What are the three most important reforms you'd like to see?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Just curious about what everyone thinks are the broken parts of our system that need to be replaced. I would like to hear what you think would be the three most important political reforms the United States could make to its political system (if you’re not from the US, you’re welcome to post - I just might not understand the changes you’d like to make to your system :slight_smile: .)

I can’t really figure out what my own answers would be - but if I can see what folks think are their most important reforms, I might get some good ideas.

Thanks!

2

Do we need to actually propose a viable solution, or just identify what we think needs fixing? If the latter, my reform areas would be:

Opening up the US election process to admit viable third-parties (How, I have no idea)

Putting together a workable health-care system that covers the poor without stifling choice or innovation

A very stringent de-globalization of the US economy.

3
  1. A complete re-working of the tax system, including a maximum wage, a heavy estate tax, the end of corporate welfare/tax breaks and incentives.
  2. A completely new justice system.
  3. A form of universal healthcare.
4

I want to see sweeping changes in media, mostly newspapers.
(I want a newspaper with the top stories from all over the world, I want a newspaper that gives me two sides to every story, and I want some damn truth, too!)

I want radical prison reform. (It’s not working for prisoners, for society, for cops, judges or lawyers. There has to be a better way.)

I want the senate gone. (Name a senator, I dare you! {Canada}They do nothing, cost us zillions, get huge pensions. We could fund healthcare 10 times over!)

I want sweeping educational changes. (I want my kids taught about the wiles of advertising, spot the fallacy kind of stuff. I want my kids to understand finances and credit card debt, money back offers, same as cash offers etc. I want them to be insulated from stupid financial decisions.)

I want my government to aim for self sufficiency in oil and gas, hydro, and farm goods. (I am tired of only seeing amerikan vegetables at my grocery store. There is no real reason for this, in my opinion.)

I want genetically altered foods labeled as such, not doing so robs me of making my voice heard.

I don’t want any government to be formed if less than 50% of the eligible voting public turns out to vote. (Maybe then they’ll be forced to address things that matter to us, instead of them. Better still, maybe they’ll have to learn to speak a language that we understand.)

5

I think you’d have a hard time growing subtropical and tropical produce up there. You’ll still need to import your Martini garnishes from Kalifornia!

6

My three reforms:

Universal health care

Improved local mass- and inter city transit

Coin/currency reform; no coins below 10 cents and no bills below $5. What the heck do we still need pennies for; we still have them only because of people clinging desparately to memories of a time when a penny was worth something and $20k was considered a handsome annual salary (The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit only made 9K).

I guess what I’m trying to say is I’d rather be living in Europe!

7

Limit the amount of dollars spent for each electable office of service.

8

Just identify what needs fixing. Viable solutions lead to soliloquies, soliloquies lead to suffering, and suffering leads to the Dark Side.
Although I’m curious - silenus - what is de-globalizing the US economy? You don’t need to go into depth, but I’m just wondering what the term means.

And elbows - if you could only pick three, which of your seven would be the most important ones?

9

By “deglobalizing” I mean finding some way to keep jobs in this country, rather than shipping them off to India and the like. I’d like to be able to call my bank and talk to someone who at the very least resides in this country. It’s not too much to ask. Think of it as a step towards a little more self-sufficiency.

10
  1. Universal healthcare
  2. Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act
  3. Election reform to encourage third-parties
11

Ditch the Electoral College and let presidents be truly chosen by the people.

Pretty much all social welfare programs - Social Security, HUD, and the like have gotten so bent out of their original form and bloated with bureaucratic make-work policies that they all need to be scrapped and started over.

12

I’m for:

  1. Ditching the electoral college.

  2. Repealing the second amendment (NOTE: I don’t say that guns all have to be confiscated and banned, I just don’t see the point in having a specifically-enumerated constitutional right to own them when we don’t have a constitutional right to own anything else.)

  3. Figuring out a real (or at least a better) solution to the MONEY = POLITICAL INFLUENCE problem. This would require a multifaceted solution aimed at drastically reducing the actual costs of running campaigns (free advertising on TV for a start?), figuring out exactly how corporate entities (especially multinationals) ought to be treated by the government with respect to tax laws, political contributions, etc., and doing something (ANYTHING!!!) about K Street and the whole special interest lobby boondoggle.

13

Boy, if it were me, I’d really want an overhaul of the election system. Partisans running polling places? People like Harris being in charge of overseeing elections? Different rules, types of ballots, and procedures state-by-state for a federal election? That is crazy stuff. And that electoral college thing is just wierd. Got to be the strangest voting system I’ve ever heard of.

