Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
United States

Journal bofkentucky's Journal: What I want in a politician 18

Journal by bofkentucky
My Plan for election reform: This JE is for you all to shoot down any wacky theories or misconceptions I have on what might just clean up politics in these United States. Suggestions, adjustments, and alternatives requested
  • Revamp the congressional distribution
    The current capping of the membership of the US House of Representatives at 435 voting members is contrary to the principles upheld by the Founding Fathers in the US Constitution, my suggestion is to retie the distribution of Congressional seats to the populations of the several states.
    Based on the 2000 census, Wyoming is the least populous state, with just under 500,000 US citizens. My suggestion is to require each house seat to be gained as a result of a multiple of that exact figure, so if you have Wyoming's population x2 citizens (1,000,000, using my rough estimate), you get 2 house seats. Another way would be to round up if you are just a resident larger than the even multiples of the least populous state and I would be open to that, but it would increase the number of reps significantly (435 current, ~445 using the round down method, ~495 using the round up method)
  • Return the citizens of DC to their respective states
    The residents of the Federal district should be enumerated with the people of Maryland or Virginia depending on which side of the Potomac River they live on. Therefore they become full citizens of this nation, represented fully in Congress and with real electoral votes (If the EC is retained).
    The only hitch with this might be state taxing in the federal district (IE, Maryland's real property tax would have to be enforced on residences in the Federal District, which could be problematic, Sales taxes at stores in DC).
  • Abolish/reform the Electoral College
    Everyone else is directly elected, why not the President? If retaining the EC is important, only use the House districts to select electors, kind of like Nebraska, Maine, and New Hampshire do and remove the unbalancing nature of the Senate seats in enumerating the number of electors. Yes it concentrates power in a few states, but Fl, TX, and GA aren't going to vote with CA, NY, and PA unless the candidate is going to pull a Reagan '84 and pull a huge majority of the states anyways.
  • Real campaign finance controls
    Eligible voters only may make contributuions, capped at $10,000 dollars/candidate/year and $10,000/party/year, indexed to inflation.
    No corporate donations, no labor unions, no PAC's
  • Presidential Term Limit Revocation or Term Limits on Senators and Congressmen
    What's good for the goose is good for the gander, President 3, 4 year terms, Senate 2 6 year terms, 6 2 year house terms with one replacement term for less than ½ a term served in the event of takeover because of resignation/death for all three
  • Balanced Budget Amendment
    Require a paydown of the federal debt to a level equal the previous year's tax receipts (1 trillion in taxes for fiscal 2001, debt level for 2002 is 1 trillion dollars
    Require a ready reserve of 10% of the previous years tax receipts to be kept in the federal treasury at all times after the debt is paid down.
    Allow suspension/use of ready reserve funds in times of congressional declared war, to be paid down in no less than 10 years after the end of hostilities
  • Line Item Veto Amendment
    Let's stop this pork barrel bullshit that gets tied to every decent piece of legislation
    Perhaps the citizenry could read a bill without going cross-eyed once all the garbage gets stripped
  • Unemployment and Welfare
    You owe Uncle Sam a days work for every weeks wages you get, I don't care if it is scraping shit off the runway at an airbase, but you will work on something
  • Social Security
    Set a cut-off date, anyone born after Jan 1, 2010 is fine by me, telling people, "hey sorry, but you really are never going to see a penny of your contributions after this point, but for every dollar you contribute to SSI, that's one dollar less in federal taxes at the end of the year for you." Basically the US gov't will shift to paying out for SSI from its own coffers, with a firm termination date set in stone. If you give a class of people all of their lives to prepare for the fact that Uncle Sam isn't going to provide for their retirement, things should pan out all right.
  • Flat Taxes
    Every worker chips in 10% of their wages to federal taxes, 5% to the state, 2.5% to the county/parish, and 1.25% to the city that they work in., no deductions no loopholes, businesses pay the same rates on yearly revenue. If everyone chips in their ~20% total the treasury should be busting at the seams, I have the rates fairly high, after the initial debt paydown, these numbers could be cut
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

What I want in a politician More

What I want in a politician

Comments Filter:
  • It sucks that when you reply to a JE you can't see the original JE anymore.

    Anyway:

    Line Item Veto Amendment

    Instead of this, why not pass a "Truth in legislature" law that requires a bill address one single subject only. This isn't necessarily exclusive of a line item veto, but it would probably make it a lot less necessary.

    Balanced Budget Amendment

    I don't know if this is such a good idea, at least the way you have framed it. Paying off all the debt is pretty impossible. A chunk of it is held by citiz
    • Truth in legislation law would have to be done at the US Constitution level, otherwise it becomes nothing more than a rule that will be ammended and broken over time.

