A Better Country
Gandalf Grey
By Brian Morton
Created Oct 30 2008 - 9:18am
Back in 2000, during Ralph Nader's quixotic quest to muddy the waters
between the two parties as much as possible, a meme went around claiming
that "there's not a dime's worth of difference" between the two major
political parties.
In hindsight, it's pretty clear how wrong that was, isn't it?
If the last eight years have taught us anything, it's that people who don't
like government and don't want much government probably shouldn't be trusted
to run whatever government we have to have. In 2000, John McCain ran as a
reformer (back when he had some actual claim to the title), and George W.
Bush, then the governor of Texas, immediately ran on a slogan saying he was
a "reformer with results." The end result was that we got a president who
believed that slogans were an effective substitute for government.
We discovered that despite "Mission: Accomplished," slogans didn't keep more
than 4,100 Americans from dying in an unnecessary war, and 30,000 more from
suffering injuries that have changed their lives and will tax our teetering
health-care system for years to come. We learned that "Heckuva job, Brownie"
didn't save the thousands who died when a hurricane experts had predicted in
advance washed over what was then the 38th-largest city in America.
Since September 2002, this column has been a long (and often depressing)
catalog of examples of one party using government to enrich the few at the
expense of the many, and sometimes even a litany of how the other party
simply laid back and allowed it to happen. Cowed, chastened, and cornered,
Democrats were rolled on the USA Patriot Act, Authorization for Use of
Military Force in Iraq, the bankruptcy bill, the Military Commissions
Act--time and time again, both as a minority party and in the majority, they
acquiesced to browbeating from Republicans and a lockstep corporate media.
Only when the house of cards began toppling did they finally see that the
GOP had built a Potemkin America, and how they could run against it.
Part of what has failed Democrats is the constant call by disingenuous
commentators for "new ideas." The ideas Democrats should be running on are
the same ones that built them as a majority from the end of the Great
Depression and World War II all the way to the flabby and undisciplined
party that lost the majority under Tom Foley in 1994. Social Security.
Medicare and Medicaid. A strong environment. Quality public education from
kindergarten through high school. Affordable college education for those who
want to go.
Combine these principles with the devotion to science and technology that
built this country during the baby-boom years into a juggernaut that went
from putting a man on the moon to creating a technological and
communications revolution with the internet. The new ideas of today combined
with the solid principles of the past can help Democrats win majorities
again if they have the courage of their convictions--and stick to them.
Already the chorus has begun on the Right to distance itself from what Bush
and Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich hath wrought over the last generation, but
conservatives got nearly everything they wanted, and now they have reaped
what they have sown. The final straw is the ongoing economic crisis. To
paraphrase conservative guru Grover Norquist, no matter how big it is, when
you can drown government in the bathtub, rich and poor alike stand a chance
of going under.
Covering politics shouldn't be drama criticism, and the modern "Washington
insider"--the David Broders, the Maureen Dowds, the George Wills, and the
William Kristols--haven't had the best interests of the average American at
heart for a long time. Yet these are the people who chided Bill Clinton, who
touted Bush, and who cheered as we were led into the biggest foreign-policy
quagmire in a half-century. And in some cases, they were the ones saying,
eight long years ago, that there wasn't that dime's worth of difference
between the two parties.
This coming week you have a chance unlike any other in a long time to cast a
vote to change the direction in which we're headed. If you believe voting
doesn't matter, you are a living testimonial to the times that have proven
such a belief's idiocy.
I'd rather have a better country. If you would, too, then on Tuesday you've
got your chance to prove it. Vote.
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
Blackwater
<vali...@gmail.com> wrote:
>A Better Country
>
>By Brian Morton
>
>Created Oct 30 2008 - 9:18am
>
>
>Back in 2000, during Ralph Nader's quixotic quest to muddy the waters
>between the two parties as much as possible, a meme went around claiming
>that "there's not a dime's worth of difference" between the two major
>political parties.
>
>In hindsight, it's pretty clear how wrong that was, isn't it?
No. Nader was dead-on.
Don't confuse the IMAGE parties project with the REALITIES.
And the "better America" ? NO party - not even the Libertarians
or whomever's hosting Nader this year - are interested in THAT.
