FEASIBLE IMPROVEMENTS THAT CAN BE MADE TO THE GOVERNMENT
Improvements to the Government are Achieved Through Reform: The US needs a government that has a pragmatic willingness to experiment with all sorts of reforms and the ability to stomach tough decisions that overhaul public services and systems. America has a long record of learning from its excesses to improve the working of its particular brand of capitalism.
Checks and Balances: The three branches of the government, executive, legislative and judicial, are separate for the purpose of providing checks and balances to each other so that no one branch becomes excessively powerful. In a democracy there is a balance between personal freedom and the order in society. Checks and balances among the three branches of government are designed to keep these two opposing forces balanced and fair. These days, personal freedom has the upper hand over order in society. This is happening because individuals with unrestrained power fall prey to their own selfish desires to accumulate wealth and power at the expense or to the detriment of the people they govern or have control over. These individuals have gained enough control over the government to be able to undermine its ability to keep order in society through checks and balances.
Democracy and Capitalism Defined: Democracy and capitalism are two distinct systems that simultaneously exist in the US. Democracy is a philosophy that insists on the right and the capacity of a people, acting either directly or through representatives, to control their institutions for their own purposes. Such a philosophy places a high value on the equality of individuals and would free people as far as possible from restraints not self-imposed. It insists that necessary restraints be imposed only by the consent of the majority and that they conform to the principle of equality. The will of the majority, the natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership of property and of the means of production and by well-developed financial institutions. Generally the capitalist system is also thought of as embodying the concepts of freedom of individual initiative, competition, inheritance, and the profit motive. Capitalism stresses freedom of individual economic enterprise, but even when the economy is least restricted, the ultimate right of the state to supervise and regulate industry and trade is questioned by few.
Campaign Reform
Reform the Relationship between Business and Government: Both democracy and capitalism are essential components of our social system which although imperfect is one of the most advanced, refined and progressive social systems in the world. There has always been a delicate balance between capitalism and democracy, but capitalism has gained domination over democracy. The power sharing that takes place between these two systems needs to be rebalanced by giving more power to democracy thereby enabling stricter regulation over industry. This rebalancing can be achieved through strict campaign finance reform. To a large extent, the government is being controlled by wealthy campaign contributors and lobbyists. In practice, politicians when setting policy are likely to keep in mind the interests of the people who have given them campaign contributions. It’s time to break the cozy relationship between campaign contributors and politicians. It’s the government’s responsibility to protect the interests of the public, and since the US is in many ways the leading global economy, that responsibility extends to the interests of everyone in the entire world. Only the government can keep big business in check.
Eliminate Campaign Contributions: We should completely outlaw all forms of campaign contributions. Congressmen should not be able to receive any gifts or money or any promises for gifts or money from anyone while they’re running for office or serving in congress. This should include any arrangements where the politician gets paid as a consultant working for firms that have something to gain if they can successfully persuade the politician to make laws in their favor. If a congressman is caught accepting any money from anyone, they should lose their job, the money should be confiscated and a jail sentence should be handed out.
Eliminate Lobbying: There are very few good examples of situations in which congressmen would be better off if they were influenced by lobbyists in their law making. Lobbying should be outlawed. No longer should this nation tolerate lobbyists who earn $500 an hour for making telephone calls and engaging in the art of persuasion. This would benefit democracy by enabling politicians to keep in mind the welfare of the people that they represent when passing laws.
Fairer Elections: Emphasis should be placed on making it easy for all voters to learn where each candidate stands on all of the relevant issues. There should only be one place to go to get information on the candidates (i.e., an official government website) that is independent, neutral and tamper proof. We should continue to require candidates to get enough signatures on petitions in order to become official candidates.
We should offer candidates who get enough signatures free TV, radio and newspaper ads and simultaneously ban candidates from raising money for their campaigns and from spending any of their own money on their campaigns. TV ads for official candidates should run back to back with the ads of their opponents. Paper flyers that advertise the views of a candidate on a particular issue should also be required to advertise the views of all the other official candidates on that issue. Any marketing tactic that a candidate chooses to use should have an equal amount of similar information on all of the other official candidates.
