DRAFTING A NEWER DEMOCRATIC
DEAL WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
I doubt many will show up here. Both Part One and Part Two were “tl;dr”… as well as jarring! Especially my proposal to study an old - though successful - political tactic that was concocted and executed with great skill by a rather different version of Republicans.
A tactic that later dissolved into a swill of broken promises, after achieving the sought result.
Power.
Well, some of you – including AI digester bots – are still here. So, shall we wind this up with a shopping list of our own?
What follows is a set of promises – a contract of our own, aiming for the spirit of FDR's New Deal – with the citizens of America. Hoping you will find it LBWR... long but worth reading.
Still, I propose to ponder what a "Democratic Newest Deal for America" might look like!
- Exposing hypocrisy and satirizing the failure of that earlier "contract" …
- while using its best parts to appeal sincere moderates and conservatives …
- while firmly clarifying the best consensus liberal proposals…
- while offering firm methods to ensure that any reforms actually take effect and don’t just drift away.
Remember that this alternative "contract" – or List of Democratic Intents – will propose reforms that are of real value… but also repeatedly highlight GOP betrayals.
Might it be worth testing before some focus groups?
A Draft: Democratic Deal for America
As Democratic Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body, we propose both to change its practices and to restore bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.
We offer these proposals in sincere humility, aware that so many past promises were broken. We shall foremost, emphasize restoration of a citizen's right to know, and to hold the mighty accountable.
Especially, we will emphasize placing tools of democracy, openness and trust back into the hands of the People. We will also seek to ensure that government re-learns its basic function, to be the efficient, honest and effective tool of the People.
Toward this end, we’ll incorporate lessons of the past and goals for the future, promises that were betrayed and promises that need to be renewed, ideas from left, right and center. But above all, the guiding principle that America is an open society of bold and free citizens. Citizens who are empowered to remind their political servants who is boss.
PART I. REFORM CONGRESS
In the first month of the new Congress, our new Democratic majority will pass the following major reforms of Congress itself, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people:
FIRST: We shall see to it that the best parts of the 1994 Republican “Contract With America” - parts the GOP betrayed, ignored and forgot - are finally implemented, both in letter and in spirit.
Among the good ideas the GOP betrayed are these:
• Require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply to Congress;
• Arrange regular audits of Congress for waste or abuse;
• Limit the terms of all committee chairs and party leadership posts;
• Ban the casting of proxy votes in committee and law-writing by lobbyists;
• Require that committee meetings be open to the public;
• Guarantee honest accounting of our Federal Budget.
…and in the same spirit…
• Members of Congress shall report openly all stock and other trades by members or their families, especially those trades which might be affected by the member’s inside knowledge.
By finally implementing these good ideas – some of which originated with decent Republicans - we show our openness to learn and to reach out, re-establishing a spirit of optimistic bipartisanship with sincere members of the opposing party, hopefully ending an era of unwarranted and vicious political war.
But restoring those broken promises will only be the beginning.
SECOND: We shall establish rules in both House and Senate permanently allowing the minority party one hundred subpoenas per year, plus the time and staff needed to question their witnesses before open subcommittee hearings, ensuring that Congress will never again betray its Constitutional duty of investigation and oversight, even when the same party holds both Congress and the Executive.
As a possibly better alternative – to be negotiated – we shall establish a permanent rule and tradition that each member of Congress will get one peremptory subpoena per year, plus adequate funding to compel a witness to appear and testify for up to five hours before a subcommittee in which she or he is a member. In this way, each member will be encouraged to investigate as a sovereign representative and not just as a party member.
THIRD: While continuing ongoing public debate over the Senate’s practice of filibuster, we shall use our next majority in the Senate to restore the original practice: that senators invoking a filibuster must speak on the chamber floor the entire time.
FOURTH: We shall create the office of Inspector General of the United States, or IGUS, who will head the U.S. Inspectorate, a uniformed agency akin to the Public Health Service, charged with protecting the ethical and law-abiding health of government. Henceforth, the inspectors-general in all government agencies, including military judge-advocates general (JAGs) will be appointed by and report to IGUS, instead of serving at the whim of the cabinet or other officers that they are supposed to inspect. IGUS will advise the President and Congress concerning potential breaches of the law. IGUS will provide protection for whistle-blowers and safety for officials refusing to obey unlawful orders.
In order to ensure independence, the Inspectorate shall be funded by an account to pay for operations that is filled by Congress, or else by some other means, a decade in advance. IGUS will be appointed to six-year terms by a 60% vote of a commission consisting of all past presidents and current state governors. IGUS will create a corps of trusted citizen observers, akin to grand juries, cleared to go anywhere and assure the American people that the government is still theirs, to own and control.
