Excuses-excuses

[HARDCORE]

1-26-2023

(More Personal Opinions)

So why do we hire our leaders - if not to benefit and expand upon our national honor, our well-being, our security, and our economy? And why do we continue to accept excuses and alibis from them every time they screw-up in spades?

These people are supposed to be “the best of the best” and not just another gaggle of second-rate tarot-card readers? Or could it possibly be that “a small portion of Our Government” is truly in business for themselves? And as such, are they often engaged in a monumental shell game that is geared merely to befuddle and/or to keep us under manageable control and subservient – “I WONDER??”

You know, being “A Good and Loyal American” does not entail being a sucker or a fool! Nor are we locked-in to each and every move - financial, military (or otherwise), that our political and financial machinery ingeniously envisioned and created!

We are a free-thinking and independent bunch of patriotic cusses, and there-in resides a great deal of our strength! We have the right (and the duty) to question, to disagree and to challenge the dictates of each and every three-piece suit that orders us to blindly obey their edicts, as these people are not infallible - nor are they perfect!

“We the People” are the true and only power behind our system of government, a fact (unfortunately) that far too many in power these days choose to completely overlook (or just plain ignore), and more is the shame! For when any politician (or group thereof) becomes more powerful than even the people who temporarily elect and control them, then we are in deep trouble indeed and our days of survival may be truly numbered, in my opinion!!

“Our Own People” (after all) are not the enemies of “ ANY DULY AND LEGALLY-ELECTED GOVERNMENT” - even if we are (at times) in “peaceful and legal confrontation” with its sometimes contrary, unbending “and even controlling” edicts!!

Hardcore

[Boats]

Example: Do politicians break their promises once in government?
[What the evidence says all around the globe including the US]
By: The Converstation News - 11-29-19
Re: https://theconversation.com/do-polit...ce-says-127761

[We are talking politicians in every country around the globe now].

The conventional wisdom holds that politicians can’t be trusted to keep their promises, yet decades of research across numerous advanced democracies shows the opposite. In truth, political parties reliably carry out the bulk of their campaign pledges, especially in majoritarian systems like Westminster.

At a time of such political cynicism, the average voter could be forgiven for doubting this claim. The idea that politicians are insincere about their campaign pledges is reflected in public beliefs about election pledge fulfilment. When Chris Carman and I ran a survey earlier in 2019, the findings of which will be published in an upcoming John Smith Centre report, we asked respondents whether they agreed that “the people we elect as MPs try to keep the promises they made during the election campaign”.

Of the 1,435 respondents who offered an opinion, fewer than one in three agreed, while more than half disagreed. Citizens seem to have little faith that the policies they endorse at the ballot box will ever come to fruition. But the truth is actually rather different.

Promises made, promises kept
The finding that political parties carry out their pledges has stood up to repeated, cross-national study. A rapidly growing field of scholarship is dedicated to investigating the connection between manifesto promises and subsequent government policy, known among experts as the “programme-to-policy linkage”. Researchers search party manifestos for measurable policy pledges and check government actions, legislation and news media sources for evidence of their progress

The most comprehensive study of the programme-to-policy linkage was published in 2017. It brought together 20,000 specific campaign promises from 57 elections in 12 countries. The strongest linkage is found in the United Kingdom, with over 85% of promises by governing parties at least partly enacted in the years studied.

There are also patterns in campaign pledge fulfilment, with a substantial difference observed between consensus and majoritarian democracies.

We also know that promises are more often fulfilled when a party does not have to share power with others, such as in a coalition government. In political systems like Austria and Italy, where coalition governments are the norm, fewer election promises become government policy. The politics of compromise is built into these democracies but it does mean that governing parties typically fulfil only half of their manifesto pledges.

Pledge fulfilment is also affected by factors like economic growth, coalition negotiations and the previous governing experience of parties.

The pledge paradox:

The take home message from this area of study is that politicians do seem to try to keep their promises. The central mechanism by which vote choices are supposed to translate into policy works more smoothly than voters assume. This disconnect between public beliefs and the academic consensus even has a name, the pledge paradox.

Why are public beliefs out of sync with the evidence? A recent study shows that negativity bias – the tendency for people to react more strongly to negative information – is the reason that voters remember broken pledges better than fulfilled ones. Meanwhile, a new paper of mine, suggests that voters only react to the fulfilment or breakage of promises on issues they care about. Perhaps parties are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

Hedging about pledging:

Both political parties and researchers, however, must confront questions about the importance of pledges enacted by parties. A recently completed study of pledges from the 2017 Conservative manifesto shows that the promises considered more important by voters were less likely to be kept. For example a pledge to make maps of school buildings available to parents was kept, while the commitment to reduce net migration to below 100,000 was again broken. An impressive fulfilment rate of 69% declined to 48% when they were weighted by voter priority.

