All legislation must have a sunset clause of length not to exceed n years, where n is decided by popular vote among eligible citizens. This vote shall be held during presidential elections.
Or, how about:
All legislation expires in 5 years but can be reinstated - without amendment - through a fast track process for 10, then 20, then 40 (etc) years. If the legislation is amended, the clock gets reset to 5.
This makes it easy to get rid of the laws that were passed in haste but saves faffing around with laws that have passed the test of time.
Excellent. Mostly minor changes, but I think they’d have far-reaching effects.
IMHO, there should also be something clarifying corporate personhood (actually, **non-**personhood).
Perhaps also something that takes a right to privacy out of its Constitutional penumbra and makes it a bit more explicit.
I may concede linear growth (+ 5 rather than * 2) though I am not sure it would have the effect you suggest, even though that is precisely the effect I desire. 
Worst.Idea.Ever.
“Get out the special interests?” The biggest special interests in any election are the incumbent politicians. And you want to turn over to them the entire funding of the election? Crazy.
You want to make citizens wholly responsible to the government for getting the funds they need to replace people in the government? What happens to fringe candidates? What happens to independents? The conflict of interest here is crazy. I guarantee you that government-funded elections would rapidly turn into a mechanism for incumbents and the two major parties to cement their hold on the government even further.
You have it exactly backwards. There should be NO government regulations on campaign funding, other than one - you must fully disclose where you got every dollar of campaign funds. If you know the source of all the funding, you can figure out if the candidate is compromised too much by special interests, and vote for someone else.
All campaign finance reform has done is make funding even murkier. Now you have ‘bundlers’ who go around and collect individual contributions and pool them together on behalf of special interests. You have rich people like George Soros influencing elections by setting up political action committees and funding ‘non-partisan’ organizations dedicated to putting a certain person in power. And the limits on outside funding give an even bigger advantage to the ultra-rich who can finance their own campaigns.
What happens to fringe candidates and independents now?
dreamy sigh I want to move to your U.S.
-crap-
**Sam Stone **, you rock. When can you sart?
Everyone must learn to count to ten.
Okay, I guess I should provide a serious answer.
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Repeal all censorship laws created by the ACLU and restore religious freedom to America.
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Repeal all prohibition of drugs, except for those proven to cause death or severe harm in the short term. Release all persons currently in prison only for drug crimes.
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Restrict the United States from foreign deployments, in a way similar to how Japan has been restricted since WWII.
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Reduce the military budget to ten billion dollars, not adjusted for inflation. Cap the size of the military at one hundred thousand individuals on active duty at any time, plus an additional one hundred thousand in the reserves. Abolish the compulsory draft.
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Eliminate the CIA.
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Pay reparations to every country that has been victimized by American foreign policy in the past 65 years, in the amount of $100,000 for every person killed or tortured.
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Outlaw torture, with lifetime imprisonment for any person in the government or military who commits it or contributes to any act of torture in any way.
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Abolish all corporate welfare.
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Mandate that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced by 10% of current levels every year until they reach insignificant levels. Provide subsidies for the creation of an emission-free power grid and automobiles.
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Create a single-payer health care system modeled on those in place in every wealthy country except the United States.
They get frozen out by the myriad rules set up by the two major parties. For example, it’s damned near impossible to get included in the major televised debates. Ross Perot managed it - but he’s a wealthy billionaire, and that was before a lot of the current rules were set up.
Also, campaign finance rules benefit politicians who can receive funding from their major parties, and federal matching funds for the front-runners make it harder on the 3rd party candidates.
Incumbents have immense advantages - so many that in a year when approval of Congress is in the 20% range, and disapproval in the 50-60% range, 95% of them will be re-elected. Gerrymandering and campaign finance reform have given them a lock on government. That’s why they feel free to ignore the wishes of the people as much as they do.
The answer to incumbents having too much electoral control is not to give the incumbents more power to control elections. That should be an obvious insight to just about anyone, but for some people their willingness to believe that government is always the answer to any problem trumps common sense.
You’re supposed to look at the pure ideologically driven crusader and say "Hey, he’s only go $5, but it’s a clean $5.
More seriously, it’s a great idea, but it presupposes that most people are going to be involved enough to look at where the money comes from, rather than just looking at what the money buys.
This was your serious answer? Where is this money coming from, exactly? While you’ve been given the power to control US legal policy, I don’t think you’ve been granted the powers of Alchemy. Unless of course your plan involves just printing money and throwing everything into hyperinflation…
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Compulsory military service from age 18-22. Honorable discharge earns you four years tuition, room, board, books at any state university in the country. Liberals may serve in a non-combat role (cleaning latrines, doing hair, etc…). Since nobody actually parents their children anymore, Uncle Sam will provide them with that much needed boot in their ass. This will help them gain some appreciation for their own country when they see how much of a shithole the rest of the world (eg Canada) actually is, and go a long way towards reversing the general pussification that plagues our country.
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Secure national borders. Amnesty for illegals already here who have no felony record. Deportation for illegals with felony conviction to country of origin. Mandatory national ID card replacing passport, state licenses, and SSN card.
