Government is best which is closest to the people. Yet that belief is betrayed by those State and local officials who engage in denying the right of citizens to vote. Their actions serve only to assure that their State governments and local governments shall be remote from the people, least representative of the people's will and least responsive to the people's wishes.
Our government has become too responsive to trivial or ephemeral concerns, often at the expense of more important concerns or an erosion of our liberty, and it has made policy priorities more dependent on where TV journalists happen to point their cameras....
We just watched this budget debacle right? Seventy-three percent of Americans want to tax the rich. Why can't the politicians respond to that? Because they are the rich. And they are beholden to the rich. It's a captured system.
As constituents, we've become lazy in terms of what we want and how to get it. If we, as a constituency, don't like what Congress is doing, but 90 percent of incumbents get reelected every year, that's a problem.
The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.
I think that the people in Indiana want to see more jobs, more opportunity. And they want to make sure that Washington listens to them.
Even in a fake democracy, people ought to get what they want once in a while.
In a political sense, there is one problem that underlies all of the others. The problem is making government sufficiently responsive to the people.
I guess the President says the majority of the people didn't elect him, he doesn't have to listen to 'em anyway.
About the only time Congress conforms to the will of the people is when it decides to adjourn.
Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.
People are used to getting a lot of information quickly, and they're used to being quite empowered as consumers, and they go to governments expecting a similar treatment; they want to find data and they want to influence events quickly, and yet they come into this brick wall.
It is among the evils, and perhaps not the smallest, of democratical governments, that the people must feel before they will see. When this happens they are roused to action. Hence it is that those kinds of government are so slow.
We have bloated, out-of-control, and unresponsive government agencies that need to be reined in and focused by Congress to deliver results.
Ask yourself, have you ever heard any of your PAP MPs ask the hard questions? As a Singaporean, you have a right to information that the Government is refusing to answer.
Flint's got so many hardworking, good people who just want a fair shake and it starts with making sure their government is responsive and protecting them and making sure everyone's got access to clean water.
The thing about local government is they want to hear what local people think, but for the most part, their systems are so long, dull and bureaucratic that people only get involved when there's an issue they really care about.
The Modi government's accountability towards the common man can be gauged from the fact that be it Indians trapped overseas, a helpless mother looking for a doctor for her ailing child in a train, or a housewife struggling to get a gas cylinder, help is just a tweet away, with no protocol or red tape intervening.
Congress would give the people what they wanted if the people knew what they wanted, and if Congress could give it to them.
What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives.
We think that when the American people make a decision together that they want something, politicians have to listen to them, and that's the process we believe in.
And if this House is to be scared, by whatever influences, from its duty, to receive and hear the petitions of the People, then I shall send my voice beyond the walls of this Capitol for redress.
Obviously, people feeling that their government is responsive to them is in the best interest of the United States. It's in the best interest of the U.K., it's in the best interest of countries all over the world.
I think the most important thing is the American people have lost trust and confidence in the people they have sent up to Congress as elected leaders. And I think that it is so important to reconnect to the people. And I think that the last election showed people weren't running back to the Republican Party. They did show that they weren't happy with the policies coming out of the Democrat Party. But they are trying to find individuals that will go up and be their voice, that will resemble them, that will take their cares and concerns to Washington, D.C.
Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens.
_0_thumbnail_47x47.jpg "John Gardner in 1979"){kind=small}
