On 2/14/2010 7:57 AM, andrel wrote:
> On 14-2-2010 3:07, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> On 2/13/2010 1:39 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> Where did I say they would make $10K a year? I said make sure their
>>> needs are provided for. Don't pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars
>>> a year.
>>>
>>> There are more ways than "cash in pocket" to pay someone for public
>>> service that don't compromise the integrity of the system.
>>>
>>> Jim
>>
>> I think you are missing a major issue here. Its not just about what
>> they are payed. If you select for only those who are unbribable via
>> corporations, you *assume* you are going to end up with those that
>> support the people. All you have to do is look at the nutcases
>> fighting over who the *real* Republicans, or even *real* Tea Baggers,
>> are, to see what you could end up with instead. Many of these people
>> truly believe that their side holds the truth, the other side is all
>> liars, and that their tactics of harping on 1-2 key issues, to get
>> elected, is a way to "get around" all the evil roadblocks, media bias,
>> and liberal control, that might otherwise keep them from representing
>> "the people". They could live in a bloody hut in a frozen snow field,
>> and they would **still** imagine that the majority of Americans where
>> anti-gay, anti-liberal, bible thumping, creationists, and that 90% of
>> everything taught in history and civics classes are lies, unlike their
>> **certainty** that the constitution references God, and probably even
>> once had the Ten Commandments in it, before liberals hid this "fact".
>>
> [etc]
>
> In the Netherlands the vast majority of members of parliament (150 in
> total) are either politically motivated (started as a member of a
> political party in their neighbourhood and had a career within the
> party) or were intelligent enough to complete a study at a university
> but did not choose a subject that could get them a job in industry and
> had a career either directly in politics or starting as a civil servant.
>
> The number of nutcases as you call them is generally at most one or two
> and they generally don't last long. At the moment we have more because
> Dutch politics is a little unstable ATM, but I expect most of them won't
> be reelected.
>
> Perhaps we do have the most optimal amount to pay politicians. Not
> enough that people who are in it solely for the money enter. Elsewhere a
> sociopath can make more money. Yet high enough to attract intelligent
> people that love to think and debate about how the future of the country
> should look like. Sometimes even people come from industry later in
> their career and take a step back in salary (though still being able to
> live comfortably), just to feel they are contributing to the country and
> its people.
Well.. One of the US problem is a) a belief that elites and thinkers are 
"dangerous", and b) a population of people that think stupidity, so they 
don't do/say something that might confuse the general populous, is a key 
indicator of "good politics".

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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