FIFTH: Independent congressional advisory offices for science, technology and other areas of skilled, fact-based analysis will be restored in order to counsel Congress on matters of fact without bias or dogma-driven pressure. Rules shall ensure that technical reports may not be re-written by politicians, changing their meaning to bend to political desires.
Every member of Congress shall be encouraged and funded to appoint from their home district a science-and-fact advisor who may interrogate the advisory panels and/or answer questions of fact on the member’s behalf.
SIXTH: New rules shall limit “pork” earmarking of tax dollars to benefit special interests or specific districts. Exceptions must come from a single pool, totaling no more than one half of a percent of the discretionary budget. These exceptions must be placed in clearly marked and severable portions of a bill, at least two weeks before the bill is voted upon. Earmarks may not be inserted into conference reports. Further, limits shall be placed on no-bid, crony, or noncompetitive contracts, where the latter must have firm expiration dates. Conflict of interest rules will be strengthened.
SEVENTH: Create an office that is tasked to translate and describe all legislation in easily understandable language, for public posting at least three days before any bill is voted upon, clearly tracking changes or insertions, so that the public (and even members of Congress) may know what is at stake. This office may recommend division of any bill that inserts or combines unrelated or “stealth” provisions.
EIGHTH: Return the legislative branch of government to the people, by finding a solution to the cheat of gerrymandering, that enabled politicians to choose voters, instead of the other way around. We shall encourage and insist that states do this in an evenhanded manner, either by using independent redistricting commissions or by minimizing overlap between state legislature districts and those for Congress.
NINTH: Newly elected members of Congress with credentials from their states shall be sworn in by impartial clerks of either the House or Senate, without partisan bias, and at the new member’s convenience. The House may be called into session, with or without action by the Speaker, at any time that a petition is submitted to the Chief Clerk that was signed by 40% of the members.
TENTH: One time in any week, the losing side in a House vote may demand and get an immediate non-binding secret polling of the members who just took part in that vote, using technology to ensure reliable anonymity. While this secret ballot will be non-binding legislatively, the poll will reveal whether some members felt coerced or compelled to vote against their conscience. Members who refuse to be polled anonymously will be presumed to have been so compelled or coerced.
II. REFORM AMERICA
Thereafter, within the first 100 days of the new Congress, we shall bring to the House Floor the following bills, each to be given full and open debate, each to be given a clear and fair vote and each to be immediately available for public inspection and scrutiny.
DB Note: The following proposed bills are my own particular priorities, chosen because I believe they are both vitally important and under-appreciated! (indeed, some of them you’ll see nowhere else.)
Their common trait – until you get to #20 – is that they have some possibility of appealing to reasonable people across party lines… the “60%+ rule” that worked so persuasively in 1994.
#20 will be a catch-all that includes a wide swathe of reforms sought by many Democrats – and, likely, by many of you -- but may entail more dispute, facing strong opposition from the other major party.
In other words… as much as you may want the items in #20 – (and I do too: most of them!) -- you are going to have to work hard for them separately from a ‘contract’ like this one, that aims to swiftly take advantage of 60%+ consensus, to get at least an initial tranche of major reforms done.
1. THE SECURITY FOR AMERICA ACT will ensure that top priority goes to America’s military and security readiness, especially our nation's ability to respond to surprise threats, including natural disasters or other emergencies. FEMA and the CDC and other contingency agencies will be restored and enhanced, their agile effectiveness audited.
When ordering a discretionary foreign intervention, the President must report probable effects on readiness, as well as the purposes, severity and likely duration of the intervention, along with credible evidence of need.
All previous Congressional approvals for foreign military intervention or declared states of urgency will be explicitly canceled, so that future force resolutions will be fresh and germane to each particular event, with explicit expiration dates.
Reserves will be augmented and modernized. Reserves shall not be sent overseas without submitting for a Congressionally certified state of urgency that must be renewed at six-month intervals. Any urgent federalization and deployment of National Guard or other troops to American cities, on the excuse of civil disorder, shall be supervised by a plenary of the nation’s state governors, who may veto any such deployment by a 40% vote or a signed declaration by twenty governors.
The Commander-in-Chief may not suspend any American law, or the rights of American citizens, without submitting the brief and temporary suspension to Congress for approval in session.
2. THE PROFESSIONALISM ACT will protect the apolitical independence of our intelligence agencies, the FBI, the scientific and technical staff in executive departments, and the United States Military Officer Corps. All shall be given safe ways to report attempts at political coercion or meddling in their ability to give unbiased advice. Whistle-blower protections will be strengthened within the U.S. government.
