Concrete Ideas

I support the Occupy Wall Street Movement. I support political reform that returns power to real people. One problem with the movement so far has been that it does not have an answer to the question, “What do you want?” There are some ideas that are starting to rise to the top. I want to add some (longer the 140 character) to the pile.

The changes that I believe our country needs can be grouped generally into two categories: Procedural Government Changes (Making Government Work For People); and, Actions Government Should Be Taking (Actions are Louder than Words).

Making Government Work for People

1. End Corporate Political Personhood. I thought about this one, I thought originally¹ that you could just say that only natural people could contribute to campaigns would do the trick, but thinking about Citizens United again, I realize that would not do. It is going to take something more, something stronger.

It will take making sure that all reasons for calling corporations “persons” under the law (statutes), and case law, are dealt with. This is a bigger issue. Perhaps a law that says that, as I originally proposed, you must be a natural person to participate in electoral politics, might be a start, but I need to dig further into the law involved to be sure.

But, no matter the mechanism, corporations are not people, and they are not voters. The corporation is a legal fiction, and the fiction has become larger than the truth. It must be reeled in.

2. End Anonymous Political Groups. All political action committees should comply with 527 regulations. Further reforming these groups, something needs to be done about the doublespeak-PR names they employ (both PAC’s and 527′s). I don’t have a good solution for this, but it’s a real part of the problem.

3. Federalize All Federal Elections. The corruption at the Secretary of State level is rampant. The efforts to limit the vote (worth noting, only in Republican controlled states) at the state level are frightening. Federalizing the elections would end this. The FEC would control voting machines, registration, ballot counting—everything involved in a federal election. At the same time, put in place absolute transparency on the process. Some suggestions.

• The officials that would make the decisions would be civil, not political, employees.
• Paper trails for all electronic voting machines.
• Open Source the software for those machines. No more proprietary, black boxes.
• Mandate early voting periods in all federal elections. Alternatively, make election day a Federal Holiday².
• No more Voter ID laws.

4. Create a Public Financing System for all Federal Elections. This will not happen overnight. However, if suggestions one through three are enacted, this becomes more possible. The system would need to be set up so that you could opt out, but that if you did, you would have to put that fact in every ad you ran. One element of the system could also be mandatory available airtime for candidates. Admittedly this suggestion is the least developed, but we would have some time to design a good system.

Actions Are Louder Than Words

If government reform is going to mean anything, they need to fix the things that do not work, and address the things that have simply not been addressed. This is more of a wish list, and it’s just mine.

1. Universal Health Care. This MUST be done. The profit motive has no place in medicine. Further, that profit is money that should be in the system, not siphoned out of it. This does not have to be a single payer system like England and Canada. We could institute a non-profit insurance system as exists in Germany. But this problem is an ENORMOUS drain on BOTH business and people.

• Businesses, especially big business, are continually having financial problems meeting their commitments to retired workers for health care. Businesses in other countries (and, it really is ALL other countries) do not have this problem. Plus, all small businesses would be able to offer their employees health care, putting them on an even playing field with big business³.

• People clearly need access to health care. The system is strained by people that wait too long to get care, never see preventive care and those who get care, but never pay. People lose time at work, get sicker than they need to be and spend too much time worrying about being sick.

We have to do something about this. The health care reform package that was passed is a start. But, by not addressing everything, it is going to require re-visiting.

2. Student Loan Reform—Service for Education. Instead of students borrowing money to go to school, they should be able to choose to offer their service to the country instead. You can have your college education paid for, and you in turn, work for the federal, state or local government (as a teacher, police officer, solider, policy expert, whatever) for a certain period of time.

3. Massive Infrastructure Reinvestment. Our roads, bridges, schools, electric grid, air traffic control, water systems, communications and well, everything, is crumbling around us. We need to rebuild the roads. We need to build effective high speed rail arterials across the country. We need world-beating broadband in all major cities, and world-class broadband everywhere else. We need new, safe and inviting schools all across the country. WE NEED THE JOBS THIS WOULD ENTAIL.

This is just my start. Let’s see where this goes….