Minor proposals - even crackpot! - for a Newer Deal

 My ten part series on a Newer Deal for Americans and the world offered 35+ proposals for the Democrats to include in their electioneering agenda, at least a dozen of which could be enacted even while Trump remains in the Oval Office, and others he might veto at tremendous political cost to himself and to his party.

Some of you might deem these proposals -- listed all together in Part 3 and broken down in detail, in parts 4-10 -- as giving short-shrift to many of the top items wished-for by the U.S. liberal-and-moderate majority, and that's true! Relegating things like monopoly-breakup and housing to the end, along with protecting women's sovereignty over their own bodies...

...not because these are unimportant! But because it will take a lot of political process and negotiation capital to get them. And - as we learned from the failures of Clinton and Obama to legislate... and the successes of Biden/Pelosi/Sanders - you gain that kind of political capital by passing the more-easily passable things first!

Anyway, negotiating with the undead zombie that is today's Republican Party, whose top levels are utterly foreign suborned and likely blackmailed, is - by their own choice under the Dennis Hastert Rule - completely forbidden. 

We'll have to fix Democracy's structure first! Shatter that subornation and lure decent, honorable, grownup conservatives back to the bargaining table, before anything lke 'negotiation' can ever return to American public life.

See a pathway to accomplish all of that here.

       == I've tried this before ==

The IGUS concept and the Subpoena Gambit are among the most potentially transformative of my earlier “political suggestions.” [1]   In fact, way back in 2006, as it was beginning to seem possible, even hopeful, that the benighted Bush Era might draw to a close, I offered a list of proposals, shorter and less comprehensive than the Newer Deal, though several would have helped to prevent our present situation! If passed when Democrats had - (and squandered on failed Hail Mary passes) - brief power in 2009.

Then, in 2019, I did it again! This time in a whole nonfiction book!  POLEMICAL JUDO: Memes for Our Political Knife-fight: A Brazen Guide for Sane Americans To Bypass Trench Warfare And Win Our Life or Death Struggle  for Civilization.   

Much more extensive, Polemical Judo included detailed methods for getting around John Roberts's rationalizations to support gerrymandering, for example. And why folks should overcome their reflexive rejection of blackmail's likely role in the DC quagmire, when it's been the core method used by Russian security services, since the era of the czars.

I was pleased to see that in 2021, the Democratic Party leadership under Biden-Pelosi-Schumer-Sanders-Warren chose not to repeat the Clinton/Obama mistakes and pressed hard to pass a series of excellent bills in that miracle year... though they addressed not a single one of the structural flaws that I had discussed in my book... nor any of the weaknesses that Donald Trump later exploited, in his current all-out attack upon the American Experiment.

Okay, I've now tried again, in 2025-2026, with the Newer Deal list.  And I expect the same response. Crickets from Democrats, many of whom are smart, decent, honest, modernist grownups who want the American Experiment to thrive and move forward, continuing its mostly (not entirely) beneficent leadership of the world. Alas, they all share the same mania. 

"If it's not invented here, then don't bother."

Still, I'm a completist. So let let me indulge my wish fantasies one more time!  What follows - cribbed from Polemical Judo - is a wish-list of minor or lesser items that never made it into the Newer Deal list. And yet, they are still pertinent! 

Indeed, if you'll just pass a couple of them, you will build your political capital, instead of frittering it away.

              == My Newer Deal Crackpot Addenda! ==

 Let's start with...

Minor but significant stuff.

First a few items that’d be worthwhile, even if not huge or sexy.

– At some point when gas prices are low, take an advantage of an opportunity to switch from a cents-per-gallon tax to a percentage tax.

– Every other major country has replaced its currency by now, with important positive effects for honest taxpayers. The rationalizations offered by opponents – who claim the greenback is forever special, different, and sacred – are getting ridiculous and awfully long in the tooth. Just think of all the drug lords and Mafiosi who would be discomfited. And the American greenback is now way too easily counterfeited and filthy.[2]

– Tell all Americans to update their computer security packages, because a bill is about to refine data tort law, making responsibility similar to public health codes. If you neglect hygiene and your device becomes a hijacked ‘botnet” source of harm to others, then you’ll share in paying the civil damages that result. Oh, yeah. That actually is one of the Newer Deal items, already.

