Popular vote on wallstreet bailout?

It seems that more and more drastic decisions about the future of our nation are made with relatively little consideration of what the populace at large thinks. I am just curious what would happen if we started having (binding referendums?) popular votes on important legislation. The only people that I personally know who would have ratified the wallstreet bailout are my wealthy friends who owned alot of stock. No one else I spoke with thought this was a good idea. 95% of the populace is not wealthy and stockowning. Most people would have voted to give themselves that money, so why weren't we given the opportunity to vote on this?
Other examples of this would be our recent decision to solidify a status of forces agreement with Iraq, which permanently enmeshes us in the politics of the middle east. Although I think we had one with Kuwait already. After our status of forces agreement with Japan in the 1940's we went on to fight in Korea and Vietnam. Surely this agreement with Iraq will lead to involvement in wars in Iran and other middle eastern countries. With this knowledge would any american citizen really vote to ratify this agreement?
Another example would be the income tax. How many Americans do you know who wouldn't vote down the income tax? With our governments recent out of control expenditures and irresponsible spending habits would any American continue to willingly give them so much of our money? I know I wouldn't and I know most of my friends wouldn't. We'd probably vote to give ourselves free healthcare and we'd probably vote against giving all these other countries all this aid money.
I am sure someone will chime in and say that we need these people making these tough decisions for us for the very reason that we would not make these decisions on our own. To which I would respond, "if these people are making decisions for us that we ourselves would not make then how can we really claim to have a government of the people?" The fact is if we had a popular vote on vital issues I am quite sure that many things would be very different.

Sorry my computer errored and posted this in the wrong forum. How can I post this somewhere else?


[edit on 17-11-2008 by hammanderr]

You might as well get rid of elected officials who's purpose is to vote, then. Your point is valid, but the elected officials should vote based on the people who voted them in's view's. They should be held accountable. This doesn't happen because the majority of people vote based on party and not the person.

Originally posted by hammanderr
It seems that more and more drastic decisions about the future of our nation are made with relatively little consideration of what the populace at large thinks. I am just curious what would happen if we started having (binding referendums?) popular votes on important legislation. The only people that I personally know who would have ratified the wallstreet bailout are my wealthy friends who owned alot of stock. No one else I spoke with thought this was a good idea. 95% of the populace is not wealthy and stockowning. Most people would have voted to give themselves that money, so why weren't we given the opportunity to vote on this?
Other examples of this would be our recent decision to solidify a status of forces agreement with Iraq, which permanently enmeshes us in the politics of the middle east. Although I think we had one with Kuwait already. After our status of forces agreement with Japan in the 1940's we went on to fight in Korea and Vietnam. Surely this agreement with Iraq will lead to involvement in wars in Iran and other middle eastern countries. With this knowledge would any american citizen really vote to ratify this agreement?
Another example would be the income tax. How many Americans do you know who wouldn't vote down the income tax? With our governments recent out of control expenditures and irresponsible spending habits would any American continue to willingly give them so much of our money? I know I wouldn't and I know most of my friends wouldn't. We'd probably vote to give ourselves free healthcare and we'd probably vote against giving all these other countries all this aid money.
I am sure someone will chime in and say that we need these people making these tough decisions for us for the very reason that we would not make these decisions on our own. To which I would respond, "if these people are making decisions for us that we ourselves would not make then how can we really claim to have a government of the people?" The fact is if we had a popular vote on vital issues I am quite sure that many things would be very different.

Sorry my computer errored and posted this in the wrong forum. How can I post this somewhere else?

[edit on 17-11-2008 by hammanderr]

At face value, it would seem like a great idea. However when you start thinking about it, you have to realize how much expertise actually goes into summing up an issue like this.

In order for the people of America to make an honest to goodness decision on issues like these, they would have to be sufficiently educated on the subject matter and any pre-requisets needed to understand the subject matter. They would have to know all of the facts. That in itself could take weeks just to gets up to speed.

Personally, I think that's the job of a Representative and a Senator, but I think it's the job of we the people to keep tabs on the issues to see that our elected officials are voting the way we expect them to vote - in the best interests of the people, not in their own personal best interests.

reply to post by sos37


SOS, at first glance I would say you are right.

But then I think that is anti-thetical to democracy.