14

  1. End the war on terror, especially as a pretense for the war in Iraq. We obviously should try to prevent terrorists from killing people and destroying things, but to treat it like an actual “war” is absurd. Traffic accidents are a far greater threat to the America.

  2. End the war on drugs. It is totally ineffective in preventing substance abuse, but provides an environment for a huge criminal industry, the imprisonment of many relatively harmless people, and often turns addicts into thieves in order to pay for drug habits that would be cheap if the money wasn’t financing drug lords.

  3. Universal health care. I don’t particularly care for big government programs, but the insurance industry has botched this so badly that most other industrialized countries have vastly superior nationalized systems.

15

Wait a minute, (1) universal health care, (2) end the drug war, (3) more mass transit, (4) North America joins the EU…

No wait…among the most important reforms I’d like to see introduced…

16

Can we modify that request just a little? I think it should be “Genetically altered foods labelled explicitly and clearly in layman’s terms as such”. Otherwise, you just know they are going to call it something like “Ultra Tomatoes, now with Progoodstuff*… *Note: progoodstuff is a registered trademark for poisonthatkills.”

17

This works, unless you start trying to define genetically altered foods.

Corn is nothing like teosinte. Where do you draw the line?

A REFORM of the electoral college system. Getting rid of it completely would mean that New York, Southern California and a few other key cities would determine who is president. That’s not good for places like Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, Idaho, Nevada, Vermont, Alaska, etc.

The healthcare system does need some reform, that’s for sure. Not sure how to fix it, but it’s pretty clear that it’s busted.

Revamp the pay rate for our military, so that a soldier fresh out of basic don’t qualify for foodstamps. That would be nice.

Do what it takes to reduce the outsourcing of jobs, as stated above. Also, balancing out tariffs and such, so that maybe some homegrown industries could stand a chance again. There are reasons American cars are rare in Japan…

Add me to the list of Limiting money in politics. Again, not sure how, but it’s clearly gone just a bit out of control.

I’m sure there’s a ton of partisan stuff I could add in here, but I’m trying not to do that.

Oh, either increase the funding for space, or create government support for a civilian space agency.

18

I thought this would be an easy to answer question but it took me a while to think up what I would say…

1.) Welfare reform - It should be a helping hand, not a hand-out. I have seen too many people receiving help for no reason other than they do not care to have a job. Welfare abuse is rampant and I think that there must be a better way - even though I’m not sure what that way is.

2.) Mental-health care reform - Mental health facilities have been overrun by homeless recently and it causes problems when trying to help those with actual mental health issues. It’s more of a company/local issue for me, but I think mental health should be treated differently than homelessness due to drug addiction.

3.) Education reform - I think the education system is ridiculous - I hate that I have seen sophomores in high school come into my mother’s classroom and not even have been taught to read. I also hate Ohio’s new educational idea (promoted by the NEA and ODE) about “closing the gap” - which means that either the worst will get better, the best will get worst, or everyone is not succeeding in this new idea. It should be about optimization for every student, not closing the gap. (IMHO)

Brendon Small

19

Looking at America from the outside, I’d suggest:

Changing your electoral college system to a logarithmic scale (base 2), so California would only get 7 (=2+5) electoral votes, and Florida 6.

Universal healthcare for acute (short term) issues and immediate post-trauma (e.g car accidents) only. Longer-term healthcare would still be via insurance.

Budget reform: start paying off that huge national debt of yours.

20

  1. Have to agree with everyone on universal health care - at least make it semi-affordable to people who are not insured at work and take away the insurance companies rights to deny health care to people with pre-existing conditions…what the hell are they supposed to do?

  2. Education needs to be a priority. Businesses know that you only get good employees if you pay them fairly - so why is that such a hard concept to understand when it comes to teacher salaries? What do you expect to have in the classroom teaching your children if you pay them the same as a Walmart cashier? And schools have to start getting the balls to flunk kids - a high school diploma has become worthless. Sorry, but some kids do not deserve to pass and maybe, just maybe, they will start to realize it takes some effort to get out of high school. Make vocational schools a viable option. Not every kid is cut out for college - but most could do very well with vocational school training.

  3. Make it mandatory to vote in order to get a driver’s license. If you don’t like anyone running, you can always mark “none of the above”, but by making voting mandatory, elected officials will not pander to the traditional minority voting public and actually work on representing the entire population.