I understand the desire to hold a 'local' person accountable, but I think that you overvalue it greatly. If you manage to convert your representative to your cause, it is only one vote of 435, so he would have to convert many of his colleagues. I don't see that happening unless many of their constituents are also converted to your standpoint. So if you want to change something on the national level, local activism in one region is not sufficient. You need to convince people nationally. I don't see how that is much harder for the slightly more distant House of Reps that I propose (remember that you have 4 reps per state). If you can't even convince one of your reps to champion your cause, then what chance does your cause have in national politics?

The regional representation that you currently use for both Senate and the House means that it is very difficult for unclustered minority opinions to get any traction. This is far easier in a party system where even a 5% minority is heard and whose voting power can be significant. The way I see it, there is no real conflict between the Senate and Congress in the current system, which results in a lack of checks and balances. For instance, they both want as much pork as possible for their region and feel no responsibility to the overall budget. It is far easier to get non-regional politicians to commit to getting rid of pork.

Currently both the Senate and the House of Reps do two things:
1. Consider issues based on their ideology
2. Wonder about the effect on their state & the limits of federal power

In practice, they implement 2 mostly by trying to get pork for their state. They pretty much ignore state rights and constitutional limits. During elections, Americans mostly vote based on ideology, so the politicians get away with it. My system would seperate these two responsibilities. The new Senate would be ideological and Americans vote for parties based on their opinion about abortion/gun rights/taxes/etc. The House of Reps would focus on the limits of federal power and the consequences to the states. Hopefully, Americans would understand the seperation and would vote for representatives that reflect their opinion on state rights and state issues, rather than ideology. If so, the power of the states could be greatly strenghtened.

Science research is funded by the government, but politicians do not determine what research is done by scientists. The supreme court is funded by the government, but politicians have no say in the rulings. Similarly, you could have a focused media organisation that is 100% aimed at researching and disseminating facts (the spin is for the networks). The leadership could be put in the hands of a small group selected by American newspapers.

I disagree with that, just as the Times did later on. Fact is that at the time, there was absolutely no solid evidence that Iraq still had WMDs. Good journalism (and good intelligence gathering) is about verification and there was nothing to back up the wild claims made by Curveball (the primary 'intelligence' source). Analysts both domestic and abroad could not verify his claims. Weapons inspectors got tips from US intelligence, but did not find the weapons where they should have been according to the sources. Journalists should have reported on this, that is their job.

Saddam didn't halfheartedly deny it, that is a lie. It is also a lie that Saddam didn't allow any inspections. They only left Iraq shortly before the war. Just before the war, the leader of the inspection team said:

In my 27 January update to the Council, I said that it seemed from our experience that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, most importantly prompt access to all sites and assistance to UNMOVIC in the establishment of the necessary infrastructure. This impression remains, and we note that access to sites has so far been without problems, including those that had never been declared or inspected, as well as to Presidential sites and private residences.

Both of these facts were know before the war. In nearly all countries, a majority of the population was against the invasion. The US was the exception. Your people didn't have any better or worse information than the rest of us, you were lied to by your government and the media. Unfortunately I don't think you have changed. It can happen again tomorrow, with horrible results.

I know. I was talking about the average American vs the average European, not about individuals (or large groups in certain regions). It's not about absolutes, but there are some major differences, like these:
- Americans tend to think more black/white.
- Americans like winners and dislike losers (although they love it when a loser becomes a winner).
- Americans want to decide what they spend their money on, instead being 'forced' through taxes.

IMO, these differences are very clear in American politics, in the opinions of Americans I talk to, etc. These differences have good and bad effects. Some of the differences make me like the US and some make me dislike it.

While that is true, I feel that the human race is at a threshold. The population has grown so big and we are abusing the resources of the earth to such an extent, that it is unsustainable and may result in major blowback (if we destabilize the eco system too much, for instance). Local politics can never rise above the prisoners dilemma that has us pumping out enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, emptying out our oceans and wasting our water supplies, all because our competitors might profit if we take on these challenges and they don't. Furthermore, the global capitalism that 'we' advocate means that irresponsible behaviour by some countries (US, UK, Spain, Iceland), can result in a global crash. So we need global rules to prevent this.

