Towards a New Democracy

[rigel99]

Ok, so Jefferson is rolling in his grave. The Democracy our founding fathers have devised FAILED miserably if shrub and his fat ugly cronies (rove/cheney, and condaleeza when she looks in the mirror at her anorexic figure) could usurp our government so easily and painlessly (and spend all our money on errant wars that drive the price of gas up to $3.00 by July)..

so here is my ROADMAP FOR A NEW DEMOCRACY:

1. One Person One Vote (no more electoral system)
2. Major Network, Weekly Televised TownHall Policy Meetings open to citizens discussing 'issues that matter' to constituents with
citizen based legislation development as its goal
3. Blogs as Official News Sources
4. Bring Back Sherman Anti-Trust Act with a vengeance
with no Press agency controlling more than 10% in any or all markets
5. SEC-like Entity expands to become a Cabinet Position, "Division of Corporate Oversight" where companies are regularly penalized for accounting problems before they become bigger problems
6. Move toward getting back on a gold standard (yes folks it
is totally possible and will change the sagging dollar) And Dagne
Taggart would really like it too!
7. Instant 3 Party System with a 3rd category generically called "Independent" and lowering ballot access requirements
for each state
8. Instant Runoff Voting
9. A New constitution creating a 5 Branch system (the 3 branches
did not work if the Executive could so easily usurp the other
2 branches as Bush has). The other 2 branches are as follows:
Branch #4: International Oversight Panel (a panel of 21 international
humanitarian experts to decide / vote / agree on
all aspects of foreign policy made by US abroad)

Branche #5: Domestic Oversight Panel (again, we need folks that are
not within the Government to be on this, so I'd suggest
2,000 folks, representative of every profession, including
ordinary citizens), to set domestic policy and to be given
a block of votes similar to senators (perhaps 33%, enough
to throw off senatorial quorums) ** how they will be chosen?
By a standard 12 person panel (2 chosen from each of the branches
judiciary, legislative, presidential, international) and
this panel, will have 15 year terms, and must pass a battery
of tests about the constitution, policy, etc.


10. Small Business Loans as easy to get as mortgages
11. Social Security will be fortified with government investing
it's kitty overseas in bond markets (safe places to grow the
money faster than it's sitting in a big pot as it is now)
12. TRADE POLICIES will be radically altered to weight US
based businesses vs. Overseas... tax incentives to China and
other businesses setting up factories in US, tax incentives
for China to ship it's factory employees here (and amnesty for
those folks, if 20% newhires are american, paid at average
american wages).... all kinds of crazy trade things to get
the money staying more in US than going abroad as the trade
deficit highlights....
13. Instant Partnership with Russia/Japan against China... clearly
china is our biggest threat period and our only /best allies
would be Russia / Japan. Also economic aid to N. Korea
coupled with a socialization plan to give N. Korea capitalism
(similar to eastern europe's adoption and growth markets),
which will eventually make them an ally to US as well.
14. STRICT Software / Music/Entertainment copyright protection
to make more $$$ when selling our 3 best selling industries
abroad...
15. Napster like services are allowed to continue, with the
price for downloads in the pennies provided directly to artist
eliminating the middleman music industry.....
16. Move to a MICROWALLET system with your cellphone as your
bank account
17. WIFI broadband and long distance is basically a flat fee (around $18/month) govt' provided service (govt' as telco, well it could be
awesome as long as they outsource the mgmt of the networks)
and the telcos made obsolete.... (ok so you can see my
hatred of telcos here)..... Also offered universally, in rural
areas, metropolitan , etc.
18. College free to anyone who qualifies to get in and the
payment for this as a tax on corporations who hire the students...
19. Medicare, ah yes, medicare. I love Dean's suggestion,
medicare free for all 18 and under and 65 and older, period.
Paid for how? With a stringent removal of HMOs and insurance
companies and a flat tax per person for healthcare per person
per month that is billed like a monthly US tax versus yearly.
Companies relieved of healthcare, US govt' can pool the incoming
healthcare money and invest in foreign bonds, as well they
can eliminate insurance aspect as insurance is a middleman
anyway and provides no value. What about poor folks between
18-65 without healthcare? All folks get healthcare
for free but are issued an IOU and must reimburse fees
when working again (taxed at a very low rate on the paycheck
and rated at the lowest possible rate based on need- not
unlike a student loan spread out so long it's not a hardship).
Reason? Healthcare is a value to all, and must be paid for...
this seems harsh but folks taking responsbility for their
health will be the goal...


