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| Source:Russia Today- Alyona Minkovski, interviewing James Poulos. |
"RT (formerly Russia Today) is a state-controlled international television network funded by the federal tax budget of the Russian government.[5][6] It operates pay television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.
RT operates as a multilingual service with conventional channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (since 2010),[7] RT UK (since 2014) and other regional channels also offer some locally based content.
RT is a brand of TV-Novosti, an "autonomous non-profit organization", founded by the Russian news agency, RIA Novosti, on 6 April 2005.[3][8] During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, included ANO "TV-Novosti" on its list of core organizations of strategic importance to Russia."
From Wikipedia
"Peter Orszag, the former Office of Management and Budget chief for the Obama Administration has written an op-ed entitled "Too much of a good thing: why we need less Democracy". Orszag argues that our Congress is paralyzed by gridlock and argues for expanding automatic stabilizers, having a progressive tax code, unemployment insurance or linking the payroll tax holiday to the unemployment rate. But does this approach of putting more power into the hands of even fewer, really sound like a good idea? James Poulos, Host of The Bottom Line and Reform School on PJTV weighs in."
From Russia Today
"Why we need less democracy.
In an 1814 letter to John Taylor, John Adams wrote that “there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” That may read today like an overstatement, but it is certainly true that our democracy finds itself facing a deep challenge: During my recent stint in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget, it was clear to me that the country’s political polarization was growing worse—harming Washington’s ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing. If you need confirmation of this, look no further than the recent debt-limit debacle, which clearly showed that we are becoming two nations governed by a single Congress—and that paralyzing gridlock is the result.
So what to do? To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.
I know that such ideas carry risks. And I have arrived at these proposals reluctantly: They come more from frustration than from inspiration. But we need to confront the fact that a polarized, gridlocked government is doing real harm to our country. And we have to find some way around it."
You can read the rest at The New Republic
"Peter Orszag spoke about government reform and fiscal responsibility. In his remarks he outlined the Obama administrations proposal to cut federal spending by asking agencies to identify under-performing programs in order to reach a 5% reduction. He also answered questions from the audience."
So since Congress has a 15% approval rating (give or take) and the 15% of the country either hate government and don't want them to do anything, (or are drunk or high, perhaps escaped mental patients who are willing to like anyone who doesn't view them as crazy) that since the Federal Government is so unpopular, we should just give more power to an institution that is very unpopular, for very good reasons.
Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results." If it's broke, break it more, perhaps even destroy it, which is essentially what former Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag is saying here.
The way to fix government is not to make it more powerful. If the voters want better representatives and government, that's what they'll vote for. That's how democracy works, that's especially how liberal democracy in America works.