I'm not saying that you can change it by making one small tweak. That was my point actually, until now, all amendments were small tweaks, instead of the big change that is necessary. In the current system, gerrymandering is inevitable because each member of the House of Representatives has to represent just 700k people (on average), but with party politics, the parties simply want to win as many of these small districts as possible so they can implement their national agenda. So they tune the districts to get the required numbers. There is not much consideration of the different needs of different districts, so the House of Representatives doesn't really serve a purpose. So I would do away with it completely. The current Senate would become the new House of Representatives, but with one major change: 4 representatives per state. The new Senate would be fully party based, with national elections (instead of state elections). Then the president would have to find 50+% support in the Senate by getting support from several parties.

Advantages of this system:
- Voting for a minority party for the Senate elections isn't useless (and to a lesser extent, the same goes for the House of Representatives)
- Minorities that are not geographically clustered can still get representation
- Influence in the new Senate is proportional with the number of votes, so minority parties actually have power
- A very clear mandate for both houses: the Senate makes laws with support of 50+% of americans, while the House of Representatives makes sure that small states are not 'shouted down' by big states
- Democrats and Republicans will have to work together. This will inevitably lead to more respectful and useful politics, instead of both parties shouting loudly and trying to increase the differences between them, instead of compromising.
- 3+ parties will completely disrupt the binary mindset in the media. They might even get so confused that they start doing journalism again.
- 4 representatives per state in the new House of Representatives means that the states have to change their voting system, hopefully to a system that gives third parties a chance. It also strongly reduces the incentive for pork. Currently, you can win the vote for a state by bribing one senator with pork. In the new system, there are four times as many people to bribe, which makes it a less feasible.

I'm not sure either, but I think something drastic has to happen. Perhaps Dan Rather can come up with something:

http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/135834

Newspapers can be just as bad. Even the NYT is infected. They let themselves be fooled by the WMD lies about Iraq for instance. Anyway, I'm not saying that it is hopeless and there are no sane people left in the media. They are just few and far between.

For most people in Europe, a corporation exists to serve society. Beyond jobs, that means that they are expected to behave ethically. For instance, we also feel that corporations should try to be environmentally friendly, shouldn't reward their management for failure (golden parachutes), shouldn't abuse a monopoly, shouldn't discriminate against minorities, etc. As far as I can tell, Americans simply feel less strongly about these issues. On the other hand, I can give many examples where the US media considered an opinion to be anathema, while polling showed that a large portion of the population actually held that opinion. So I wouldn't necessarily conclude that Americans don't care, just because the media don't tell you that they do.

There are no mandatory coalitions in any of the countries that currently have coalition governments either. The politicians simply desire them. Changing the voting system for congress to realistically support more than 2 major parties would automatically result in coalitions.

I wasn't arguing about the war on drugs. I was arguing about the ease with which the constitution is ignored when the written words don't match the desires of a large (Washington) majority. It turns your constitution into a joke (not that my constitution is any better, but I'm not pretending that it is, like most Americans seem to do).

There was an EU vote in 2009 (EU parliament). The average turnout was a mere 43%. I don't think that it is comparable to the national US elections though, because:
- The EU is much more of a federation than the US. The individual EU states have a huge amount of power, while the EU parliament has far less power then the US Congress.
- We don't actually get to vote for European parties. We vote for national parties that send representatives to parliament, who then cluster into European parties that can have drastically different policies than the national party that we voted for.
- There is very little media reporting on the EU parliament (as a European, I know more about decisions made by the US congress than those made by EU parliament). Even if I find out that they did something that I like or dislike, it is very hard to figure out which parties voted for/against it.
- The EU political system is very young and nobody is happy with it. The only disagreement is with how it should be changed.
- There is a new EU constitution on the way which is a major change.

