Continuing my series about a proposed Democratic Newer Deal.
Here I'll dive deeply into four more of the 30+ suggested reforms that were briefly listed here... organized in a way that both learns-from and satirizes the hypocritical but politically effective 1994 Republican Contract With America.
But first some pertinent news. A couple of weeks after I started posting this series -- offering voters a clear agenda of positive steps -- economist and columnist Robert Reich issued a shorter list of “What Democrats Must Pledge to America.” And no, I am not asserting that my series triggered him to hurry his.
Well, probably not. Though Reich's list overlaps mine in overall intent! We both aim to make progress toward better health care, aid to parents and children, and sound economics while limiting the power of oligarchies and cheaters and monopolies. Alas, Reich's 'pledges' also make up a wish list that might as well be directed at Santa Claus, for all of its political impracticality.
Alas, not one of Reich’s proposals satisfies the “60%+ Rule” that was so politically-effective for Newt Gingrich in 1994, and that Pelosi-Schumer-Sanders applied with terrific effectiveness in 2021-22.
Start with steps that can be steam-rollered quickly, with 60%+ strong public support, right away! Only after that do you try for the long pass.
Big Gulp endeavors, like those tried by Clinton and Obama, always get bogged down and savaged by "Who pays for it?" and "They want communism!" Then, the GOP wins the next Congress and that's that - opportunity window closed. What we discovered in the 2021-22 Pelosi miracle year was that you can make great strides in multiple directions, if you start from that 60% consensus in order to push solid increments. Steps that then create those new plateaus!
Contrasting with Reich's "pledges," my list emphasizes restoring a functioning republic - civil service, reliable institutions, elections and rule-of-law - in ways that can't be withdrawn by future demagogues... along with incremental steps toward our shared goals (e.g. get all CHILDREN coverable under Medicare, in a single stroke, easily afforded and canceling every objection to Medicare-for-all.)
Look, I like and respect Robert Reich. But here he should have added an equally realistic 11th wish to the other ten... that every American gets a unicorn or pegasus, or at least a pony
== Those "Newer Deal" proposals we appraised last time ==
Could the news this month have better supported my list? If we had the Inspectorate right now, under IGUS (a totally independent Inspector General of the United States), Trump could not have fired or transferred most of the IGs and JAGs in the federal government. Honest scrutiny would abound when we need it most! And officers would have somewhere to turn, when given illegal orders. (I have recommended IGUS for fifteen years.)
The Truth & Reconciliation Act - discussed last time - would have staunched Trump's tsunami of corrupt pardons and the Immunity Limitation Act would clarify that no President is above the law. And yes, there are ways to judo-bypass the Roberts Court in both of those realms.
Some other proposals from my last two postings may seem obscure, like the Cyber Hygiene Act that could eliminate 90%+ of the 'botnets' that now infest tens of millions of home and small business computers, empowering our enemies and criminals. Or one that I personally like most... a simple House-internal reform to give every member one subpoena per year, which would likely transform the entire mental ecology in Congress!
But onward to more proposals! Most of which (again) you'll see nowhere else.
== Appraising another four "Newer Deal" proposals ==
I've mentioned the 1994 Newt Gingrich Contract With America several times and in so doing I likely triggered visceral, gut wrenching loathing from many of you!
Well tough. You must understand how the 'contract' seemingly offered voters clear and crisp reforms of a system that most citizens now distrust.
Yes, Newt and especially his replacement - the deeply-evil Dennis Hastert - betrayed every promise when they took power. Still, some (a minority) of those promises merit another look. Moreover, Democrats can say "WATCH as we actually enact them, unlike our lying opponents!
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.
Some members may resist some of those measures. But those are the sorts of House internal reforms that could truly persuade voters. Especially with the contrast. "Republicans betrayed these promises. We are keeping them."
Here's another one that'd be simple to implement. Even entertaining! While somewhat favoring the Party that has more younger members. Fewer creaky near-zombies. And so, swinging from the House to the Senate:
No explanation is needed on that one! Bring back the spirit of Jimmy Stewart.
Only now, here's one that I very much care about. Do any of you remember when Gingrich and then Hastert fired all the staff in Congress that advised members about matters of actual fact, especially science and technology? Why on Earth would they do such a thing?
Simple. The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) would often say to members: "I'm sorry (sir or madam), but that's not actually true."
Oh, no, we can't have that! Gingrich asserted that OTA said that dreaded phrase far more often to Republicans than to Democrats. And... well... yes, that is true enough. There's a reason for that. But true or not, it's time for this proposal to be enacted:
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.