-- Folks occasionally talk about invoking the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, which sets up procedures to neutralize an incapacitated president. But most dismiss the notion, because no matter how off the rails Donald Trump tumbles, he stocked his cabinet  this round with utter 'loyalists' who give whole new meaning to that word. (I believe he ensures that loyalty in a special, mobster way; but no one seems to want to ponder that.) Alas those who shrug off the 25th, thinking that only the cabinet may invoke it, are too lazy to actually read the amendment, which allows a route to entirely bypass the cabinet.

I know that at least one prominent Democrat did read the 25th, way back in 2019 during Trump's first term. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) - among the smartest House members - proposed a bill to create the Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity to fill a role that is actually outlined (or at least sketched-in) by the 25th. Raskin wanted to provide a specific ‘body’ comprised of 10 physicians, psychiatrists and retired former leaders – like presidents and vice presidents – chosen by House and Senate leaders of both parties. 

Note that I alluded to this in the Newer Deal's proposal for a neutral Executive Branch Manager. Too soon?  Seriously?

Some more-crackpot suggestions.

All right, we’re about to tip into notions that are more than just “unusual” or “judo.” These crackpot ideas may yet have their day, though. [3]  And I want to be on record proposing them.

– Provide basic firearms safety training in all high schools, along with Driver's Ed and comprehensive sex education. Think about it! Isn’t this one of those positive-sum, win-win scenarios? It lets us judo past the NRA’s trenches by offering one thing they claim that they want - the one item on their agenda that might actually help reduce gun violence![4]  While forcing them into a deal that would also help reduce teen pregnancy, STD and abortion rates by empowering girls and women with knowledge.5] 

Think it through. Better yet, ponder how MAGAs will react when they think it through! Every kid from a liberal family, every feminist girl, every minority kid in every city getting the gun safety (and use) training that the NRA claims it wants all kids to have! And every son or daughter of the NRA exposed to concepts of liability, insurance and every other parallel with owning and using motor vehicles.

A head scratcher? You don't yet see how it's a win-win? Well, just let it sit there, among less busy neurons at a corner of the mind. It'll comce to you how it could be a win-win-win, outmaneuvering the nuts.

– As of mid 2019, Bernie Sanders came aboard supporting this proposal that long predates even my own interest[6]… a small tax on financial transactions. As low as 0.01%, it would not even be noticed by average human investors! But it could stymie the AI programs at major Wall Street firms that make tens of billions of trades a day. Advantages include a way to limit volatility, plus helping to control a “churn-hungry” financial caste. But I have a bigger reason: it could diminish the likelihood of those cryptic, unscrupulous Wall-Street firms unleashing artificial intelligences that are by design voracious, parasitical, predatory, amoral and utterly insatiable potential “skynets.”[7]  

And yes, I wrote that in 2019.

– Ban interlocking corporate directorates among a narrow CEO caste of golf buddies voting each other vast compensation packages. The Greatest Generation wisely forbade this conniving incest. They also banned massive stock buybacks. They were smarter than we are. And yes, they also adored Jonas Salk.

– Give capital gains tax breaks only to long held and voted stock. Or else... (more radical, but justifiable) ... only to new issues that actually raise new money for companies. Since older equity does nothing to raise investment capital for the company. (Ponder that! Older equities base their value on the existing capital and dividends of the company and have absolutely no basis for tax preference, while NEW issuances might merit encouragement by taxpayers.)

– Revise "corporate democracy" to reward involved, long-term actual human stockholders and purchasers of new issues, while limiting the power of passive proxies and shell companies, especially those shells who don’t devolve within one layer to real human owners.

– Nukes. More mind-blowing still, even though techno-liberals like Stewart Brand have pushed it for years, and it might help reduce carbon emissions significantly… consider making new allies and crucial support for environmental action in exchange for accelerated development of two or three of the truly impressive new types of ultra fail-safe nuclear power plants?

– Establish an Institute for Verification and Re-test. One problem with modern science – it emphasizes new discoveries over the verification process upon which the whole thing relies. Postdocs and professors don’t find it sexy to merely check out or replicate a recent finding, nor does that lead to prizes and fame. Necessary for the peer review process to work, we need some way to encourage tests to reproduce results. A possible role – if properly set up – for burgeoning networks of amateur scientists?

