How are you going to fix the United States?

Great Debates
21

One thing that I would institute (thinking of Canada as I don’t know the law in the US) is keeping people in jail at least until they’re not at risk to re-offend! Too damn many times I hear about how so and so is released “and is at high risk to reoffend”. Then why the hell are you letting him out??? Letting him out because there’s no room in the jail? Well, we’ve got lots of wide-open land, build a new one! (And putting it on wide open land is a good idea, if they manage to escape it’ll take them a bit to get to the nearest city to reoffend.)

I can’t believe this hasn’t been done (even by our Conservative govenrment that says it’s “tough on crime” (and is, I admit, somewhat draconian most of the time, earning them my contempt. This time they’re too liberal.))

22

I’m okay with most of Diogenes’ suggestions, and I’d add:

Totally reform Senate rules - filibusters can only go on for a calendar month and then the vote goes ahead, and no frigging “holds” allowing a single Senator to hold up an appointment forever for no reason.

23

Reduce the power of the federal government by:

  1. Have money (taxation etc) flow from the states to the feds not vice versa.
  2. Don’t allow congresspeople to direct federal funds to their own (or any) states. They get to make plans and allocate money for projects (but see #4) but the actual distribution is allocated by a non-political civil service.
  3. Rollback all the interstate commerce nonsense. Feds are restricted to the powers enumerated in the constitution. Everything else is the concern of the states (or the people).
  4. End the war on drugs.
  5. And Terror.

So far, so ordinary. Here’s my centerpiece:

  1. No one can donate money to a politician unless they live in the district that that politician represents.

  2. End the fiction that corporations are people. They are not. (corollary: Since corporations are not people & they are not represented by politicians, so they can’t donate money to them)

  3. Rollback all the bullshit laws that most people violate most of the time.

  4. Flat tax. No deductions. No tax credit. All income (dividends, inheritance, profits, salary, capital gains) is taxed the same.

  5. Flat benefits. Everyone gets the same. (T = rI -B)

I also believe in universal healthcare - but the states will have to take care of that themselves.

24
  1. No law may prohibit any purchase or sale of goods or services, or prohibit or regulate the use thereof; nor may any specific tax or duty be applied.

There’s your 2nd Amendment, liberation of drugs, prostitution, etc, all rolled into one. And yes, you can own a battleship. Or nerve gas. Using nerve gas to kill people is still illegal, though. :slight_smile: You can fire a gun anywhere, but you’re still on the hook if you endanger someone. Selling unhealthy food becomes a case of poisoning if it’s eaten.

  1. No tax or duty or law may be instituted unless it affect all people equally. (Hello, flat taxes. Hello, SSM. Goodbye protected classes).

  2. Selene has good phrasing here:

However, I would go further and say that these vouchers be generously funded.

  1. Lawyers or law firms that pursue a suit or case on a contingency basis will ordinarily be wholly liable for the defendant’s costs. This will stop nuisance lawsuits cold.

  2. No non-imprisonable criminal penalty shall last longer than the Statute of Limitations, nor need such penalty be declared thereafter.

(Pick one of 6a or 6b depending upon your view of the Death Penalty)

6a. The death penalty is abolished. At the discretion of the Court, for any imprisonment exceeding the Statute of Limitations, the convicted may apply for exile, subject to forfeiture of citizenship for the convicted, spouse, and all descendants, and forfeiture of their assets. And finding a country willing to receive them. Should the convicted be vindicated, citizenship may be returned.

6b. The penalty of death shall apply to any criminal sentence of imprisonment longer than the Statute of Limitations, sentence to be carried out half-way through (i.e. after 3 years). The convicted has that time to either prove their innocence or persuade another country to accept them as an exile, whereon they forfeit citizenship and assets as above. The exile lasts until innocence is proven.

  1. A citizen who has been granted citizenship and is convicted of a criminal offence will ordinarily forfeit their citizenship. If imprisoned, citizenship is forfeited at the end of the sentence.

  2. Abolish the Reservations. Native Americans are just as native as everyone else.

  3. No pork. I’m not sure how to phrase this but basically the Senate and Congress shall only enact laws that affect the whole of the US. Any clause or item or bill that affects less than 4 States (to pull a proportion out of thin air) is the purview of the individual state.

