Issue 729 Fixing democracy 6 November 25, 2015

The Supreme Court is becoming a problem.  How you ask, well let us get started.

Supreme Court problem:  The issue at hand is that they are more and more legislating from the bench.  Basically for those that do not know, they are making laws without respecting the separations of power in our government. The Supreme Court is supposed to say if something is legal or not with respect to if something is constitutional and nothing else.  But they are ignoring this by ruling that the penalties in Obama care are a tax, or that the government has power to define marriage and what constitutes being married.  As such, rules I believe should be put in place to limit how they rule on issues and laws.  They first should look to see if the issue is a federal government responsibility with respect to the powers outlined in the United States Constitution.  If it is, then fine, they can rule on it, but if not they then determine if the level of responsibility lies with the State governments, local government or if it lays with the people.  Basically a checklist on whose level of authority is this under.  In this respect, they can even determine when they deem it a State responsibility which States can make or ignore laws based on those particular States Constitutions, or similarly local governments’ charters.  However, as a check and a balance if rights are being violated and the Supreme Court says that something ultimately lies with the power of the individual people, then no government may usurp the people's power.  So if it violates people's rights, like government deciding who can get married, or people's right to contract, then the Supreme Court can overturn any law.  So the checklist will look as follows:

1) is it in the United States Constitution and is it a federal government responsibility or power?

2) If not 1, then is it a State responsibility or power as per their Constitution(s), and if so is it indicative to that State's Constitution or is it broader to be a responsibility of all States?

3) If not 1 or 2, is it a local government's responsibility or power, and is it indicative to just that particular local government or all the local governments in the country?

4) If it is not a responsibility or power of 1, 2 or 3, then it belongs to the people as per the ninth and tenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and the law or act is to be immediately overturned.

5) If at any time the law or act in question is determined to be an issue of rights, privileges and immunities as held by the people and or as listed in any level of government Constitution or charter, and that law or act is in violation of those at any level of government, then the power and responsibilities in question will be placed with the people as per the ninth and tenth amendments and the law or act will be immediately, overturned. 

6) If the law or act is not clear in purpose, ambiguous and/or is not easily understood, then the law or act is overturned in keeping with the principle that if the people do not understand the law, then the law is unenforceable and open to abuse.

7) If the law or act attempts to clarify or protect a right, privilege or immunity, then the Court is to determine if said right, privilege or immunity in question needs to be clarified, and if said law or act actually adequately defines, protects or hinders those rights privileges or immunities in question.  If the clarification or protection would hinder the expression of a person's rights in any way that law or act is to be overturned.

Simple Checklist right?  If you will notice, both 4 and 5 make it so that if the issue is not any government's responsibility or power, or if it is a question of rights, privileges and immunities, then the laws are overturned.  These insure that laws and acts made by legislative bodies and agencies and departments are always inferior to the Federal, and State(s) Constitutions, and local charters. Additionally, if the right, privilege and immunity is listed at any level of government or simply determined to be a power or right held by the people, then automatically the law is overturned if deemed in violation even if the law or act in question comes from a higher level of government. For the sake of example a local government's charter says that anyone can marry anyone as per their religious right to marry, then a federal law may be overturned which say was attempting to define marriage to just a man or a women.  Get it.  Rights of the people would trump laws and acts by government.

Conclusion:  A simple checklist like this will do wonders in defining what can and can't be done, especially if the Supreme Court wishes to continue to determine what is constitutional or not.  So expanding and limiting their power at the same time would work which this checklist does.  However, determining the obviously wrongful acts like murder, theft and the similar will be necessary to prevent changes in attitudes and maintaining the idea that the ninth and tenth amendment provide for unwritten rights will also be necessary as well.  For let us face it, we are a forgetful people and defining what can and cannot be done is absolutely necessary to maintain our Republic.

Issue 728 Fixing Democracy 5 November 24, 2015

In this issue we will talk about reallocating responsibility of which level of government does what.  Let us start.

