Peter Orszag former White House economic adviser laments all that nasty democracy.
To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.
Well, well. Isn't that NICE?
At least Orszag didn't suggest that we need a third way between the uncaring greed of Capitalism and the poverty-stricken incompetence of Communism.
Proposals abound for expanding this type of process. In the late ’90s, economist Alan Blinder proposed shifting responsibility for tax policy to a Fed-like institution of experts. Stephen Flynn of the Center for National Policy has proposed a similar process for infrastructure decisions—and, indeed, creating an infrastructure bank, as President Obama has proposed, would accomplish much the same goal. Such a bank would be empowered to select individual infrastructure projects, thereby removing some decision-making power from Congress.
So, Congress is not supine enough? They're not sufficiently enthralled to the vision of technocratic big governance? Obamacare and Stimulus and Dodd-Frank and McCain-Feingold didn't give enough power to "institutions of experts"?
So, there's really no bottom then?
Brian Preston summs up.
Putting these together, if you succeed, even despite the left’s anti-business laws, you should be grateful and be a good little leftist anyway. Capitalism is good until it enriches actual capitalists. Theocracy is bad except when a Progressive can use it to shame a conservative into becoming a Progressive. Democracy is good until non-leftists win, at which time “polarization” demands non-democratic rule by Progressive experts.
At least North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue is more direct. She simply things we should suspend elections until the current emergency has passed.
“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,”
Right... because removing accountability is sure to make a politician's decisions less corrupt and make them less inclined to totalitarian urges. Besides Emergency Laws are always temporary!
Consider this, a sitting governor is saying the US populace cannot handle the responsibility of voting for congressmen and Senators due to the economic conditions. Odd, FDR did a lot of bad things but even he didn't cancel elections.
Does the governor even know the dark road that countries go down when you start canceling elections due to "emergency"? Hell, does the Constitution mean anything to her? Why does she think it's okay to even suggest such an idea?
Ace has the answer:
Because she is a prisoner of the liberal -- or leftist -- idea that the people are incapable of making sound decisions about politics, and require a "vanguard" of the enlightened to make decisions on their behalf.
The problem is (from her perspective) is that democracy doesn't permit the vanguard to do "good;" when the vanguard ignores the (stupid, ignorant) mumblings from the citizen-morons of the republic, the citizen-morons rise up and vote them out of office.
That won't do. How can you have a revolution against the (moronic) wishes of the people if god-damned elections keep getting in the way?
It seems that some consider elections should have the same weight as when a family "votes" on where to go for vacation. Sure the children get to vote, but they only count if it agrees with what the parents want to do.
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