Again, my criticism of the US is not that the system sucks, it's that there is no serious effort to change it.

An alternative is to force the companies to lease their lines at a modest cost (where the price is set by a government agency). This has worked very well in some EU countries, where they wanted to convert government utilities to a free market.

I might have high standards. I consider Italy to be awfully corrupt and France to be fairly bad. If you compare the US with really shitty countries like Nigeria or Russia, it comes out fine. But then again, are those the countries that you want to compare yourself with?

True, but only because Abramoff went too far in his corruption. It is clear that he was at the center of US politics and many other lobbyists were doing the same things, in a slightly more modest fashion. I don't see any indication that most politicians want to deal with it. They just want to prevent excesses that will become public and will result in outrage.

Not at all, a gentlemens agreement that is enforced by a group is extremely effective. What happens if a big company doesn't do this? They will quickly lose influence in DC, since the other politicians will stop listening to them. So they are forced to do it. It is very easy to detect as well, just look at the CV and donations list of a politician who becomes a lobbyist. A law could be made that disallows politicians from becoming lobbyists for the companies that they had contacts with while in office.

You are right. But there are several solutions that can help:
- Spread the power around by changing your system to be multi-party (it's harder to win with a negative PAC campaign when you have to discredit 5 opponents instead of 1)
- Media reform (instead of dismissing lies they like to discuss the 'controversy')
- Better defamation laws so lies can be countered effectively

UK, Germany, France, Holland and the Scandinavian countries all have way better media than the US. The problem with the US media is not that they go after a demographic. In fact, as long as the main biases are accounted for I like that far better than media that pretend to be impartial. The real problem is firstly that they have too much time to fill and want to fill it as cheaply as possible. So what do you get: sponsored and dumbass opinions, 'controversies', reading twitter messages and emails out loud on air, etc. What is rare: expert opinions, critical interviews, investigations and other forms of real journalism. The second problem is cultural. The media consider what happens in Washington DC to be normal. There is almost no criticism directed at the system. They only see fault in individuals (and those are always exceptions). Here is a nice quote:

BILL MOYERS: I think you wrote that "The media stars in Washington almost never understand that there's anything wrong with the establishment of which they're a part."

GLENN GREENWALD: That's right. I mean, if you were to say to normal Americans, and it's the reason why these issues resonated, and why Barack Obama made them a centerpiece of his campaign, that members of Congress leave office and make millions of dollars doing nothing other than essentially peddling influence to wealthy individuals who can have their way with Congress.

Most people consider that to be corruption. That's what Barack Obama called it when he ran. Yet, to members of the media, who have spent their lives in Washington, who are friends and colleagues of the people who are engorging themselves on this corrupt system that is just the way of life. It's like breathing air or drinking water. It's not anything that's noteworthy, let alone controversial.

Glen Greenwald is one of the few good journalists around today. Not surprisingly, he lives outside of the US, to keep himself from being infected. Without any staff and by doing research by phone and through the internet, he has publicised some major scandals over the years. Unsurprisingly, many of those involved unethical behavior by the media.

There is a big difference between buying from big business and letting them make the rules. Big business has gained market-share in Europe as well in the past decades, but in most West European countries their influence in politics is far less than in the US. There is actual pro-competition regulation for example, both for Europe as a whole (see the efforts by the European Commissioner for Competition) and in individual countries. I can point out many other differences between US laws that favor big business versus European laws that favor the consumer (privacy laws for instance, companies can't sell my personal info).

I have no problem with big business as long as they are kept on a tight leash (through strong regulation).

My definition of democracy goes beyond 50% + 1 and includes the rights of every citizen (minorities, non-voting citizens, etc). Then again, I live in a country of coalition governments, instead of a winner takes all system. Support from a minority party can be crucial get into power, so there is a strong self-interest to listen to the minority, at least for the issues they care most about.

hear, hear!