They want a more CONTROLLED America, a MICRO-MANAGED America,
a Put-More-Money-In-My-Offshore-Account America.
For the "better" America, I suggest you read the Founders.
nys999
@news.west.earthlink.net:
The plantation owners? Or the liberals?
Phlip
>>between the two parties as much as possible, a meme went around claiming
>>that "there's not a dime's worth of difference" between the two major
>>political parties.
>>In hindsight, it's pretty clear how wrong that was, isn't it?
> No. Nader was dead-on.
Al Gore would have packed the White House with Nixon & Iran-Contra alumni?
nys999
4ax.com:
>
Geez, your most logic argument in months.
Blackwater
Damned software .....
Anyway, at least there WERE bona-fide 'liberals'
amongst the Founders. Ain't any these days - and
sure as hell not in government.
nys999
news:490ef8b4...@news.east.earthlink.net:
Apparently it's beyond your powers of observation
to note the US is no longer an agrarian society where
"classical" liberal ideology works.
Even liberal principles must evolve.
But I too can make broad statements, for example
about those of your political ideology: people
like you use to be ethical and moral. Not anymore.
Proof? Your posts.
Liberals never claim to be perfect, but we aspire
to be perfect. You think you're perfect.
You judge and condemn without evidence. Your
justification? You don't approve of the officeholder.
Simple as that.
Rock Brentwood
> A Better Country
a) Revoke Amendment XII.
Another possibility, other than going straight back to the pre-
Amendment XII "top 2" formula, could be to go with a "top 3" or "top
4" formula. This would work in conjunction with a formal institution
of a line of succession. So the #3 and #4 spots would also be #3 and
#4 in the new line of succession.
Example, #1 top vote-getter becomes President, #2 becomes Vice-
President, #3 Secretary of State, #4 Secretary of Defense.
b) Eliminate explicit reference to or mention of any political party
on all ballots.
All candidates for all offices are listed "on their own name" only: in
effect, as independents.
c) Remove formal public support for party nomination processes from
all primaries.
The nomination process is kicked out of the public sector, and placed
back into the private sector.
This does not outlaw parties, per se, but removes formal public
support for them. People, as always, are free to gather and assemble
as they see fit.
d) Remove all reference to parties in laws governing equal coverage in
broadcast or other mass media.
Reference to party affiliation is removed any determination of who
falls under equal coverage.
Rock Brentwood
> got your chance to prove it. Vote.
"If you were to stretch the paper the Constitution of the United
States was originally written on to 30 times its original size, tears
and flaws not originally present would emerge in it, as a consequence
of the fact that the fabric of the Constitution is not scale-
invariant."
You can begin to see the root of this problem once you note the
lingering of a curious historical vestige in the constitution and the
picture it reflects.
There is an explicit prohibition against the people/representative
ratio falling under 30,000. At the time this provision was written,
such a notion might have been plausible.
What is it today, on average? About 700,000 to 1. The 30,000/1 ratio,
now, would be more descriptive of an aldermanic district in a
municipal government! That, more than anything else, clearly shows the
nature and scale at which representation was meant to take place.
At 700,000/1, particularly with the power of purse-strings, new tears
and flaws emerge that were not originally present at the 30,000/1
ratio. Most noteworthy is the Decision-Making Bottleneck. One person,
alone, now has on his or her shoulders the lives of an entire city's
worth of people behind every purse-string decision.
How much time would you be given, if everyone were to be provided
equal share of a representative's time? There's about 30 million
seconds in a year. Take 60 million for 24/7 access to the actual, real-
live, individual, and you're taking about 1 1/2 minutes of audience
time.
That's a bottleneck that leads inevitably to the following
consequences:
(a) "the people are out of touch with Washington":
a complete disconnect of the people with the government's budgetary
process. Those who are affected and who pay the money are now
disconnected from those who make the decision.
(b) "the rope whose pull you're resisting is the same as the one
you're pulling" syndrome
the rope that binds you to the government (taxes) is the one whose
pull you're resisting. But, because of the bottleneck, you no longer
see that far beyond the horizon it is attached to the pillars of
authority, wraps around and connects back to you. So, as you pull the
other end of the rope (the services you demand from the government),
you never see that it's your own pull that tugging you in. At the same
time, you never see that it's your own resisting of the pull that's
keeping you from being able to pull the rope in.