Democracy is the power of a people, not necessarily one that is well educated or has the right motivations.

I believe that if the electorate as a whole had more say on things in general then the PTB would be forced to placate them regardless.


Personally I would rather have the nation directed by a chaotic mass of creature comfort seeking voters than well educated Representatives or Bankers looking for a better way to maintain their positions.

I know it's a risk, but I place my faith in chaos much more than in perceived order.

We are not a democracy. We are a representative republic. I would not want the average American to vote on issues; they are too ignorant. Take this for example:

Warning: This is from Howard Stern, so the F bomb is naturally in there.



[edit on 17-11-2008 by jsobecky]

My original point is that the fact that most of us are too uninformed to decide on these issues is part and parcel of the problem. Where I differ with most is that I believe the solution is not to keep these intellectual/financial elite in power but rather to get back to having a government that actually is on the side of the people and is fully understood by the people. Issues which are too complex for the average to understand need not be simply decided by those that claim they do. Because I think in fact that they really don't.

Case in point, we did not have access to the intelligence which our government did around the time of the invasion of Iraq and we trusted too much in our politicians words. They used our ignorance as leverage to get us into a bad situation. It's not that these issues are too complex for the average to undrestand it's that they are too complex for anyone to really fully grasp. And I think the average man has as good a grasp as any on some of this stuff.

The income tax. Most of us do not really understand where all that money goes and we're justifiably skeptic about where some of it goes. We're totally justified in that thinking. If the people with whom we've entrusted our money cannot really trust us enough to tell us exactly where all of the money goes maybe we shouldn't trust them with all that money. With a popular vote we probably would have alot less taxes with alot more benefit to us because we wouldn't be authorizing all kinds of obscure, shady dealings.


Wall street bailout. Who, Who would have actually voted to give all the same idiots who caused this problem billions of dollars to solve it? We were right again, all this bailout money has solved nothing and alot of it is going into the pockets of the wealthy.

The UFO issue, we'd already know all that the government knows.

The very idea that we need a selected few to make all of our decisions for us is presumptuous. In a popular vote system any legislation which was too complicated for the average man to understand would just be voted down. Problem solved. I for one am very dissatisfied with what my elected officials have done with this country in the last 40 years and I do vote and yet nothing changes, it only gets worse.



[edit on 17-11-2008 by hammanderr]

reply to post by hammanderr


Americans are ignorant as is most of the world's population. There is no way a popular vote could happen on the bailout issue, I don't even know when was the last time this country had a popular vote on anything. As for the bailout, Congress (the NWO mini puppets) agreed to give Paulson $840 billion dollars to spend as he sees fit (in installments) and he can change the rules as needed. For me, it is reason # 3,657,802 as to why I hate the entire human race. God bless America, bless us on our way down to hell.

Perhaps Americans are not ignorant and nither is the rest of the world. Maybe it is just easier to convince people that they are stupid than to get control another way. The way I see it anytime one of these supposed "highly complex issues which we are unfit to decide on" comes up the result is always catastrophic. As I've stated previously, i.e. wall street bailout, income tax, iraq war, free public healthcare. So many of the important issues are seemingly decided for us by people who really do not seem to know or care what an actual, average, nonwealthy american would want.

This democrat controlled congress was given a clear mandate to get us out of the middle east or at the very least out of Iraq. We elected them and they subsequently failed us. Obama ran on a platform of getting us out of Iraq and now he too seems to be backing off this. If you had a popular vote today to pull our troops out of the middle east, all of them, I think it would pass resoundingly. So, why shouldn't we have this power over our own country?

If you had a popular vote tomorrow to take the bailout money from wallstreet and give it to the people, it would pass resoundingly. Why can't we do this?

If you had a vote tomorrow to abolish the income tax and the IRS and make government more transparent and accountable, it would pass resoundingly. How many people do you know who like being hunted by the IRS?
My point is that people are not happy with their governments performance, we say we live in a democracy, we say we are free. Why can't we vote to actually change our government instead of just voting to plug new cogs into the wheels of government?

By the way, I'm not against paying taxes in general but I am against paying taxes which are used inefficiently and in ways I completely disagree with, i.e. mantaining a tottering empire, pursuing war with everyone we can, aid to foreign nations I don't care about, locking up american citizens for nonviolent crimes, entrapping american citizens.