Changes of responsibility:  So the federal government is supposed to do one set of things, State governments another and local another.  Basically, we just make sure each one sticks to its own responsibilities.  For example the federal government has a forestry service.  They basically stop forest fires, preserve the forest and act to aid in conservation efforts.  But some of these things run counter to each other due to fighting fires in forests meaning that parts of the forest needs to be removed to act as a fire break.  The reason being is that again interest groups get in the way as conservation groups, in their effort to preserve the forests, help to enact laws that may hinder firefighters from going in and stopping the fires.  As such the National Guard, primarily a State level institution, should get the role of fighting forest fires.  The conservation role will be separated as well and turned over to the forest ministries and their equivalents in their respective States.  By doing simple things like this it eliminates competing doctrines in agencies which can paralyze them and cause our tax dollars to go to waste.  Another example would be the jobs that homeland security does.  The air national guard can do airport security, the FBI already does counter terrorism, and the Army national guard already coordinates with fire, police and other rescue personnel in disasters.  As such, the entire apparatus of homeland security is redundant as all their jobs are done by other bodies in and at all levels of government.  New York City has its own counter terror group and shares info and receive info from the FBI and CIA.  So we can have major cities protect themselves from terrorists, coordinate with other bodies for broader national defense and areas that do not have the counter terror teams set up like NYC does can have that placed in the national guard or FBI branch offices, or simply placed in SWAT teams run by the States.   

Another example would be national monuments.  No one wants them to go away and they are deemed national treasures.  But why is the federal government in charge of them.  States already do a good job with their State parks and monuments, so why not turn over the national ones to the States who are more than equipped to handle their upkeep.  It is not the federal government's job to maintain monuments, so why is it doing so?  Why is it wasting taxpayer dollars which can be better spent elsewhere and the States can get the revenue from those people visiting those monuments as well?  Well, lobbying is partly to blame for all of this.  The federal level departments and agencies who handle monuments also lobby congress.  Yes, government even lobbies itself.  And thus sending it to the States makes sense as now the government lobby is broken up and no longer has an influence.  How about Fannie and Freddie, the mortgage loan giants.  They were created and supported by the federal government to back loans, but that is not the federal government's responsibility, it is the private sector, so break it up and privatize it.  Welfare is a local government responsibility, and thus should be turned back over to them.  Education and environmental protection are both State and local government jobs, the federal government really should not have a say there either.  However, environmentalists, industries, advocacy groups and even the government all lobby for power and control.  But if the jobs were placed where they belong, we may not be having as many problems as we have now with respect to corruption.

Conclusion:  We are centralizing political power in the higher echelons of government and that causes problems with competing doctrines, lobbying and of course power struggles that can paralyze our government.  It is time to fix that by giving power back to where it belongs and doing it smartly.

Issue 727 Fixing Democracy 4 November 23, 2015

Continuing with this series, we get to ways to end Gerrymandering.  What Gerrymandering is, for those who do not know, is when politicians divide up electoral districts to make them have an overwhelming majority of people from one political party to ensure that that particular party gets elected into office.  Basically it makes it easier for one politician from one party to get elected over the other.  However, this is a form of corrupting influence upon our nation and it must be stopped.

Fixing it:  Obviously this is a bad practice as it ensures little to no compromise with respect to politicians as they have to appeal to only their political party and the voters in that group.  Also it causes the politicians to become more extreme as without the need to appeal to the other side, the views of their ideologically pure constituents can become more and more radical. As such, they become more radical too so as to not be replaced by more ideologically pure politicians. So a better method must be developed and enforced by law to prevent gerrymandering and its influence on the nation.

One method already in use is a committee of non-elected/non electable officials which are selected in the same way a courtroom chooses a jury.  This committee then distributes the districts up as equally in population size as possible without looking at things like race, ideology or other factors.  California already does this (note: States make the congressional districts, not the federal government).  However, this has a weakness.  It does not account for regional needs such as urban, to suburban to rural.  It only takes into account population density.  As such there is an additional alternative people may or may not like.