(c) chronic budgetary deficit
this sets up the elected representative for failure. There's no way
out of it. For, the consequence of imbuing them with all the power of
deciding on the purse-strings on behalf of 700,000 people is that they
get 700,000 times the blame for asking you for money, and 700,000
times the blame for not providing services.
(d) the Funnel Effect: "Special Interests" are you doing what you're
supposed to do
in order to increase access to a representative, it inevitably arises
that those with the same interests have to pool together their access
to the representative just to be heard.
"Special interests" are not some evil plague that's suddenly descended
on the country. It's simply you, doing your best to get a hold of the
actual live person by combining interests with all others sharing the
same interest. That's the funnel effect brought about by the
bottleneck. And there can never be any way out of that, because it is
all driven by the unworkable 700,000/1 ratio.
It's wrong to put anyone in that kind of double-bind dilemma, and a
system of government that sets up its representatives like this is
outright immoral. And it's wrong to condemn people for combining their
interests just to be heard.
If you want a better country, fix the emergent flaws in the
Constitution that lay behind the, likewise, emergent chronic problems
that have afflicted the country for over a half century.
Complete the call for the Second Constitutional Convention. We're only
a few states away from this happening.
Revoke Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3
Revoke Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 2.
Revoke Article I, Section 7.
The Popular Mandate Budget
It has now been nearly 50 years since the US has had a surplus. This
is determined by the bottom line -- the tabulation of the total debt
kept by the Bureau of Public Debt (which can be found on the Web now,
broken down by a monthly basis since the founding of the Republic) The
last surplus was during the Eisenhower administration.
Having taken place during all manners of combinations of conservative
and liberal congresses and presidencies (and all combinations of
parties in power in each); and having taken place over the period of a
half century which has seen major shifts in peoples' frames of mind
and cultural values, it is obviously something that goes beyond
ideology, beyond culture and values and beyond party politics.
Over time, the chronic debt erodes into the value of the currency. All-
too-conveniently, it's also become a de facto standard as of late to
discount its primary effect by measuring it against the eroding value
of the currency.
As the currency erodes, things your parents and grandparents were able
to afford and buy as a matter of routine pass further and further
beyond reach. It starts out in seemingly insignificant ways. For
instance, as the (rate x time) product of long-term loans (e.g.
mortgages) go beyond their historical value of 1 to 2 by the 1980's,
this is the first sign that things starting to pass out of reach.
Eventually, one reaches a point where more and more desperate measures
have to be taken just to tread water. Savings go down, usage of credit
cards just to make ends meet. Pyramid schemes or "no money down" or
"get rich quick" schemes find fertile ground.
None of this is the outgrowth of bad policies or anything that's
happened in the past decade. The deepest roots of what we see now
(e.g. the passing of the rate X time product up from 1 to 2 or higher)
was already in place by the 1980's and before.
It is one of many effects that take place as a result of the erosion
of the currency (another, of course, being the erosion of the middle
class, itself, which has been steadily on-going for the past quarter
century and more).
During the 1970's, a call for a second Constitutional Convention was
issued and was quickly ratified by a number of states that eventually
reached 30 in number. However, as of yet, this total is still short of
the 34 required to initiate the convention. The issue that served as
the basis for this call was the chronic budgetary problem.
The origin of the problem, ultimately, is the bottleneck. You're
asking a small number of people to govern the funding of a country
comprising a vast, diverse population.
The power of the purse string has to go back to those whose money is
being called on to enact the spending.
"Back to the people", however, does not here mean the "I'll look out
for you" pandering nonsense that it means when a candidate proclaims
they'll bring the "government back to the people." That same prattle's
been heard from time out of mind. The fact that it hasn't been done
and that the disconnect has become all the greater, itself, shows that
what's driving it is structural and systemic. It cannot be remedied by
new ideology, revival of old ideology, nor by powerful or charismatic
leadership.