== Even more crackpotty! ==

Okay, you were warned… have nearby several grains of salt…

– Revive air travel the simplest way. 

   One sign of our spiral toward levels of class war last seen in 1789 France is how the rich are abandoning us to our fates in deteriorating airports and airlines, fleeing from First Class into charters and corporate and private jets, thus avoiding all the frisking and hassles. History is clear. When elites abandon a mode of transportation (e.g., railroads and ocean liners in the 1950s) that utility starts to die! Moreover, the gulf between the mighty and little people widens to unsupportable levels. (See David Rothkopf’s book Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.) 

This can be solved with some decent agitation, followed by the right taxes and fees so that private and corporate air at least pay their own way, and ideally subsidize the airways.

 Metaphorically speaking – and so far I am still talking only in metaphors! – we must lift torches and pitchforks, picket the private, no-TSA airports and chase those elites and moguls "Back into First Class, where you belong! Sit there with your tablecloths and mimosas and champagne. But fly with us!  Just you watch how quickly air travel (including TSA) improves for everyone.

                     == The crack-pottiest! ==

– Ban the undergraduate business major. Let them go for an MBA after four years spent creating or delivering goods and services. You think I’m joking? Ten years later, you’ll think we entered a Golden Age. (The Chinese leadership consists almost entirely of managers who were promoted from their start as engineers. Consider what happened to Boeing, when they stopped doing that.)

– Stop letting taxpayer-subsidized companies "shout" into space. All right, this one sounds super-crackpot. But as we speak, private companies using dishes that were paid for by the U.S. taxpayer are beaming commercial stunt messages – for everything from snack food companies to Craig’s List – into outer space – supposedly to sell music videos and garage sale items to aliens! 

Sure, it sounds harmless, and it might be. But that’s the problem, we just don’t know. And at minimum it violates laws against amateur interference in diplomacy with foreign powers.[8]

And while we're at it... will at least some of you finally grow up about UFOs?

...and finally...

– Revive rural ghost towns as slightly-subsidized havens of all kinds. Seriously, does anyone look for win-win solutions, anymore? There are rural villages dying all across America. Luring giant vulture companies to come and snap up vast tracts in a crushing steamroller of restored peonage that calls to mind the 1932 Dust Bowl, leaving Karl Marx rubbing his hands, in expectant glee for what comes next.

Sure some of those small towns are showing leadership and verve, adapting, experimenting and thriving with new models… and we must help those, generously! Yay that. Incentives might encourage folks in - say - four small, dying towns to ingather and consolidate with the one that has real prospects.

Only then what to do with those abandoned other three? Where local farmers workers and merchants just couldn’t quite make a profit? Once we’ve helped those folks get profitable on their own feet in a newly-consolidated, vibrant town -- perhaps slightly-subsidizing mom n' pop stores that aren't Walmart? What to do with the other three? 

Are there modern problems that might be helped by offering the bought-out or abandoned ones to certain groups across America? Offering those groups a completely voluntary, subsidized life in fresh air, gardening or farming, or running businesses that (with modest subsidies) need merely to break even, not make a profit?

You can guess I am talking about groups who are already receiving aid (or expensive care-taking or else restricted movement) far more expensively in cities or shelters or minimum security facilities. In a village, taxpayers need only underwrite a marginal bit, for the garden-farm or restaurant or fix-it shop to crest at viability. 

If you can’t imagine half a dozen potential uses and constituencies in just a minute or two – from purely voluntary homeless redoubts to safe places for refugees to do their paperwork, to… well… just try again. There are dozens.

Okay, there are lots of these items that may seem marginal or crackpot today… like votes for women, back 120 years ago. Meanwhile,  I hope one thing above all. That sane American voters – and in other nations allied for the future – will give us the power to wrangle over these things, and enact a lot of them.

---

[1] Political suggestions from 2006 and earlier. http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/suggestions4congress.html

 

[2] The 2019 “Ig Nobel” Economics Prize was awarded for testing which country’s paper money was "best at transmitting dangerous bacteria" (the Romanian Leu won, but the US Dollar was a finalist).