Much Stricter 3 Branch Checks and Balances..
No more Pres. appointments of judges
No more pres. appointment of Cabinet Heads, (this will
be done by the Domestic Oversight Panel, involving
ordinary citizens making decisions).
No more Presidential Veto, but instead, Congressional
vetoes will expand to the 5 total branches giving any
one branch a Veto power over the Congress. Why? Because
Vetos are important expressions against 'radicalism' and
make the laws passed withstand a higher 'citizen based'
scrutiny as well as International oversight.

*** Would the International panel approve of going to war?
well, if humanitarian rights are at issue, i'm sure
they will approve, but even if they don't the veto
may be overridden by same 2/3 majority in Congress as normal.
Jimmy Carter as lifetime member of International Panel.... : )

I could go on.. but it's late.... ideas.....

[shance]

1. I like the way you think****

Great ideas and solutions.

It's obvious to me you have put a lot of thought into the solution part of it, which is where we ALL would be better suited to focus.

Thanks for the terrific post. It needs a nomination for sure!

[rigel99]

2. thanks for taking time to read it..

just so I know whether to go buy a dress or something, nomination for what?

I really screwed up the healthcare part.. was hard to just dump from my head. but the key is removing healthcare as a burden on corporations and pooling all insurance into one monthly payment to govt. that you are relieved of paying when unemployed... but benefits continue...

i'm unemployed now and the healthcare part is a bitch.....actually dental, but that's irrelevant... somehow when I made 6 digits and paid GOBS of money, the insurance companies paid minmum teeth cleaning and then now that I"m broke, where's my money... they still have it.. fuckers... insurance should really just go away as we know it.....

[tommcintyre]

7. No fancy clothes needed at this time ;)

"buy a dress or something"

Your thread has been nominated (and "elected") to the esteemed "Greatest Page".

Congratulations!

[rigel99]

11. Wow....

did you use DRE machines to tally the votes!!
hee hee..just kidding..

I'm truly honored...

wow.. I think I'll go out and celebrate..

[Selteri]

3. I agree with 85% of your points, still, it's a great start

Leave the Presidential Veto, juswt add others. It's not like Bush has even USED his.

The 5 th national panel is downsized a bit, broken into groups that oversee aspects but also get together, similar to congres...

Make sure to include Artists and at least a few young and old people (I'm talking 18-30 and over 65... basically so that both sides are represented as well.

4 parties formed instead of 3 - independent and moderate. They can choose thier own names, also the rules returned back to their reasonable levels. Allowing for other 5th and 6th parties to be able to join together.

All voteing is done is done in a triple redundency system with every voting location using an non-national witness per machine, just in case.

The first vote is electronic, paper reciept inside and outside like an ATM. The outside reciept has to be acknowledged ande agreed to or it literally shreds both and starts the vote right back over.

If the vote is agreed the voter signs - namestamps the resiept then places it a seperate collection bin that has a bank type guard/cop on it at all times.

Voting Tampering becomes a class 1 felony with a manditory minimum of 20 years and a maximum sentence of having citizenship stipped and deportment to a country willing to accept and reform the criminal after thier sentence is over. (You try to screw America, you don't get to stay - would require a lot of evidence)

[ProgressiveConn]

4. No! Secret Ballot is MANDATORY! =(

[rigel99]

5. Love your system..

will agree to your changes, entirely..

not sure I understood the 5th/6th party merging? more on that?

love the signed / namestamp part too but have to agree with our next poster, secret ballot is critical for 'safety' issues.... your vote can be used against you and the secrecy is critical...
but to preserve your spirit, we have a single list that we all namestamp separate from the ballot (versus a checkmarked off of their form) so we can see who really showed up cause my Open records in ga. show the provisionals to be 0 in some counties where there were 6000 voters.. wtf.. where are all the provisional voters.. do you mean to say you rejected all the provisionals? fuckers.. anyway.... sorry bad rant...

agreed to your changes.. Make it so... let's start drafting a new constitutional wording (

life / liberty and right to vote... how about that!!!