When a prospective leader says "I'll go through the budget line by
line and fix it" or "I'll bring about a commission that will fix the
budget", that does nothing more than repeat the very same thing that's
been done time and time again, and completely misses the point that
the root of the bottleneck is the bottleneck, not laziness or moral
ineptitude on the part of congress.
How does taking it all on yourself (or through the commission) make
the bottleneck anything but *yet more* extreme?! It's not the cure of
the problem, it's the cause.
A popular mandate budget works like this.
When you pay taxes, or at any other time you may also provide a
prioritized list indicating where you want the money spent. The
priorities are entirely left to individual discretion: top 5, top 10,
top 1000; priorities one-by-one, or priorities listed for groups. The
filing may be done over the net by secure connection, in person in
libraries or other designated locations, by form in mail.
A master list is compiled from the sum of all the individual
prioritizations.
How does this amplify your power. In the best case, if there are, say,
10,000 items, this would lead to pairwise comparisions between 500
million pairs. Under equal distribution, that averages only 2-3 people
per pair-wise decision. Obviously the pairwise comparisions won't have
contribution from equal numbers of people, but this gets to the root
how just how far the bottleneck is broken open by this new protocol.
Comparison may be done by the following method. Every item is compared
with every other, like a tourney. So, with 10,000 items, item #1 is
compared with items #2-#10,000. For each pair, #1 vs. #2, the total
score is compiled: how many rated #1 higher than #2 vs. how many rated
#2 higher than #1. If #1 is rated higher by the majority it "wins" and
#2 "loses". If both are rated higher by an equal number of people,
it's a tiel.
The final standings give you the priority order of the programs, e.g.
#1 has 9998 wins, 0 loss, 1 tie; #2 has 9997 wins, 1 loss, 1 tie; etc.
Spending is set at a strict limit. The programs are then run down the
line in decreasing order of priority until the spending limit is
reached. That's the cut-off. Period.
One way to keep some power back in Congress is to set the cut-off for
the priority list at, say, 80% or 90% of the total spending limit and
set aside the remaining 20% or 10% for direct allocation by the
representative body.
Before constitutional changes are effected leading to any revision
like this, the power is already in the presidency to effect the
beginnings of such a program. Congress may commission formal support
for a popular mandate protocol and for it o be submitted directly to
the President. The President, then, will take the list and based on
this list, will draw up a budget (called the Popular Mandate Budget)
and submit it to Congress. With the 10% or 20% set-aside rule,
Congress will have additional discretion for decision-making without
being forced into a simple yes or no vote on the budget.
In this temporary setup, at no point is the President actually
effecting the purse-string power himself (or herself). Congress still
has the power to freely accept or reject the budget submitted and draw
up their own. However, with a Popular Mandate Budget, a serious onus
falls on the representatives who go against the collective will
reflected by the compiled budget. So, it's hard to go against it (and
expect to remain around in 2 years).
At the same time, this provides coverage for making budgetary cut-
offs. Without the "people having our back" the representative would be
forced to go back to the people and explain either (a) why programs
were not enacted or (b) why taxes were called for (to pay for the
programs enacted).
This way, the credit and blame all fall on the shoulders of the people
-- where it belongs. This takes a huge burden off the representative,
and the 700,000/1 bottleneck is defeated.
The rope pulling you in now comes fully into view and you can, at
last, see that it's you doing the pulling. The pulling, inevitably,
gets moderated and stops. Things pass to equilibrium, on its own, and
the chronic budgetary problem shrivels up, as its roots are removed.
Seanis Amazinopoulus
"Rock Brentwood" <mark...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1cd87909-95d1-4a8c...@s9g2000prm.googlegroups.com...
THIS ->
c) Remove formal public support for party nomination processes from
all primaries.
The nomination process is kicked out of the public sector, and placed
back into the private sector.
This does not outlaw parties, per se, but removes formal public
support for them. People, as always, are free to gather and assemble
as they see fit.
-----------------------------------
Sean: Would be a great well-grounded and practical way to improve the
process. No where else in the world has ever had the need to do anything
like it. Political party members should vote ofr whome they choose to
present the Party at elections, be they Congressional, Senate, or the
Presidency. imho.
and this is good too ->>