Sure to a great extent but these politicians aren’t representing their constituents, they are power-seeking for themselves and if they represent anyone it’s their donors. For the most part legislators are beholden to the donor class and it’s only when the interests of donors and constituents occasionally intersect in some obscure corner of a Venn diagram that the constituents actually get anything out of the process anymore.
This is why legislators who reject corporate / big $ / PAC and other dark money donations and live off small constituent donations escape that system and usually end up better serving those who they are actually supposed to represent. They are also tend to be more in touch with people’s actual concerns or pain points, sometimes even to the point that their constituent offices provide or coordinate community goods and services for the constituents.
Sigh, I don’t have the energy to go review your posts to see if you’ve ever challenged a theist for responding to a direct question the way you have just responded to my direct question.
Be that as it may, I asked you a legitimate question.
TBH, the reason I asked it is because it came off to me like you were lecturing…like you had to do so because I was ignorant of it…like you were mansplaining. Therefore, the question was an attempt to determine if what I thought you sounded like was actually the case. You, however, decided to respond to that question with deflection rather than a straightforward answer.
No, I was not attempting to lecture and I wasn’t attempting to “mansplain”, either. In fact I couldn’t have if I had wanted to because until now I wasn’t even aware that you were female.
From my POV I was just expanding on your point with a little more nuance, and I generally write for all readers – in fact, almost always I have the general audience in mind more than the specific person I’m responding to. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother to engage with theists because nearly always the one I’m speaking with isn’t apt to change or learn anything. It is the lurkers, usually, IMO, who are looking for answers or insight, and statistically, there are far more of those than participants.
I appreciate that you meant to find out if I was actually being an asshole, although it seemed to me like you were assuming that I was. So to directly address your question, no, I didn’t feel i needed to say “all of that” for your benefit.
For the record – sometimes, I don’t always read the room as well as I could. I lean a bit autistic / aspie (sans comorbidities). You can safely assume that if ever my tone seems “off” to you, it has nothing to do with you. I have no axe to grind with you or anyone else here. And I certainly don’t consider myself superior to anyone here.
It also might be a good idea not to assume too much about tone regardless of who it is, since lacking body language and voice tone feedback, it’s easy to assume way too much. I’ve been guilty of it myself occasionally. Maybe even in this case in responding to your initial quesiton.
Muskrat ran DOGE the same way he runs his companies: by trial and error–just keep trying things until something works, even if the intermediate results are disasters.
I don’t understand why they threw them that bone. I think they should have been dismissed with extreme prejudice since it was pure retribution. But maybe there’s some legal principle at play here that I don’t understand.
Just one reason why the old GOP canard that you ought to run the government like a business is simply wrong. Governments are not businesses. They don’t exist to make a profit or to enrich shareholders, they exist to serve the people’s needs and protect their interests.
I suspect the court encountered the first problem, realized it was fatal to the case and went no further for fear of being overruled by a higher court. Keep it simple.
I’ve spoken to a lot of people who voted for Trump, and the most common reason they give for voting for him is because “he’s a good businessman and we need to run the government like a business”.
First, he’s not a good businessman, as a review of his past performance would show (hell, the guy bankrupted casinos!). Second, as you said, governments should not be run like a business, which tend to benefit only the owner or shareholders, but run in a way to benefit everyone. The only one who has benefited from the current regime is Trump himself, and his cronies.