  4. All laws in conflict with the above are null and void.

Okay, let’s make it #11.

25

A Modest Proposal:

Anyone who receives a direct transfer payment from a government agency - welfare, employee salary, subsidy, grant, basically anything except payment for goods purchased in an open marketplace - loses the right to vote at that level of government for at least one voting cycle after the payment has been made.

Thus, if I am a receive welfare from the state, I lose the right to vote in state elections. If I am employed by a town, I lose the right to vote in town elections. If I receive a federal grant to create public art, I lose the right to vote in federal elections.

The concept is that I should not be in a position of voting myself a slice of the public treasury.

26

I suppose I should add that I’m a state employee, so, under my proposal, I should lose the right to vote in state elections.

27

That’s unconstitutional, not to mention digusting.

28

As an Aussie I do like America and a lot of it’s policies but the one thing that disgusts me is your health system. Bring in a system like we have in Australia and it would be a great first step in fixing America. How can a country allow people to go bankrupt because they need an operation? That is wrong and just astounds me that due to pressure from business interests that a central health care system will never get off the ground.

Oh and I would decrimalise marijuana and reduce the drinking age to 18.

This is another way of ensuring that poor people cannot vote. ANd we all vote for self interest.

29
  1. All laws restricting sexual actions are hereby repealed. There shall only be one law on the subject of sex: Is it harmful? If the answer is yes, then that specific instance of that action between those specific people would be prohibited and the people involved punished. If not, then it is ok. Standards for what is deemed harmful shall be strict and limited only to physical, emotional, and psychological. At any time, a consenting person of sexual maturity shall have the option of voiding the limitation on harm. They can engage in harmful sexual activity if they are judged sexually mature and of sound mind. To that end, sex education will now be taught beginning in kindergarten, with age-appropriate material. But no lying to kids and no preference for abstinence.

What this means is that all types of sex is now legal, to be done anywhere, with anybody, barring those specific limitations. Acts deemed harmful should only be punished in that specific instance, meaning that if people want to say prostitution is dangerous and bad for women, they’d have to prove that for all instances of prostitution everywhere. Obviously impossible, which is fine by me. You can fuck dead bodies if you want. You can fuck animals too, provided you can prove it’s not harming it. You can fuck your relatives, I don’t give a damn. So many problems come from our insane obsession with sex, this is my way of fixing that

  1. Drugs that are not addictive is legal in all cases. If it’s not addictive, then you’d doing it to yourself. Go crazy, not my problem. Addictive drugs are still illegal though.

  2. Most of you would probably expect me to ban guns, and though I’d like to, I’ll offer that in an ideal world with the rest of these #9 laws, they would be less necessary, therefore less harmful. However, I want guns restricted. You don’t need to be rich to get a license, but you have to be able to pass a psychological test to make it less likely that you’re going to go nuts and shoot up a mall. Racism may not be illegal, but if you’re anywhere near a KKK member, have paranoid delusions about immigrants taking over the country, then you don’t qualify, period. If you’ve ever been convicted of a felony, you’re not qualified. If you’re mentally ill or in a situation where it is likely that you’re going to be mentally ill, then sorry, you’re not qualified. Women will get preferential treatment over men. Sorry guys, that’s just how the world is, there’s a whole lot more of us males fucking over humanity than women. Oh, and like driving, everyone will need to be registered and tested every few years.

  3. Courts need to be reformed. For starters, pretend everyone’s a rape victim, and a minor. That means no releasing of information about defendents or plaintiffs. Protect both sides equally. The law shall be there to do justice, not to simply follow itself for the sake of following itself. Priests, lawyers, doctors, psychologists, and spouses will not be given leeway to hold things from the court just because they happen to be related to or working with a person. Everyone testifies, that benefits the most people.

  4. I can’t believe I have to use a law for this specific issue but damn if people aren’t idiots in this country sometimes. Gay marriage is now legal in all states. It cannot be repealed unless marriage itself is repealed. There will be no seperate class of marriage for different groups. All marriage is government registered, none is specifically religion based. If any other group tries to make a seperate class of “real” marriage, that will be illegal and they will be punished. All marriage is equal in the eyes of the law, be it between straights, gays, more than 2 people, or among relatives.