The alternative is to have the States, when making electoral districts, divided into regions.  In this case, a city will be its own electoral district and rural areas, wilderness areas and the like will have each their own districts as well. In the case that there is only two representatives for a particular State, then one representative will represent all the urban areas and some suburban areas, and the other will represent all the rural, wilderness and other sparsely populated areas.  Now the reason why this is controversial even if the representatives are actually representing regional needs is that the size of the populations in those districts will be vastly different.  Cities can have thousands of people living in them, but rural areas can have less than a thousand distributed throughout the entire State.  So people see this as unfair that a few hundred have the same voting power as potentially one million.  The Supreme Court has already ruled on this matter once in favor of having districts with population sizes that are almost equal irrespective of the fact of people's needs.  To overcome this the Supreme Court ruling would either have to be overturned or electoral districts would need to stop being constrained by State borders.  This would mean a total loss of power to the States which would in effect reduce lobbying as well to a degree as power becomes more distributed.  But this may also mean that Congress may need to be reworked as well.  Additional houses of representatives may be needed so that rural areas and urban areas do not overwhelm each other’s votes.  Even then, Suburban and wilderness areas would need representation.  Basically it gets really complicated and thus making sure cities, suburban areas, transitional areas, rural, and wilderness all have an equal number of representatives if we end up not having to rework the very government itself that is.  Again, none of this respects population size and thus will be seen as unfair.  

Conclusion:  I wanted to make it clear to you my reader that there is alternatives out there, but our current system is the fairest. As such, to reduce the corruption of gerrymandering the committee idea is the best one with respect to reducing corruption and preventing politicians from becoming too radical (let alone the districts themselves).  In that respect the committees insure that districts potentially have people who will disagree and thus play devil's advocate to ensure no ideas get out of hand.

Issue 726 Fixing Democracy 3 November 20, 2015

So we got Congress and the Senate, the Vice President, but what about the Electoral College.  It aids in creating corruption and allows people more power than they normally would have.  So how do we fix this?

Fixing the Electoral College:  Our current electoral college works as follows.  Each State chooses a slate of electors, with two for each electoral vote that State has with half representing one candidate running in the Presidential election and the other half representing the other.  From there, we the people vote and then the majority vote decides which slate of electors votes who then vote for their chosen candidate.  Somewhat simple right?  Basically it makes the system a winner take all vote as the candidates need a certain amount of electoral votes to be elected President.  Problems are caused by this however.  For one, a person in a Blue State (Democrat party) like New York State overrides their Republican brethren with respect representation in that State.  Which means that it is almost pointless for a Republican to vote in New York as they will always be outvoted.  So you lose representation.  Additionally, this helps Swing States like Florida as more attention is going to be paid toward it due to how many electoral votes they have and how they can go for either candidate.  So Florida gets major benefits from politicians as they want to play nice to manipulate the voting in their political party’s direction.  This also means that businesses in these swing States gain advantages as well as explained in Issue 722 with the example of Sugar growers having superior say in political circles if they originate in a swing State and thus make them able to manipulate the market in their favor (hello lobbyists).  

So what is the solution to our votes counting more, getting other States to be paid attention to, and to reduce lobbying?  Simple, eliminate the winner take all system. Have it by electoral district with each district's electoral vote going toward whichever candidate had the most votes in said district.  Then if the majority of districts in the State vote for a particular candidate, the two electoral votes representing the number of Senators each State has (electoral votes are determined by the total number of Representatives in the House and Senate combined) will go toward the candidate with the most electoral votes in that State.  But if neither candidate gets a majority, then the electoral votes representing the senatorial representation will be divided between the two.   Actually let us scrap that, and make it so that the total number of electoral votes is equal just to the number of the members of the House of Representatives and each candidate must win a simple 50% plus one majority.  No more by winner take all bull crap.  Just win half the 435 plus one electoral votes to win.  This makes it simpler and easier to understand.  Every electoral district is equal which means the Candidates for President will have to visit multiple places to try and win, not just a few key areas of a State to get all of the votes as with the current system. It eliminates the power businesses had if they existed in swing States and thus reduces their political clout and thus their ability to lobby Congress which hinders crony capitalism.  It also means your vote may count more as well especially as you are not locked into the Republican or Democrat majority State situation anymore.  States also become more equal as Swing States and States with a lot of electoral votes do not count as much anymore as candidates are not trying to win a whole State, but instead a majority of the people by electoral district.  Truly much better than the current situation.

Conclusion:  This will be hard to pull off because we are basically removing a lot of power from a lot of people.  It does not eliminate key businesses like banks, international and domestic trade ports and the like, but it removes as many businesses as possible who gained say (lobbying power) artificially through our imperfect system.  Basically it is better than the status quo.  However, I will not go toward a pure democracy with the direct election of the President just yet, as I still fear mob rule.  Until we can counteract that, this solution I present to you here is as far as I am willing to go while fixing the system.