The candidates and the voters should create a list of 10 to 15 relevant issues and then each campaign advertisement can cover some or all of those issues. Schedules can be made up for the release of official candidate information on a specific issues (i.e., gun control the first week of August, abortion the second week of August) so that people interested in those issues can plan on tuning in and learning. Televised debates should continue to be held prior to voting. The current method of electing the candidate that is able to raise the most money or that is willing to spend part of their billion dollar fortune on their campaign is not working. It is unfair that wealthy candidates and famous candidates have an advantage over their opponents.
Transparency in candidate’s positions is poor and most times political office goes to the candidate with the most money in their coffers. One way to improve this would be to create an official government website that shows:
For each candidate the official government website would have:
For an incumbent the official government website would have:
In order for a registered voter to vote:
Voting could be done online or the candidate summaries with the voting code could be mailed out to all registered voters. This would dramatically reduce the amount of votes cast because a candidate is more popular, more famous, or has more money to spend on their campaign than their opponents. Once the separation of money and politics is achieved, our democratic system would improve because:
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Voting Reform
Direct Democracy Measures: California has three direct democracy measures in its constitution, 1) the initiative process (which allows voters to pass laws directly), 2) the referendum (in which voters support or strike down laws passed by the legislature), and 3) the recall (which allows voters to impeach bad politicians at any time). These are measures that theoretically result in a stronger democracy, but in California, wealthy people and organizations have been using these measures to their advantage which has weakened their effectiveness. For example, if a big company in California is unhappy with a law, they can simply spend a couple of thousand dollars to collect enough signatures for an initiative to strike that law from the books, and then a few million more for TV advertising to get voters to vote their way. These three direct democracy measures should be implemented nationwide along with safeguards that prevent wealthy individuals or corporations from inappropriately using direct democracy measures to their advantage. Our capitalist system can be vastly improved through democratic processes that allow educated citizens to decide important matters of state.
Internet Voting on Initiatives, Referendums and Recalls: Democracy occurs when people act directly to control their institutions for their own purposes. Internet voting is the ultimate democratic tool that would allow citizens to act on their own behalf, thereby removing some of the reliance on representatives to act on their behalf (one of the inherent flaws of democracy). If a decision concerning our society had to be made, with internet voting, citizens could be told the different alternatives, the pros and cons of each alternative, and then each citizen could vote on the matter. Instead, politicians who “represent” us make these decisions for us. Technology is available for internet voting (votes submitted online and tallied electronically); it’s the policy makers that are blocking it because many of them would lose power if this form of voting replaced the traditional representative method. If internet voting were to be implemented, it should be advertised that hackers caught tampering with the results of a government internet initiative, referendum or recall will be sentenced to two years in a maximum security prison.
Replace Current Redistricting Practices with Randomly Created District Boundaries: Redistricting, also known as gerrymandering, is when political parties are given the freedom to draw up voting district boundaries as they see fit enabling them to create districts that all vote the same way so that political parties can focus their campaign resources only on districts that are more mixed in their political tendencies. Redistricting is a flawed practice that harms our democratic system because instead of voting for the best person for the job either from the right or from the left, voters typically find themselves living in a district where everyone is a democrat (or republican) and the candidates are courting the more extreme voters in the district. This results in more extreme right-wing and left-wing representatives in Congress and a legislature that is structurally geared against the center. Redistricting has made Congress a more partisan more polarized place making it more difficult to legislators from both parties to compromise and work together. Redistricting should be outlawed and voting districts should be re-created based on arbitrarily drawn up district boundaries that are calculated by using population numbers and geographical boundaries, factors that disregard a community’s political makeup.
Eliminate the Electoral College: The electoral college was designed for a voting system that was in place 200 years ago and has been rendered obsolete in these modern times. The president should be elected by popular vote.
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Subsidy Reform: When subsidies are granted to an industry, they provide that industry with a financial incentive to increase its output. Subsidies are financial rewards for good behavior as opposed to taxes which are financial penalties for bad behavior. When the government decides to dole out subsidies to the fossil fuel industries, they are taking tax dollars that they collected from people like me and giving them to companies like ExxonMobil (which made $36 billion in profit in 2005). The product life cycle for gasoline is nearing its end, but thanks to subsidies and the lack of taxes, gasoline use in cars artificially remains as the dominant technology when other technologies should be replacing it.
