democratic hopefuls

[erik_blank]

Let's just abolish elections altogether. Make all adult men and women sign up for the draft, and every two years we draft our representatives, every six years we draft our senators, and every four years we draft the president and vice president. There'd be simple disqualifiers, like for any drafted service (severely mentally handicapped people wouldn't have to serve, for example).

I like the idea to an extent, but this really won't abolish the corruption issue. In fact it may actually make corruption in office worse than it is now since people will be wanting to feather their own nest before being booted out of office. just look south o fthe US border for examples. In Mexico, their president is only allowed to sit for a single 6 year term. What happens becaus of this is that the president spends the last few months/years making sure that he has a solid retirement of purloined government funds.

It seems that for every answer their is another problem.

[Lemonaide]

Their retirement fund is obviously for their loins. While the rest of us run around in yesterday's loincloths, the politicians seems to still be out of control when it comes to spending tax dollars. It all started with makeup. Politicans in the 50's and 60's barely touched the stuff, their constituents didn't care if they looked young or good looking. Later on, after JFK, [hate to say it] but because he appeared so youthful, many politicians later on, started to make use of the Makeup Artist for "T.V.". It seemed to work and many people were elected on the basis of their appearance, so it 'trickled down' [mass follows class] to the degree that even local politicans now dye their hair, and wear a little 'stage makeup'. It blossomed into a genuine love affair between the White House and Hollywood, as several of our Democratic leaders - but not all - elected to carry out friendships with movie stars and band leaders, being under an impression that 1. those people had money to spend on special issues and 2. that they cared about special issues. But it led to disaster as more and more Presidents ended up on the front pages of National Enquirer.

My concern with Hilary Clinton is that she'll run the White House through her husband, but we could say the same for President Bush and his father, or even when Bill Clinton was Pres. that his wife had too much of a hand in the political goings on. What is the bottom line for America is that they get a peice of the pie. It doesn't matter too much to the majority of the population if a politican skims from the top and we might even turn a blind eye to it, as long as they can ensure that the population has the big three: food, clothing and shelter. When all of that starts to crumble - as did Rome, then they have a choice. Shore it all up by reapportioning money, reevaluating the number of representatives that are out there and I feel we need more not less due to the expansion of the population, or do they cover their tracks, retrench and put money back into areas that were 'traditional' such as military,& nasa. Personally I had a better view of the recent total lunar eclipse which was spectacular than anyone in space.

More people had more stuff when they had a decent social system and it took forever for people to be able to convince even a small government agency to invest in the arts. Believe it or not nearly every penny dedicated to the Arts came from Private Endownments and Private Grant money from such notables as the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie. The aim now should be to locate more people who fit the arts Profile and create more foundations. The Charles Wang Foundation of Arts and Music, The Bill Gates Foundation for Literature, The George Bush Foundation for Botony and Sealife; The Martha Steward Foundation for Farming - etc.