View Single Post
  #2384  
Old Posted May 12, 2017, 2:53 PM
hipster duck's Avatar
hipster duck hipster duck is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Toronto
Posts: 4,109
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc View Post
One thing that makes this whole thing suspect...

Isn't the obvious solution to ensure that every citizen has photo ID? Issue a national ID card to every American citizen. Then boom, this whole problem goes away. Shouldn't the Republicans insisting on complaining about voter fraud be putting this proposal to the front of the list of proposed solutions?

Unless of course, they WANT certain demographics to be less likely to be able to vote.
Let's disregard - if we can - the notion that there are certain interests who would rather not see certain groups vote.

Beyond that, the United States hasn't seemed to figure out:

1) How to use the Federal government to coordinate coherent, equivalent services across states;

2) How to divorce politics from public service through independent, third-party but publicly-financed agencies.

With regards to elections, these are organized by the states rather than by an organization that is fully independent and national like Elections Canada. Similarly, the Americans are spectacularly bad at organizing a large scale, coordinated government response. Remember how after Katrina they gave out those useless debit cards, and housed them in hotels or the Superdome? Every other country would move people en masse to shelters that provide the same basic services - food, clothing and shelter.

The sclerotic mess of confusing services that cost way more than they should and provide little to their users is a big part of the reason why Americans hate government. When Reagan said that the scariest words anybody could hear were "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" he wasn't exactly wrong.

The big exception to this is the US Armed Forces. I think the reason why Americans are ardent supporters of their military is because it is a very efficient social welfare program for its service members.
Reply With Quote