Cleaning Our Room
It’s about time somebody made some positive suggestions about how to clean up the mess we have with our government and electoral system. Since the problem is systemic, we’ll need some serious changes.
First, since the root of the endemic corruption is the overwhelming power of corporations and their control of elected officials, and since the courts have interpreted the constitution as seeing corporations as “persons� with the same rights as humans, we need a constitutional amendment to clarify, once and for all, that corporations are artificial constructs designed to make money for their owners. As collective entities they are not covered by the Bill of Rights.
Second, since our electoral system is broken, we need to rewrite the rules for elections: limit the time span to 3 months, as they do in Britain, eliminate ALL campaign spending, and limit campaigns to a series of debates, sponsored and formatted by the League of Women Voters in each jurisdiction. The current campaign system features nothing but lies and disinformation, and has become so efficient at fooling all the people most of the time that honest, intelligent candidates are frightened away. Public campaign financing? No way! Why would we tax ourselves to be lied to? We need to ensure we have verifiable voting, with printouts for each voter.
At the beginning of each campaign, each candidate will be expected to sign a code of ethics, which requires him or her to:
1. pledge to take no money from anyone for travel, goodies, or promises of future employment for themselves or their friends or family;
2. agree to held civilly liable to their constituents for their actions;
3. agree to forfeit any retirement benefits and the right to run for ANY office if they are convicted of a felony committed while in office;
4. Agree to index their total salaries and benefits to the average of those of their constituents, to be recalculated each year;
5. Limit the size of their staffs to a prearranged formula;
6. Agree to make themselves available to ALL their constituents at free meetings at regular intervals;
7. Agree to take NO fees for speaking engagements;
8. Agree to be present AT LEAST 90 percent of the time their elected body is in session;
9. Agree to run for and serve no more than three terms in any single office, and no more than four terms total in elected office;
It’s time we admit that our system of government is out of our control, and we need to get it back again. How many more Abramoffs do we need to get the picture?
Comments
10. A unicameral legislature in California. Nebraska has one, why can't California. Throw half these bums and their staffs out of Sacramento. They won't be missed.
Posted by: Robb Willis | February 13, 2006 07:25 PM
No to unicameral, Walter has it right. The question is how to achieve it.
Posted by: Tom Rogers | February 14, 2006 12:18 AM
"Given the low level of competence among politicians, every American should become a libertarian. The government that governs the least is certainly the best choice when fools, opportunists and grafters run it. When power is for sale, then government power should be severely limited. When power is abused, then the less power the better."
- Charley Reese
Posted by: Fred Mangels | February 15, 2006 05:18 PM
I think it would be a step in the right direction to test all legislators, just like we test school kids. The test would be heavy with ethical questions, science, history and math. All candidates would have to pass the test before they would be allowed to run. Parties would have no part of it. If a party couldn't come up with a candidate who could pass the test, they'd be out of luck no matter how much money they had.
Posted by: Mary | March 9, 2006 10:06 PM