A conservative estimate of special interest subsides and handouts paid by the US government to American businesses is $100 billion a year. The government should grind to a halt the vast sums lavished on fossil-fuel industries as subsidies, below-market royalty payments, tax breaks, and other hidden subsidies. The government should not be giving the oil industry any incentive to increase its output. However, there are occasions when it’s in society’s best interest to increase output in certain industries (i.e., clean energy technologies).
Earmark Reform: Earmarks are spending projects that are directly requested by individual members of Congress and are specifically targeted to that politician’s district. Earmarks are not subject to competitive bidding. Lobbyists love earmarks because they are a way to smuggle pet projects into vast spending bills without even the pretence of proper oversight. The most egregious examples of lobby corruption involve earmarks. Earmarks encourage a culture of spending because legislators vote for bloated spending bills in order to get their earmarks through. The number of earmark projects has increased by 970% in the past ten years. Earmarks should be eliminated and legislators should be forced to justify their spending projects on the floor of the House or Senate.
Tax Reform: A US tax on gasoline would reduce pollution and reduce our reliance on foreign oil, but there has been no serious consideration of such a tax. This is because of the influence of the petroleum industry and its powerful lobby that prevent the introduction of such a tax. We should shift taxes away from labor and income, and instead derive a significant portion of federal revenues from taxes on fossil fuels, emissions, pollution, waste, and resource exploitation (all of which are presently subsidized) in order to minimize the use of natural resources and curtail harmful emissions. As the cost of waste and resources increases with new taxes, business can save money by hiring now-less-expensive labor and capital to save on now-more-expensive resources. This generates more demand for labor and thus drives down unemployment while reducing the demand for resources and giving incentives to businesses to innovate in the area of resource productivity. The more a firm cuts back on its natural resources exploitation, pollution and toxic emissions, the more it would save in tax payments. This would incorporate externalities into the price of goods and services thereby providing a fix to the one critical flaw in our capitalist system. The flaw being that up to now, firms are not made to pay for the detrimental externalities that the production of their goods and services impose on the community.
If income taxes were significantly reduced and the revenue shortfall was replaced with a tax on the use of natural resources, family incomes would rise significantly allowing more households the option of having one of the two parents to stay at home thereby enhancing the upbringing of the children. Also, luxury taxes should be levied on private jets, yachts and similar items, and the inheritance tax should be reinstated.
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Construction/Development Reform
Concentrate New Construction in Areas That Have Already Been Developed: Augmentation of the number of houses and people and in the amount of cleared land does not necessarily “improve” the land. The construction industry should only be permitted to redevelop and refurbish areas that have already been developed in the past such as abandoned industrial sites and economically depressed and blighted neighborhoods rather than build new developments in places where forests currently reside with the exception that if the population in an area has increased significantly and there is a need for additional schools, hospitals and libraries.
Green Architecture: All construction projects should incorporate green architecture. The definition of green architecture is to design a building or home in such a way that, 1) minimizes the building's energy consumption by reducing the need for electric lighting, air conditioning and heating, 2) minimizes the amount of resources used in a building (during construction and after construction is complete and the owner occupies the building) by building smaller, building for longevity and designing for more efficient use of space, 3) builds with renewable materials that are manufactured in a sustainable manner and that are non-toxic (that do not contribute to an unhealthy indoor air quality), and 4) minimizes change to the local ecosystem during construction and maintains the ecosystem's ability to sustain itself in the future.
Educate Building Inspectors, Zoning Professionals and Children: The US should require building inspectors and people who sit on zoning boards to pass tests that verify their knowledge of architecture, how a building impacts the environment, and up-to-date land use planning techniques. These professionals should be re-tested every 5 years. The US should require urban planning curriculum to be taught in all schools. One 45 minute lesson plan per year can have an enormous impact on awareness of the importance of urban planning in our society.