      If you will notice, I do allow for a Federal Debt equal to the previous year's tax receipts, for emergency use. 1 trillion in emergency spending that can be paid back over 10 years (100 billion a year of debt principle) would cover a 9/11 style repair operation and a couple of wars.

      The welfare state is an issue I have serious problems wi
  • Revamp the congressional distribution

    I really don't like this idea:

    1) You do not propose a cap on the number of reps. Yeah, 495 may be manageable today, but what happens when its three or four times that number in 100 years?

    2) Small states get less and less representation as the population of big states grows faster then that of small states (or the small states may even lose population, or just remain steady). This is compounded by the fact that small states physically can't have as many people - Rho
    • It's a classic "rich get richer" problem, and in this case is probably a dangerous thing to let happen.

      My contention is that gov't is becoming less tied to the people by unfairly capping the house membership at 435 members. My time lobbying is less valuable than my father's or grandfather b/c my rep has x% more constituents than the previous generation's rep.

      The small state individuals would still have their protective senators to stop bad legislation, but you and others in this august circle are calli
  • Others have touched on the other issues; I'd like to set you straight WRT Maryland taking back DC. First, the area that was Virginia was given back prior to the Civil War. Most of it is now Arlington. Second, there ain't no way in hell I want DC back. One of the problems (and there are many) with the district is that only about 30% of the land is taxable. This needs to end if anyplace (a sovereign DC, Maryland, etc.) could ever hope for a break even situation with DC. What I do favor is representation for D
  • It's late so I'll take it one at a time, but don't hold any of this as gospel.
    Oh, and excuse me if I get bellicose. I'm reading McCullough's John Adams...

    * Revamp the congressional distribution
    Not a bad idea.
    Better yet, send the reps home.
    Why EXACTLY do they need to be in D.C.?
    Can't they teleconference, etc?
    Seems more marriages might stay together, so I wouldn't expect the democrats (Clinton, Corzine) to get on board.

    * Return the citizens of DC to their respective states
    Fine, although I'm movin

    • * Revamp the congressional distribution
      Not a bad idea.
      Better yet, send the reps home.
      Why EXACTLY do they need to be in D.C.?

      I've often wondered just how many new laws we really need at the federal level. What do they do all those months they are meeting? I'd be willing to pay them to go home and NOT meet - let them take their stinking money and leave us alone. Bleh.


      * Social Security
      It's a boondoggle. Get rid of it.
      It was supposed to be one of three sources for retirment not the only one.
      Fail
      • I'd be curious as to who puts more into the system: white females or black males. Only then do you know if it's really reverse discrimination.
      • Boortz makes the interesting argument that social security is a reverse discrimination pyramind scheme.

        Once you start looking at things racially, you get right back into the protected groups argument which flies in the face of true equality. Besides, if Al or Jesse start arguing that they should pay LESS taxes, they'd sure have some 'splaining to do to the rest of their party.
    • * Real campaign finance controls
      Two words: free speech.
      You show me how you control 'campaign finance' without limiting someone's right to free speech and maybe I'll listen. But you can't. Sorry.

      I have thought about that, would you agree that businesses and labor unions have no right to free speech? Perhaps eligible voters can make fully unlimited campaign contributions, but we cut out the business and union donations?
      • But the First Amendment guarantees the right to associate freely.
        Presumably, if you can form a group, that group should be allowed to espouse their opinions.
        Don't get me wrong, I think unions do some horrible things. I work in Philly, remember?
        But you have to tread lightly here.
        As it stands, McCain-Feingold will be struck down this year or next, due to it's illegality.
        • But since these groups do not have the right to vote, why do they have the right to contribute to political campaigns?
          • The Continental Congress didn't have the right to vote, but then, that was kind of their point, wasn't it?
            It all comes back to free assembly. If you restrict one group, where do you let the other groups go to?
            Like I said, I'm no fan of Unions, however, I refuse to limit them on the off chance that someday my group (not that I have one) will not be allowed to speak out.
            • That was the thing, I wanted no contributions except for those of elegible voters, no NRA, no Greenpeace, no Halibutron, and no Tyson chicken. You can blow unlimited ammounts of cash on any canidates you chose too, but worst case, Bill gates could only afford to bankroll 200 elections at the dollar value that the 2004 race is shaping up to be, 400-500 million dollars figures are being thrown around.
  • I like the idea of revamping, but not your implementation.

    One idea I've seen that I really like is as follows:

    Every citizen can select any one other citizen they like to represent them, even themselves, and they can change their representative at any time, electronically.

    When the representatives meet and vote, their voting power is exactly proportional to the number of people they are representing.

    If a representative doesn't attend the meeting, his vote doesn't count, but the people he's representing ca

Slashdot Top Deals

Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced. - John Keats

Close