To fix the government for everyone.
I was thinking the other day (don’t laugh it happens occasionally) about one of my favorite posts from a few years back. The Post was about Disconnection and it was on December 9th 2002 if anyone wishes to revisit it. Its still true today. But it occurred to me that the reason that congress has abysmal confidence levels from the electorate, that voting numbers are dwindling, that the tea baggers have been necromanced by fox network and the occupy movements have developed is due to the fantastic inequity and the ability of the government to totally disregard the will of the people. I see this as a completely politically neutral thing – neither right nor left. Everyone is completely pissed off that congress or the government is doing nothing and that we have no control of our government or political system.
The policies and obfuscation on the issues are being used by special interest groups to polarize the electorate and keep them focused on their issues of passion. The special interest groups and government don’t want these issues to go away or be solved. They never want the electorate to focus on the real issue – THE GOVERNMENT IS NO LONG UNDER OUR CONTROL. We live in a representative democracy! A government of the people, by the people, for the people promoting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Wrong again yak breath!
Ok then what should be done?
- Only people are people. Corporations, foreign governments, organizations, unions, vegetables and minerals are not people – only people are people. Only people may donate to any politcal party.
- Stop the bribery and latent bribery in congress via lobbists and lobbying organizations. No member of congress or anyone in their employ may ever, repeat EVER, be employed by any organization seeking to promote any policy in congress. No congressman can accept anything (anything) from anyone – except through regular political donations from private citizens. Transgressions should be handled by the criminal justice system not congressional censure. There should be jail time and complete access to civil suits. These are recommendations from perhaps the most notorious lobbyist of all time Jack Abroamoff!
- Make all laws that apply to insider trading etc. applicable to anyone in the government. Make it manditory that government officials investments be handled by transparent blind trusts.
- No closed door sessions! Ok defense and national security issues may be closed but it must be justified.
- De-monopolize the media. No one person or corporate entity may own more than one media outlet in any market area. No more media propaganda moguls!
- Stop voter disenfranchisement. make elections on saturday. Everyone should have the time and ability to go to the polls.
- Eliminate all impediments to the construction of additional politcal parties.
- Congressional numbers should be increased so that all congressional representatives are closer to the constituency.
- Term limits. We shouldn’t have career politicians in congress.
- Campaign costs should be capped and campaigns should be handled in the public forum via publicly sponsored debates and a publicly sponsored website that allows all the candidates to express their view daily and a matrix of issue related questions applied to all the candidates. No shady funded political action committees.
- It should be much easier to recall any political figure – forcing a new election. They must be made to bend to the will of the governed. If the governed are piss off they should be able to act.
- I would also like to see the libel laws put back onto political campaigns.
That’s about all I’ve come up with to make government do our bidding. Once the people are in control of government I don’t see the need for big protests – we’ll get what we want collectively and we can’t complain, what ever the government ends up being its ours and we can change it next election.
If anyone has any other ideas about getting the government back into our hands lets hear it.
Eliminate the electoral college. The popular vote is already counted & compiled by electronic means these days, thus we know (nearly down to the person) which candidate got more votes….in near-real-time too! Candidate A received 5.3 million votes, Candidate B received 4.7 million votes…. A wins. Done.
Hell, news channels display the popular vote totals on election night as it is, so why not use it?!
Oh, & remove the unstated “connection” between Church & State. It seems to be a requirement for any candidate, regardless of what they are running for, to be a follower of Jeezus, else they have a snowball’s chance in Tartarus of being elected. This would be difficult to enforce though. The only way I can think of is to prohibit questions of candidate’s religious stance from being fielded until after the candidate has won office. If they choose to disclose their standing in this field, that’s fine, but they should not be forced to.
Make elected officials and government employees pay into social security and not their own plan. Maybe it would be fixed then. Also put them into the Medicare/Medicaid program when they retire. That would then be fixed as well.
Also revise the tax code to eliminate all deductions and loopholes and go to a flat tax. That should not only save time but get rid of a bunch of IRS pukes with too much power and “millionaires” wouldn’t get away with not paying their fair share.
I can’t believe I missed the obvious – scrap the electoral college! I am also completely on-board with making our representatives experience the vicissitudes of being an “everybody American”.
Some other changes I would like to make is get rid of the grid-locking super majority bullshit in the Senate. If they want to filibuster, it has to be the old way – stand on the floor of the senate and talk! If you have the stamina you can hold out but none of this Joe -Fucking- Lieberman “I filibuster” bullshit. Another thing, I would like to see a rule where there are no off topic bill riders. If its a bill about taxes – then no appropriations etc. I don’t really think that line item veto is good as it would give the President too much power – but compromise bill packages on single topics could be worked out and passed without odious last minute bill riders. I would also like to see an end to ridiculous convoluted gerrymandering! The districts should be set by a neutral commission and be blocky and follow recognized political boundaries as closely as possible.
Scrapping the electoral college might be pretty hard. Would require an ammendment and the smaller states would never go for it to give the 3/4 majority states needed to approve the ammendment. They like the influence they have on national politics.
Yes make them stand up and filibuster, the lazy bastards.
I hate the riders as well, if its a good bill it should be passed without bribing some one to vote for it. If it’s a bad bill if should just fail to pass. Some governors have the line item veto but you are (choking….) probably right, too much power for the President.