Stability is overrated. If the citizens of a country cannot agree on major issues, so a strong coalition government cannot be formed, why should there be a strong government that changes laws without sufficient support? Leave the existing laws alone then. A weak government can then manage the daily affairs until there is consensus. BTW, in my country the House of Representatives has the right to propose laws, although it only happens a few times a year (and not for pork).

I might have exaggerated a little by using the word perfect. But if you look at the list of amendments for the previous century, most are either fixes that do not actually change the system (women's suffrage, federal income tax, two term limit for the president) or really minor alterations (20th, 23th, 24th, 25th, 27th). I see none that try to fix the two party system. For instance, in many countries, the presidential elections are two-tiered, with the two highest scoring candidates going to the decisive election. That would be a small step to do away with the a-constitutional primaries and would give third parties a much better chance. However, if you really want to earn my respect, you could go for approval voting, which only requires one election and would give even better chances to third parties (while still being extremely simple: vote for everyone you would want as president). Of course, the same can be used for congressional elections, so this can be introduced on a state level first.

The government can only regulate interstate commerce, which should not include medical marijuana sold to state residents by stops in the state. The Supreme Court decided in 2005 that Congress may regulate a non-economic good, which is intrastate, if it does so as part of a complete scheme of legislation designed to regulate Interstate Commerce. I don't see how this interpretation is reflected in the constitution. It's a clear case of: 'we don't like this part of the constitution, but a large majority in Washington agrees and we don't want to allow for the sale of medical marijuana while an amendment is being processed'.

How can you say that when almost 50% of Americans don't vote at all and of the remainder, many are unhappy with the limited choices they have and feel forced to vote 'against' rather than 'for'. To me, it seems that many people are disenfranchised, but do not see how they can change the system. I think you'd be surprised what Americans would vote for if third parties had a chance and the media would do their work. Polls often show that the American people are way more sane than their politicians.

Bob Ney, Michael Scanlon, Neil Volz, Mark Zachares, Italia Federici, Robert E. Coughlin, Ann Copland and John Albaugh have all pled guilty to taking money or gifts from Abramoff while they were in politics. Tom DeLay was involved in the scandal too and received gifts from Abramoff. There is a money trail going from Abramoff to a lobbying firm (ASG), to Christine DeLay (about $300,000 in total). Tom DeLay was majority whip of course, so this happened at the center of US politics.

Furthermore, there are scores of politicians who worked very closely with lobbyists and later were given higly paid jobs by the companies that sent the lobbyists. That is also a form of payment, IMO. Then there are donations to PACs, which can be spent on attack ads and such. Most politicians are pretty lazy, so they will often rely on a few lobbyists to tell them what to think. Then you buy legislation by buying the lobbyists that advise the politicians. That situation is just as bad for democracy as bribing the politicians directly, but it is completely legal.

That is just ignorance. There are civilized countries that have independent media that is not beholden to a small elite. Unfortunately, the mainstream media in the US is completely corrupt, since the majority of the US citizens do not seem to care and most politicians favor big business (no wonder, since those are the people who steer their votes).

My point is that he could have much more influence, if the US political system was more democratic. Unfortunately, you seem to accept your broken system and don't actually care about democracy. Land of the brave? Land of the slaves is more like it.

Health care is not a big issue for Americans? Or the enormous national debt that will have to be paid back one day? What about the lack of banking regulations that costs you billions in Chinese debt while the bonusses keep getting paid? Iraq & Afghanistan?

If the American people feel that there are no major national issues that the federal government should address, they are dumbasses. Being disenfranchised is an decent reason not to vote. The national government not being important is not.

You are right, it sounds incredibly lame. Giving up your vote, so you won't have to do your duty to make sure that justice is served = Double-plus unpatriotic.

So where is the party that wants to change the system? You could at least make an effort. Other countries do it. Your founding fathers told you to keep improving upon their work. Yet Americans keep pretending that their constition is perfect, while both parties and the supreme court 'interpret' the constitution to mean something completely different from what it clearly says and very few people actually want a two-party system.

