Absolute Vodka Corrupts Absolutely

[Mike Ossipoff]

DEMOREP1 at aol.com writes:
> 
> Mr. Ossipoff wrote:
> ---
> DEMOREP1 at aol.com writes:
> > 
> > Donald wrote:
> > 
> > In England a late Lord one time said:
> > 
> >         "Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely"
> > -----
> > D- The Lord was Lord Acton, 1834-1902, a British historian. Absolute Power
> is
> > a mixture of legislative, executive and judicial power such as that
> possessed
> > by Hitler, Stalin and Saddam.
> 
> Nonsense. Why is Demorep so fond of Hitler & Stalin? We've heard much
> repetition of that lack of "separation of powers" will corrupt.
> Is that why the U.S. is so much less corrupt than the Parliamentary PR
> democracies? :-)
> 
> Why should Parliament be corupt? Repeated assertion, with no justification.
> -----------
> The Term Limits home page has the quote being---
> 
> "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." - Lord Acton
> (letter, Apr. 5, 1887) 
> 
> Demorep1 is not fond of Hitler & Stalin- a typical Ossipoff libel.   

Ok, excuse me; I left out Saddam.

> 
> It seems Mr. Ossipoff has a different dictionary regarding the definition of
> tyranny.   Is Mr. Ossipoff claiming that Hitler and Stalin did not have
> absolute legislative, executive and judicial powers at the peak of their
> powers and that they were not *corrupt* ?

What has that got to do with anything?? Hitler & Stalin were 1-man
govts. By no stretch of the imagination is an elected Parliament
tyranny. Hitler may have been elected by an elected Parliament,
but that just shows that no representatiave systems can save
people from their own bad judgement. It isn't because they had
control of 3 hypothetical branches of govt that it was tyranny;
it was because they weren't accountable to anyone, & couldn't
easily be replaced by the people.

> 
> As to the British Parliament, I would suggest Mr. Ossipoff read the U.S.
> Declaration of Independence regarding the activities of King (George III) and
> *others* (i.e. the oligarchy in control of the 1776 British Parliament).

Again, that isn't relevant to the question. I've never proposed
a king & a hereditary House of Lords :-)

> 
> In case Mr. Ossipoff is unaware of it, the corruption in the federal and
> state governments in the U.S. arises from a mixture of unequal ballot access
> laws, the gerrymander in electing the Congress and state and local
> legislative bodies (producing totally corrupt indirect minority rule),
> plurality nominations in most states, plurality elections, the convention
> system for picking candidates for U.S. President and appointed judges (who
> are beholden to those who appoint them).

Most of those statements are things that I've never said anything
conbtrary to, & most are things I've agreed with. As for judges
being beholden to those who appoint them, I'm afraid that will
always be the case, not just with judges, but with any appointed
or elected official. I myself like the idea of judges being
directly accountable to the public, the voters. I don't know
how Parliamentary systems choose judges, but even if Parliament
picks them, a broad accountability to Parliament is much better
than accountability to a single person, the executive. It would
be hard to devise something worse than that.

> 
> .-
> 


--