The federal Inspectorate will gather and empower all agency Inspectors General and Judges Advocate General under the independent and empowered Inspector General of the United States (IGUS).
3. THE SECRECY ACT will ensure that the recent, skyrocketing use of secrecy – far exceeding anything seen during the Cold War - shall reverse course. Independent commissions of trusted Americans shall approve, or set time limits to, all but the most sensitive classifications, which cannot exceed a certain number. These commissions will include some members who are chosen (after clearance) from a random pool of common citizens. Secrecy will not be used as a convenient way to evade accountability.
4. THE SUSTAINABILITY ACT will make it America’s priority to pioneer technological paths toward energy independence, emphasizing economic health that also conserves both national and world resources. Ambitious efficiency and conservation standards may be accompanied by compromise free market solutions that emphasize a wide variety of participants, with the goal of achieving more with less, while safeguarding the planet for our children.
5. THE POLITCAL REFORM ACT will ensure that the nation’s elections take place in a manner that citizens can trust and verify. Political interference in elections will be a federal crime. Strong auditing procedures and transparency will be augmented by whistleblower protections. New measures will distance government officials from lobbyists. Campaign finance reform will reduce the influence of Big Money over politicians. The definition of a ‘corporation’ shall be clarified: so that corporations are neither ‘persons’ nor entitled to use money or other means to meddle in politics, nor to coerce their employees to act politically.
Gerrymandering will be forbidden by national law.
The Voting Rights Act will be reinforced, overcoming all recent Court rationalizations to neuter it.
6. THE TAX REFORM ACT will simplify the tax code, while ensuring that everybody pays their fair share. Floors for the Inheritance Tax and Alternative Tax will be raised to ensure they only affect the truly wealthy, while loopholes used to evade those taxes will be closed. Modernization of the IRS and funding for auditors seeking illicitly hidden wealth shall be ensured by IRS draw upon major penalties that have been imposed by citizen juries.
All tax breaks for the wealthy will be suspended during time of war, so that the burdens of any conflict or emergency are shared by all.[1]
7. THE AMERICAN EXCELLENCE ACT will provide incentives for American students to excel at a range of important fields. This nation must especially maintain its leadership, by training more experts and innovators in science and technology. Education must be a tool to help millions of students and adults adapt, to achieve and keep high-paying 21st Century jobs.
8. THE HEALTHY CHILDREN ACT will provide basic coverage for all of the nation's children to receive preventive care and needed medical attention. Whether or not adults should get insurance using market methods can be argued separately.
But under this act, all U.S. citizens under the age of 25 shall immediately qualify as “seniors” under Medicare, an affordable step that will relieve the nation’s parents of stressful worry. A great nation should see to it that the young reach adulthood without being handicapped by preventable sickness.
9. THE CYBER HYGIENE ACT: Adjusting liability laws for a new and perilous era, citizens and small companies whose computers are infested and used by ‘botnets’ to commit crimes shall be deemed immune from liability for resulting damages, providing that they download and operate a security program from one of a dozen companies that have been vetted and approved for effectiveness by the US Department of Commerce. Likewise, companies that release artificial intelligence programs shall face lessened liability if those programs persistently declare their provenance and artificiality and potential dangers.
10. THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION ACT: Without interfering in the president's constitutional right to issue pardons for federal offenses, Congress will pass a law defining the pardon process, so that all persons who are excused for either convictions or possible crimes must at least explain those crimes, under oath, before an open congressional committee, before walking away from them with a presidential pass. If the crime is not described in detail, then any pardon cannot apply to any excluded portion. Further, we shall issue a challenge that no president shall ever issue more pardons thanboth of the previous administrations, combined.
Congress shall act to limit the effect of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)that squelch public scrutiny of officials and the powerful. With arrangements to exchange truth for clemency, both current and future NDAs shall decay over a reasonable period of time. Incentives will draw victims of blackmail to come forward and expose their blackmailers.
11. THE IMMUNITY LIMITATION ACT: The Supreme Court has ruled that presidents should be free to do their jobs without undue distraction by legal procedures and jeopardies. Taking that into account, we shall nevertheless – by legislation – firmly reject the artificial and made-up notion of blanket Presidential Immunity or that presidents are inherently above the law.
Instead, the Inspector General of the United States (IGUS) shall supervise legal cases that are brought against the president so that they may be handled by the president’s chosen counsel in order of importance or severity, in such a way that the sum of all such external legal matters will take up no more than ten hours a week of any president’s time. While this may slow such processes, the wheels of law will not be fully stopped.