 

[3] A blog on crackpot notions! http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/crackpotsuggestions.html

 

[4] Envision every elementary school kid encouraged to tattle on Uncle Bob’s unsafe and unsecure shed fulla bazookas, while praising dad for the responsible rifle safe. Oh, the NRA would split over this! Then imagine red skulls imploding as liberal and minority kids learn weapon basics.

 

[5] Abortion rates decline more in blue than in restrictive red states, why? All studies attribute it to sex education. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/18/761753866/u-s-abortion-rate-continues-long-term-decline

 

[6] Transaction taxes might save us all. http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/transactionfee.html

 

[7] The amount of money in the top three investment funds alone is now equal to the GDP of China.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-asset-management-in-decline/

http://statisticstimes.com/economy/projected-world-gdp-ranking.php

https://www.pionline.com/article/20190221/ONLINE/190229952/fidelity-sees-record-revenue-operating-income-despite-dip-in-aum

 

[8] See my evaluation of the cult phenomenon called METI or "Message to Extraterrestrial Intelligence." http://www.davidbrin.com/meti.html

 

Imperial dreams and Greenland seams and GOP manic swings

  The news cycle smashes my New Years resolution to only blog once a week. But after posting a ten-parter Newer Deal for Democrats to promise to Americans, there’s much to catch-up on. That list of proposals covers a lot of ways to repair our nation structurally, so that this criminal madness won’t happen again. 

But first… there’s so much sturm und drang over the Venezuela/Maduro raid. AND the Greenland mania. And so much of it misses important points! Sure, the core motive across-the-board remains distraction from the Epstein Files! But there is so much more. Let’s start with Venezuela:

-      -      While we all focus on the toddler brats who ordered the raid and followed it with fecal – “we’re running Venezuela for a profit!”  declarations, few pay heed to what we actually saw. Which was a brilliant display of stunning competence by US military and intel agencies…

 …the very same folks who Pete "Filthy Fingers" Hegseth* denounced - just 9 weeks ago - as "Too fat and too woke to fight!"  Just… nine… weeks… ago. Riiiiight.

We've seen it before. Take another example: the incredibly skilled 2001 takedown of the Taliban - who deserved it - as did Saddam and Maduro. Only then idiotic politicians plunged us into costly quagmires - as both Bushes did in Afgh & Iraq, and as Trump will do in Venezuela (and Cuba?) as he bypasses their democracy movements and the world -recognized true winner of the 2024  Venezuelan elections, in order to make deals with Maduro's comrades to milk their country to fill his own cronies' pockets. 

- Having said that, grow up about the damn oil! There will be no gushers of Venezuelan oil for years, maybe even a decade. They do have vast reserves, but collapsed infrastructure and very low exports. What our own petro companies are now angling after is lucrative no-bid contracts to rebuild Venezuelan infrastructure. Such contracts are exactly the cash cow that was milked in Iraq, by Cheney-linked logistics companies. And Iraq was not the cow. The US taxpayer was.

Again, show us what oil we ever got from Iraq, or likely will from Caracas!  Only fools are saying “It’s about oil!” Including (alas) our jibbering fool at the top.  

-       Okay, removing Venezuelan oil from world markets will benefit both the Saudis and the current Russian regime. A little. Though with a potential side effect, when subsidized Venz-oil stops going to Cuba. If that regime then falls – perhaps nudged by US military action – it could enable Trump to shore up his MAGA support, even in the face of Epstein revelations. Keep your eye on Cuba.

-       Putting all that aside, DO NOT fall for the trap of going  all anti-military about this! They are the bright side of it. Such stunning competence daunts dark forces worldwide. Not one US death and most of the explosions in Caracas etc. appear to have been largely for show and distraction. (And to finish off any reputation of Russian-made air defense systems.) But that makes all the worse the juxtaposition, that such magnificent professionals are now at the beck and call of - at best! - cranky toddlers. And at worst our enemies.

-       Trump & Hegs & company are now frantically trying to intimidate both the serving and retired officer corps. (e.g. threatening their pensions, if they speak.) And hence, officers are being forced to think thoughts that they swore never to think. And for that, I hate the toddler-maniacs, worse than for any other crime.