Separately, the volunteer-run Policy Tracker project also recently completed its analysis of the same manifesto. The group categorised pledges differently from past researchers, including more subjective statements in the analysis. Using this method, it reports that just 29% of the previous government’s pledges were fulfilled, with a further 55% “in progress” by the time the 2019 election was called.

Although these newer approaches add nuance to our understanding of the linkage, it remains the case that governments make a sincere effort to carry out most promises. It is uncommon for British parties to outright break promises – this happens most often when they are forced to compromise with others or get defeated in parliament. Famous recent examples include the Liberal Democrats’ pledge to abolish tuition fees in 2010 before entering a coalition government with a party that opposed the idea. Then, of course, there was the Conservatives’ failure to pass a Brexit deal after the 2017 election.

Although fulfilling election pledges is not the be-all and end-all of democratic processes, it’s fair to say that the research rebukes the conventional wisdom that campaign promises are worthless. On the contrary, political parties take them very seriously.
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To this consider this:

Can politicians convince people to selflessly support the government?
On the other hand, the more politicians can convince people to selflessly support the country and the government, the more powerful and legitimate they grow. The problem is: selfless support for the group is not rational from a voter’s point of view.

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Another view: By CBS NEws 08-03-12
Re: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lying-p...-fact-of-life/

Lying politicians: A fact of life:

(CBS News) Here are three things most Americans take as an article of faith: The sky is blue. The pope is Catholic. And politicians are liars.

"There's a general awareness that candidates are giving self-serving accounts of what they stand for and what the other guy stands for," says historian David Greenberg of Rutgers University.

"Voters don't consider campaign promises to be real promises," adds historian H.W. Brands of the University of Texas at Austin. "They recognize that they're buying a used car from somebody."

For the past few weeks, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has been aggressively pushinga deliberate misreading of President Obama's now-famous "you didn't build that" comment. The Obama campaign, meanwhile, has spent much of the campaign falsely casting Romneyas an advocate of letting the American auto industry die. They're just two of the claims that have kept groups like Factcheck.org and Politifact very busy during the 2012 campaign season.

These fact-checkers don't just deem claims true or false. Instead, they offer shades of gray - "mostly true," "three (out of four) Pinocchios" - to reflect the fact that politicians and their campaigns rarely offer up lies so obvious that they can't defend themselves against charges that they're liars.

"I think most presidential campaigns try not to tell direct lies," said Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons. "They may tell extremely shaded versions of the truth. Lying usually does get you in more trouble in the end - though obviously not always."

Simmons has a simple explanation for why politicians and their campaigns mislead voters: "You can get away with it. We know that." He says one of the most effective recent examples of an effective lie was the "Swift Boat" attacks on Sen. John Kerry in 2004, when the then-presidential candidate was accused in attack ads of lying about his Vietnam record.

The lesson of those attacks, Simmons said, is that politicians need to quickly and aggressively contest false claims before they take hold in the public consciousness. Kerry, he said, waited for weeks to respond and then offered only a "tepid" defense, in part because he did not want initially to elevate the claims by dignifying them.

"The dirty secret of political campaigns is there is no referee calling fouls and handing out penalties," he said. "Your campaign has to respond for the public to know you will fight." Mr. Obama recently went on the air with a response to the "you didn't build that" attacks, saying the ads are "taking my words about small business out of context - they're flat out wrong."

Politicians could potentially sue opponents over false attack ads, but libel claims are difficult to prove. The president could legitimately argue the "You Didn't Build That" attacks, for example, are misleading - but they aren't libelous. Plus, any libel victory a candidate does achieve is likely to be hollow, since it would most likely come after a campaign is over - and the other guy has potentially already won.

Despite a professed distaste for negative advertising, Brands said, the public rarely turns against a candidate for throwing mud at his opponent.

"I can't think of any election where the public said 'enough is enough,' where they were really turned off by negative campaigning," he said. "Many voters have become so cynical that they really don't expect candidates to speak the verifiable truth, and they accept these exaggerations, these mild falsifications, as just part of the game."

They don't just accept them, says psychology and behavioral economics professor Dan Ariely - they come close to demanding them from the politicians they support. His research found that Americans have a high tolerance for dishonesty when it comes from their own candidate, with no difference between Republicans and Democrats.

"I think it basically is about the ends justifying the means," he said.

"We have an agenda that we want to get things done," Ariely said. "And I think that everybody realizes that the system in Washington is such that if you're pure at heart, you're not going to get much."

"If you think the fight is fair, you might want your representative to be perfectly fair," he added. "But if it's not fair, and it's not right and has lots of corruption, then you might want the candidate that you choose to be less moral because then they would be able to get more."