  5. Conservative doctrine on social issues is now banned. It’s holding the country back and fosters an evil, mindless apathy for science and facts. Progress will never be a bad thing, and more knowledge is always better than less knowledge. Anyone to the right politically of a moderate Republican right now will be deported or re-educated.

  6. On a similar note religion is now not a seperate class of thought that deserves extra protection. The government officially declares itself agnostic and removes all references of god from all public places. Churches will be taxed. Religion and religious thought like Creationism will now only be taught in the same classes kids learn about mythology and folklore. Priests and religious figures have no more power to offer sanctuary or withold information from law enforcement than your neighborhood juggler. Instead of “Freedom of Religion” we shall now have “Freedom FROM Religion”.

  7. Xenophobia is bad. America was built on immigration. No more of this English-is-the-official-language BS. America will declare itself multi-cultural. We can still have immigration quotas, but no more preferences by country or race, if indeed we still have that. We’ll have X number of immigrants a year, awarded randomly, except families are given preference to stay together and relatives of Americans will be given preference as well. There will still be a line, so the random citizenship awards are based on who’s in the front and luck.

  8. Corporations are not people, and thus deserve no rights. If a corporation violates laws repeatedly, they will not only be fined, but those in charge will be jailed, and the corporation seized and run by the government until it can be sold off. We shouldn’t need to call corporations people in order to allow them to hire, that’s a stupid law. On the same note, they will no longer be allowed to donate to political campaigns as a corporation, nor will any special interest group. Every donation must come from a living, breathing human, whose money is actually something they earned. Mandate that corporations exist solely by discretion of the government for public service. Making the maximum amount of profits to the detriment of the public will now be a crime. You can make less money and still exist, do so, and don’t harm people. Otherwise, your decision-makers will be jailed, assets seized, and the company run by the government until sold

  9. Being sick should not be a crippling burden to you or your family for the rest of your life. Everyone has health care. You can opt out, but you still have to pay your fair share for the rest of us. Everyone’s premiums are based on their income, with progressive prices for lower income people.

30

The change has to be gradual. You can’t just ‘abolish’ all the federal departments. So I’d propose the following rules (assuming they would be kept):

  1. The annual growth of government will be held to 2% less than the average GDP growth based on a rolling 5-year average. This will continue until the size of government is at 25% of GDP, at which point it can grow with GDP, but no more. The effect of this would be to erode the deficit in real terms, while still allowing government to grow. It would also mean that the only way politicians can get more money is to institute policies that create economic growth. This is not hard to do - government still gets to grow. Canada did this from 1992 to 2008, shrinking the share of government from 53% of GDP to 39%. We balanced budgets along the way and improved services, too. You can grow the government - just not as much as GDP grows.

  2. No new regulations may be passed without sunsetting current regulations on the books. In fact, the federal register must shrink by 5% per year, until it is half of its current size. Every time a politician proposes a new regulation, he’s going to have to fight it out with the rest to cut a regulation somewhere else.

  3. Congress will be permanently barred from excusing itself from the rules and regulations it passes for others. Congressional health plans and retirement plans will be abolished. Congress must worry about health care like everyone else, and must live under any health care plan it sets up for the rest of the people.

  4. Give the president 100 line-item vetoes per year, to use at his discretion.

  5. The public sector will undergo a wage freeze and a benefit freeze any time benefits and wages are above 90% of the level of those widely available for similar work in the private sector. Allowing public employees to retire at 50 with 90% pay and full health care and other benefits is obscene, when such benefits are paid for by taxpayers who can’t come close to getting the same kind of deal for themselves. Government employment should be what it once was - a lower-paying but secure way to eake out a living. Not a path to riches and early plush retirement.

  6. If you want Keynesianism, then go all the way - any spending increases that occur during a recession must be matched by equivalent spending cuts when GDP is positive. Keynes would have wanted it that way.

  7. The deficit must be reduced by 10% per year measured against GDP, until it is under 5% of GDP. Long-term, the budget must be balanced, but the 5% deficit allowed gives the government room for some modest deficit financing in hard times.

  8. Corporate taxes must be reduced and simplified to reduce loopholes. If the effective tax (tax after loopholes) is more than 10% lower than the posted tax rate, the tax rate must be reduced by a half of the difference. That means every time a politician lobbies for a special tax cut for his own pet company, all the other politicians are going to have to suck up the resulting tax rate reduction.