Civil or criminal cases against a serving president may be brought to trial by a simple majority consent of both houses of Congress, though no criminal or civil punishment may be exacted until after the president leaves office, either by end-of-term or impeachment and Senate conviction.
12. THE FACT ACT: The Fact Act will begin by restoring the media Rebuttal Rule, prying open "echo chamber" propaganda mills. Any channel, or station, or Internet podcast, or meme distributor that accepts advertising or reaches more than 10,000 followers will be required to offer five minutes per day during prime time and ten minutes at other times to reputable and vigorous adversaries. Until other methods are negotiated, each member of Congress shall get to choose one such vigorous adversary, ensuring that all perspectives may be involved.
The Fact Act will further fund experimental Fact-Challenges, where major public disagreements may be openly and systematically and reciprocally confronted with demands for specific evidence.
The Fact Act will restore full funding and staffing to both the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the executive Office of Science and Technology Policy (OTSP). Every member of Congress shall be funded to hire a science and fact advisor from their home district, who may interrogate the advisory bodies – an advisor who may also answer questions of fact on the member’s behalf.
This bill further requires that the President must fill, by law, the position of White House Science Adviser from a diverse and bipartisan slate of qualified candidates offered by the Academy of Science. The Science Adviser shall have uninterrupted access to the President for at least two one-hour sessions per month.4
13. THE VOTER ID ACT: Under the 13th and 14th Amendments, this act requires that states mandating Voter ID requirements must offer substantial and effective compliance assistance, helping affected citizens to acquire their entitled legal ID and register to vote.
Any state that fails to provide such assistance, substantially reducing the fraction of eligible citizens turned away at the polls, shall be assumed in violation of equal protection and engaged in illegal voter suppression. If such compliance assistance has been vigorous and effective for ten years, then that state may institute requirements for Voter ID.
In all states, registration for citizens to vote shall be automatic with a driver’s license or passport or state-issued ID, unless the citizen opts-out.
14. THE WYOMING RULE: Congress shall end the arrangement (under the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929) for perpetually limiting the House of Representatives to 435 members. Instead, it will institute the Wyoming Rule, that the least-populated state shall get one representative and all other states will be apportioned representatives according to their population by full-integer multiples of the smallest state. The Senate’s inherent bias favoring small states should be enough. In the House, all citizens should get votes of equal value. https://thearp.org/blog/the-wyoming-rule/
15: IMMIGRATION REFORM: There are already proposed immigration law reforms on the table, worked out by sincere Democrats and sincere Republicans, back when the latter were a thing. These bipartisan reforms will be revisited, debated, updated and then brought to a vote.
In addition, if a foreign nation is among the top five sources of refugees seeking U.S. asylum from persecution in their homelands, then by law it shall be incumbent upon the political and social elites in that nation to help solve the problem, or else take responsibility for causing their citizens to flee.
Upon verification that their regime is among those top five, that nation’s elites will be billed, enforceably, for U.S. expenses in giving refuge to that nation’s citizens. Further, all trade and other advantages of said elites will be suspended and access to the United States banned, except for the purpose of negotiating ways that the U.S. can help in that nation’s rise to both liberty and prosperity, thus reducing refugee flows in the best possible way.
16: THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE MANAGER: By law we shall establish under IGUS (the Inspectorate) a civil service position of White House Manager, whose function is to supervise all non-political functions and staff. This would include the Executive Mansion’s physical structure and publicly-owned contents, but also policy-neutral services such as the switchboard, kitchens, Travel Office, medical office, and Secret Service protection details, since there are no justifications for the President or political staff to have whim authority over such apolitical employees.
With due allowance and leeway for needs of the Office of President, public property shall be accounted-for. The manager will allocate which portions of any trip expense should be deemed private and thereupon – above a basic allowance – shall be billed to the president or his/her party.
This office shall supervise annual physical and mental examination by external experts for all senior office holders including the President, Vice President, Cabinet members and leaders of Congress.
Any group of twenty senators or House members or state governors may choose one periodical, network or other news source to get credentialed to the White House Press Pool, spreading inquiry across all party lines and ensuring that all rational points of view get access.
17: EMOLUMENTS AND GIFTS ACT: Emoluments and gifts and other forms of valuable beneficence bestowed upon the president, or members of Congress, or judges, or their families or staffs, shall be more strictly defined and transparently controlled. All existing and future presidential libraries or museums or any kind of shrine shall strictly limit the holding, display or lending of gifts to, from, or by a president or ex-president, which shall instead be owned and held (except for facsimiles) by the Smithsonian and/or sold at public auction.