The majority of electoral democracies have government subsidies to pay for (some of) the campaign expenses and other costs. Combine that with a multi-party system, where power is spread among many political parties and it is far less likely for political parties to become dependent on donors. Italy is Western Europe's black sheep, so it's not fair to look at that country as the only alternative.

There is a big difference between influencing voters by paying for ads and giving money to politicians in return for favorable legislation. In the US both seem to be called free speech, while in the rest of the world, the latter is called corruption.

Ultimately, the idea behind democracy is that everyone has an equal vote. A rich man's opinion as expressed through the ballot box is not worth more than the a poor man's opinion. Obviously that ideal is unreachable, but it should still be mostly true. If not, the government cannot be considered democratic and is illegitimate. The US is doing very badly in this respect, IMO, clearly evidenced by the small turnout, since many Americans feel that their vote is worthless (about half).

But it is much harder to kill someone with a club, knife or your bare hands than with a gun. In fact, that is a very common argument among gun-lovers: miss beanstalk can only defend herself from mister bodybuilder rapist if she has a gun. I can run away from someone with a contact weapon, strike at the weapon, take it away, etc. That is much harder when the opponent has a gun.

Not if the anger subsides, the person becomes semi-rational again, the victim manages to escape/counterattack, someone helps the victim, etc. These are all more likely when the attacker does not have a gun.

There are many examples of people who survived an attack by someone who was determined to badly hurt them. You have to be pretty determined to kill someone with your bare hands. Most attackers give up when the victim is clearly beaten, but he is still alive. Similarly, knife attacks typically end after a few stabs. There is a good chance that you'll survive. A gun is much more effective.

Not if you were carrying a gun. Then you only need to make sure that you pull out your gun first. If you were prone to getting into fights with people who might carry a gun, that would be a very good reason to carry a gun yourself (where there is a good chance that they would limit themselves to a knife in places where gun ownership is restricted).

There are more dimensions than that, such as:
- Environmentalism vs Cornucopia
- Fiscal conservative vs Big spender
- Multi-cultural vs Single-cultural
- Populism vs Elitism
- Small government vs Big government
- Egalitarian vs Social hierarchy
- Pacifism vs Warmongering
- Isolationism vs Globalism

While certain combinations are much more likely, pretty much any combination is possible. For instance, there are capitalist environmentalists, socialists that are against a multi-cultural society, liberals who are elitist since they want strong limits on democracy (like a powerful constitution) to prevent authoritarians from making laws they don't like, people who want small government and big spending/tax cuts, etc.

Unfortunately, due to the archaic political system in the US, there are only two viable political parties and most combinations do not have a corresponding political party. The result is that many Americans are not even aware that there are more possibilities than those reflected by the Democratic and Republican party.

Yes, when you said this: "I was specifically referring to was the spend spend spend attitude that is personified by the Democratic Party in the United States." This sentence only makes sense if you think the Republicans are better. If you think that both parties are bad, then say so. Don't whine when people judge you on the words you write instead of reading your mind (and I'm not the only one who read your words this way, so it's not me who is the problem).

They have been out of power for a very short time, after 8 years of making policy. Obama has put Reps in his cabinet, so they share part of the responsibility. They are still a factor in congress (with the democrats having a very slim filibuster-proof majority). You can't just ignore them, especially since your criticisms of the Democrats might drive people to the Republicans, which won't solve anything.

Yes, because it is unfair. You cannot turn a supertanker on a dime. During a recession, the first priority for the government is to appear reliable and stable. You cannot simply change fiscal policy drastically, without risking major panic. Also, it diverts attention away from the bipartisan corruption and foolishness.

Obama reached out to the GOP. Did they demand less spending? No. They wanted lowered taxes (a very ineffective way to combat a crisis, since many people will put the money in the bank). The consensus in Washington is that there needs to be spending to fight the recession (as has always been the case during a recession, since politicians started believing in Keynes after the Great Depression).