  9. Accountability for government agencies. No longer will failure be met by budget increases. Heads must roll. And good agencies should be rewarded. As an example, for each year that student test scores decline, the Department of Education will lose 5% of its budget. Said money will be turned over to parents as vouchers to allow them to take their children out of public schools if they wish. This will continue until the Department of Education’s budget is back to where it was twenty years ago - when test scores were higher.

  10. The FDA’s requirement to test drugs for efficacy will be dropped. The FDA will henceforth only certify drugs for safety, and allow doctors and their patients to decide when to use them. This will dramatically cut the cost of drugs and improve their time to market by several years.

  11. Marijuana will be legalized. Other drugs will be decriminalized, with possession of personal amounts resulting in no more punishment than the equivalent of a traffic ticket.

  12. All persons currently in prison for simple possession of drugs will be pardoned immediately and set free. Other non-violent drug sentences will be re-examined and dramatically reduced.

  13. Student loan rules will be tightened. There is a higher education bubble going on right now, and the wide availability of credit on “Don’t pay until some time in the future” terms is feeding this bubble. The result is too many people in college who shouldn’t be there, and too much crowding out of the hard sciences and engineering in favor of ‘soft’ faculties that attract the below-average students. Extra effort should be made to strengthen alternative educational avenues, such as apprenticeships, online learning, vocational school, and Community Colleges.

  14. Establish a bipartisan redistricting commission that will, in transparent fashion, redistrict all voting districts along simple geometrical lines. No more snaky districts that are set up just to pack all the Democratic or Republican voters together to protect the incumbent.

  15. Cancel all campaign finance regulations. Allow anyone to raise money any way they want. Eliminate all the other institutional advantages of incumbency that have been built up over the years.

  16. Have a modified term limit plan - after two terms, you can only be re-elected if you beat your opponent by 5% of the vote or more. That would at least make the party put pressure on these people to go, and they’d only get re-elected if they were the clear choice of their constituents.

I could go on…

31

He supersedes the Constitution for the purposes of this exercise. Disgusting, though.

32

I’d go in the total opposite direction. There’d be a concentrated effort to send illegals back home, but much more importantly, there’s a new fine for employers who hire illegals - I think $15,000 per illegal employee per year of employment should do; employers who can’t pay the fine in a reasonable amount of time should be face jail time (though maybe it could be house arrest with ankle bracelets to reduce the strain on the jails). If this law was strictly enforced, the illegal immigration problem would sort itself out because very few would want to come through illegal channels if no one would give them a job. As for the immigrants themselves, I’d be okay with a one for one swap - for every illegal sent back to their country, another person patiently waiting to legally immigrate would be allowed entry to the county; these people wouldn’t need to be more skilled than those leaving, but odds are many would be which would be boon to the country.

As for other changes, there would be a federal ban of cell phone use while driving; drug possession would no longer be a jail-able crime, and all people over the age of 70 would be required to take the written driving exam (either actually in writing or orally) every time they renew their license which would hopefully curb the growing epidemic of injuries caused by the elderly in places like MA; there would be a federal law allowing civil unions for everyone regardless of gender - states who so chose to may allow the option of SSM as well - and being single or gay will no longer bar anyone from adopting a child placed in foster care, though private adoptions would be exempt from this requirement.

Oh, and from now on, campaign finances for the presidential race will be decided solely based upon popularity of the candidates. Twelve months before the primaries two new shows will be aired on CNN and FOX news: So You Want To Be The Next Democratic Presidential Nominee and So You Want To Be The Next Republican Presidential Nominee. Each week candidates will compete to engage the masses in a variety of ways, such as having debates, describing their solution to a problem assigned to them, or singing Beatles songs. No one would be voted off the show, but the votes of the people would determine what percentage of the pool of money for campaigning each candidate would receive. In addition to federal funds divied up by the show, viewers calling in to vote would be allowed to pledge a small amount to their choice; the maximum amount a civilian may donate divided by the number of episodes, probably. The shows’ finales would air a week before the first state primary, and people of legal voting age would be heavily encouraged to “cast their final vote” at their actual polling place.

