Washington couldn't get elected today.

 Oh come on, conservapedia has to be satire... isn't it? I remember stumbling across it a couple of times, chuckling a little weakly, saying something to myself about how the Liberals who were writing it were really laying on the ham and then moving on. It is satire isn't it?

Could someone please verify that it's satire?

Feel free to stick with North, Tom. My Father was "Mr. Finck" and my Grandfather was Jeremie.

 You'd do yourself, the subject, the conversation and your (our) cause an enormous amount of good, Loviatar, if you had held your breath for a moment, counted to ten and then wrote a thoughtful useful reply as if you hadn't perceived any condescension or title problems in Ethan’s post. Instead by rolling around on the level you’ve decided to wallow at, you’ve accomplished nothing.

Tom, every third post of yours contains a section where you decry the bias and slant of the site of a given group (the League especially, see post #8) and then you say that the left needs signalling devices? You're trying to be ironic I'm guessing?

My dear Doc, well done sir!

True Patrick, I'm utterly spacing, does India fall into the Far East or the Near East designations? Certainly the Near East is utterly awash in youngsters.

No, he didn't call any of us WECKS.

A note, the Far East in general and China in particular would likely pay big money if they could somehow exchange our demographic concerns for their own. In America, no less, we have an easy solution to demographic concerns; we can just import some more workers. Problem solved.

They wouldn't sell them but they'd be in the hands of the trust for the duration of their time in office.

As I noted in my original response, you may have done a poor job summarizing his points and I didn't have a link to read at the time old shoe. Surely you would agree that saying that the entirety of the blue states economies could be broken down into financial workers, government employees and government dependants. As I said before, risable. If i find the time I shall read the man's article, I assure you.  

As to my own predictions you're creatively broadening my assertions considerably, I had said that the democrats would never permit a default and to my knowledge there hasn't been any indication to the contrary.

This was eminantly worthy of the front page. I cannot praise it enough.

I engaged the point Tom, no need to swoon, and I thought quite adequately considering how nakedly incorrect it was. I mean the dude didn't even include tort lawyers, abortion doctors or political activists in his list? How hard should I try to refute something that clearly had no effort put into it to make even remotely plausible.

Go ahead and link it. The premise sounds so nakedly risible, though, that I personally don't intend to dignify such hogwash with much more than a snort or perhaps your summary doesn't do it justice.

That may be but that's not insider trading. Now we're talking about influence peddling which is a different basket of fish entirely.

Well at some point it stops being insider trading and becomes ideology. If Dakota Dan is a huge personal supporter of frak drilling and invests in Frak drilling and pushes frak drilling while in congress that's not insider trading. The dude presumably got elected despite being a frak oil driller. (The same'd go for Nancy the Nevada Nuclear bug or Ted the Tort guy from Tucson).

Even with a small government there'd be plenty of opportunities for a congresscritter to inside trade.

Actually I wasn't thinking of anything so dramatic.

When you go into congress your financial assets go into a box. You can't do very much with them in the box and what little you can do is put up on a website after being vetter by some bored accountant. No more insider trading. This is somewhat constraining I suppose but it's not much to ask of people who want to lay their hands on the reins of power of the country.

Not at all. If your assets are in a trust with limited access/control and full transparency for you then you will have a very limited ability to insider trade. Insider trading is generally an issue only in a very limited time window; the markets process their information very quickly. If Jim or Jane Congresscritter can't access their assets but for, say, a trade or two a year and those trades must be fully publicized then they can't insider trade without quickly losing their jobs (because Bob or Barbara Congresscandidate will be watching those couple trades closely for dirt to campaign on).

Seems simple enough. People elected to Congress, the Senate or the Presidency should surrender their financial assets into some kind of trust fund system (perhaps with limited and carefully public access to a certain limited number of financial transactions) for the duration of their stint in office.

Not all of them mind. Even most libertarians (except anarchists) endorse state involvement in things like externalities, the commons, force and fraud.

Reason is the province of technocrats. Voters don't have to worry about such things.

My point was that voters are generally incoherent, eagerly willing to dismiss options A or B and thus, by default, causing option C to occur.

At some point, however, the underlying cause of your pain lays you out cold on a street or other public place whereupon people without your democratic consent will cart you off to a hospital where they will endevor to treat the underlying issue.

You're welcome.