Category: General

Eight Ideas for Reform

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Kyle Mathews shares eight steps he believes would produce a more functional congress at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. It is an interesting list including ideas I’ve heard before and a few new ideas. There is also some good discussion in the comments. I thought it would be worth sharing here in the order that he presented the ideas.

Resolve the electoral status of D.C.

I’ve made my position on this issue clear in the past. Kyle agrees with me that it is important and that the current legislation is the wrong route.

Limit campaign contributions to those who will be represented in the election.

Again, I’ve already shared my thoughts on that (multiple times) and I agree with this idea. I like the term Kyle uses – electoral carpetbaggery.

Water down the filibuster.

This is one I don’t think I have written about. I agree that the filibuster is overused but I also agree with one of the comments which said that placing a time-limit on filibusters would effectively remove them completely. As one who believes that the filibuster mechanism provides an important check on the system I think I would rather put up with its overuse, than do away with it entirely.

Eliminate anonymous holds.

I had not considered this before either, but as a believer in transparency and accountability I agree that holds should not be anonymous. If I put a hold on a bill I should be willing to admit it and explain my reasons.

Increase the size of both houses.

Once again, I have made my position on this quite clear, and once again I agree. I had never considered increasing the size of the Senate, but the way that he presents it – three senators per state – would be workable and would still allow the Senate to function in the same capacity that it was originally designed to function. I especially like the way the three senators per state idea would give each state a chance to bring a fresh face to the Senate in each cycle.

Increase the capacity and role of the Congressional Research Service.

This was another idea that was new to me, but it sounds like a good one. One comment argues that members of congress only use the CBO information if it benefits them. That argument is fairly weak because whatever hurts one side of the debate will benefit the other so the information will almost always be used. More information is almost never a bad thing for the governing process.

Restructure the committee system.

This is another idea I have never addressed, but I agree that the committee system is broken. Committees tend to turn committee members into industry insiders (if they weren’t already) and thus minimize any objectivity that should exist between government and industry. One other idea I once heard related to this was random committee assignments and regular rotation. I think there are lots of ways the committee system could be altered and most of them would be improvements over the current system.

Make all elections non-partisan.

Once upon a time I might have agreed with this, but I now believe that this would actually make it more difficult for voters to get truly informed about candidates and would further discourage voter participation in the political system. I could be wrong about that, but that is what I would expect to happen.

Out of the eight ideas I had addressed three directly in the past and I agree with six of the ideas in principle – some details would still need to be worked out on some of those. If I had to choose all or nothing I think that making all eight reforms would be a positive change overall in our system despite the drawbacks of the two ideas that I disagree with.

Tags change congress, civic participation, connections, ideas, thoughts, voting

General

Hit Them Where it Hurts

[quote]As Congress finds new and ever more inventive ways to spend money (both real money and imaginary money) more and more voters are waking up to find themselves becoming fiscal conservatives. First off, I must say that there are not nearly enough of us among the voters and secondly I feel compelled to add that we would be in a much better position to be taken seriously if there had been many more converts to the cause while Bush was still in office.

Earlier this week a friend of mine asked for my thoughts on an idea he had to slow and/or reverse the growth in government spending. (I feel compelled to state that said friend was awake to this issue well before Obama was elected – lest anyone mistakenly think that he just woke up to this in the last week.) His idea consists of two parts and boils down to this:

Have states set the wages for their Congressional delegation.

Have each member of Congress pay for 0.00001% of the federal budget out of their own paychecks. (That’s one out of 10 Million dollars for each member of Congress.)

My initial response was to point out the fact that it would take a Constitutional amendment to make the first part legal due to the provisions of Article I Section 6 that their salaries be paid out of the U.S. treasury (not that state money is not already mostly from the U.S. Treasury).

After thinking about the proposal more I recognize that it only works if both parts are enacted because if only the second portion is enacted it would only take about 30 minutes for the House to pass emergency legislation (or simply attach it to that proposal if they want to be efficient) in which the calculation for Congressional salaries is changed from it’s current “$170,000 plus an automatic annual cost of living increase” to “0.000012% of that year’s annual budget plus $169,999.99 plus an automatic annual cost of living increase.”

The real kernel of the idea was to hit Congress in the wallet – where it hurts – for the egregious budgets they pass from year to year like kidney stones in the national economy. For myself I have long believed that we should make congress feel the pain of their overspending by having them be responsible for a portion of their deficit spending – say 3 times whatever portion of their budget is financed by deficits. (In other words, if 15% of the budget is deficit spending then members of Congress lose 45% of their salaries – and probably the same portion of their budget for staffers etc. for the year – to help offset their budget.) This only works if there are no exceptions (“oops, we had an emergency and had to overspend – but our regular spending didn’t include a deficit so we should not pay a penalty.”) On the other hand they should also receive some incentive for wise management by offering a bonus of one tenth of any percentage surplus they run for their personal salaries. (That would be, if 10% of revenues were in excess of the annual budget they would get a 1% bonus on their salary for the year.)

