[extropy-chat] Extropy and libertarianism - a search formeaning...

[The Avantguardian]

--- Brett Paatsch <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> 
> > A good first step might be to make politicians
> personally 
> > accountable for their errors...
> 
> That's not a bad idea. But you can't have a first
> step that is not
> operationalisable.  Holding all politicians as a
> class accountable for
> their collective errors isn't operationalisable for
> you or me or indeed 
> any one person. Because they don't operate as a
> class. They take
> individual oaths of office and to the extent that
> they can individually
> avoid being held to account for breaking their oath,
> then of course
> they will (on average) try to do just that.

How would one keep politicians accountable? California
has recall elections as a provision and there is
impeachment. As far as impeachment goes, I was amazed
during the Clinton fiasco as to how time-consuming and
expensive it is. It seems much more straight forward
as it is described in the Constitution. It doesn't
seem all that efficient a way to hold politicians
accountable, at least in the manner it is practiced.
The constitution does not mention expensive armies of
lawyers on both sides. Most politicans ARE lawyers so
they should not need lawyers, at least not more than
one, to defend themselves against accusations.

I wonder if a case could be made for politicans to be
held accountable for broken campaign promises under
contract law. Under commonlaw oral contracts are
binding are they not? Moreover most politicans making
their false promises do so on the record of the media,
so there is ample evidence of the "oral contract". If
a politician promises to do something for me on TV in
exchange for my vote, but then fails to fulfill his
end of the bargain, is that not breach of contract?
Could someone file a civil lawsuit against a former
holder of high office for breach of contract?

> If you want to hold any one politician accountable
> and set an example
> of holding accountable to the others you have to go
> after the highest
> profile one. You have to make sure the US President,
> the highest 
> profile politician in the world is held accountable.

Well he WAS, if you are talking about Clinton.
Apparently duplicitous warmongering is acceptable but
duplicitous oral sex is not. 
 


The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson

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