Friday, February 12, 2010

Few Americans Want Members of Congress Re-Elected, Poll Finds

US climate skeptics seize on blizzard Just 8 percent of Americans want the members of Congress re-elected, according to a CBS News-New York Times poll taken nine months before roughly one-third of the Senate and the entire House face voters.

The Feb. 5-10 survey found 81 percent of respondents saying the lawmakers shouldn’t receive another term.

By 80 percent to 13 percent, Americans said members of Congress are more interested in serving special interests than the people they represent.

Also, 75 percent disapproved of the job Congress is doing, the highest level since 74 percent said they disapproved in October 2008. Congress’s job approval rating was 15 percent in the current survey; it was 12 percent in October 2008.

The new poll of 1,084 adults had a margin of error of plus- or-minus 3 percentage points.

Half of those surveyed said they wanted to abolish the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, the procedural move by which bills can be stalled unless 60 lawmakers vote to shut off debate, while 44 percent disagreed.

via Few Americans Want Members of Congress Re-Elected, Poll Finds - Yahoo! News.

Congress is the opposite of progress. Science is making great progress, but politically and morally, we are slipping when "anyone, anywhere may be abducted, secretly imprisoned, tortured, and murdered in cold blood."

2 comments:

Ann said...

"Progress" was a term used by early Christians when they viewed the World in terms of Biblical goals of "Salvation" and the coming "Judgment Day."

It was a term used by even pre-Augustinian Christians - in fact, they were called "the Progressivists" as they thought the collapse of Rome was imminent. (If you didn't know "St." Augustine, an influential spokesman of the early Christian church, changed all that and said "progress," according to Scripture, was spiritual thing. But, it was still "progress" however nebulous and aloof ... that far off vision of the "The City of God" etc.)

But, after the "Enlightenment," and about same time the "Scientific Revolution," (with Newton et al.) progress reverted back to material goals, but in this case people didn't look forward to a better world with the collapse of Rome but to technology, the results of "science."

Ok, that was few hundred years ago, and still today we are worshiping at the alter of Science and waiting for the Gifts of Technology.

Your right we can cooperate ... but first we must stop thinking about the future. It is all here and now. Everything resources, ideas, technology etc. All here and now.

The future is in our heads, in our imagination .. Oh, wonderful, but so it has been for over 200 years. People have been talking about "utopias," and a better world far too long. We need a fundamental changes in the way we think.

Instead of inventions and break-throughs, there is an entire body of knowledge floundering about how to apply what we already know and have. Why is it floundering? Merely because it is not considered important. We want "new," when we should be thinking how to apply what we have.

We must not list "goals" but demands!

(But, really "whatever." I'm just the voice of one.)

Xeno said...

I do have to defer to those who have studied these things so I appreciate the corrections. Now I'm even more curious. Has anyone figured out the cost of various entire world improvement projects? How much would it cost to: get clean water to everyone everywhere? How much for basic sanitation? How much, and is it even possible, to set up farming and distribution so no one dies of hunger? If we can't do it, what population target would permit that? How much to get rid of all the diseases we know how to cure?