Issue 730 Fixing Democracy 7 December 8, 2015

Now that I am back (somewhat) I can finish off the last two in the series of fixing democracy.  So let us continue.

Appointing Judges and Term Limits:  At current Supreme Court Judges are appointed by the President and ratified by the Senate.  This was meant to be a check on the system as the Senate represented the State Governments and not the people directly.  So it prevented the President from stacking the court in their favor with respect to issues of State sovereignty and people’s rights.  But now it is all about party politics.  Presidents use "litmus tests" to determine the most appointable judge that best represents their ideological viewpoints.   Kind of degrading to the nation isn't it?  As our supreme court is degraded into a tool of the Party Politics system.  So what can be done about this?  Simple, change the rules.

To eliminate this corruption via the political machine, you first have to eliminate the traditional method of appointing judges.  So rather than a president appointing them, they will be chosen via the same method one would choose a member of a jury.  In this case, standards would be set demanding that any judge who may serve must be a practicing lawyer, or judge with at least one year of service.  This eliminates people who have law degrees but have never been inside a courtroom (Justice Kagan being a prime example of a person who never saw time in court, but was appointed anyway).  So with that limitation we make sure people who actually know law and understand how it is implemented are the ones serving.  At this point the currently serving judges would look at the potential candidates and give their top 20 list from which the Senate would pick and ratify a number equal to the number of open positions on the Supreme Court.  If none of the candidates in the list make the cut, then the Supreme Court would provide another list eliminating the bottom candidates and adding new ones.  This process (like the current one) would continue until both sides are satisfied.  

Now, we do not want justices serving perpetually, and thus they will be limited to a maximum of three six year terms with a max total of 18 Judges.  As such, 1/3 of the judges will be changed or reappointed every two years.  This insures that potentially bad judges do not stay in office for an extended period of time (current judges serve as long as they please as they have no limits on the number of years served).  Additionally the number of judges needed to sit on any given case will be a minimum of three and a maximum of nine but the number must always be an odd number. This allows the judges to see multiple cases at once, but if a case should return to the Supreme Court for any reason, the judges from the previous case will not be allowed to sit on that case.  This prevents conflicts of interest. As such with this in place we eliminate judges not wanting to retire due to political reasons like ideology.

Conclusion:  By limiting the Court to choosing its own replacements with select criteria, we eliminate some of the party politics (partly because the lawyers and judges have a mindset that things can only be done within the law).  If combined with Issue 729's set criteria on reviewing a case, then we may have a judiciary that would never allow for something like Obama Care, or Kilo Versus New London ever again.

Remembering Pearl Harbor December 7, 2015

Not many people save history buffs will remember Pearl Harbor day.  It happened December 7th 1941 when the Japanese launched a surprise attack and was the catalyst that finally brought the United States into the war, World War II.  It is not like we were not already involved in the fighting beforehand.  The United States was already sending arms to the British and other forces fighting the Germans and the Japanese.  We lost territory to the Japanese in the Philippines, and our allies did too. But still, we stayed out of direct involvement due to President Roosevelt trying to avoid fighting until America was ready (contrary to his promise to keep us out of war).   As to whether we allowed the attacks to go through to galvanize the public, that is still and probably will remain speculation for who could believe that the government would purposefully allow an attack on U.S. territory (though today's politicians potentially may allow something like that).  So on this day, despite it potentially being an avoidable occurrence we remember Pearl Harbor day and the lives lost that would spur the American Giant to war.

Taking a week off.

Stupidly....I injured my back and cannot sit for very long to type.  In fact I herniated a disk moving furniture for some family, and needless to say, this type of injury really sucks (avoid it if you can).  Hopefully I'll be able to write soon, otherwise I will post what I manage to type when and where I can.   Hope to be back to normal soon.  See you hopefully in a week with the usual five posts a week.

Black Friday

Post Thanksgiving post!  Hope you all enjoyed your time with family and friends, but there is no reason to stop the festivities the day after.  Yea, it may be black friday, but I am not going shopping, I am going to spend some more time with family and friends.  Hard to believe a day that once represented the stock market crash now represents sales and people losing their mind about buying stuff (I'll stick to buying from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Think Geek).  So stay home and be with your family some more.  Enjoy your long weekend and see you next week where we pick up where we left off on The Jormungand.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  

I'm taking a break from the usual to say how glad and thankful I am to have you all as readers.  Without you all reading then I would not have the courage (or stamina) to write as much as I do.  

With the world in turmoil and opinions a dime a dozen, thank you for being there to listen to mine.  I hope you all have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.  

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.