*(A creepy, alky boor who is unworthy to lead the men and women he berated. But why call him “Filthy Fingers”? Hegs repeatedly yammered on Fox that he doesn’t believe in germs and hasn’t washed his hands in a decade. Except perhaps in the alcohol that he spills.)

          == Is there more? On to the icy frontier! == 

There’s more than I can possibly catch up on. Like MAGA screeds about Greenland/Canada etc.  

Would a military seizure of Greenland tear apart NATO? Sure, and that’s a feature to Trump’s boss-blackmailer in the Kremlin. But there are so many aspects that few pundits or opponents mention:

-        First, it would be disobeyed. Pure and simple. And this time, the generals and admirals must not resign! Rather, do a sit-down, until they are fired. And then demand a court martial!  Watch how that, alone, would get Hegs to back down. 

-       It would shred the GOP – (it’s already started) - revealing with utter clarity which Republicans are blackmailed cowards and which have even a residuum of guts n’ balls. Residually Adult/Sane Republicans or RASRs, as I called them in Polemical Judo,   

Sure they are rare! But even 1% of Republicans is about a million people. Picture just 200 such folks entering GOP Congressional primaries in March, flipping the ‘primary gambit’ on its head.  (Luring many in GOP-gerried districts to register Republican!) Or maybe even 5000 who dare to primary MAGA dolts for state legislatures? 

       Are there that many?
        Don’t bet on it. Anyway let’s get back to Greenland… where I set several scenes in my novel EARTH…… 

-       The US (through NATO) already has bases in Greenland!  And the once-vaunted Russian Navy has been revealed as a Potemkin paper babyshark. Just one US or British submarine could bottle them all in Polyani Inlet. So, what’s with all this ‘national security’ BS? And the moronic inability of any in media to point that out? (see ADDENDUM below.)

-       There are just 50,000 Greenlanders.. Maybe 30,000 voters. Is Trump such a cheapskate that he can’t see the transactional way ahead? “I’ve escrowed thirty billion dollars that will pay out to all Greenlanders if a Join America! Plebiscite succeeds… except none of the escrowed rewards will go to those who campaigned against it!” 

Hey Don, that’s as big a bargain as Alaska! Aren’t you sure you’ll get the money back from, say mineral rights?

-       Oh, but wait a minute. Isn’t it likely Greenland would then become a blue state? Which brings us to…

I never heard or saw a pundit answer the Canada as 51st state malarky with the fact that Canada has ten provinces -- which would translate into eight new deep-blue states and a couple of purples. And two more ‘territories’ since the Inuit in Greenland get to be a state. So, bring it, dude. Bring it! Oh, and the Panama Canal Zone? Two more blues! (One on each side of the canal.) And in that case just try to leave out Puerto Rico. Where are we now, 66 states?

And hey MAGAs note this: travel from all of the above to any US city will be domestic, so no passport checks. Anyone arriving from any of those places will be assumed legal and get in. But then the "US" will have another maybe 5000 miles of lovely unguarded new borders. Have fun recruiting enough ex-cons to staff ICE, then.

But sure, there’s no ‘national security’ or ‘mineral wealth’ or climate change or such explanations. Nor even Putin ordering the Greenland thing, in order to break up NATO. (Dream-on, Vlad.)

No, there are just two real reasons for this insipidioty. The first one is widely known. Don wants immortality in the form of a huge, imperial expansion of USA territory, like the Louisiana Purchase. Especially since most map projections portray a flawed depiction of Greenland as having the same size of Africa!

As for the rest of the GOP? Even allowing for blackmailed cowardice in the upper ranks? Now I’ll explain it to you, as a pair of deeply insane syndromes.

 

    == The maniacs who are ‘thinking’ longer term ==

Of course this is all rooted in fundamental craziness of two related kinds.

First… Thielism and the Dark Enlightenment, which I’ve dissected and scrutinized and eviscerated elsewhere. A neo-religion of ingrates who perceive themselves as Top Dogs in a New World Order, but never would be anything but kibble, in any other society than the gently permissive and spectacularly productive scientific and liberal one that gave them everything. Look up the latest sub-meme of this cult: “The Technate of North America,” illustrated in this dredged up map from a similarly fevered era, the 1920s and 30s. Part of a range of bizarre political ideas that have flourished in times of stress. 