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National sales tax replaces all other federal taxes. States can do whatever they want. Dont like your state’s taxes, move.
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Legalize prostitution, cannabis, and Napster (Napster was the shit - remember how fast that thing was?).
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Presidential line item veto.
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Shut down Social Security. Replace with mandatory participation but self directed investment program similar to 401k but with appropriate safeguards and risk limitations. No more ponzi scheme. You fund your retirement, not someone else’s.
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Make organized labor and collective bargaining illegal. Make it illegal to do business with any foreign country that restricts US imports in any way.
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Withdraw from United Nations, World Bank, and cease all foreign aid. I don’t care what sort of sob story tsunami bullshit happened. Go ask a Scandinavian country for a handout - since all we ever hear about is how great it is there, I’m sure they’ll be happy to help you.
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Provide all citizens with same health and dental insurance coverage that Congress gets. Pay for it with #8
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Vehicle restrictions: No non-commercial passenger vehicle may be manufactured, imported, purchased, sold, or operated that weighs more than 3,500lbs and gets less than 45mpg. Kiss your SUV’s goodbye yuppies. GM will be directed to produce a car meeting these requirements and provide low interest financing to all citizens so they may immediately comply. Fuck you very much Saudi Arabia, but we don’t need your oil anymore.
But if it’s constitutionally mandated or the equivalent, how do these pols have any say in it?
If they’re too fringe, they don’t deserve public support. If they’re fringe, but still have a support base (I suggested something around 1% but that’s an ass-pull) then they get the same funding (not proportional, the same) as any other incumbent - the campaign budget for that election split X ways. And the same access to public venues and media.
And political parties aren’t allowed to channel funds to “their” candidates any more than private citizens or corporations or lobby groups are. If someone wants to donate money to political efforts, they do it to the general pool, not specific campaigns or even parties. If you’re running for public office, you declare your interest, show that you have the constitutionally-mandated minimum support in the form of signatures/some biometric survey (I prefer the latter) and you then become eligible to:
a) Use the government printers for campaign materials
b) Book public venues for rallies and meetings
c) Book time on the public broadcast systems
d) Book such reasonable public-funded travel as is necessary to reach constituents
e) Other facilities such as internet, minimal campaign offices etc.
All this within an appropriate budget for that level of election.
I envision there being a State Department of Election Finance that oversees national elections, with similar offices at the state, county & city levels. The aim being to prevent people (especially incumbents, but see my opinion on term limits) from effectively buying elections by buying the media access and travel time that overwhelms their opponents. The only way an incumbent or other person with potential large warchest has an advantage is that they probably will find it easier to get the minimum signatures to get into a campaign in the first place. After that, they are on an equal footing with everyone else. They are not even allowed to spend their own money on electioneering.
I think it goes without saying that I’d be stopping any sort of non-public election advertising, including, but not limited to, attack ads and blind phonecalls. No TV/Radio/internet ads, no partisan radio spots, no general mailers. Posters, pamphlets to be handed out to people willing to take them, scheduled debates - these are the ways I’d mandate people reach their audience.
Are you making the mistake of equating liberal with pacifist?
How? How exactly can you outlaw CB? By outlawing the right of peaceful assembly?
So you’re not going to trade with anyone, then? Because every country has some restrictions on imports, I’m pretty sure.
What about people that live in areas like mountains and snow? Or people that tow boats etc?
Let’s be fair, he’s only got ten commandments. Before he goes off to Sweden for ten years, I’m sure he’ll fine tune some of these.
It is interesting that he thinks Liberal = pacifist.
I’m surprised at the degree to which the suggestions so far skew to the Right and Libertarian.
If this compulsory military service is going to involve “seeing how much of a shithole the rest of the world (eg Canada)” is, does that mean you’re going to invade?
No self directed investment program is “risk limited”. Investing involves risk.
Every single country in the world has protective tariffs on certain goods and services. The fact that you don’t know this is really, really depressing.
Nice guy.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, you apparently don’t know that we spend about $20 billion a year on foreign aid in total. That’s about 1% of current Federal healthcare spending, which of course accounts for only the people covered by Medicare/Medicaid, Tricare and the federal employee plans.
Ah, a cheap, lightweight and economical “people’s car”. You know who else built a people’s car?
Actually, I’m kind of okay with this one.
My reduction of the U. S. Military budget will save seven hundred billion dollars a year while the elimination of corporate welfare saves another three to four hundred billion dollars a year. That’s a total savings of over a trillion dollars per year.
Now the country that gets the most reparations from the United States will be Vietnam. At one hundred thousand dollars per person killed, they’ll receive between two and three hundred billion dollars. Next would come Iraq, receiving roughly one hundred billion dollars. After that it trails off rapidly, with nations such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Laos, Cambodia, and Afghanistan all receiving between ten and fifty billion dollars. The total cost is less than the savings that we’ll receive each year from reducing the military and eliminating corporate welfare, with plenty left over to provide tax cuts and rebuild necessary infrastructure.