Theoretically this would have the downside of encouraging them to raise taxes to cover their spending priorities thus causing citizens to bear a greater cost for their government. Personally I think that would be beneficial because people would spend less time clamoring for more government handouts because they would almost universally feel the effects of any spending increases. Such a change should also have the side effect of having people be more engaged in the process of removing representatives who ignore them because they would be more likely to feel the effects of whatever votes their elected officials cast.

Tags change congress, connections, deficits, ideas, money, taxes

General

Why Life Imprisonment is Wrong

Post author By David
Post date November 9, 2009
No Comments on Why Life Imprisonment is Wrong

photo credit: BlatantNews.com

When I read Jay Hutchinson’s post about Why Capital Punishment is wrong I could not sit still without sharing the opposite perspective so that some people can recognize that the issue is not one sided or clear cut. I am not one who believes in excessive punishment and I would not argue that a justice system without an option for capital punishment is inappropriate, but the longer I live the more I recognize that I have never heard an argument against capital punishment that did not ring hollow on some level.

When Jay speaks of the “hypocrisy” of a government killing to prove that killing is bad he both makes a very poor argument and misses the point of capital punishment entirely. The shallowness of that argument is apparent when we recognize that government has a legitimate position of authority with regard to society and thus has some limited permissions not available to society as a whole. For his argument to work you would have to be able to argue that a father was being a hypocrite for making a rule that his child could not use matches when he uses matches to light the furnace when it goes out. Another example would be trying to argue that police departments are hypocritical for enforcing speed limits on the population while they and other emergency workers regularly exceed the speed limit in the course of their work. The use of capital punishment is not to show that killing is bad, it is meant as a consequence of certain actions as a way to demonstrate unacceptable behavior through the punishment and as a way to remove future threats to society. That certainly does not mean that capital punishment is the only way, or even necessarily the most desirable way to meet these goals, but it is not simply to show that killing is bad.

Of Jay’s three official arguments, two of them hinge on far from common occurrences – the change of heart and the wrongful conviction. That these are not true in the majority of cases does not mean that they are not legitimate concerns, but governing based on exceptions is a very dangerous practice. The fact is that most of the time the person convicted is the guilty party and of those convictions that are overturned a sizable number are overturned on technicalities, not necessarily because the defendant was innocent – nothing we can do in our justice system will ever make it 100% accurate, but we do fairly well. Jay gives exactly one exceptional example of a change of heart while claiming that “people often have a change of heart on death row.” I’m not sure how we could determine “often” since no metric, including professions of innocence, can accurately draw a line between those who have a change of heart and those who don’t. Even if we could draw that line accurately part of a change of heart for those who are guilty is an acceptance of the consequences of their actions. If society has determined that death is the appropriate consequence for our actions then a real change of heart would include coming to terms with that punishment for our actions. (After all, just because Bernie Madoff changes his heart about defrauding millions of people out of billions of dollars and promises never to manage money again does not mean that he should not face the consequences of his previous actions.)

His third argument is not dependent on the exceptional case – the financial cost of capital punishment is almost universally higher than the financial cost of life imprisonment. Like governing based on exception however, governing based on financial considerations alone is dangerous. Besides that, there are things we can do to change the equation (considering that the vast majority of appeals result in no change of sentence one option would be to reduce the number of available appeals).

For those who are still convinced that capital punishment is just wrong please consider the alternative and see if we are not stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Tags connections, death penalty, Elevated, issues, laws

General

Individualism vs Collectivism

Post author By David
Post date November 5, 2009
6 Comments on Individualism vs Collectivism

photo credit: 416style

It seems that the churning within the GOP is a conflict at various levels between the forces of individualism and collectivism. There is the question of whether the party faithful should do what they think is best or what the party determines to be best. There is the question of whether the national party should be uniform, or whether the local parties should be more autonomous, and there is the question of whether government should enforce the collective good, or allow for more individual choice in society.

With all the jockeying within the GOP there have been plenty of calls for a return to small government principles within the party and generic statements about various groups spoiling the supposed conservatism of the party but in a Los Angeles Times article yesterday Edward Crane sounded a call I never thought I would hear – The GOP Should Dump the Neocons. The first thing I had to do as I read that was confirm the accepted definition of “neocon” to decide if I could believe what I was reading and if there were any implications that I would disagree with. It turns out that I think I can fully agree with this position.