One comment on the electoral college problem. I’m not sure if the size of the state matters as long as the number of electoral votes is (roughly) in line with the population (A state with a population of 2M receiving 1/10 the votes as a state with 20M people is representative). I think a popular vote total gives more “weight” to states that are overwhelmingly red or blue. You get the same electoral votes if you win the state by 1 vote but if you win 60/40 it would make a much bigger difference. Also, and this is obviously a hypothetical example, if you had a state like Utah that is something like 70/30 red and election day had really really bad weather the (hypothetical) 30% of the people who came out to vote would (in theory) represent that 70/30 split and the state would be fairly represented. If, on the other hand, the total votes cast by that 30% were added to a single total then the state would actually be under represented (assuming the electoral college distributtion is accurate).
This isn’t meant as my enthusiastic endorsement of the current system but I don’t think the electoral college system is completely arcane.
On a semi-related note, I just read that Newt Gingrich has ads that attack Mitt Romney for being able to speak and understand French. All joking aside, do we really want people voting who would be negatively influenced by knowing that a candidate understood a foreign language? Talk about Jack’s “great unwashed”. I think Mary’s husband Paolo speaks 5 languages so he shouldn’t even be allowed into Sportsmen’s Camp.
Wow…lots to comment on here…I agree with Phish in that they will never get an amendment thru to change the electoral college…even if a broken down truck in Iowa can delay things 5 or 6 hours in our electronic age…maybe we can recall the Supreme court that thinks a corporation is a person (hows that for a constitutional question?)…..what would Rupert Murdoch do if we banned multi-outlet ownership?…he’d probably buy ESPN……….or maybe the Hallmark Channel….I don’t believe more political parties are the answer, but rather an honest search for candidates concerned with America, not some special interest agenda that they believe should outweigh any other reason for their position….if you remember Jack we had this discussion many moons ago while decorating a Christmas tree in the woods-I believed then and still believe we must have a balanced budget,one that also works to reduce the current deficit, as would any surpluses…this doesn’t mean the government cant borrow or ignore the borrowing that has gone on in the past, it simply means that this is also a cost that must be accounted for in each budget..as much of a mess we are in now we still have the greatest country and economy in the world…but the stagnation of the last 2 yrs or so does nothing to get us moving forward again..the tea party and evangelical right have fragmented the Republicans so that none of their possible candidates will beat Obama-no matter how bad a job he has done-and I fear four more years of lockjaw
Wal-Mart vs. The Morons
1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day.
2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!
3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.
4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.
5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world’s largest private employer, and most speak English.
6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.
7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.
8. During this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.
9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.
10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USAof which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.
11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart stores. (Earth’s population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)
12. 90% of all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart.
You may think that I am complaining, but I am really laying the ground work for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the economy.
This should be read and understood by all Americans Democrats, Republicans, EVERYONE!!
To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the Legislature
It is now official that the majority of you are corrupt morons:
a.. The U.S.Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 236 years to get it right and it is broke.
b.. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 76 years to get it right and it is broke.
C.. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 73 years to get it right and it is broke.
d.. War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 47 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to “the poor” and they only want more.
e.. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 46 years to get it right and they are broke.
f.. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 41 years to get it right and it is broke.
g.. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 34 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
You have FAILED in every “government service” you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars.
AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM ??
Folks, keep this circulating. It is very well stated. Maybe it will end up in the e-mails of some of our “duly elected’ (they never read anything) and their staff will clue them in on how Americans feel. I know what’s wrong. We have lost our minds to “Political Correctness” !
Someone please tell me whats wrong with All the people that run this country!
We’re “broke” & can’t help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc.,.
In the last months we have provided aid to Haiti , Chile , and Turkey .. And now Pakistan …..previous home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!! Our retired seniors living on a ‘fixed income’ receive no aid nor do they georganizations pour hundreds of billions of $$$$$$ and tons of food to Foreign Countries!
We have hundreds of adoptable children who are shoved aside to make room for the adoption of foreign orphans.
America: a country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed hungry, elderly going without needed meds, and mentally ill without treatment, ect. ect…
YET…
They have a benefit for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations, ships and planes lining up with food, water, tents clothes, bedding, doctors and medical supplies. Imagine if the Government gave us the same support they give to other countries.
I appreciate the well considered comments – however I was trying via this blog to address no position right or left or espouse a specific policy. My point was to explore ways that the government could be brought to heel. The point was to make the government us and to then let the winds of democracy push it where they will – fascism – socialism – social moderation fiscal responsibility – libertarianism – let the chips fall where they may but at least the game wouldn’t be rigged and we’d all have anted up.
Congressmen and Senators were not meant to be lifetime positions. They obviously won’t pass term limits, which might help a little. We just need a total anti incumbent movement. Just vote the incumbents out in all offices. Whether they are good, bad, Republican or Democrat, I don’t care.. That will send the message that we are not happy with anything they are doing.
THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!
1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman / Woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they’re out of office.
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen / Women are void effective 01/01/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen / Women. Congressmen / Women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.
HERE HERE!
THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS PART TWO !
1. Congressman/Women must never to meet at any time or place with any lobbyists or their representatives, or knowingly communicate with them in any way.
2. Congressman/Women must refuse any and all lobbyist money and support as well as donations from foreign entities, corporations, banks, PAC’s or any political parties and will only accept contributions from real human persons.
3. Congressman/Women will not to seek reelection to the House after six years of service (twelve years for Senators) as I have no interest in becoming a permanent Washington insider, but only wish to serve my constituents.
4. Congressman/Women must try their best to determine and then vote the way a majority, of us the voter, would vote on any particular issue and not let their own biases, opinions and prior or beliefs affect their final vote.