Originally posted by Gregarious
How about if we get the military guards keeping us out of Congress, to keep them IN the building, just bringing them food and medical. I think they already have a library and gym. . . . Oh, and stop feeding them all our money. Dollar a day is about what I think they already pay other inmates.
Of the People, By the People, and Against the People.

Great idea . . . except for rehabilitating. Most are beyond that.

But maybe we could start an indoor sculpture garden of the fossilized old _arts. Then we could invite a world conference of the most skilled spattering pigeons.

Well if you look back at the time you will find that the majority of Americans were against the bailout based on the terms presented...but so what, I mean who are we? So I believe ATS actually reflected the will of the people in this case.

In my opinion this was another Bush deal to reward his neocon friends. I don't doubt the need for a bailout however I believe the opportunity was seized to steal money for their Wall St cronies. Congress was threatened with martial law if this bill was not passed immediately. This has all the marks of Bush administration corruption, particularly no oversight or restrictions on the allocation of the funds. So another scam and final FU from the Bush administration!

Email, write, and call your congressmen, and tell them "I WANT MY MONEY BACK!" The banks refuse to be accountable for what they are doing with it, so make thiem give it back! Decorum and TOS forbids me from being more descriptive.

I don't know if any of you have seen Bill Maher's "Religulous" yet but in it he is speaking to a congressman.

Bill says something like, "come on, your smarter than that."

The Congressman's response...

"There isn't an IQ test to be elected to Congress."

Says it all really.

Just stopped by to answer the main question at hand.

ATS is full of people who love to see themselves speak. ATS points mean nothing, and if you still believe in 'Yes we can' and company.. then your surely the crap on the bottom of my boots.

Add term limits to any and all political offices city - federal.

Send any and all in D.C. to jail for treason ... and yes including Obama.

You would first have to define the parameters of the term "smarter".

Smart denotes a level of intelligence, in that both ATS members and congress shares in common. Smartness is irrelevant because the goals of ATS members and congress are entirely different. ATS members may presumably have the goal of saving our nation's economy and people as a whole but congress has proven they have a different agenda.

Do you honestly think congress didn't know what they were doing when they passed the bailout program? Do you really think the goals of the people or ATS are the same as theirs?

Please! Give me a break...

Congress men and Congress women have been untrustworthy for decades now. They almost never pass a bill unless they will get something out of it. They take bribes from big businesses, gifts from special interest groups and lobbyists but occasionally some fool gives them an opportunity to steal hundreds of billions of US dollars and they take it. There wasn't any regulation because they didn't want to ruin their chance.

If ATS members were inherently dishonest and criminal in their thinking then congress would be smarter; for they then would have played the game better than ATS but if congress was inherently honest then ATS members would have been smarter. Neither can be the case and therefore, smarter is irrelevant.

In the wake of this most increditable heist I think the people of this country should rise up and retake its country. The people of our nation should take back that which has been stolen from us by congress; imprison those congress men and women, confiscating their accounts and belongings. Otherwise, the people of this nation have no more rights because those who control the laws are above the laws. And those controlled by laws are sheep to a slaughter.

I would like to add that yes we are smarter than congress. People in this community are not blind to what really needs to be done to fix things IMO.

I guess the better question you should be asking yourself is "Are we really smarter? Or are we only being made to look smarter?" In other words, is it possible that they're smarter than we think, and they're just making themselves look like fools on purpose to escape any repercussions?

I wouldn't say i'm smarter then any members of congress. But then agian i wouldn't give myself much credit for anything at all.

I think it's a simple fact that the average member of Congress is better educated and has a higher IQ than the average ATS member. I mean no disrespect to anyone here, as I place myself among that group of ATS members with less formal education than the average Congressman.

Of course, there are areas where the average ATS member surpasses the average Congressman. One of those areas, and perhaps the most important, is having a better grasp of what the average American is going through and what the average American expects of their government. And that is simply because most of us are average Americans (except for the fact that we are not blind to the many conspiracies that most Americans don't care to notice). And I'm sure a lot of ATS members have more "common sense" than the average Congressman.

But let's be realistic here. While there are quite a few extremely intelligent and well-educated ATS members who would put most of Congress to shame if there were a "battle of wits", they represent an extremely small minority of the membership here. Simply taking a gander at any old thread here on ATS would probably make any Academe's head spin. A lot of people here completely butcher the English language in ways that I never thought possible. There are also a lot of gullible ATS members who will believe just about anything as long as it is on a website, regardless of how absurd it is.

So, to answer the OP's question: Are ATS members smarter than Congress? Absolutely not! After all, we're the morons who pay their ever-increasing salaries and buy into their B.S. every election year!

Here comes the cynic!

I don't think that members of Congress of the Senate are smarter than us. But...they care more than us!

Haven't we been through a recent election where Joe the Plumber, Harriet the Waitress, Ben the Soldier have all been thrust before us with a respective politician standing right beside them wearing heartfelt looks of sympathy?

On a side note, I just saw our Illinois Governor (and accused criminal) Blagojevich doing the same thing to prove why he shouldn't be impeached.

Congressional bailouts simply keep a flawed business system on life support instead of allowing a Darwinian survival of the fittest to occur. It allows workers to keep their jobs, but doesn't do a thing for the system. Look at the how the airline industry was bailed out. Has it helped consumers? Nope. The wasteful business plans are for the most part still in place.

But then again, government doesn't care about the bottom line. It doesn't affect their paychecks. I would propose a bill that would tie Congressional pay to the budget. Budget surplus--bonus! Budget deficit--tough luck buddy, no paycheck this year. But I hear the Salvation Army has a good soup kitchen around the corner.

Then we'll see how many wasteful projects/bailouts come out of Washington.

Originally posted by Rasputin13
So, to answer the OP's question: Are ATS members smarter than Congress? Absolutely not! After all, we're the morons who pay their ever-increasing salaries and buy into their B.S. every election year!

This is an interesting position but you should try to remember that the US Constitution is a document always growing. Many of the laws created in the last two hundred years are in fact unconstitutional and tend to serve their creators not us. Let's face it, the last couple times our congress gave them a raise in pay, it went to a vote amongst the House and Senate and was finally approved by the President. At no time did the people ever get a say in that matter. There wasn't any millage on any ballot nor was their any "public opinion surveys" to represent what the people may think. Congress did it without permission from us or our parents. We have no choice but to pay their ever-increasing salaries because a few of their laws surround the financial part of the workers' salary, income tax. Congress takes income tax automatically and doesn't provide any option for a worker to say, "No! I am not going to pay any more. Live on what I do pay you or get into a new line of work."

Congress men/women expense just about everything they do every... single... day! We pay them $200,000 plus each year but they hardly ever use it. My point is that we pay for their breakfasts, lunches and dinners. We pay for their flights, limos, cap rides to their personal engagements, clothing, hair-cuts and housing on expense. But then we pay for their breakfasts, lunches and dinners, flights, limos, cap rides to their personal engagements, clothing, hair-cuts and housing in that $200,000 plus salary too, and then they say it isn't enough and so we pay more but without a say in the matter.

I say we kill them all and start over!