Issue 725 Fixing Democracy 2 November 19, 2015

As we are talking about fixing democracy, we need a canary in the coal mine in office.  No, I am not talking about a literal canary, but someone who can play devil's advocate and hopefully suppress the radical ideas of idealist Presidents.  I am talking about altering the role of the Vice President.

Vice Presidential Fixes:  So we all know that if the President can no longer serve as President for whatever reason that the Vice President takes over.  Did you know that the Vice President is the President of the Senate according to the Constitution?  What this means is that the Vice President organizes debate on the Senate floor and only has a vote there in the event of a tie.  And that is pretty much it.  Or should it be?  If we are going to fix the role of the Vice President, then we need to make him/her the opposition.  This means that the runner up in a Presidential election will be the Vice President so as to be the devil's advocate and be the canary that says the President is going too far.  But how would that work?  How is a Vice President going to be in meetings with the President (especially if the Vice President is not liked) while actually doing the job as President of the Senate?  Well, the Senate is not meant to be in session all the time, and the Vice President is not necessarily there all the time either.  Sure, the Vice President can keep the tie breaking vote as the Vice President represents government and not necessarily the people.  So what about making the Vice President the chief of staff?  The Chief of Staff organizes meetings, and oversees the operations of the Executive branch.  That is one way to make sure that the Vice President is in on the meetings, but that may be pushing it.  The reason being is that the Vice President need not be in meetings to be the canary, and is meant in this case to go public with his/her reservations.  We need a Vice President that is designed to usurp and undermine the President's power via public statements.  So remaining the President of the Senate is fine along with the tie breaking vote.  But adding in the equivalent of a State of the Union address would be most beneficial.  In this case, the Vice President would publically go before the Congress and the Senate and voice his/her concerns.  In this instance, the time frame for these speeches will be the week prior to Election Day each year at minimum and at maximum additional ones can be held or the Vice President may address the people publically through media and the press.  No President wants to be reprimanded or look bad the week before elections are held for that means his or her opposition can gain just the foothold they need to usurp the President's allies in the Congress and the Senate.  People listen and the American people will listen to the Vice President if we give the appropriate title and message in the speech the Vice President will be making.  So we can label it "The State of Opposition" speech. 

Conclusion: Other than that, the Vice President really has no roll, save maybe formalizing the Vice President attending State funerals, weddings and other events in the President's place.  The Vice President can informally also stand in for the President at Cabinet meetings or other official business, but these will need to be added into the Constitution much like the "State of the Opposition" speech in order to formalize duties and actually give the Vice President any semblance of political clout.  So let the Vice President meet with foreign dignitaries on behalf of the President, perform all ceremonial duties and basically any public duties.  This keeps the Vice President in the limelight in contrast to the President's power, but makes the President's presence all that much more important when he/she does eventually appear in a non-ceremonial or even a ceremonial function with the Vice President.  They will literally be competing for public attention with the Vice President having the advantage of making connections and being the most visible person to the public at large (which will help to ensure that people listen to that speech).   I thought of making the Vice President the Secretary of State, but that defeats the canary in the coalmine idea, so we will have to settle for all ceremonial duties being carried out by the Vice President, formalizing his/her role as a stand in when the President is absent and hopefully adding that opposition speech in for good measure.

Issue 724 Fixing Democracy 1 November 18, 2015

As we looked at what was wrong with democracy, with respect to America's Republic I thought it might be nice to look at ways to fix it.  So here is part one in this series.

Fix it:  First and foremost let us not say cut things, and the usual methods.  Instead I will discuss methods to change our democracy and explain the context on how they will help do that.  One of those first methods is to eliminate the direct election of Senators as prescribed by the 17th Amendment of the United States Constitution.  You may be thinking that this runs counter to the idea of democracy.  That by not being able to choose your senators via elections defeats the purpose of a democracy.  However, these individual senators abide by mob rule. They will do anything to please the populace that elects them even if it means creating chaos in the country.  These people depend not only on your vote, but special interest groups (lobbyists) to maintain power as it takes money to run an election.  However, going back to the system that had Senators chosen by State legislatures with the ability to recall them when necessary removes lobbyist’s power.  The reason being is the fact that the Senators no longer have the power of the vote as the legislatures will then tell them how to vote (those legislators represent us).  They, as they were intended, were meant to vote in line with what the State legislatures wanted and was in effect a check to prevent the Federal government from gathering too much power and usurping the State's powers under the 10th Amendment.  So no more overbearing federal government overstepping their bounds and less lobbying.