[tommcintyre]

6. Nice work! Need a job? Run for office once you get election fraud in Ga...

handled. I bet you, and other honest, caring citizens would be a breath of fresh air for your voters.

:)

[Sirveri]

8. Oh boy.

Rebuttle to #1: This would clearly shift the balance of voting to dense urban areas. While this clearly plays to the democratic base, it's unfair to the rural areas and sparsely populated regions. Overall the electoral college system we currently have, while complex, is quite good. I suggest doing more research on it if you haven't done so already.
Rebuttle to #2: C-Span isn't a major network? I think the real issue I have with this is the once a week requirement. The entire proposal needs to be fleshed out more, is everyone on once a week? And if they are, then how do we make up for their lost time? 1 day in travel time out of Washington and then one day at site for the townhall meet, so only 3 days a week to work on actually running the country? Maybe everyone once a quarter, that way we could spread it out but still retain the spirit and flavor.
4: I need to do more research on this aspect, 10% sounds a bit low to me, but it would likely be better than the current situation.
5, 6: This could occur now, with proper legislation. As for Gold Standard, we might suffer from High levels of deflation, which is actually worse than high levels of inflation.
7: This would work better if we simply outright adopted a parliamentary style system. There are benefits and drawbacks to both systems, I personally would need to be persuaded why we would need to radically shift our model of government when the trade offs don't have any major net benefit.
9: I don't think we need 5 branches, it needlessly complicates things. We simply need to have the legislative branch stop abdicating all its power. As it stands the government is working backwards, the legislature should be telling the President what to do, and he should be doing it, not vice versa. This could be rectified by adding a few clauses directly into the constitution regarding Presidential behaviour and authority.
11: Social Security is a Insurance system, not a 401k, please try to think about it differantly.
12: See 5,6.
13: I'm afraid we're dicked here, Russia sees China as a potential ally to compete with us and is assisting them in their limited capacity to build up their blue water naval forces. And Japan... They own most of our debt, they already have us by the balls, it would be better to simply recognise who the bitch is in that relationship.
14: We already have this.
15: Eliminating the middle man in this case is something that should likely be achieved by market forces as much as I am loathe to say.
16: Another Market Force item, it will happen eventually.
17: I'd like it if the government took control of all Infastructure systems and nationalised them, roads, rail, water, telco, power, etc... Those are services which should be provided at cost because they're essential.
18: I had a interesting idea, why not just have the government simply buy out a existing HMO group, make enough in profits to buy out another group, and simply buy out every medical group in the country and then downsize as appropriate and run the new universal system at cost?

[mmonk]

9. My answer to Rebuttal #1

look where we are right now.

[rigel99]

12. I HATE THE RURALS

they are currently running our country.

why? Because the electoral system boils down in practicality to a bunch of ignorant Iowa farmers who live 20 years behind the rest of the world to decide the first pres. winner and Iowa / NH decides the fate of the winner...

no let's get out of the rurals...I agree one person one vote is harsh on the rurals.. so I'd simply to a weighted thing....

simply, I'd label counties simply like this:

based on Size percentage of entire state (so in GA Urban may
be 3M or more while in NY it's 16M or more)

URBAN X1
EXURBAN X2
SUBURBAN X3
RURAL X 4

that way the votes are tallied by county (no more districts
or precinct level stuff, a county is either rural or it is
not)....

that's how I'd do it.... but you're right one person one vote
is weighted badly but I"m still saying no more 50% or higher wins, too many close races shows me that system don't fly anymore....

[rigel99]

15. I HATE RURAL VOTING SYSTEMS slight modification

I"m mad at the electoral systems that slant towards rurals..
I'm sure there are many nice rural people and not all folks in IOWA vote badly... apology offered....

likewise I see a big problem in rurals no broadband.. personally turned down a USDA offer to do broadband in rurals cause #'s would not work out(I'd be bankrupt in first year)... so rural issues have been key on my mind, mostly to see about how to elevate their access to information that changes their sometimes limited by churches perspective.....