In other words: The game is rigged, so you might as well have a cheater on your side.

"We understand that Washington is a corrupt system, and because of that we are willing to have corrupt individuals as part of the agenda because they are likely to fit better with the system and get more things done for us," said Ariely.

With the attack ads flying fast and furious, it may feel like lying in politics is worse than ever. But that's a tough case to make: In the 19th century, for example, party-affiliated newspapers would regularly give completely different accounts of identical events. Today, politicians don't just depend on partisan media outlets to spread distortions - they can be spread by ostensibly unaffiliated "super PACs" as well as supporters who push false claims, such as the notion that Mr. Obama is Muslim, online.

"You're never going to hear Mitt Romney say that, you're never going to hear anybody who's a high-profile Republican say it, but there are plenty of people who circulate it on the Internet," said Brands. "So you get the effect of the big lie, without the candidate needing to be the big liar." (It's worth noting that while most mainstream Republicans steered clear of "birther" claims, they were pushed by one high-profile Republican: Donald Trump.)

Outright falsehoods and out-of-context distortions aren't the only claims that could be considered lies. There are also campaign promises that can't or won't be kept - most famously, perhaps, President George H.W. Bush's "Read my lips, no new taxes." Other examples abound: Richard Nixon's "peace with honor" pledge to end the Vietnam War, Romney's (seemingly impossible) promise to cut taxes for all in a revenue-neutral fashion. It's not clear whether Mr. Obama believed his 2008 campaign claims that he would bring real change to Washington - but four years later, it's clear he didn't deliver.

Greenberg, for one, says the lies aren't always a bad thing. While "you didn't build that" is being used in a misleading way, he sees a valuable discussion behind it.

President Obama "was arguing that individual success in business owes a lot to the collectivity," said Greenberg. "Whether 'that' in his sentence refers to the businesses or the roads and bridges doesn't matter. The point of criticism - as Romney said - was the claim that there's a debt to the wider society and government. Obama and Romney were arguing economic philosophy, not parsing a sentence."

The same is true, he said, of Romney's comment that he likes "being able to fire people." Democrats have seized on that comment to attack the presumptive Republican nominee, despite the fact that Romney uttered the words as part of an argument that Americans should be able to choose from among health care providers.

"People on the right will say it's really unfair, it's a lie to say Mitt Romney likes firing people," Greenberg said. "That quote may have been taken out of context, but for somebody who thrives at Bain, which makes money by downsizing and firing people - is it really untrue?"
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1. Should politicians be able to lead?

If politicians are ever to be able to lead, there will have to be an end at some point to the negative expectancy disconfirmation effect. We have to learn to trust again. Great leaders require not only the ability to take bold action, but the willingness of citizens to allow them to try to win without having to make wild and unrealistic promis
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2. Are politicians insincere about their campaign pledges?

At a time of such political cynicism, the average voter could be forgiven for doubting this claim. The idea that politicians are insincere about their campaign pledges is reflected in public beliefs about election pledge fulfilment.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CBS post 08-03-12
Re: Lying politicians: A fact of life

(CBS News) Here are three things most Americans take as an article of faith: The sky is blue. The pope is Catholic. And politicians are liars.

"There's a general awareness that candidates are giving self-serving accounts of what they stand for and what the other guy stands for," says historian David Greenberg of Rutgers University.

"Voters don't consider campaign promises to be real promises," adds historian H.W. Brands of the University of Texas at Austin. "They recognize that they're buying a used car from somebody."

For the past few weeks, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has been aggressively pushinga deliberate misreading of President Obama's now-famous "you didn't build that" comment. The Obama campaign, meanwhile, has spent much of the campaign falsely casting Romneyas an advocate of letting the American auto industry die. They're just two of the claims that have kept groups like Factcheck.org and Politifact very busy during the 2012 campaign season.

These fact-checkers don't just deem claims true or false. Instead, they offer shades of gray - "mostly true," "three (out of four) Pinocchios" - to reflect the fact that politicians and their campaigns rarely offer up lies so obvious that they can't defend themselves against charges that they're liars.

"I think most presidential campaigns try not to tell direct lies," said Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons. "They may tell extremely shaded versions of the truth. Lying usually does get you in more trouble in the end - though obviously not always."

Simmons has a simple explanation for why politicians and their campaigns mislead voters: "You can get away with it. We know that." He says one of the most effective recent examples of an effective lie was the "Swift Boat" attacks on Sen. John Kerry in 2004, when the then-presidential candidate was accused in attack ads of lying about his Vietnam record.

The lesson of those attacks, Simmons said, is that politicians need to quickly and aggressively contest false claims before they take hold in the public consciousness. Kerry, he said, waited for weeks to respond and then offered only a "tepid" defense, in part because he did not want initially to elevate the claims by dignifying them.

