Is bypassing Congress gridlock and appealing directly to the people the only hope Obama has?

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

 

Some fiery shit right here. Shuts them other suits right up proper.


Questions for the group: Is he right regarding Obama's (and ours, collectively) only hope of turning this around? Is Congressional election system so money corrupt that we, the people, must literally fire them from their jobs? 

Does anyone know anything about his references to previous presidents bypassing Congress LIKE A BOSS and going to the people, even at the risk of alienating his own party (even more than he has)?


And what about this new bank idea of his, loaning business capital @ 2%? Which side claims that idea?

EDITED FOR CLARIFICATION: Folks, checks and balances are not the issue here. Not is the abolition of Congress and establishing  Executive dictatorships. That is silly talk.

The issue is the speaker in the video suggests the POTUS, who is free to speak directly to the people, should rally the people against the Congress incumbency.

Some think he has to have Congressional oversight to do so. Er, no. He is not passing laws here, folks.

What the gentleman in the video is suggesting is that Obama talk directly to the people as our LEADER, to point the blame at the entire congress, including his party (80% of the country agree). He has the bully pulpit.

The purpose of the bully pulpit being to rally the people to purge Congress of incumbents, replace them with 'clean' legislators (read clarifications in my comments to those below who misinterpreted the intent), who will pledge to work in a non-partisan manner to get the country back on track (whatever that is; another post for another time)

Comments

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

If the POTUS bypasses Congress, he is defying the constitution and breaking laws.

If he goes to Congress, nothing will ever get done and Congress will continue basking in its collective incumbency without feeling any real obligation to fix shit.

The root of the problem, if you ask me, is the apathy of the people.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

The Congress does not have the authority to tell the POTUS to not speak to the people about the problems with Congress.

POTUS is, like any other citizen, free to speak. Fortunately, he has the ability to speak to the globe, if he chooses.

He is not remotely suggesting Obama arbitrarily pass any laws here....

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

"The Congress does not have the authority to tell the POTUS to not speak to the people about the problems with Congress."

You are absolutely right about that.

"He is not remotely suggesting Obama arbitrarily pass any laws here...."

Then I am not sure what exactly he is suggesting, since giving speeches isn't going to solve our economic problems.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

see my clarification on the OP

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

I see it; thank you for pointing it out. I see where you are coming from =)

[blorky.livejournal.com]

"...I create an infrastructure bank with 2% blending immediately. There’s – once I explain to people the problem, once I explain to you that you have cancer, once you understand how screwed up your trade, tax, and banking policies are, believe me, you will have no issue when I incorporate an infrastructure bank that I fund with repatriated offshore money..."

That does seem like unilateral action, but yeah, mostly this rant boils down to "Make a speech encouraging people to vote."

Honestly, I'd guess that the show was losing ratings and the producer told the talking head to go out and have a meltdown to see if they could gather some interest.

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I'd guess that the show was losing ratings and the producer told the talking head to go out and have a meltdown to see if they could gather some interest.

No, he's just like that.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

The root of the problem, if you ask me, is the apathy of the people.

I don't know if it's just apathy, some people are apathetic and just go about their days.

I think there is a combination of things that causes a very major problem, maybe all of them purposely caused to end up this way:

1) The US was not intended to be a direct democracy. We were supposed to vote on people based on their capabilities to make smart decisions for us. Hence the house of representatives, hence electors who were supposed to get together and vote for a president. We weren't supposed to vote for a) representatives that agree with our political views, nor b) electors who are bound to vote for who we personally think is best.

In these ways we have short-circuted our representative democracy in to somewhat a messy form of direct democracy.

Unfortunately: 2) The people are ill-informed. A democracy is only as good a system as the people voting in it. Our media is doing a terrible job making people informed. Much of it is for-profit, taking stories from PR firms that are payed to get the population to think a certain thing and vote a certain way.

These two things combined means that we vote in terrible people and get terrible results. The people who control the message make a lot of money.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

All that is certainly true. But I also think if people took the time to become more informed about their representatives and the decisions they make, instead of just voting for so-and-so because they've held office for 20 years and I'm not dead yet so he must be okay, we wouldn't have incumbents just sitting on their success without feeling motivated to actually answer to the people.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

And yet when people take to the streets they're called astroturf.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

When they're backed by Soros or Koch money, yes, then we do. Because actual grass roots movements are started by people, not plutocrats.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's the egg and chicken story all over again. Which was first - some people creating a group to make a point in front of the politicians and that group then being hijacked by some plutocrats with big money -or- some plutocrats with big money paying some people to form a group and make a point. So which is it? And evidence, please. (I'm a forrinner, you know).