Another one: push cities to have green (as in trees) everywhere. Not only is it prettier, people will be more happy with loads of green everywhere, but it also lowers temperatures in cities. Better mental healthy better physical health.
The 10 year term limit for the Supreme Court is trouble. With 9 justices, one party in power for 8 years, which happens often, is more than enough to ideologically set the tone.
I don’t mind term limits per se, just not such a short limit.
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Way way way better than the first one!
Removing the house rep cap (more particularly adopting a plan similar to The Wyoming Rule) would be a fantastic idea and allow the house to return back to what it should be, populace representation. As the electoral college is based on combined reps and senators, this also does a fair bit towards resolving the underlying issue there.
Corporate personhood is what allows you to sue a corporation and enter contracts with it. The courts have allowed that to go further then it should vis a vis allowing contributions to political campaigns etc. Removing it would not be the best idea with that in mind.
if one allowed the IRS to file taxes for citizens you wouldn’t need to ban tax prep companies since the amount of people buying their products would fall off a cliff.
Where I’m from judges have to be picked by a list prepared by the bar of that jurisdiction, IIRC. That way you can’t just get any barely competent idiot who happens to be a good party man as a justice on the highest court of the land.
Roleplaying as Decronym bot for a moment:
Acronyms, initialisms, and other phrases seen in this thread:
Shortform Likely Meaning VAT Value-Added Tax IRS Internal Revenue Service UBI Universal Basic Income CPI Consumer Price Index GDP Gross Domestic Product FPTP/FPP voting First-Past-The-Post, or First-Past-Post voting STAR voting Score Then Automatic Runoff voting RCV Ranked Choice Voting IRV Instant-Runoff Voting STV Single-Transferable Vote AV Approval Voting 321/3-2-1 voting 3 Semifinalists, 2 finalists, 1 winner via rating candidates MMP Mixed-Member Proportional (Representation) PAC Political Action Committee CCC Civilian Conservation Corp EC Electoral College NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization EU European Union US United States SCOTUS Supreme Court of the United States RMV Registry of Motor Vehicles IIRC If I Remember Correctly TF The Fuck UBU Universal Basic UwU All public funding, subsidy, stimulus, and infrastructural spending should purchase public equity that can only be bought back via taxes.
We don’t have to call it socialism. It can be capitalism proper. But it’s the people’s labor and capital being lent interest-free when they should expect a return. Fair is fair.
Some other reasons it works:
- Entitlements like UBI become ordinary financial vehicles, annuities for the growing public trust.
- It would underscore the stake citizens have in their governance, the economy, and would certainly reframe public discourse.
- Nationalized healthcare is just vertical integration, eliminating corporate inefficiencies and overhead.
- National debt becomes leverage rather than a burden to future generations.
- Conservative pundit rhetoric sounds hopelessly plebeian against an owner proletariat (e.g. “government handouts” are a childish way to say public dividends).
- Many large private interests that have historically gobbled up public funds would quickly see the public become majority shareholders, effectively nationalizing many industries that should have been long ago.
Supreme Court should be subject to ethics laws and rules, not exempt from them
Rules adjudicated by whom? You’d need another independent judiciary specifically tasked with overseeing the SCOTUS, and there’s a lot of reasons why that would be a dicey proposition.
Even if they’re responsible for policing themselves, you’d get a huge improvement by making them write it down. We shouldn’t have Clarence Thomas claiming he didn’t know that accepting $100k+ is an obvious conflict of interest.
My company has no problem writing down ethics policies for me - I’m sure they’d let the supremes copy it
Even if they’re responsible for policing themselves, you’d get a huge improvement by making them write it down.
Would you? Do you seriously think guys like Kavanaugh and Alito would sincerely self-report? Or would they just lie with impunity and dare you to call their bluffs?
We shouldn’t have Clarence Thomas claiming he didn’t know that accepting $100k+ is an obvious conflict of interest.
Who holds Thomas to account when he’s caught perjuring himself? What court do you put him in front of?
My company has no problem writing down ethics policies for me
Without a doubt, because you’re staff and they’re the boss. But there’s no one to hold the owner of a company to its own internal policies. Not when the owner gets to author, adjudicate, and dictate the administration of those policies. No Twitter HR rep is going to rein in Elon Musk.
Currently, they not only judge themselves but decide what their standards are.
Clarence Thomas was found out, and we’re all outraged. So far, he’s claiming various versions of ignorance and there’s no rule against it. Writing down ethical standards mean he can no longer make those claims. He’d have no excuse, no way to delay.
You’re right that he still might not be held accountable, but it is a step in the right direction
Writing down ethical standards mean he can no longer make those claims.
Okay, sure. But then he just makes a new set of bullshit claims, and nobody exists in a position to call him on it.
You’re right that he still might not be held accountable, but it is a step in the right direction
If it was a step we were taking, I won’t object. Part of the problem with this bullshit is that reforms are almost always DOA, outside of hypothetical debates. But if I’m starting from a blank slate and told “Fix the SCOTUS”, I’d dream a bit bigger than a rule with no teeth.
Instead of all that, just one thing. Start there and everything else will unfold from it: remove private corporate money from politics. All contributions to a politician or political party to be public and capped, per citizen.
but corporations are people in America, so this would never fly without abolishing that first.
All excellent ideas.
Now how do we afford to bribe all of the politicians to make this happen?
RCV is the best available way to elect the president (afaik), but for the House I’d use full-on proportional representation. You could use the German or the Irish models, both of which still retain bonds between reps and their districts.
Both can be proportional in terms of peoples (ranked) votes counting the same.
I haven’t really seen it mentioned here yet but policy makers and judge rulings should either have additional schooling in the area they are making the policy/ruling on OR have a mandatory specialist/professional input throughout the process. So many of these brain dead policies come from not even know what TF they are talking about.
I want proper understanding from these people before they agree or pass something because “it sounds good” from lobbying
OR have a mandatory specialist/professional input throughout the process
People on the internet don’t like to hear this, but that’s called Lobbying.
I’d vote for you
You don’t vote for kings!