No, it's not. A lot of money goes to tax cuts and the states, which are not pork. The rest of the bill does have some pork, but by Washington standards, it is very little. You are just parroting right-wing talking points. And of course the money cannot be spend immediately. It always takes time to start up projects, especially if the money is not earmarked.

But the discussion wasn't about American politics. It was about liberalism until your post where you started talking about the Democrats and the Republicans.

Why would I let you hijack this thread and reduce it to a myopic talk about US politics? There are plenty of non-Americans on this site and many articles that are about foreign or global topics (like this article). IMHO, a major weakness of many Americans is that they have very little global awareness. As a result, you get these crazy ideas floating around:
- There are only 2/3 normal political options: Dems, Reps (and on Slashdot: Libertarian). Everything else is extremism.
- What the Dems do is liberal/socialist
- The Dems are objectively left-wing
- What the Reps do is conservative (or even libertarian)
- The government can never do anything right, so politicians cannot be blamed for f**king anything up
- A (semi-)socialized health care system will be more expensive and will provide far worse care than the current system, which ranks poorly on both counts when compared to nearly every other health care system from civilized countries.
- Empire-building is normal, everyone who disagrees is an extremist who hates America
- Etc.

Your comments on the stimulus are just nonsense, as I've said before. The health care reform is clearly needed and you cannot blame the Democrats for the disinformation campaign that tries to make good reforms impossible. The rich will have to pay roughly the same tax percentages as under Reagan, after having had way more tax cuts than poorer Americans for the last few decades, so I don't think they can rightly complain. The cap and trade giveaway is similar to what happened in Europe, nothing outrageous. The GM bailout is standard operation procedure in DC, that both Dems and Reps support. Nearly all politicians quickly turn into socialists when jobs in their constituency are threatened.

All in all, the Democrats seem to be moderately right-wing for the most part. Of course, the GOP and their cronies are shouting socialism for everything that the Democrats do, even though the Democrats are doing nothing outrageous by US standards. That you seem to think that the Democrats are now implementing some socialist masterplan tells me that you've drunk the kool-aid and are caught up in the stereotypes.

Irrelevant. My point is that there is very little actual change on these issues, so they are very poor reasons to vote for a certain party.

1994 is a long time ago. The AUW law expired in 2004 and all attempts to extend it have failed. Obama has said that he will not try to get it reinstated. The 'carry in national parks' rule has been stopped by a judge for now and a final judgment still has to be made. However, it seems like small potatoes to me. The partial birth abortion ban has been easily circumvented by doctors by injected the fetus will lethal drugs before the abortion is performed. It changed nothing substantial.

That was my point! The partisanship that you demonstrated by attacking the Democrats is what helps to keep this alive, since it diverts attention away from the broken system and pretends that this is just a game where 'your side' has to win.

It's not redirection. You claimed that liberalism = Democrats = spend spend spend. But Bush Jr, Bush Sr and Reagan were big spenders. The most fiscally conservative president of the last few decades was Clinton. Arguably, Obama has had little choice but to continue spending to get out of the recession. Most fiscal conservatives are fine with running deficits in bad times, as long as there is a (larger) surplus in the good years. Obama could easily turn out to be a fiscal conservative, by cutting spending and raising taxes when the recession is over.

In short, your anger at the Democrats for being big spenders is not based on facts, since the GOP is way worse in that respect. Your anger at liberals is even more of a mystery, since your world-view seems to be limited to the US. Liberals exist all over the world and some are extremely fiscally conservative, while many conservatives want to spend like crazy. Break out of the stereotypes. They are what allows politicians to get away with the horrid behavior, while beating the pro/anti-gun, pro/anti-abortion, etc drums at election time. On those issues there haven't been major attempts to change the laws for a long time, but politicians pretend that they are major issues, so they don't have to talk about the real issues (like their awful spending & corruption).

Except that there are many old liberals. That quote is really only enlightening to a selfish subset of the population who can't stand the thought of paying for the well-being of other people, at the expense of a little luxury.

