What’s a fact about the American Government that most people don’t know?

25 comments

1. I saw on a documentary once that near Congress there is a building where members of Congress go to make calls for money basically and it’s just this ugly bland office building full of cubicles. They’re basically telemarketing

2. President of the United States is statistically the most deadly job in the country.

   Four of 46 POTUS have been assassinated while another four died in office.

3. James A. Garfield was most likely killed by his doctors more than the bullet did.

   Also, President Lincoln’s son was around 3 presidents who were shot.

4. The first amendment only protects you from reprisals by the government, not from consequences from private businesses when you say shitty things

5. The US Constitution originally required 1 congressperson in the House of Representatives per 30,000 citizens.

   This means, per the intentions of our founders, the House of Representatives should currently have about 11,080 representatives.

   This rule was changed in 1929, because there wasn’t any more room in the capitol building to fit any more representatives into the building. So they capped the number at 435.

   As a follow up to this, the number of electors in the Electoral College is also pegged to this number (+100 for senators). So, anyone that tells you that we shouldn’t change the electoral college because it was “designed to work this way” is very much incorrect.

6. Established case law on the second amendment allows much more robust gun control than we currently have. It’s not the second amendment that prevents it, just the policy preferences of Congress.

7. Also, from our totally greatest president, Woodrow Wilson, he made it illegal (during that time, because this wasn’t a Woodrow specific thing.) To criticize the American military.

   The issue is that it’s still written down somewhere on the books if they wanted to enforce it.

8. During Prohibition the United States government ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the U.S. They did so knowing bootleggers regularly stole such products and sold it to U.S. citizens. At least 10,000 people are thought to have been poisoned as a result before Prohibition ended in 1933.

   The Library of Congress has 838 miles of bookshelves, consisting of more than 39 million books, and receives about 15,000 more items each working day. The bookshelves are long enough to stretch from Houston to Chicago.

   Nancy Pelosi is the first and only woman to serve as Speaker of the House. There has never been a female Senate Majority Leader. There has never been a female Chief Justice. And, of course, there has never been a female President.

   Under the U.S. Constitution, the Chief Justice only presided over and impeachment trial of a US president. The Vice President, in his or her capacity as President of the Senate, presided over all other impeachment trials. But that means if the Vice President is impeached he or she would be required to preside over his or her *own* impeachment trial.

   No President of the United States has lived and died under the same flag. So far there have always been new states, and therefore new stars on the flag, during the lifetimes of all deceased Presidents. If the U.S. does not add more states in the future, that will remain true until the death of a President born after 1959.

9. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and PHS (Public Health Service) have uniformed commissioned officer corps. The are the only uniformed services that aren’t part of the military.

10. [removed]

11. > Nikolaus Barbie (25 October 1913 – 25 September 1991) was a German operative of the SS and SD who worked in Vichy France during World War II. He became known as the “Butcher of Lyon” for having personally tortured prisoners—primarily Jews and members of the French Resistance—as the head of the Gestapo in Lyon. After the war, United States intelligence services, which employed him for his anti-Marxist efforts, aided his escape to Bolivia, where he advised the regime on how to repress opposition through torture

    >The West German Intelligence Service later recruited him. Barbie is suspected of having had a role in the Bolivian coup d’état orchestrated by Luis García Meza in 1980. After the fall of the dictatorship, Barbie no longer had the protection of the government in La Paz. In 1983, he was extradited to France, where he was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. Although he had been sentenced to death in absentia twice earlier, in 1947 and 1954, capital punishment had been abolished in France in 1981. Barbie died of cancer in prison in 1991, at age 77.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Barbie

12. The Queen of England could be the Speaker of the House.

    The House chooses the rules by which they select the Speaker and there are no constitutional qualifications.

13. During the Vietnam War, the US dropped more bombs on Southeast Asia (including Laos and Cambodia, neither of which we were at war with) than it dropped on Europe and Asia in the entirety of the Second World War.

    The CIA wanted carry out a terrorist attack in Miami and blame it on Cuba as a pretext for invasion; look up Operation Northwoods.

14. The whole to *”protect and serve”* [is just a slogan that came from a PR campaign](http://www.lapdonline.org/history_of_the_lapd/content_basic_view/1128).

    The job of law enforcement is to enforce laws, as they see fit. Multiple cases, up to the Supreme Court, have established that law enforcement has no duty to protect you.

    [Warren v DC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia)

    [Castle Rock v Gonzalez](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales)

    [DeShaney v Winnebago County](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeShaney_v._Winnebago_County)

    [Lozito v NY](http://decisions.courts.state.ny.us/fcas/fcas_docs/2013JUL/3001010882012002SCIV.pdf)

    [And most recently in the Parkland shooting.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/12/19/parkland-shooting-judge-school-cops-no-duty-protect-kids/2360683002/)

    [Radiolab has a good episode on this.](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/no-special-duty)

15. The House of Representatives can choose the US president if no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes. They choose from the top three candidates. The Senate selects the VP from the remaining 2 candidates.

    Given how little the average American knows or understands about the Constitution I cannot imagine the sheer chaos this would cause if it happened today.

16. Puerto Rican nationalists shot up the Capitol Building and almost killed the president.

    Not many people remember that.

    We also fought an ongoing civil war in the Philippines when they were a US territory.

17. Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11. Thank you for your time and good night.

18. The [California Eugenics Program](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_California) was the basis for the Nazi’s own eugenics program.

19. A very, very large portion of government services are subcontracted out to private companies. The government doesn’t do a whole lot by themselves.

20. The electoral college and how it works.

    I come across people on reddit who think a majority of Americans voted for Trump.

21. Every President since President Taft has gotten a tattoo in the inside of their belly button in very small text that says, “We the People.” True story, read it in a book.

22. The majority of federal legislation needs to be renewed regularly, but so few people know or understand this that it’s easy for politicians and pundits to convince people that their opponents are pushing through new, radical legislation when really they’re just renewing mundane legislation that has been on the books for years, decades or even a century or more.

23. There’s no government agency willing to regulate sex toys, so it’s very much a Buy At Your Own Risk market.

    Last I checked, the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) holds that sex toys are used on or inside the body, so are quasi-medical devices and should be regulated by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA).

    The FDA says sex toys haven’t been considered medical devices since 1952, when “Female Hysteria” was finally removed from the DSM. Therefore, they’re for “entertainment purposes only”, so should be regulated by the CPSC.

    The FDA does, however, regulate lube, and is pretty draconian about it.

    Meanwhile, the USDA and National Highway & Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) just sit back and watch the show.

24. Until the end of the 19th century, Senators were not directly elected. They were elected to the US Senate by their state’s legislature, and candidates were chosen from amongst the state legislators. This was an intentional safeguard to make sure that both houses of Congress could never be controlled by populist radicals

25. It is actually incredibly efficient and organized (federal). There is so much going on, and many of the people involved are the best in their fields.