33

Let’s see…mmmm,mmm,mmmm

Goodbye electoral college - direct vote for president is it.
1 non-repeatable X-year term for president (I favour 5-7 years), something similar but repeatable (but non-consecutive terms may be a no-no) for senators etc. Same for Governors and state reps. Definitely don’t want the Pres and Govs focused on re-election for the 2nd half of their terms.
Addition of sexual orientation & gender to Bill of Rights, so SSM is legal and gay is a protected class.
Clarify 2nd Amendment to make it clear private carry is A-OK by me. One nationwide law for CC.

Reduce military budget by at least 75%. No adventurism, still plenty of punch for defence (plus, you know, nukes), more focus on tech and modern warfare.

Do something to make any outside funding of politicians illegal. Yes, ALL campaign contributions. Have both local and national forums for campaign advertising that work on an equal time basis, including TV, internet, press & appropriate public venues. Various minimum expressions of interest based on demographic % to get on the ballot e.g 1% of a municipality signing a petition to get you on the ballot for mayor, 0.5% of registered national voters to get you on the Presidential ballot, whatever.

Take some of that military money and spend it on jazzing up education & environmental issues. Also science research, including NASA but also a “Free us from the internal combustion engine” Manhattan Project. Also free countrywide WiFi broadband.

Mandate each state has at least 2 nuclear power plants built by the time I come back to check (10 years, was it?). No stalling by Green nuts allowed - if it passes basic scientific health, safety, environmental assessments, it gets built.

Implement single-payer National Health Care.

Legalise all narcotic drugs & prostitution. Possession, dealing, soliciting and patronage are legal BUT covered by taxation and zoning laws (sensible ones) - this includes alcohol and nicotine. I favour a sales tax on transactions, but some other model might work…

Remove any tax exemptions from religious institutions. There’s no logical reason for it.

34

1- 100% free universal health care. Make doctors, nurses, etc. all federal civil servants. Make hospitals all federal institutions. No forms, no nothing. You get sick, you seek treatment, they give it to you. You need surgery, you get it. No insurance industry sucking off their share of the health care dollar, no worrying about what insurance might or might not cover. Doctors spend all their time treating patients, not filling out paperwork.

2- Marriage is OK between any two consenting adults, with the exception of incestuous relationships.

3- Eliminate all individual and corporate taxes. All revenue is raised on sales tax. All persons would receive a check for the sales tax that would be paid for the expenses of food based on family size. Therefore, the sales tax would be paid only on purchases beyond what is needed for subsistence.

4- The Roe v Wade decision shall be made part of the Constitution and be unrevokable and unalterable.

5- Guns used for hunting shall be permissible subject to an annual license fee and the purchase of at least one hunting license per year. Failure to pay the fee or buy a hunting license will result in seizure of the guns. Handguns are banned.

6- Persons forwarding right wing glurge emails shall have their ISP address permanently banned from the internet.

7- Public universities shall be tuition free. Admission to these universities shall be based on test scores and grades without regard to race or gender.

8- The death penalty shall be banned.

9- All elections shall be conducted using paper ballots marked in ink by the voter. They shall be counted manually, any results with margin of victory < 5% shall be recounted by another set of counters. If the two results disagree, the ballots shall be recounted publicly with observers from both candidates present. The ballots themselves shall be retained in perpetuity.

10- The designated hitter rule shall be permanently banned.

35

Brilliant.

36

Re-tool congress, switch to a parliamentary system like the UK’s.

And fix all our damn bridges.

37

harrumph!

38

It’s traditional to insert filler between mutually exclusive statements. That maintains a polite pretense of respect for the reader’s intelligence, even if actual respect is absent.

39

A few items:

  1. Prohibit civil forfeiture; allow profits from crime to be seized only upon criminal conviction (including proof by criminal-conviction standards that the alleged profits are in fact the fruits of crime).

  2. Constitutional loophole-closings:
    2a. Clarify the individual right protected by the Second Amendment
    2b. Insert a hard-number time limit (on the order of 50 years) into the Patents and Copyrights clause.
    2c. Require that “interstate commerce” involve some actual tangible trade between actual identifiable citizens/residents of two actual different states.

40

I like the idea of public financing for political campaigns. Get out the special interests.

And term limits. Please!