Anti-corporate and anti-business doesn't mean anti-capitalism. There are many people that want reforms. Banking reforms are especially popular right now. There is no reason why we have to accept the current crappy system that favors short term greed over long term sustainable growth.

But the problem is that these private companies have huge debts with each other. So if a few big banks/insurers go, they all go. The regular economy is hugely dependent on the banks, so they will crash as well. We would lose much more money in the long run. Look at the Great Depression.

So having more rights doesn't mean anything to you? I guess only the rights you have as an American (which I presume you are) actually count as freedom. Iran and North Korea use the same argument to claim that they are free countries. After all, the people of those countries can do anything they should want to do.

The parent didn't say that anything was allowed in Holland, but he gave some examples of rights that differ from the USA. Argue those rights instead of using the 'anarchy' argument (also known as the 'fingers in my ears' argument).

And yet, the ratio of small companies to big companies is higher in Holland. So seemingly it is easier to profitably run a small company in Holland, despite having more regulations. Anyway, IMHO civilization is about establishing rules that shape our interactions and limit our actions. For instance, food regulations + inspections allow us to visit a restaurant with some confidence that we will get served hygienically prepared food. That is a highly practical measure. There are also more moral measures, such as hate (speech) laws and laws against (non-hallucinogenic) drugs. Both the USA and Holland have both types of laws, but the exact laws are different. What I find interesting is that in my discussions with Americans, they often seem to regard their own choices in regulations to be completely sensible and the choices of other civilized countries to be completely alien; As if these regulations do not have any merit and prevent us from having a happy and quite free society (which is a pretty silly argument if you know a bit about Holland). As I see it, some Americans like the word Communism because it allows them to neatly file something in the 'evil file', without have to consider the actual pros and cons.

Why not? Are you not interested in improving your country? I am interested in improving mine.

Or we might have had a (limited) space war, filling Earth's orbit with debris, making it impossible to have any satellites for the next thousand years.

If you cannot stop in time for a stationary object, you are speeding, regardless of the actual speed limit. There are many reasons why there could be a stationary object behind the corner: a traffic jam, accident, fallen boulder, someone with car trouble, etc. It's not 'shit luck' when you hit that object. It is the consequence of your decision to drive faster than is safe. That decision also happens to put cyclists in danger, the people who get in an accident in that spot, the cars in a traffic jam, etc. Essentially, you are gambling with the lives of others.

You are not entitled to go 25-30mph. You are allowed to drive up to the speed limit, if the conditions allow.

Sometimes, the reasonable speed for a car is 0 mph. At a traffic light or in a traffic jam for example. Do you run the red light or drive on the shoulder along the congestion, since you are seemingly entitled to keep moving? If you don't, then why can't you accept that there are situations where you have to slow down because your fellow road users cannot go as fast. This can mean cyclists, trucks, tractors, horse and buggy (Amish), a herd of sheep being moved to greener pastures, etc.

Or perhaps drivers should just learn to obey the law. If there is something in your lane that is moving slowly or not at all, you are obligated not to pass until it is safe to do so. Regardless of whether that obstruction is someone who is breaking the law or who you think is inconsiderate. Drivers who get frustrated and perform dangerous maneuvers are breaking the law themselves. They are the real issue, not the cyclists. If the cyclists are banned, the agressive drivers will do the same thing to trucks, tractors and other slow traffic.

Just because the roads in Europe weren't designed for cars, doesn't mean that they are safe for cyclists. Since their introduction, cars have simply taken over these roads and forced alternative forms of transport off the road (it is simply not safe for 30+mph cars to mix with 15mph cyclists). In bicycle friendly parts of Europe, there have been a lot of investments in seperate bike lanes to allow cyclists to travel safely:

http://www.streetsblog.org/2006/10/04/notes-on-bicycling-in-copenhagen/

The USA could do the same. More cycling means less congestion, fewer parking problems, less obesity, less gas consumption and less pollution.