Notice how this pre-empts all plausible objections in advance! By challenging (and funding) every representative to hire a science and fact adviser from their home district, you achieve several things:
1. Each member gets trusted factual guidance -- someone who can interrogate OTA and other experts, on the member's behalf. And this, in turn, addresses the earlier Gingrich calumny about "OTA bias."
2. Members would no longer get to wriggle and squirm out of answering fact or science questions -- e.g. re: Climate Change -- evading with the blithe shrug that's used by almost all current Republicans: "I'm not a scientist."
So? Now you have someone you trust who can answer technical or factual or scientific questions for you. So step up to the microphone with your team.
3. Any member who refuses to name such an adviser risks ridicule; "What? Your home district hasn't got savvy experts you could pick from?" That potential blowback could ensure that every member participates.
4. Remember, this is about fact-determination and not policy! Policy and law remain the member's domain. Only now they will be less unconstrained in asserting false, counter-factual justifications for dumb policies.
And finally (for this time)... a problem that every Congress has promised to address, that of PORK spending. Look, you will never eliminate it! Members want to bring stuff home to their district.
But by constraining pork to a very specific part of the budget, they'll have to wrangle with each other, divvying that single slice of pie among themselves. And it will lead to scrutiny of each other's picks, giving each pork belly a strong sniff for potential corruption.
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. (More details here.)
Notice that all four of the proposals that we covered this time are internal procedure reforms for the houses of Congress! Which means they would not be subject to presidential veto.
These... and several others... could be passed if Democrats take either house of Congress in January 2027, no matter who is still in the White House.
There are other procedural suggestions, some of them perhaps a bit crackpotty! Like occasional secret ballot polls to see if members are voting the way they do out of genuine conscience or else out of fear or coercion... but you can find those here.
Next time, we'll get back to vitally-needed laws.
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And this project continues...
9 comments:
!!
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/frenchmen
har!
Dr. Brin,
I think the first thing we must do if we want to change things for the better, we have to understand the political moment.
People keep insisting that Trump won because the country has become toxical racist, sexist, and every other -ist that the left likes to attribute to MAGA supporters. However, I don't think that's why Trump won in 2024.
What I think is going on is we're in an era where people realize we're being cheated and they keep voting out the incumbents. I think that's becoming the strongest force in US politics, and helps explain why traditionally left cultural groups had a large shift rightward in 2024.
We the People know we're getting the shaft and so they want to vote the rats out...except they keep falling for rhetoric and the ones they elect keep ripping them off.
So, your reform ideas are on the right track. But the the problem is, will Democrat officials actually enact them. The Republicans flipped the house for the first time in 40 years by promising true reform...then they reneged. Will Democrats do the same thing?
My first inclination is to say, yes they will...until some political catastrophe happens which upsets the current two-party status quo.
In support of JV's point
When I lived in the USA one of the main reasons that I chose not to stay was
a worry about the future
America used to be the best place for a working man - back in the 70's
By the 90's it was very clear to me that was no longer the case - the workers in our UK factory got nearly twice the pay of the workers in the American factories
(This was not true for engineers - but the pay in the USA was only a bit higher than in the UK)
Very clear to me
The American workers that I worked with did not seem to see this - they were very sure that America was the best place
My expectation was that at some point the American working man would realise that he had been thoroughly rogered
I expected that would lead to guillotines and flaming torches
And that having my family living there would not be a good idea
I did not expect it to take 25 years and to end up with them electing such monsters
Two party systems are toxic, because they tend to entrench corruption and stop evolution. That should be lesson of the last twenty years. If you don't allow outsiders a chance to win, the system will frustrate voters and lead to cynicism and yes to conspiracy theories.
To me, it seems as if Americans vote for Republicans when they are feeling hopeless and vengeful because of it. The cruelty is the point because that's all the satisfaction they have left.
Americans vote for Democrats when they realize they need government to help with certain specific problems. When those problems are not solved to the voters' satisfaction, they become incensed at their heroes who failed them and angrily throw the bums out. *.
The electorate apparently has no sense of cause and effect. They don't vent their anger on the Republicans whose policies are the cause of their discontent, nor on the power brokers behind the scenes who rob them of their future. They elect Democrats when they feel hope for the future, and they elect Republicans when they're hopeless and vengeful. Even if Republicans are the cause of their hopelessness.
* Exhibit A is "Arabs for Trump" who blamed Democrats for American support of Israel and so elected the most openly pro-Israel and anti-Muslim president in history and then don't say boo afterwards. I guess, "That'll show them!"
In the political discussion over the last several comments section I haven't seen any mention of what I think is the gorilla in the room, as it were.
Propaganda. Big Lie.
There are lots of other problems that have helped steer us to this point. Most of them have been touched on. But not the big one, IMO. The one that has progressively detached damn near everyone from reality, to one degree or another.