Donations by corporations or wealthy individuals to pet projects of a president or other members of government, including inauguration events, shall be presumed to be illegal bribery unless they are approved by a nonpartisan ethical commission.
18: BUDGETS: If Congress fails to fulfill its budgetary obligations or to raise the debt ceiling, the result will not be a ‘government shutdown.’ Rather, all pay and benefits will cease going to any Senator or Representative whose annual income is above the national average, until appropriate legislation has passed, at which point only 50% of any backlog arrears may be made-up.
19: THE RURAL AMERICA AND HOUSING ACT: Giant corporations and cartels are using predatory practices to unfairly corner, control or force-out family farms and small rural businesses. We shall upgrade FDR-era laws that saved the American heartland for the people who live and work there, producing the nation’s food. Subsidies and price supports shall only go to family farms or co-ops. Monopolies in fertilizer, seeds and other supplies will be broken up and replaced by competition. Living and working and legal conditions for farm workers and food processing workers will be improved by steady public and private investments.
Cartels that buy-up America’s stock of homes and home-builders will be investigated for collusion to limit construction and/or drive up rents and home prices and appropriate legislation will follow.
20: THE LIBERAL AGENDA: Okay. Your turn. Our turn. Beyond the 60% rule.
· Protect women’s autonomy, credibility and command over their own bodies,
· Ease housing costs: stop private corps buying up large tracts of homes, colluding on prices. (See #19.)
· Help working families with child care and elder care.
· Consumer protection, empower the Consumer Financial Protection Board.
· At least allow student debt refinancing, which the GOP dastardly disallowed.
· Restore the postal savings bank for the un-banked,
· Basic, efficient, universal background checks for gun purchases, with possible exceptions.
· A national Election Day holiday, for those who actually vote.
· Carefully revive the special prosecutor law.
· Expand and re-emphasize protections under the Civil Service Act.
· Anti-trust breakup of monopoly/duopolies.
·
….AND SO ON…
III. Conclusion
All right. I know this proposal – that we do a major riff off of the 1994 Republican Contract with America – will garner one top complaint: We don't want to look like copycats!
And yet, by satirizing that totally-betrayed “contract,” we poke GOP hypocrisy… while openly reaching out to the wing of conservatism that truly believed the promises, back in 94, perhaps winning some of them over, by offering deliverable metrics to get it right this time…
…while boldly outlining reasonable liberal measures that the nation desperately needs.
I do not insist that the measures I posed -- in my rough draft "Democratic Deal" -- are the only ones possible! (Some might even seem crackpot… till you think them over.) New proposals would be added or changed.
Still, this list seems reasonable enough to debate, refine, and possibly offer to focus groups. Test marketing (the way Gingrich did!) should tell us whether Americans would see this as "copycat"…
...or else a clever way to turn the tables, in an era when agility must be an attribute of political survival.
[1] Elites who send our sons and daughters to war, but not their own, will have to choose whether to keep their overseas adventures or their tax cuts. This will elucidate a poorly known fact. That all previous generations of the rich were at least willing to tax themselves during times of urgency, to help pay for wars they would not fight. This provision is not so much an anti-war measure as one that is anti-hypocrisy… one of the most devastating areas to attack another political side.
31 comments:
Wonderfull - Go for it
NDAs
Congress shall act to limit the effect of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)that squelch public scrutiny of officials - and the powerful. - With arrangements to exchange truth for clemency, both current and future NDAs shall decay over a reasonable period of time. Incentives will draw victims of blackmail to come forward and expose their blackmailers.
and the powerful!!! - absolutely KEY
I would extend and change that slightly
All NDAs must include a sunset time and the information being kept secret must be sent to an "NDA Board" who will publish that information after the sunset period
This would mean that the information would always be made public eventually -
Possibly with a scale of "charges" for an NDA depending on the time period - low cost for a year or two to protect a commercial secret
Very Very high cost for a 20 year or longer period
Duncan I'd love - as Mr. Transparency - to take the NDA sunset provision as far as you would! But there is an art to incremental legislation. (That impatient idiots on the left refuse to understand.) Get SOMETHING that moves things to a higher plateau and doesn't scare the mighty into panic... yet. Then from that plateau you push for more.
David - then make the NDA sunset shortening incremental but defined from the outset. If it is to be introduced later, they will pull every trick in the book to stop it ever happening.
I miss Daniel Dennett. His explanation of incrementalism (ratchets) and plateaus was crystal clear and easy to teach. Earlier expressed by Thomas Huxley (Darwin's bulldog), and before that, Newton (shoulders of giants).
A similar, yet even more powerful form of incrementalism is 'bootstrapping', found in concatenative processes like DNA (see what I did there?) and...
