Added on 9/24/15
- Quiz: What is founding father George Washington's view on Religion in America? What did one of the presidential candidates say about religion in US?
- Recent Gallup poll (involving countries with a free press) suggested that 75% of the participants agree that corruption is widely spread throughout the government in US. This poll also captured several other countries where corruption is supposedly widespread. Some of the other countries which were placed higher than US being, Mauritius, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Lithuania to name a few.
- Quiz: Is there a presidential candidate who is connected to more than one country in the above list of countries?
- Prof. Noam Chomsky's views on GOP (Interesting read)
- Brookings Article on Governance cited in the above article (Theme: Common good focus lacking)
- Psychologist's Open Letter to US Voters (Interesting sentence from this article: "Politicians are groomed by us—by our applause, by our polls, by our votes.")
Added originally on my website on 9/24/15
- What people want? - Must read
- Electoral College History - Must read
How to combine these two to reflect changing times, and to increase accountability in the political system?
To connect with people's thoughts of limiting terms for politicians, as mentioned earlier, if the President of USA is limited with two terms, time has come to consider term limits for all the congress representatives, and at the state level as well.
Even a state representative earns around 2.5-3 times the median household income, and if politicians were to even have three terms of office, their salary will be equivalent to 30+ years of cumulative income seen by families earning median household income. With so many political representatives being millionaires, it appears that there is a disconnect between the political world of elected leaders and the real world. Moreover, common families don't have the same kind of job stability unlike politicians. Further, time has come where individuals with proven track record in various fields become politicians so that income is not the primary reason for individuals to seek politics, and to bring in their experience in their area of expertise while putting forth recommendations for new policies and rule of law.
At the same time, going by the thoughts of the founding fathers, popularity need not align with great leadership, and need not reflect the common interest/good of the country. For that reason, implementing a political process where proven leaders in different fields with electoral experience in the political system (at least for four years) along with some level of global experience should become a mandatory requirement for the Presidential role.