[CrispyQ]

10. Corporate Personhood?

Any plans to revoke that?

[BiggJawn]

13. That's very important!

We started down the road to ruin the day the first corporation was declared a "Legal Person"

BTW, I'm a "Rural". I vote Democratic.

[rigel99]

14. corporations are not people, but Badly misbehaving robots

they are programmed by people that eventually gain more
power than the people.. and end up turning people into
evil instruments of its will.. people don't realize
they are bilking millions in order to live in that bigger
house, case in point, Choicepoint.. I got an email from
a wife of choicepoint executive saying she and her husband
were innocent of wrongdoing... I wrote an editorial and later
pulled it from DU about this cause it was so controversial.
She sincerely did not believe her big house and kids going
to private schools were paid for by little old ladies
sitting at the bank asking why their house refinancing
was denied because some guy in LA is charging up a storm
on her identity.. bottom line, there seemed to be no connection
to a. I have gobs of money b. I convince myself I"m not
fucking anyone to have this money...

so, plain and simple, I'd tie legal accountability to
weighted volumes of stock owners.. the folks who get
legal liability climbs rather 'unceremoniously' down the
largest shareholder lists.. this brings in board members
who are usually legally 'distant' from the company into the
legal fray... this is pretty much my idea. when suits
are won, the $$$ taken from the big shareholders is redistributed
back to the low volume shareholders... where you draw
dividing line is a sticky issue, but you could pretty much
see that there is like 3 guys with all the stock
and 20,000 folks with miniscule stock volumes in most companies..

but how do you draw the personal accountability to actual people who run a company? how do you say Bernie ebbers has full legal 'responsibility' for all his actions? then how do you spread that to board members as well as individual workers..

why? I want to right now get a trench worker at an Electronic voting machine company involved in something I'm doing but she's afraid to lose her job and will likely be the scapegoat when stuff hits the fan... whistleblower is good but who supports her income while she's going to court? We have to chang ethis...bottom line, how do we move forward with building accountability for one's actions?

your website is awesome.. I agree the status of corporations vis a vis government is the #1 issue in today's governmental activity... it should be our #1 focus (keeping in mind global trading pressures)

[rman]

16. Seriously: what is the point of the gold standard?

Isn't it basic economics that there should be (only) so much currency in circulation that it allows for trading of goods and services that are both available and in demand?
The total value of goods and services (wealth) depends on human activity, and is constantly changing - it would be sheer coincidence if that value would be equivalent to the value of the amount of gold on this planet.

On the rest of your roadmap: good work, you covered a lot of bases.


Though wrt regulation of corporations i'd like it to be more specific and refer to one of my favorite websites as a starting point. The site is about corporate persoonhood, how it is wrong and how it got completely out of hand.
Particularly interesting are the old rules on regulation of corporations. Reinstating and re-enforcing those (many are in fact still in the books) would go a long way towards correcting the current situation.

rules such as:
- A charter was granted for a limited time.
- Corporations were explicitly chartered for the purpose of serving the public interest-- profit for shareholders was the means to that end.
- Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
- Corporations could be terminated if they exceeded their authority or if they caused public harm.
- Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts they committed on the job.
- Corporations could not make any political contributions, nor spend money to influence legislation.
- A corporation could not purchase or own stock in other corporations, nor own any property other than that necessary to fulfill its chartered purpose."
www.reclaimdemocracy.org


But probably the very first thing to do would be to take back control over our currency - and by extension control over our economy, from the banks. I'll quote Andrew Jackson, the last president who prevented the privatization of control of currency. He was addressing some wannabe bankers who came to see him at the start of his first term.
"You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the eternal God, I will rout you out."
"If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations."
- Andrew Jackson, 1829

[rigel99]

17. reclaimdemocracy.org GREAT WEBSITE

really, the piece on walmart was very educational.
This kind of website should be featured on every newspaper.
it's real, it's honest, its factual.