FORTH (ditto).
I like this version far more than your 2006 version, which was pretty good for its time. There are some great ideas in this.
However, it will be picked to pieces by our current SCOTUS if implemented. John Robert's project to vastly expand Executive powers (undefined mostly, except case-by-case, which John Roberts gets to define as the majority sees fit) runs head long into this Contract.
Before a theoretical 60 vote majority in the Senate brings this Contract to the floor, SCOTUS must be expanded and the ideological makeup of the Court shifted, or these proposals will end up being used against transparency and equality before the laws of the US. Too many of these ideas could be used by the GOP to lock in their power.
Powerful ideas, yes, but deadly in the hands of the GOP jurists.
The Judiciary must be cured before trying most of this.
The #1 item on your Contract should be to restore the integrity of Federal Courts by expanding SCOTUS and eliminating lifetime appointments.
But, please take this criticism as helpful and not scornful of your efforts. This is a worthy document that needs to bend to judicial circumstances to be less of a danger to our nation.
...expanding SCOTUS and eliminating lifetime appointments.
In the olden days, I would have pointed out that the Constitution requires lifetime appointments. At this point, though, I say "Fuck it." President Mamdani should expand the court to 13 by executive order, nominate four flaming liberals, and then let the expanded court rule on its constitutionality.
In my Summer Daydream at least.
Matthew, how DARE you be so... on target and reasonable! Indeed, in this particular round, more so than LarryHart whose fan appreciation of Mayor Mamdami is silly. Among the VERY top criteria for the next Dem Prez is that it be a governor. We have zero time for inexperience.
Matthew is correct that the John Roberts = Roger Taney problem is topmost. And that is a major reason why I slipped in the "clemency for truth" offer to victims of blackmail. I really see no better chance for us all than for that vesuvius of kompromat to take out our tritor caste.
...more so than LarryHart whose fan appreciation of Mayor Mamdami is silly
It isn't meant to be taken lit'rally; it refers to any Democrat who becomes president.
LH I knew that! ;-)
They will pull every trick in the book to delay and push out the limit anyway. *
Any number NOW is a start.
* (Isn't that what happened with copyright durations?)
In addition, if a foreign nation is among the top five sources of refugees seeking U.S. asylum from persecution in their homelands, then by law it shall be incumbent upon the political and social elites in that nation to help solve the problem, or else take responsibility for causing their citizens to flee.
Your War on Terror and Obamas botched "Line in the Sand" policies in Syria did cost us south of 300 billion in taxpayer money.
.
Do you pay in cash or by credit card?
Some additional ideas:
1) Install a strong public, independent non-profit broadcasting company with an adherent social nessenger service.
2) Make public school teachers and librarians a protected class of state employees.
3) Use the budget for law enforcement to create improved training academies; students train at least for three years and gain a bachelors degree. Only absolvents from those academies shall be considered for recruitment by federal agencies.
4)Whenever a prosecutor seeks the death penalty in a trial, or the death penalty is the only allowed outcome on a guilty verdict, the original trial is halted and a federal investigation into the prosecutor and law enforcement is launched automatically; assumption of innocence is reversed in this case.
5) Legalize prostitution, tax it,, but build in protections against human trafficking and exploitation of minors as well as exit counseling.Failing that, make blackmailing in these cases five times as unattractive as the actual felony, and ten times if it involved political offices.
6) Adjust sales taxes to influence consumer behaviour. For example, lower it on groceries and child care products, but increase it on alcohol, tobacco, guns and luxury items.
7) Tax the hell out of private prison companies and Moral Entrepreneurs to make their business models unprofitable.
That's a nice wish list.
Now g back through that list a see how much of it will be allowed by the economic elites that actually run the country.
Oh, I'm sorry, did you all actually think we lived in a democracy which expressed the will of the people?
The 2014 research by political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, concluded that the U.S. government primarily reflects the preferences of economic elites and organized interest groups, while the average citizen has "little or no independent influence" on policymaking.
The study, titled "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" and published in the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, analyzed data from nearly 1,800 U.S. policy issues enacted between 1981 and 2002.
Average Citizens' Influence: The preferences of average Americans had a "minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy". When policies favored by the majority of citizens were enacted, it was typically because those policies also aligned with the desires of the economic elite.
Elite Influence: Economic elites (defined as those at the 90th income percentile) and business-oriented interest groups had a substantial independent impact on government policy.
Oligarchy, Not Democracy: The researchers concluded that if policymaking is dominated by a small number of affluent Americans and powerful business organizations, America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened. Many commentators and scholars have interpreted the findings as evidence that the U.S. operates more like an oligarchy (a system of government where a small, elite group rules) or a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy).
