Lately I’ve been thinking extensively about how we’re governed (I’m sure many of you are having similar thoughts as well (if you aren’t, maybe you should?)) and to try and make sense of all these varying, yet interconnected ideas, I’m writing these thoughts out here. I’m not sure how much structure there will be to this as far as moving from one idea to another like I’ve plotted this out (there isn’t any outline for this, just lots of thoughts over many, many months and half-written “journal” entries). Here we go (also, I’m going to be focusing on federal positions/policies, not individual states though I feel you can utilize the ideas/concepts I’m writing about here and apply them to each state but I digress… again… and will many more times):
I’ve been getting really fucking annoyed lately with all the Blue State/Red State crap Trump has been saying to the press, at rallies, and at the debates (and yeah, I think DJT is an atrocious president and I voted Biden). We’re a powder keg right now and Trump is knowingly trying to light the fuse (if you have an educated, fact-based argument that Trump is trying to quell the tension and violence I am willing to listen to or read it). All the other elected members of our federal government are playing into this as well to one degree or another so don’t think I’m only going after DJT here (though he is by far the most egregious offender).
Our elected officials love that we go along with labeling ourselves as Democrats and Republicans. It allows for easy division amongst the populace. We are at a place in our society that we don’t need official parties anymore (George Washington, yeah, that guy, warned against political parties before he left the presidency). The people who will tell you we need the parties are the ones who lead them and know that is how they hold on to their power. We should abolish political parties (and one or two other things as well, which I will get to later). This will force people to run purely on their record and their platform. Imagine voting for candidates because of what they have previously accomplished and/or what they plan to accomplish if elected to office instead of voting for them primarily because they’re the candidate a given political party chose for you?
This will also, hopefully, make it more difficult for extremists of any ideology to gain any real traction with the broader American public because by and large we all fall somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum (we all want the same damn things: safe communities, safe neighborhoods, access to clean water, good schools for your kids if you have them, a decent job that pays a living wage). I’m quite liberal on many issues, more conservative on others, and so is everyone else that I talk. So how do we get our representative government to adhere more closely to that? A few ideas (I’ll probably come up with more along the way. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions as you will see):
- Abolish political parties (check, but also, this one will be incredibly hard to pull off in the short-term)
- Abolish the Electoral College (duh)
- Ranked Choice Voting
- Reverse Citizen’s United
The Electoral College is a relic of our past that doesn’t properly represent the people because the last two Republican presidents did not win the popular vote and yet they were elected to office because they won the right combination of states by a razor thin margin (as I’m sure you’re all aware, Trump won with 80 thousand votes spread out between Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania but lost the popular vote by over 3 million votes). Abolishing the electoral college makes every American’s vote count as one individual vote instead of a total within any given state and that whoever wins that state wins all the electoral votes. This system can delegitimize voters in states that heavily favor one political party over another.
In 2016 Clinton won 8.7M votes in California and Trump won 4.4M, yet she won all of California’s Electoral College votes. That’s fucked up. This system is stupid and antiquated. Every citizen’s vote should count as one complete vote for the president; not votes for a majority that then awards all the Electoral votes to that candidate. What this also does is it forces the candidates to campaign in ALL THE STATES. This might also make them moderate their more extreme views a little bit since they will need to truly be reliant on every single vote. This is a significant way for the people to reclaim power that we feel is being pulled away from us by our elected officials. There is not a good argument for keeping the Electoral College in our modern era of society and technology (I would also argue that the Electoral College is Socialism for Republicans).
(I saved this as “Rant 102620” for whatever that’s worth (it amuses me at the very least))
Ranked Choice Voting is a newer idea that’s been floating around and one I like very much. essentially you vote by your highest preferred candidate to lowest (here’s a link to a more formal definition on Ballotpedia). For an example I will use my vote in the Dem Primary and limit it to five candidates who were actively running at that time (cause I would’ve put Yang at the top #yanggang; also, at this point, you could probably figure that) 1. Warren, 2. Sanders, 3. Buttigieg, 4. Biden, 5. Klobuchar (and this just brought up an interesting question: who would’ve won the nomination with ranked choice voting in all states? I’m still assuming Biden but I wonder how that might’ve played things out. Also, I digress). Who I wanted as top pick didn’t come to fruition, but we ended up with someone I knew at the very least would be a fundamentally decent person and a better leader for our country and citizens.