Newt Gingrich was a flaming asshole and he is the one that turned the Republican Party onto the tactic of no holds barred dirty politics, screw precedent and the law. But the real Architect of our current woes goes by the nickname Turd Blossom. Karl Rove. That's the asshole who dusted off the Big Lie tactic used so famously in the past, most famously of course by the Nazis. And the mind-boggling thing to me is that he said it out loud. It wasn't a secret. He said it out loud at the time. At yet, it still worked. That's how reliable the tactic is. His job was to figure out a game plan to win such an advantage over the Democratic Party that the Republican Party would never pose a serious challenge to them ever again. And one of the primary tactics he came up with was to utilize The Big Lie.
And the RP has been using it ever since. Trump was born using it. It isn't a conscious tactic, it's simply the way his brain is wired, and that's one of the reasons he took over the RP so easily from its masters. They'd prepared their voters for someone just like Trump, but of course they had intended to put their own puppet on the throne. But instead, along came Trump.
Anyone still whining "both sides are bad" at this late date has been duped. Over the past 30 plus years the Democratic Party has unquestionably been significantly better for society, not just ours, and for working people, than the Republican Party. Perfect? Of course not. But all this talk about how the DP screwed poor folk just like the RP did? Pure bullshit. Whenever the DP had the political power to enact their policies they improved the lot of the poor, every time. In real life degrees matter. In fact, that's all there really is.
No, if you want to accurately kick the DP in the balls for failing, the proper target is their failure to counter the RP's decades long Big Lie tactics. They have failed miserably at that. If the voters were not duped by that decades long effort to distort reality via the Big Lie an overwhelming number would be voting against the RP. And the RP knew that. Came to that realization during the Clinton administration. The RP leadership realized they were losing and were going to lose more if they continued as they were. Hence the hiring of Karl Rove, to devise tactics to figure out how to lie, cheat and steal to get enough votes to stay in power when it was clear that they could not continue to do so by playing by the rules. They've followed the playbook and now here we are.
So the real problem is that there are always enough people in any large group, like a nation, that are susceptible enough marks to be conned by a determined Big Lie propaganda effort to vote against their own best interests in spite of easily accessible evidence. Because they can no longer tell what is real and what isn't, what is true and what isn't. They've become effectively detached from reality. How to counter that, to prevent it, should be a Manhattan Project level effort. Failing to figure this out might be a Great Filter.
A lie is a lie is a lie, no matter who tells it, wherein the term 'lie' is most commonly defined as a 'false promise' given with the intent to manipulate, deceive and gain an advantage.
Hence the term 'compromise', a term which literally indicates "an exchange of promises", insomuch as an exchange of false or misleading promises is quite literally not an actual compromise at all.
This brings us all to where we are now, as we are all currently enmeshed in a socioeconomic spider's web of false promises, compromises and unilateral agreements designed to manipulate & exploit rather than enlighten.
An undefined Social Contract;
An extractive Tax Code; and
An obtuse & impenetrable Legal System.
Hell, even our cell phone contracts & utility bills are elaborate fictions that have been specifically designed to exploit and defraud us.
There are even those who would attempt to rectify deceit with even more deceit, as in the case of our fine host, who intends to manipulate the opposition to his advantage by offering up even more false contractual compromises that will forever remain unilaterally alterable & breakable in an incremental fashion.
And, this from a dedicated incrementalist who claims to hate 'cheaters' and contends that a promise is a promise is a promise that constitutes an unalterable & unbreakable legal contract, according to Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.
D'oh.
reason said: "Two party systems are toxic, because they tend to entrench corruption and stop evolution."
I answer that is either a lie or utterly ignorant or masturbatory sanctimony fetishism. The differences between the two US parties could not be more day-vs. night and you are doing Putin's bidding.
The division is as clear, morally, as blue vs gray was in 1863. Yes THAT clear.
Seriously, YOU desperately need a wakeup. Start here: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2019/08/five-devastating-rebuttals-to-use-with.html
JV: While Vote the Bums Out! is definitely a factor, I believe the 250 year culture war model works vastly better.
LH: "
The electorate apparently has no sense of cause and effect."
That is one reason why I press that clear explication of OUTCOMES is vastly important. Dems need to make clear that OUTCOMES are always, always, always better across dem administrations.
What Darrell E said! And one of my 30+ proposals is to reinstate the Rebuttal Rule in all media that either take advertising or have 5000+ subscribers.
locum blah blah blah. If people don't actually read the user-agreements they must accept to get Web services, then let's have expert nerds at the Consumer Protection Agency do it for us and announe/summarize the results. L is a bufoon.
We must stop the Trump administration from completely defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was established after the 2008 financial crisis to keep everyday Americans from getting ripped off by Big Banks.
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