Happy New Year! 2020 – the year of Hindsight! I hope it is your best one yet.
2019 wasn’t the best of years, though we did get a chance to visit Ireland, meet some cousins, and attend a Worldcon, as well as a brief visit to Iceland on the way back. Between travel and medical issues I only got to spend half a year on the golf course. The good news is that, medically, I am back in the pink for 2020. Physically, I need to continue the exercising and stretching I began last year with the Silver Sneakers program down at the gym. That should also help on the golf course.
As we enter the election year, I am conflicted. I support Bernie Sanders wholeheartedly. I believe his Democratic Socialism platform is the best for the US moving into the 21st century. Our own Constitution starts with “We the People” and mandates to:
- form a more perfect union,
- establish justice,
- insure domestic tranquility,
- provide for the common defense,
- promote the general welfare,
- secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our descendants,
if that’s not Socialism, I don’t know what would be. But, the man is 78 years old; I really believe he would not survive first first term. I wish he had a groomed successor in his 50’s ready to go, but the other Democrats in the running don’t seem ready to adopt his platform. This also means his VP pick will be critical and I expect that “politics” will give us a less than optimal successor. It will be an interesting year.
I do think it is time for Congress to take back its constitutional duties and to stop ceding them to the executive. Especially sending American sailors, marines and soldiers into combat at the whim of the executive. Congress opened the door about letting the Executive use military force without direct Congressional approval and the Executive has ripped the door off the hinges. Our military actions throughout the world over the past 70 years have not been the actions of a democratic republic promoting its ideals to the world.
What we do seem to be doing is making the world safe for business. Not safe for the people who patronize the businesses but the businesses themselves. And to add some confusion to the mix, businesses are becoming multi-national and and by making the world safer for business we are making it less safe for ourselves, since if the business is engaging in practices our country deems unsafe, they will just move to another country that doesn’t prohibit or limit those practices. The practices are still unsafe and continue to create a harmful environment; it is just at a remove from us. And we still protect the overall business that is engaging in these practices. Realistically, we need to ban/prohibit these businesses from doing business in our country if we find them engaging in practices that we prohibit here because they are harmful.
Business concentrates money, politics concentrates power, concentrated money buys concentrated power, concentrated power can intensify concentrated money. We need to break this cycle. Let’s start by diffusing the power. Let Representatives have a maximum number of constituents, say 100,000 per Representative. Triple the size of the Senate and let the top three vote-getters be seated in each Senatorial election. Set a restriction that a person cannot hold successive terms of office. A Congressional incumbent can not run for the same office, but they can run in the following election when they are not the incumbent.
Congress should also incorporate sunset timelines into every bill, say 20-25 years, then the bill/law expires. Of course Congress may just reaffirm all the sunsetting bills en mass, so we restrict that so no more than half of the sunsetting bills can be approved in a bundle. The rest must be approved on to case-by-case basis.
On the money side:
- 90% estate taxes on estates in excess of $5,000,000 should help prevent the concentration of wealth.
- Political contributions can only come from registered voters or Citizens. Get businesses out of politics.
- All political contributions are publicly available for review.
- 90% income tax on incomes over $5,000,000 should help as well.
Actually, I have a whole income taxing scheme that I will discuss in a later post.
Happy New Year! Let the Fun Begin!