anyway, to the gold standard... will answer later tonite
when I can do research about the early 1900's populist movement that wanted to go on gold standard.

here's the economic twist.. inflation happens because you have no standard, and you print money ad infinitum without any basis on market forces or reality. The US has been printing money on this chaotic basis and that's why dollar so weak, we've outprinted ourselves versus global markets when our products and trade gap do not warrant such volumes..

actually going on a gold standard is not about tying the total gold reserves to the US currency level, but putting something 'real and valuable' behind a dollar. It's almost like saying from this point forward DUE NORTH will be this exact magnetic place in the North pole, putting a pole up and then allowing all clocks to synch to this. The same with gold. you say there is X amount of gold in world (there could be more in mines but for now this is X amount) and the X amount of dollars out there will synch with X amount of gold. this way printing dollars chaotically becomes impossible.

true enough about deflationary effects of it, but I'd happily swapt that for a weakened dollar globally.. do you know how quickly the dolllar's value would drive up globally being one of the main currencies to be backed by something of value (meaning at any time you just trade in the greenbacks for bars of gold) it would 'artificially' re-weight the US as the Economic leader by its very virtue and buy us time to fix the other things like trade deficit, etc.

as for your corporate list of bullets.. bravo.. and then some.. like that's exactly what I was hinting at and agree totally.....

having sat on many boards of large corporations, I'm very interested in seeing company's regain some semblance of decency.. honesty.. respect..... think apple... think of the early days apple and the kind of company apple was trying to be.. think mindspring... think of Charles brewer having a LIST OF CORE VALUES on every wall in his office and one line of it speaking about employee diversity... wow.... there have been some good role models....

[rman]

18. "putting something 'real and valuable' behind a dollar"

First: i'm completely with you on inflation and its causes, though i'd add that so much money is printed because of the expectation future profits - which is why perpetual economic growth is more then a paradigm, it's the very basis of the current form of capitalism. Also i'd say it is completely unrealistic. Also of course i agree that there must be a standard, but it must be a real, useful standard, and i don't see what makes gold so special that it makes it suitable for that purpose.

If the gold standard is not about "tying the total gold reserves to the US currency level, but putting something 'real and valuable' behind a dollar.",
Then using a gold standard doesn't really solve the problem. By your own admission it does not mean the amount of money in circulation is "backed up" by its value in gold - at best gold is used as a reference, a go-between.
But then the question remains how this would guard against inflation or deflation. There's a fixed amount of gold but the value of an economy is ever changing; you'd constantly have to adjust the gold/money factor by making an estimate or a calculation or measurement of what the value of the economy is in order to figure out how much money should actually be in circulation to keep the economy healthy, and then use that to adjust your gold-reference. With or without gold, the essence of the problem remains the same - and why complicate it by introducing a go-between reference?

I'm pretty sure that the current system of fractional reserve, deficit spending, creating money out of thin air based on expectations of future profits, borrowing from our children... - that it's essentially a scam. Just look at who profits from this borrowing from the future; only a very tiny minority benefits from it while vast numbers of people still live in poverty.
But i'm convinced using a gold standard isn't really any better.

I do know in some circles it has been proposed to introduce another standard: a virtual basket with certain essentials of life in it - a loaf of bread, a gallon of drinking water, that sort of thing. To me that seems much more "real and valuable" then gold. In the end you'd use gold or money not to eat it, but to buy something to eat - in case of a gold standard that'd be the value of gold, not so much the gold itself. This comes much closer to basing the amount of money to be in circulation on an actual measurement of the value of the economy - if the we can't in fact make a good measurement of that, then the problem cannot be solved no matter how many "standards" we use.


wrt to companies regaining decency: i'd say we can't rely on corporations being decent on their own accord - much like is the case with civilians. That's why society has laws, rules and regulations in the first place. More then corporations having a list of proper core values, it is by means of rules and regulations that society must enforce its core values on any member of that society - including the leaders of corporations and any organizations that are created by members of society. If anyone doesn't like society's values: anyone is free not to be part of it.


on edit: if you haven't seen it already you'll certainly like the documentary "The Corporation" www.thecorporation.com