The Technocracy movement had its brief heyday in the 1930s, amid the Great Depression and disillusionment with apparently oligarch-suborned democracy. (And watch Things to Come for HG Wells’s more benign version.) The article about the Technate is fascinating (if in some places flawed). And the map creepily overlaps the vision of today's Donald Trump + Peter Thiel White House! 

Plus it illustrates the openly-expressed fantasy of Putin for a globe that’s been divided into spheres of influence, giving him Eurasia (sorry, Europe!) and ceding to China everything southward (sorry India and the rest!) With the USA converted into comfy fascism run by CEO-kings aided by the technological elite, isolationist and minding its own business…

…or else following George Orwell’s nightmare pattern of endless simmer-war among Eastasia, Eurasia and our own Oceania, which – in a stunningly creepy pareidolia – would look an awful lot like the “Technate” map. Which perhaps inspired Orwell in the first place!  I riff further on this here. 

 Oh, these guys are such ingrates, ignoring 6000 years of utter failure by their feudal model of governance. Though that, to them, is a matter of great pride. They won’t admit to being ignoramus dunces…

…but there’s another trait that I’ve seen no one else point out. Even though it’s flaming obvious.

              == The Mania is Depressing! ==

Cast your memory back as far as it will go. All the way back to the Great Depression, Republican foreign policy has featured the same trait, over and over again.

No, I’m not talking about the childish, churlish way they name things, like U.S. Navy ships… or military operations like the recent ‘Absolute Resolve,’ when the whole idea of operation names was military pragmatism and information security, not advertising slogans.

No, I refer to Republican Bipolar Disease that I first diagnosed back in the last century, but wrote about here, in 2017.  The way GOP administrations and indeed all of their political leaders tend to gyrate between two states… 

   …either manic imperialism or depressive isolationism.  

   The Bush era neocons manifested the former with openly raved “We are now an empire!”... a phrase that now blares from the Trump White House. Which just weeks earlier proclaimed an isolationist “America First!” policy and an end to wars of intervention or nation-building... and even our world network of alliances that kept the peace (mostly) for the last 80 years.  

These bipolar and extreme mood swings are predictable, hypocritical and dangerous!

Are Democratic administrations guiltless, or more-sane? Well, yes, comparatively so. Certainly, less blatantly and compulsively cyclical between extremes. And in most cases – except Somalia – at least listening to professional advice.

 

                                    == And finally… peacemaker? ==

 Is it ‘bipolar’ that Trump brags about ‘ending wars,’ then veers to naming the “Department of War” and howling at our officers to ‘kill, kill, kill!’ and beating drums of imperialism? 

 Sure it is. And all we can do, for now, is challenge his idiot supporters… in order to peel away a couple of million crucial, residually sane Republican neighbors from his alliance of confederate twittery.

DEMAND your neighbors (physically or online) put up wager stakes whether Donald Trump ever actually ‘settled any wars,’ let along eight… no ten… no fifteen!  I don’t care that he mistook Armenia for Albania. Bush Jr. would have done that. But for Don to claim that he settled the Armenia-Azerbaijan war is as crazy as the same claim for Burma-Thailand and all the others. 

 But it is the demand to NAME ONE that corners those potential RASR neighbors of yours, and may get a few of them to stop desperately suckling at the Fox teat. Like name one piece of verified, large scale evidence for an electoral ‘steal’ in 2020. And so many more, offered in my posting about the Wager Gambit.

And if you peel away from Murdochian madness even one voter, you will have done your bit for the Revolution.

But sure, it is too late for that. So… help get my Newer Deal before the eyes of Democratic pols and pundits. What will save us, maybe, is something a simple and pragmatic as better tactics.

 

=========

ADDENDUM to the post. It occurs to me that OWNING Greenland truly is different than the US having NATO military bases there. It would improve the security situation... for Putin! The current NATO bases can easily bottle in the Russian fleet, if NATO gets into a physical tiff with Moscow. But an AMRICAN Greenland might just step aside and let the RN sail on by. Especially if Greenland were taken by force, shattering NATO.  Jeepers, no lie! This IS for 'national security.' The national security of Russia.