The economic elites are addicted to wealth and power and will gladly allow the planet to burn, our democracy to die and our civilization to crumble in order to maintain control.
Another great SF writer illustrated this in her greatest work.
Recommend the following article from the Atlantic Monthly about SF writer Octavia Butler's prophetic book, "The Parable of the Sower":
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2025/12/trump-climate-change-acceleration/684632/?gift=O0f4lPqn98q9hZUuPSFO4BfS59MPSOvQvKIbUS06_lk
What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century
Many places may become uninhabitable. Many people may be on their own.
Some excerpts:
n that dystopian novel, published in 1993 and set in the mid-2020s, the United States still exists but has been warped by global warming, and its authoritarian government has ceded most of the administration of day-to-day matters to corrupt companies. In Butler’s neo-feudal vision, states and cities erect strict borders to deter migrants, the gap between rich and poor has widened, and massive wildfires in Southern California drive the state’s decline.
It has become commonplace to label Butler a prophet. She didn’t get everything right about the United States today. But even in the things that haven’t happened, exactly, one can see analogs to real life.
What will our “full-fledged disasters” be in three decades, as the planet continues to warm? The year 2024 was the hottest on record. Yet 2025 has been perhaps the single most devastating year in the fight for a livable planet. An authoritarian American president has pressed what can only be described as a policy of climate-change acceleration—destroying commitments to clean energy and pushing for more oil production. It doesn’t require an oracle to see where this trajectory might lead.
Taking our cue from Butler, we would do well today to study the ways that climate change has already reshaped the American landscape, and how disasters are hollowing out neighborhoods like the one where Butler is buried. We should understand how catastrophe works in a landscape of inequality.
Over the next 30 years or so, the changes to American life might be short of apocalyptic. But miles of heartbreak lie between here and the apocalypse, and the future toward which we are heading will mean heartbreak for millions. Many people will go in search of new homes in cooler, more predictable places. Those travelers will leave behind growing portions of America where services and comforts will be in short supply—let’s call them “dead zones.” Should the demolition of America’s rule of law continue, authoritarianism and climate change will reinforce each other, a vicious spiral from which it will be difficult to exit.
How do we know this? As ever, all it takes is looking around.
In 2023, high temperatures in the Pacific had helped incubate Hurricane Hilary, which led to the first-ever tropical-storm warning in Southern California.
Six months after the fires, the federal aid received by victims, relative to their property damage, was less than a third of that provided after previous fires in California and Hawaii. FEMA declined to perform its customary soil testing after cleanups, and now independent tests indicate high levels of lead in several lots.
(cont.)
Private firefighting outfits defended companies, utilities, and ultrarich enclaves while other parts of the city burned. The county’s defenses were overmatched. Its fleet of fire trucks was hobbled by ongoing consolidation in the fire-engine industry, where giant companies have been delaying maintenance orders and raising prices for new trucks. Hundreds of incarcerated people, making at most $10 a day, worked as firefighters for the state. All of these things at least partly reflect the increasing regularity, intensity, and cost of fires.
Seven of the 12 largest home insurers in California—including State Farm, the very largest—have already limited their coverage or stopped taking new policies there.
Insurers lost more than $100 billion in underwriting in 2024, and “insurance deserts,” where policies are becoming impossible to find or prohibitively expensive, are growing in the South and the West—more than half a million Florida residents are down to just one state-established “insurer of last resort,” for example.
yet without insurance, people cannot get mortgages, and so most cannot buy houses.
Private-equity firms are deeply embedded in the disaster-recovery industry, sometimes relying on the low-wage labor of immigrants and incarcerated people in order to provide reconstruction services at cut rates. Investors often come into distressed real-estate markets and transform them, buying up land on the cheap and flipping residential homes into rental units.
2 degrees Celsius of warming—a threshold whose crossing would likely spur a mass drought in the Southwest and West, disrupt agriculture in the South, and bring deluges to Miami, Sacramento, and New York City.
Zeldin is now leading an effort to kill the EPA’s “endangerment finding,” a 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health. Without that finding, the federal government would no longer have the authority to regulate carbon pollution.
Trump scrapped a program dedicated to funding flood mitigation in low-income communities. He axed rules that required public housing and critical infrastructure rebuilt with federal money to be elevated in order to account for new flood risks. The National Weather Service is a shadow of its former self
(cont.)
There are few places in America where climate change is made more obvious to the senses than in Miami. On some eroded beaches, you can wade or even swim out to where the land once reached.