Smart Urban Planning: New developments should discourage the frequent use of automobiles by 1) adding bike lanes to most busy roads, 2) widening the sidewalks and narrowing the streets, 3) uses of the area being developed should be a mix of commercial and residential, 4) adding ample public transportation, 5) maximizing the amount of homes within walking distance to neighborhood commercial zones so that residents can walk to do their errands, and 6) moving buildings closer together and closer to the edges of sidewalks to make them more accessible to pedestrians and to increase local density. New developments should include green spaces and keep intact biologically diverse areas and areas that need to remain undeveloped in order to protect water tables and watersheds. New development should encourage diverse economic classes of people to live near each other rather than segregating wealthy people in their own enclaves.
To insure that city streets reach their potential in terms of
liveliness, safety and diversity, the following four conditions must be
met:
1. The district, and as many of its internal parts as possible, must
serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These
must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different
schedules and are in the place for different purposes, but who are able
to use many facilities in common.
2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to
turn corners must be frequent.
3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition,
including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the
economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly
close-grained.
4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for
whatever purposes they may be there. This includes dense concentration
in the case of people who are there because of residence.
Tree Zoning: Trees are a natural remedy to global warming. The process of photosynthesis that occurs in every leaf on every tree naturally removes carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere. Photosynthesis extracts and absorbs the carbon from carbon dioxide and releases oxygen back into the atmosphere. Trees also provide lots of shade, nature’s version of air conditioning. We should create zoning laws that protect all trees regardless of where they are located. People should be required to obtain a permit before they destroy any tree located on private property that they own that has a trunk with a diameter greater than eight inches. All wood products purchased in the US such as furniture, paper and lumber should be required to come from tree farms that utilize sustainable yield forestry practices. New forests should be planted. Anyone caught destroying a tree without a permit should be fined 5% of their net worth.
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CONSTRUCTION/DEVELOPMENT
REFORM
Immigration Reform
More Tolerance, Better Education: Forty percent of the people in New York and Arizona are minorities. Some 10 million migrants work illegally in America. Nearly 500,000 unskilled migrants arrive each year to do the kind of strenuous, low-paid jobs that Americans shun. Currently, the US issues only 5,000 visas per year for unskilled foreigners seeking year-round work. They come because employers need them, and many risk death to get here. Senators Kennedy and McCain have proposed a sensible law that would allow employers to hire immigrants on temporary work permits if locals don’t want the job. The bill languishes because of concerns over border security. Lawmakers should implement immigration reform that establishes a program where illegal immigrants who reside in this country are granted legal status with the possibility of citizenship and that strives to bring minorities' education levels in line with whites.
Immigrant Home Purchasing: More than 200,000 undocumented immigrants, including many who have been in the country for decades could buy homes if they had better access to the market, but for years, because qualifying for a mortgage required a Social Security number, the only way for an illegal immigrant to do so was by using a false number. In addition, such immigrants often were rejected or overlooked by legitimate lenders, leaving them vulnerable to fraud. Nearly a decade ago, the IRS began giving out Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers so people without Social Security numbers could pay taxes. Since then, more than 8 million applicants have received numbers, and about 2 million are used annually on tax returns. Mortgage loans based on tax identification numbers are one way to allow illegal immigrants to buy homes. Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati lends mortgages to illegal immigrants.
Farm Workers: Some 53% of America’s farm workers are “undocumented” foreigners; in California, most estimates would go as high as 90%. There are few safeguards against unscrupulous contractors who cheat their workers, for example by denying them their legal break-times or by underpaying them. Senators Edward Kennedy and Larry Craig of Idaho, have been pushing an “Agriculture Jobs” bill that would give temporary legal status to undocumented migrants who have spent at least 100 days working in the fields since July 2003, and would open a path to permanent residence if they work another 360 days over the next six years. Agricultural organizations support it, but it has yet to pass a Senate (let alone a House) afraid of appearing soft on border security.