"The dirty secret of political campaigns is there is no referee calling fouls and handing out penalties," he said. "Your campaign has to respond for the public to know you will fight." Mr. Obama recently went on the air with a response to the "you didn't build that" attacks, saying the ads are "taking my words about small business out of context - they're flat out wrong."

Politicians could potentially sue opponents over false attack ads, but libel claims are difficult to prove. The president could legitimately argue the "You Didn't Build That" attacks, for example, are misleading - but they aren't libelous. Plus, any libel victory a candidate does achieve is likely to be hollow, since it would most likely come after a campaign is over - and the other guy has potentially already won.

Despite a professed distaste for negative advertising, Brands said, the public rarely turns against a candidate for throwing mud at his opponent.

"I can't think of any election where the public said 'enough is enough,' where they were really turned off by negative campaigning," he said. "Many voters have become so cynical that they really don't expect candidates to speak the verifiable truth, and they accept these exaggerations, these mild falsifications, as just part of the game."

They don't just accept them, says psychology and behavioral economics professor Dan Ariely - they come close to demanding them from the politicians they support. His research found that Americans have a high tolerance for dishonesty when it comes from their own candidate, with no difference between Republicans and Democrats.

"I think it basically is about the ends justifying the means," he said.

"We have an agenda that we want to get things done," Ariely said. "And I think that everybody realizes that the system in Washington is such that if you're pure at heart, you're not going to get much."

"If you think the fight is fair, you might want your representative to be perfectly fair," he added. "But if it's not fair, and it's not right and has lots of corruption, then you might want the candidate that you choose to be less moral because then they would be able to get more."

In other words: The game is rigged, so you might as well have a cheater on your side.

"We understand that Washington is a corrupt system, and because of that we are willing to have corrupt individuals as part of the agenda because they are likely to fit better with the system and get more things done for us," said Ariely.

With the attack ads flying fast and furious, it may feel like lying in politics is worse than ever. But that's a tough case to make: In the 19th century, for example, party-affiliated newspapers would regularly give completely different accounts of identical events. Today, politicians don't just depend on partisan media outlets to spread distortions - they can be spread by ostensibly unaffiliated "super PACs" as well as supporters who push false claims, such as the notion that Mr. Obama is Muslim, online.

"You're never going to hear Mitt Romney say that, you're never going to hear anybody who's a high-profile Republican say it, but there are plenty of people who circulate it on the Internet," said Brands. "So you get the effect of the big lie, without the candidate needing to be the big liar." (It's worth noting that while most mainstream Republicans steered clear of "birther" claims, they were pushed by one high-profile Republican: Donald Trump.)

Outright falsehoods and out-of-context distortions aren't the only claims that could be considered lies. There are also campaign promises that can't or won't be kept - most famously, perhaps, President George H.W. Bush's "Read my lips, no new taxes." Other examples abound: Richard Nixon's "peace with honor" pledge to end the Vietnam War, Romney's (seemingly impossible) promise to cut taxes for all in a revenue-neutral fashion. It's not clear whether Mr. Obama believed his 2008 campaign claims that he would bring real change to Washington - but four years later, it's clear he didn't deliver.

Greenberg, for one, says the lies aren't always a bad thing. While "you didn't build that" is being used in a misleading way, he sees a valuable discussion behind it.

President Obama "was arguing that individual success in business owes a lot to the collectivity," said Greenberg. "Whether 'that' in his sentence refers to the businesses or the roads and bridges doesn't matter. The point of criticism - as Romney said - was the claim that there's a debt to the wider society and government. Obama and Romney were arguing economic philosophy, not parsing a sentence."

The same is true, he said, of Romney's comment that he likes "being able to fire people." Democrats have seized on that comment to attack the presumptive Republican nominee, despite the fact that Romney uttered the words as part of an argument that Americans should be able to choose from among health care providers.

"People on the right will say it's really unfair, it's a lie to say Mitt Romney likes firing people," Greenberg said. "That quote may have been taken out of context, but for somebody who thrives at Bain, which makes money by downsizing and firing people - is it really untrue?"
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Personal note:
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As you can see - politic's is alot of BS - They sell it to the public & tell them
what they want to hear - make promises that they can't fullfill - and so on.
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You'd swear none of them were really the delegates you anticapated whle
peddling their ideals running for office. Newbee's follow their leaders and
have for a very long time.
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Good or Bad - they sign on to keep - or at least maintain some showing
of contribution - to what other's are plugging. Regardless if its good or
bad for whose party!
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Politician's is a rotten business with little to show for the time spent.
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And we pay them big bucks for their service - if you can call it that!?
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3. Lying politicians: Is a fact of life - they got with the flow regardless.
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