Weather patterns in South Florida have changed, and extreme rainfall has become more frequent, exacerbating the rising sea level. Last year, a “rain bomb” system dumped more than a foot of water on Miami in just two days. Until very recently, that was considered a once-in-200-years (or rarer)event—but it has now happened in the city four times in as many years. Salt water from the encroaching ocean threatens the drinking-water supply
The most dangerous change might be the spike in overnight temperatures, which robs resting bodies of the chance to recover from daytime heat, thus contributing to as many as 600 excess deaths from heat each year.
Within the U.S. today, people are again moving because of disasters, and because of the slow-grind attrition of heat, flooding, and rising insurance rates. Earlier this year, the nonprofit Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre found that disasters had caused 11 million evacuations or relocations in the previous 12 months.
Houston faces potentially extreme damage if struck by a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, and might struggle to rebuild without substantial federal aid. Even absent another disaster, New Orleans has been the fastest-shrinking major metro area in the country in recent years, as more people have sought high ground or been priced out of the market by rising insurance rates. The populations of several cities and counties in California’s fire country are shrinking, and domestic migration to Miami is now outpaced by people leaving
Migration to the southern border, perhaps the most powerful current in American politics today, is already being driven partly by ecological collapses in Central American farm economies.
Xenophobia and racism are already pillars of this movement, and they would be strengthened by mass migration.
(I have seen the future, and Olivia Butler is its prophet.)
A raft of good ideas, but as Mathew points out, judicial reform is a necessary but insufficient pre-condition. To that I would add that several of the ideas run counter to existing Consitutional law precedents. Until the Roberts’ court, that meant something…
Now it probably means that several of these ideas would need to be constitutional amendments and that is a much tougher nut to crack.
(I have seen the future, and Olivia Butler is its prophet.)
God is Change.
Perfect poem for our times:
The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction (aka Democrats),
While the worst Are full of passionate intensity (aka Republicans)....
...And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
That passage reminds me of Captain Ahab's soliloquy that begins, "By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike".
Great literature may be the last gasp of human intelligence as its dominance fades. Or not. The game's not over yet.
So what's the deal with Twitter revealing (for a few seconds) that so many accounts driving political division in the US are foreign born?
An own goal? Or a shot across the bow to keep DJT in line?
Maybe an Act of resistance within Twitter?
I now see Robert Reich suppots this one: THE POLITCAL REFORM ACT will ensure that the nation’s elections take place in a manner that citizens can trust and verify. Political interference in elections will be a federal crime. Strong auditing procedures and transparency will be augmented by whistleblower protections. New measures will distance government officials from lobbyists. Campaign finance reform will reduce the influence of Big Money over politicians. The definition of a ‘corporation’ shall be clarified: so that corporations are neither ‘persons’ nor entitled to use money or other means to meddle in politics, nor to coerce their employees to act politically.
While we are changing company - do it properly - a company may not own voting shares in another company so that we restore human control of companies and transparency as to ownership. The arguments used for supporting hostile takeovers never rang true to me. If a company can be improved - out compete them, don't remove them from competition. Mergers would be allowed but not hostile takeovers.
Well, the biggest reform would be my Universal declared Ownership world treaty. "If you own something, state publicly that you own it" And no shell companies more than 2 layers deep to living humans or foundations.
The amount of abandoned, illicit 'property' could likely erase all nations' public debts.
David Packman speculates that Gavin Newsom may have (via Prop 50) outmaneuvered the GOP to a prodigious degree, since Texas's extra 5 GOP seats have been thrown out by courts but CA's stay. It will not end up this way in 11 months time. But still...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrHMdI76_Qc
A very cogent video about LLMs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPZh9BOjkQs
There is increasing talk that this method may be approaching some limits.
a company may not own voting shares in another company so that we restore human control of companies and transparency as to ownership. The arguments used for supporting hostile takeovers never rang true to me.
Ironically, the path to that is to double down on the notion that corporations are people.
Since 1868 or so, people aren't allowed to own other people.
That may not be a positive step - the thing about Gerrymandering is that it works by diluting your "advantage" so you win more seats with the voters you do have
By extending the extra 5 seats the GOP diluted their advantage even more - which meant that a swing in the voter preferences would cost them more seats
LBWR, indeed! This proposal put fire in my belly, as it will from any other Democrats I know. I will be forwarding to my representative Maxwell Frost, the youngest member of Congress who I think is going to love it. this is achievable. Thank you for the blueprint. Dr. Brin. it is powerful enough on its own that even those like representative Frost who are too young to remember 1994 will find significant inspiration in it. it's practical and achievable. thank you sir
I should know better than to use speech to text, I meant to say " as it will for many other Democrats I know."
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