==============================

PS... Blogger is giving me way-problems - as in this posting's line spacing. I guess I'll be shifting over to SUBSTACK grandually...  https://davidbrin.substack.com/

Come on over there!  But I'll stay here too, for one of the best comment communities online. Even when they aggravate me... they use complete sentences and paragraphs and actually argue with (some) evidence!  Where else does that happen?

 

 

 

 

A Newer Deal Part 10: Before solving your favorite problems, shall we repair our nation's ABILITY to solve problems?

My Newer Deal series, a ten-part – (“tl;dr”) -- array of thirty-five proposals for Democrats and their allies, is finally drawing to a close. 

All 35 concepts - some of them wholly unique and desperately needed, right now - are summarized in Part 3.

Parts 1 & 2 were introductory, showing how a 1990s Republican tactic -- both polemically brilliant and hypocritically evil -- offers important lessons for us, today. Or it would, if anyone gifted of curiosity might perk up and notice.

Parts 4-10 dived into the proposals, four at a time, with deeper explanations.

Alas, other than this person, who sagaciously understood and expanded on some proposals, I doubt anyone will pay heed. Democrats may be far less-corrupted and more focused on better things. But their political caste has the tactical skills of a tardigrade.

No matter, I've done my duty. And now I'll drift back into my lane, having at least offered some tools and pragmatic priorities. In case we ever get savvy 'generals' in this awful ninth phase of the recurring U.S. Civil War.

This time, part 10 offers some basic fixes... for taxes and such. Plus (and some of you will mutter "at last!")...  the Liberal Agenda!

                        == Tax Reform ==

THE TAX REFORM ACT will simplify the tax code, while ensuring that everyone 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 very large caches illicitly hidden wealth shall be ensured by IRS draw upon major penalties that have been imposed by citizen juries. 

Tax reporting amnesties will be offered, contingent upon affirmations that no future surprise caches of hidden taxable wealth are found.

The simplification process shall be separate from all other tax issues, while guaranteeing that no large category of taxpayers will be net harmed by simplification itself.

 

All tax breaks for the wealthy will be suspended during time of war or foreign conflict, so that the burdens of any emergency are shared by all.

This one may need to be parsed-out. First, modernization of the IRS that began with the Pelosi-Schumer-Sanders miracle bills of 2021-22 ... and trashed by Trumpers to protect cheater-oligarchs... will be restored. 1970s computers and software will be modernized and auditors sufficient to the task will be sent to world tax evasion havens.

Tax simplification was offered by Donald Trump and Paul Ryan in 2017: "You'll do your taxes on a postcard!" In fact, many European nations have computerized records so that Tax Day takes less than an hour for most citizens. While it's unlikely that AI omniscience will be delayed in the USA for long, we can try a different, non-European approach. My own proposed method has been around a long time. The "No Losers" concept.  A neutral notion that will only be opposed by the vast and powerful tax-preparation cartel.

As for that final paragraph:  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 personally fight.  This provision is not so much an anti-war measure as one that is anti-hypocrisy… one of the most devastating traits to attack in your opposing political side.

   == The Excellence Act ==

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 and resuming our immensely profitable method of attracting the world's brightest to come and study and work in the USA.  Education must be a tool to help millions of students and adults adapt, to achieve and keep high-paying 21st Century jobs.

Okay, that one is pretty much self explanatory.

And yes, it's been noticed and commented that a majority of my proposals are structural, or procedural, for example protecting the neutrality of our civil servants, law agencies and military officer corps... or else ensuring that calamitous failure modes exploited by the Trumpians get patched and sealed!

Fair enough. Structural repairs can and must be passed swiftly - with 60%+ public support. Because saving the Republic and its responsible institutions and democracy -- and preventing an authoritarian putsch -- are paramount! As is prepping the way for a return to the politics of negotiation.

Hence I diverged from varied 'platforms' pushed by liberal or leftist mavens like Robert Reich, whose own proposed "Democratic Pledges" coincidentally appeared a couple of weeks after I started posting this series. To be clear, I generally quite respect and admire Reich! But his 'pledges' amount to a fantasy - give everyone a pony! - wish list of spectacularly unrealistic idealism, learning nothing from the agenda failures of Clinton and Obama when they tried for Grand Vision, all-at-once legislation... 

...or from the hugely more-effective (incremental) successes of Biden/Pelosi/Schumer/Sanders in 2021-22.