Likewise, we want the same to be said for the House of Representatives.  While the Senators go back to being appointed, the people who are actually meant to represent us in the Federal government cause similar problems due to lobbying and corruption.  So the solution that I think works best is to extend their terms to three years in office as opposed to the current two.  Yes, we let them stay in office an additional year, but they will be limited to a maximum of two terms and those terms in office cannot be consecutive.  So why is this better?  Simple, for one lobbyists will have a harder time manipulating Representatives in the long run due to the limited number of terms allowed and the fact that it makes it harder for incumbents (the guys running for office again after already having served) to win elections due to them not being able to hold consecutive terms.  Therefor lobbyists will have to offer short term bribes that have less impact on the United States economy and less likely to be as corrupting as well.  The reason lobbyists are so effective is due to the sheer number of years some of these congressmen and senators serve in office, but limiting the number of years or removing the reins of power helps to fix that.  At the same time this three year term is set up to insures 1/3 of the House of Representatives is being elected each year.  This means higher turnover and thus fresh blood constantly coming into office while acting as a check against a popular president gone bad.  Think for a moment.  People did not like where President Obama was going with his first term in office and so we had to wait two years to create a counter balance with the other political party (Republicans).  But with 1/3 being elected per year, the power balance shifts yearly with popular support for a good President ushering in more people who think like him/her and unpopular support reducing the President's power by removing his likeminded party members from Congress.  It is another check and balance on the system.

Conclusion:  Both of these solutions have to go together.  They cannot be separated for without the Senators going back to representing the freedom of the States and the individual people in them, then the entire change over for term limits in the House of Representatives becomes an outlet for popular support of the President and thus creates a mob rule scenario.  The Senate is meant to be a check on the House of Representatives to prevent mob rule, not support it by maintaining the current situation with the direct election of senators.  Get it now?  I hope so, or you can always ask me questions via google here or my Facebook page which is under my real name.  Anyway, hope you enjoyed the read.

Issue 723 Failure of our Democracy November 17, 2015

Welcome back.  So we looked at the failure of our market economy so why not our democracy.  Let's begin. (I take inspiration from the Economist and Foreign Affairs)

Issues with our Democracy:  The first issue is that elites have superior access to power and information which is used to protect wealth.  Remember the sugar grower’s example in yesterday's issue?  This is part of that.  Rules in general and access to politicians due to this political clout allow these individuals and businesses to get information first before everyone else.  So what to do here?  Simple, let everyone have access to that information by having government not get in the way.  By having less government involvement it means less chances for government to solidify unfair competition.

Issue two is that we, the ordinary voters do not get angry at our corrupt politicians as we generally do not know that money is being stolen in the first place.  As such we need to get the money out of politics.  No, this does not mean more rules to be enforced however.  It actually means less money being taken from us, the taxpayers.  It means no more pensions or even salaries for politicians, less government as this means less money and as such each level of government focusing on its own responsibilities only.  Smaller government means we can see it better, and even limiting when they can meet and vote helps with this too.

Our other two issues are our fault.  Firstly we have our cognitive rigidities and beliefs.  This can be religion, ideology or just being stubborn.  However, these things prevent social groups from mobilizing because we keep looking at what is different.  In other words we sabotage our ability to organize.  This leads to our other issue.  Different groups have different abilities with respect to actually being able to organize in the first place.  As such minority groups can misportray themselves as the majority in some cases and lead us further down the wrong path.  So what can we do?  Well, we have to start looking at what we all agree on. It is all about uniting behind things one at a time and talking it out to decide what needs to change and how.  Once that is done, then we all get up at once and say never again and perpetuate that.

Conclusion:  I personally always come to the conclusion that less government is best for those in power amplify these problems in our democracy.  We may not need to organize as much if there were less rules turning people who are completely innocent into criminals (victimless crimes).  But alas, this is what we created for ourselves.  So now we struggle to undo the harm we have done to ourselves.