I’m fine with Biden as the nominee. I think he possesses the right soft-skills to be a great president for the moment that we’re currently in: he will actually give us straightforward information and tell us like it is with Covid, he would aggressively work to bring the country back together (Biden might be the perfect face to put in the dictionary next to the word “moderate”) and ease the social tensions we are living with on a daily basis over stupid fucking masks (the sooner you suck it up the sooner we can better control outbreaks and transmission and properly reopen the economy so I can get inappropriately drunk in a bar with my friends and we can scream into each others ears and faces when it gets too loud and not feel like we might get a potentially lethal virus in the process) and the litany of social justice issues we are confronting as well as right-wing extremism.
Biden has the capability and the capacity to be deeply empathetic and comforting at a time when so many people are in all different kinds of pain and struggling to overcome massive obstacles and systemic inequities. I hope that he realizes that while his past record has notable marks against it that as President he can work to aggressively redeem himself for those past judgment failures. He can help bring about the societal change we need and champion a new policies that will help the communities that need it the most and empower a much more diverse and representative Cabinet as well as all other Executive Branch leadership roles. I was not enthusiastic about him during the primary but have been quite pleased with him overall during the campaign and that he has a clear agenda for what he wants to do if elected president (Trump doesn’t have one despite the GOP tweet about the permanent moon base), and more importantly, I think he’ll be really boring and hopefully make our politics boring again and we can all go back to dunking on Ted Cruz as the biggest tool in the Republican Party.
I wonder if Ranked Choice Voting would have allowed for a different outcome in the 2016 Republican Primary? I’m sure there’s a formula that could calculate it based on available data.
Reversing Citizen’s United won’t be a long section: We need to get all the fucking dark money out of politics. That money is controlling our representatives which in turn controls us. Members of Congress spend multiple hours per week calling people asking for donations and need to hit certain party requirements. This is a major reason why they don’t have time to properly read through all the legislation that they’re supposed to vote on. I’ve had enough and I hope you have too. We have to put an end to how much money we waste on elections (the amounts are insane and could be utilized in so many more fruitful and beneficial ways). It would also be great if we can somehow change our election cycles and make them a lot shorter (like, six months long or something even shorter). Apparently Tom Cotton is already making moves for 2024. Ugh.
We also need to rethink how our representatives hold votes, hearings, and other congressional business by all being in DC. With Covid showing us that work from home and holding hearings remotely is possible we should figure out how to have our representatives work out of their home offices more consistently and telecommute. This will allow them to be routinely available to their constituents so concerns can be addressed more readily (maybe even require them to hold quarterly town halls? Wouldn’t that be fun!? You could potentially get to protest your representative to their face once every three months. That might scare away the people who don’t actually want to do the job and make room for people who actually want to try and make things better).
And I say that because today (well, “today” as I’m writing this), the Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett in one of (if not) the speediest Justice confirmation process in the history of the senate. And right after they finished that they adjourned until November 9th. They didn’t do anything else. McConnell doesn’t care and no other Republicans cared enough to try and keep the Senate in session to pass a relief bill for their constituents. They are weak and feckless and we should never let them forget how they turned their backs on the American people during a crisis. These people are elected to lead yet they are wildly ineffective and all earning six figure salaries despite no major legislative accomplishments.
We need to create legislation that makes their salary more performance based or create various penalties should they not do the job they were elected to do. If we, the American People, are dissatisfied with their performance we should be able to penalize them for poor job performance (think of this as another way for us to check their power) before waiting until the end of their term to try and vote these individuals out. Also, zero members of Congress should receive a paycheck until the next relief bill is passed.
No relief packages will have a chance to be passed until November 9th AT THE EARLIEST despite the HEROES Act having been approved over 20 weeks ago by the House (and then an updated version of that package being approved by the House again in early October). Our Republican led senate decided it was more important to spend their time voting for and confirming a wildly unpopular Supreme Court Justice who is unfit for the position instead of passing important aid packages to help the American people (hey Susan Collins, you voted “No” on the wrong judge, you coward).