Am I betraying the ambitious goals of liberalism? In a few cases - where I demur or disagree - perhaps so. 

But actually, I share most of the goals expressed by Reich! Indeed, I expect many of them to follow! After we have saved the nation and world. After we have restored honest American political process. After we have protected the professionals on whom we all depend. After we have revived a word "negotiation" - unheard in this century - back into the political lexicon.

Indeed, after keeping our 'contract promises' under the 60% rule, we'll be rewarded with a mandate to do more.

But sure. Let's list some of those priorities here, just to show you that I am an ally who is arguing with you about WHEN, not whether to do these things, too!

         == The Liberal Agenda ==

THE LIBERAL AGENDA: Okay. Your turn. Our turn. These are HIGH priorities, though beyond the 60% rule.

 

· Protect women’s autonomy, credibility and command over their own bodies,

·   Ease housing costs: stop private corporations from buying up large tracts of homes, colluding on prices. (See my proposal #19.)

· Help working families with child care and elder care. (See proposal #8.)

· 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 in person. (See proposal #13.)

·  Carefully revive the special prosecutor law. 

·  Expand and re-emphasize protections under the Civil Service Act.

·  Anti-trust breakup of monopoly/duopolies to restore competition to American market economics.

And of course there are others... that will require that we get past the fanatcism and sloth exhibited by today's Congressional GOP... the laziest Congresses in the history of the Republic.

Once again, those Liberal Agenda items are not afterthoughts! Nor left to the end because they are low-priority! They are here at the end of my series because all but two of them will entail major fights! Battles we'll be better able to take on if we learn from the Clinton-Obama mistakes and start with those 60%+ reforms! 

This is called politics, folks. Don't waste your political capital right at the start. Be seen as heroes by a clear majority, and they will reward you. Try it!

And if you have some other fresh ideas of your own, come on by the Contrary Brin comments section below!  (And subscribe.) It's one of the best and most erudite comment communities online, with only a couple of occasional (polysyllabic ) trolls. Mostly folks talking in actual, complete sentences!  Your cogently clear insights will be welcome.

          == A final note about tactics ==

How shall we deal with a tense nine months ahead, while Donald Trump's health plummets and he ponders desperate spasm end-games? And the MAGA/Foxite/Putinist cult grows ever more frantic to avoid commuppance... either in November elections or much sooner?

Is it forlorn to hope that recent GOP defections are harbingers of a coming flood of escapees from a sinking ship? From an ever-stinkier undead, zombie were-elephant?

Now - right now - 200 residually sane/decent Republicans could step up with the courage of patriots and file for the GOP primaries next spring. Make that 5000, to include state legislators!  Running as decent non-Trumpian conservatives. As relative grownups, willing to negotiate with their blue neighbors and stand up to the monsters who have taken over their party and the nation. 

Judo-flipping the 'primary tactic' that terrorized decent people out of almost the entire Republican political caste. Turning that tactic on its head.

If they made their case well, and it looked like even just 1/3 of the district's Republican voters - sick of Trump - might vote for them... then WATCH as the GOP in that district will get floods of newly registered Republicans, joining the party in order to have a choice, for a change. In order to get someone decent representing everyone... yes, even liberals... in Congress and statehouses across the land.

YOU could get this rolling. If you live in a gerrymandered Republican district, REGISTER REPUBLICAN so you can vote in the only election that matters to you - the one where your vote would matter - the GOP primary. Make this a movement. A flood! 

Oh, and there's another reason! When (not if) many red states suddenly start purging the voter rolls, just before the next election, they won't purge you if you have registered Republican! Ponder that. And how it's just a word. You can live with it.

Sure, I'm daydreaming. Will that wish-scenario of sudden courage from the till-now craven Goldwater Right come to pass?

So far, with a few exceptions, the decent conservatives* have been utter cowards. But that could change, if YOU show them the way.

------

* They exist! Some of them are your neighbors who would help you if you get in trouble. They have been fooled, sure. But welcome them back into the light. And re-demonstrate to them the arts of listening and negotiation.

And yes, in some states the Register Republican notion doesn't matter. Those like California that have made party labels moot in compined primaries, for example. Still, give it some thought. Hold your nose, if you must. But reclaim some value to your vote.