simple solutions for a very dangerous problem, the lose of freedom in the country. These changes would make the political class more accountable to the voters, remove the venomous effects of campaign financing from the processes, would ensure that we start getting new people into office who might actually care more about the good of the country than the future of their political career.

Then, and only then, might we start to see a level of confidence in those that lead us and a level of competence that is rewarded with more than a measly 9% approval rating.





Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com