(Also, sorry if I’m redundant. I might clean it up a bit tomorrow. Or I might not… Edit: I)
There needs to be some new mechanism in place for the US Citizenry to make certain demands about the types of legislation we want our representatives to work on beyond calling into their offices (if they don’t go for my town halls idea). We have the tech capabilities to come up with some sort of straightforward way of doing a sort of instant vote to basically say “Hey, motherfuckers, we don’t want you to focus on this right now and if you decide to ignore us we get to recall you immediately.” Calling and writing your senators isn’t as quantifiable as an instant vote (or something along those lines that is truly quantifiable/measurable).
It’s pretty easy for them to ignore their constituents right now because of the old, arcane rules they refuse to modernize. We need to start having these larger conversations about instituting these reforms so we can put pressure on members of Congress who will be running for re-election in 2022 to say that they want to proceed forward with initiatives like this that helps get the power back to the people. We should question the motive of every single representative that wants to limit the amount of power and influence their constituency can have.
I feel like at this point I should clarify that I am no means anti-government. We need our government to provide and facilitate essential services that are not necessarily profitable in the private sector (or if they are profitable that could make them highly corruptible… like health insurance) but are necessary and helpful to improving all American’s quality of life as well as keeping their communities clean and safe. I also think we should establish a national power grid utilizing renewable energy sources (solar in southwest, wind turbines in the Atlantic). And we also need Oversight.
There are a number of large corporations and other entities operating within the United States that bend and break rules, regulations, and laws all the time without any real consequence. The number of environmental disasters we’ve had to deal with because of private corporations cutting corners or outright ignoring rules and laws. Back in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan there was a factory that inadvertently created the largest PFAS site in the whole state. That has fucked up the immediate environment and also had a significant economic impact by affecting property value in the region (and it isn’t an inexpensive place to live). They’ve had to pay some penalties but not nearly enough to scare them as well as every other company in the state (and hopefully whole country) into making any more decisions like that without making sure it’s been properly vetted and approved.
The Deepwater Horizon spill was a massive disaster but BP had to pay only $20 Billion in fines. They’re an oil company. The 20 Billion dollar penalty is basically the same as a small dent on a car door (yeah, it sucks the dent is there but the car operates perfectly). They should be paying multi-billion dollar penalties annually and forced to invest in renewable and green energy technology as a way to force their commitment to a better future for the generations yet to come.
I’ll wrap this up by saying that the thing I’m trying to get at is we need to start pushing our representatives to give us back our control over how they govern us. Our ceding of power started out like a small drip on a faucet: one drop infrequently (at first), and then it started to drip a little faster, and soon it became a consistent drip that turned into a full opening of the faucet. We should be very wary of any politician who doesn’t want to make it easier for us to exercise our voices. I also hope this encourages more conversations from other people about how they feel we should be governed. I want to help come up with concrete ideas for rebalancing power and better holding our leaders accountable. We need diverse opinions and ideas for how we should govern ourselves and continue working towards a more perfect union, but we also need to be clear that we are a country that demands inclusivity and can allow for multiple ideologies to exist at the same time. We should be trying to govern and create laws that help us move forward, not backward. Restricting one human’s fundamental rights is
We are coming up on the 250th birthday of the creation of the United States of America as a governing body. Let’s take a really close look at how far we’ve come as a country and how we want to proceed forward. The constitution is a living document and Thomas Jefferson has some specific thoughts about whether one generation has a right to bind another future generation to the rules of their time. The path forward won’t be an easy one but whenever confronted with something difficult I think back to one of my favorite JFK quotes: “Do not pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men (and women).”
America, it’s time we do the right thing, not the easy thing.
(Also, I think for the next few years while we overhaul policing in America we should put mom’s in charge of the majority of police departments. I feel like they will bring a level of empathy and compassion that men historically lack; but delving into this idea will lead down yet another rabbit hole of other interconnected policy and personnel issues that are better served in a separate essay. And probably written by brighter minds than mine)
(Also also, thanks for reading this all the way to the end if you did. You deserve a fist bump! 👊)
@g3kiefer 