Visa Reform: In 2004, a record 464 people died crossing from Mexico into the US. Smuggling illegal immigrants by “coyotes” has evolved into a sophisticated service industry. The US government should sell temporary three-year visas priced to compete with the smuggler’s rates. One-third of the visa fee could be returned to immigrants when they depart the country, and anyone who had bought a visa in the past would be free to buy another one, provided they did not break the rules. Also, anyone with a felony on their record could be kept out. These features would be powerful incentives not to overstay. Some fraction of the fee could also be refunded to immigrants who pay social-security taxes, giving them a reason to keep out of the underground economy.
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Food Reform
Meat Reform: If we are going to slaughter animals for food, we might as well treat them humanely while they are alive. Cows have their food laced with antibiotics because they live in their own feces and they get sick easily. We should regulate the addition of antibiotics to cow feed and require that ranchers have a certain amount of acreage based on the number of cattle on their ranch. The current method of raising chickens should be outlawed and poultry farmers should be required to raise chickens on free ranges. Cows are increasingly being fed the remains of dead cows which is causing mad cow disease. Cows are also being fed corn instead of grass so that they grow faster. We should require ranchers and farmers to feed livestock only their natural foods. We should require all meat in the contents of a supermarket package of ground beef to come from only one cow so that if a sick cow’s meat gets packaged, it contaminates much fewer packages. This way a sick cow’s meat is easier to recall. We should outlaw beef imports from Brazil because Brazilian ranchers are clearing rainforest for the purpose of raising cattle. The Amazon jungle is being cut down at a rate of 1,000 acres per day.
Organic Food: Some chemicals and chemical combinations, including those that are used for pesticides and herbicides, can cause human genes to mutate and can interfere with human reproduction processes. Prolonged use of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers contaminate drinking water to the extent that it becomes undrinkable. We should ban the use of pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers on US farms. Everything raised or grown in the US should be done so organically. We should also ban imported agricultural products that are not produced organically.
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Ocean Protection Strengthened and Enforced: Approximately 90% of America’s large marine fish, such as tuna and swordfish, are now gone due to overfishing. Strict limits on the size and types of catches should be enforced. Unregulated pollution trickles into the sea from inland factories and farms. Factories and farms that are found directly or indirectly contributing to ocean pollution should be held accountable by forcing them to clean what they have polluted and outlawing the use of the chemicals that did the polluting in the first place. Dumping garbage in the oceans should be outlawed and strictly enforced. Companies that own tankers that spill oil into the ocean should be required to replace their fleets with double hull, spill-proof tankers, and, along with the companies that own the oil spilled, they should pay for the entire cleanup of the oil spill. Rapid coastal development known as “seashore sprawl” should be curbed. Federal regulation should prohibit any new construction on undeveloped land located 10 miles from an ocean shore; only renovations and redevelopment of already developed land should be permitted.
Population Control: Population growth should be controlled because with zero growth, there is less of a strain on landfills, air pollution, deforestation, and traffic congestion. All US citizens and immigrants should be educated in the methods of family planning, birth control, and masturbation. The replacement rate that keeps the size of the population stable is 2.1 births per woman. Tax incentives should be offered for the first two births and tax penalties should be given to any births after the second. Tax incentives should be given to women who give birth for the first time at age 30 because women and their husbands are smarter at 30 than they are at 20 so they are less likely to divorce and more likely to raise the child or children together. They are also wiser at 30 so they are likely to do a better job raising their children, and they are less likely to have very large families if they first give birth at age 30.
Marketing to Children: We should outlaw any marketing or advertisements in any media that target children below the age of ten (including Disney).
Resistance to Change: Resistance to change is natural. Some people get put in a worse situation after change occurs. No one wants to lose their job or lose some or all of their business’ profits, but sometimes decisions have to be made for the greater good of mankind that relegates a certain sector or group to suffer negative consequences. These tough decisions have to be made with a view to softening the fall of those groups that face negative consequences as a result of the change.
I am proposing to impose these reforms against a host of vested interests in the face of deep-rooted social practices. It’s possible that none of these proposed reforms ever occur, but that’s no reason to refrain from trying for the simple reason that society would benefit immensely by implementing these changes. If all of these proposed changes were to happen, in the short term there would be many winners and some losers, but in the long term there would be huge improvements for everyone. These reforms can only be accomplished through the government, and it’s up to the people to force the government to make these changes happen.