I was recently brought to task for posting political commentary without offering any concrete solutions. So, I thought I would offer my view of what we as a nation need to accomplish in order to right the ship of state. Please feel free to comment on each, any or all of my suggestions and also feel free to offer some of your own. Perhaps we can use this a the starting point to create a legitimate political platform for 2016 and beyond.
I'll give you the first 4 steps, 1) get the money out of politics by fundamentally changing the campaign finance laws. My proposal is and has been to limit campaign contributiuons to the federally mandated limit of $5400.00 per candidate, but I suggest that only legally registered voters be allowed to contribute. No PAC's, Unions, corporations or foreign nationals (including illegal aliens) be allowed to contribute. Contributors can contribute to as many candidates as they wish, but only twice per cycle, once before and once after the primary.
2) Eliminate the current income based tax in favor of a consumer based tax known as the "Automatic Payment Transaction Tax, with the caveat that it be collected at the local source ad paid upwards, 40% to the local government, 30% to the state and 30% to the Fed. This eliminates the major flaw in the current tax code -- the political use of the tax code to social engineer society and pick and choose the winners and losers based on their ability to lobby congress.
3) This is probably both the hardest and easiest to accomplish -- change the electoral college in each state back to it's original intent by eliminating the "winner take all" voting structure in all the states except a couple and return it to allocating the votes by winners of each congressional district. For example, if 70% of the popular vote in 7 of 12 state districts were won by one candidate and 5 by the other, the votes would be 7 for one and 5 for the other. This will make the presidential race much more competitive forcing the candidates to pay attention to the entire country rather than a few major urban swing cities and it will eliminate the ability for a very few highly populated urban areas to dictate the vote for the entire state.
4) And finally, we MUST, absolutely MUST, institute term limits for national level legislators. The advent of professional politicians such as Obama, Reid, Schumer and Pelosi, McConnell, Boehner, McCain and and the Bushes have become the agents of death to this Republic as it stands. this will return politics to the Patriotic citizens of the country who believe in helping the country for a short time and returning to private life rather than having a class of professional politicians who believe in helping themselves first at the expense of "we the people".
If we are able, in some manner shape and form to enact these four legislative actions, we will go a long way to guaranteeing our ONE NATION, UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.
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Roger --
ReplyDeleteYou and I have debated the proper form of efficient taxation (consumption vs. income tax) so I'll leave that for another time.
For now, I would recommend adding one more important item to your list, perhaps in lieu of term limits -- get rid of gerrymandering Congressional districts and state legislative districts and go back to what was the "law of the land" as opined by SCOTUS many years ago -- a requirement for compactness of Congressional districts. Under the current system, representatives select their voters rather than voters selecting their representatives.
Acknowledging the problem of career politicians, term limits are inherently undemocratic because they prevent voters from selecting the representatives they want. (Perhaps a representative with seniority is actually good at his/her job.) Getting rid of gerrymandering would go a long way to getting rid of the careerists.