Tags Cato, connections, Elevated, parties, Republican

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Knowledge – the Key to Sound Government

Post author By David
Post date November 3, 2009
4 Comments on Knowledge – the Key to Sound Government

photo credit: TheAllNewAventuresOfMe

Although I had never heard it before, this quote in Utah Policy really captured the essence of some of what I have been trying to convey in posts and comments on what makes an ideal legislator:

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives”. James Madison

We are supposed to have a popular government (government of and by the people) and it must have popular information (information from the people) if it is to function properly. This is one of the reasons that backroom politics is so undesirable. In this age of hyper-communication every elected official (or even candidate) has the means of acquiring popular information and they must do everything in their power to acquire that information.

Tags change congress, connections, Elevated, liberty, quotes, thoughts

General

Legislator as Analyst

Earlier this year at a town hall type breakfast meeting I had the chance to ask Senator Bennett what he considered to be the most important task of a Senator. I was not very impressed with his answer that the most important thing was to try to see the future clearly. I still argue that keeping their oath of office is what all the actions of an elected official should revolve around, but upon further reflection I think I have a better understanding of what he meant and it was closer to acceptable for me. His third item in the list of of most important jobs was that they should do their homework. I think that what he was trying to get at was that legislators need to study the information that is available to them and then make wise decisions about how to deal with whatever information is available. After all, that is the whole point of a representative form of government – voters are essentially selecting someone who will have access to more information than most of them with the expectation that the elected official will make a better than average decision with that more comprehensive information.

While that task of analyzing information to make decisions should be anchored to keeping the oath of office it is truly one of the most important tasks of a legislator. As an analyst, a legislator must always be seeking as much information as possible on the issues they are called to decide upon. They should seek that information from their constituents as well as all the official sources of information that are brought before them (such as task forces and committee reports). Their job is to take all that information to put together as accurate a picture as possible of the reality they are dealing with and then make as wise a decision as possible with that understanding.

Tags civic participation, ideal, legislature

General

A Question to Ponder

I really did not need to focus on any serious topics today (or yesterday for that matter – notice the lack of a post) so I have to thank my brother for providing a humorous but thought provoking question on Facebook last night. I thought that the question deserved to be freed from the walled garden of Facebook so I thought I’d share it here:

If China decided to call America’s debt today, which state would {President Obama} sell to make ends meet?

California received some votes as well as Texas, North Dakota, and non-states such as Guam. What do other people think (recognizing that this is entirely not realistic no matter which state anyone suggests)?

Tags California, China, funny, Guam, national debt, North Dakota, Obama, questions, Texas

General

In Search of Banzai Republicans

Post author By David
Post date October 22, 2009
18 Comments on In Search of Banzai Republicans

photo credit: jpellgen

Holly has a great post/discussion about why Unity at all costs is the wrong message for the GOP today. Within her post was one small statement that I had been thinking about for weeks:

Too many are not willing to lose . . .

I thought of calling such leaders Kamikaze Republicans but there is an important difference. Kamikaze attacks could not have the attacker survive and have the attack be successful. Banzai attacks had a low probability of success, but the attacker could still hope to both live and be successful. Kamikaze attackers intend to destroy themselves in hopes of breaking their opponents while banzai attackers are willing to stand for their principles even if it means they lose in the effort.

Show me the republican leader who is willing to end their political life in order to maintain a principle in which they should not compromise. For that matter, define for me the principles of the Republican Party for which the party should take an uncompromising stand.

Tags debates, Democrat, Elevated, parties, principles, Republican

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We Should Make That Illegal

Post author By David
Post date October 21, 2009
13 Comments on We Should Make That Illegal

I heard a report of a store robbery this morning and the description of the perpetrator sounded very familiar – dark clothing, dark beanie hat, you know the drill. As I heard it I discarded the remote possibility that there is one man or a small group that use that outfit as their signature in committing these felonies. This led me to a new conclusion (I’m amazed nobody has thought of this before) – the availability of dark clothing, especially dark t-shirts and dark beanie hats, induces people to commit robberies.

We should make the production and sale of those clothing items illegal and remove the temptation to commit these robberies.

Tags funny, reactions, thoughts

General

Groundwork for a Campaign

In a recent comment I said:

. . . as a non-celebrity there is a long road of groundwork that I would have to lay before I could hope to run a campaign with any chance of being taken seriously. If I ever feel that I have laid that groundwork you can bet that I will run . . .

Today in Utah Policy I discovered Local Victory from a link in their Campaign Tips section. Honestly I have not paid particular attention to that section before, but this looked like a great resource. As I poked around the site I found “Getting Ready to Run for Office – 8 Steps to Take Today” which helps potential candidates prepare and claims to be applicable “whether that campaign is next year or ‘some year’.” I really liked the list and saw much of what I had seen as necessary preliminary steps but with a bunch more detail and listed in a way that makes me believe that I could actually make a plan to get that groundwork laid. I did notice however that some of the steps would be much easier to take after deciding on something more solid than “some office.”

I’m absolutely confident that I will be spending more time on that site gathering ideas and information to get more prepared, to gauge how prepared I am, and to plan when and if I am ready to launch a campaign.

Tags civic participation, connections