What structural changes would you like to see in the US national government?

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

outlaw all subsidies, bailouts, and guaranteed loans

Sign me the fuck up.

Why? They have been proven to be effective. I just want more acountability in the future if we ever use them again.

Effective at what? Creating a politically entrenched aristocracy of corporations with a revolving door through the federal government? Saving the economy? Screwing the market all to hell? Contributing to a massive obesity epidemic in the US and abroad? Holding down the economies of developing nations? Creating hundreds of thousands of jobs? Creating a massive opportunity cost that can never be recovered? All of the above?

[The Progressive]

Lol, sometimes I gotta wonder what planet commodore and tormund is living in.

Chrysler just posted huge profit last year, its employees are getting a bonus check for $1500, and 1800 new jobs were added to its plant in Illinois.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2012/02/07/Chrysler-to-pay-bonuses-a-month-early/UPI-35991328648757/

[AverageGuy]

Seriously The house of reps need no more people (im from NY huge population) why should my voice be substantially greater than lets say South Dakota.

You would not have a greater voice, you'd still only have one representative. NYC as a whole might see more representatives, but they'd be more responsible to individual constituents. Which is the point; it's not like a city of 8,000,000 is homogenous in its decisions, and Congress should better reflect the subtleties.

And the Electoral College makes sense also, other wise NY and Cali would win all the time (even thou that would be awsome).

No they wouldn't. They couldn't; the minute you eliminate the electoral college, the states as units cease to matter in the Presidential election. Again, states are not homogenous areas, meaning individual votes within those states would split (suddenly gerrymandering in Texas doesn't matter and the upstate New Yorkers who want to form their own, conservative state would have a vote that means something). Even if the entire populations of both states did vote the same way, they only account for about 18% of the country.

[Lord of Oop North]

• Minnesota should come to the ample bosom of voluptuous Canada, as a new province.
  
• British Columbian Death Commandos to occupy Washington State, with Elisha Cuthbert named Military Empress of the Occupied Territory
  
• Ice Hockey to be proclaimed as the National Sport of the United States of America, and games of suicide shinny to be used to determine votes in the House of Representatives - CBC's Hockey Night in America will be our Running Man-like television broadcast of this.
  
• Packs of Polar Bears will be released at every Republican National Convention.
  

[Shryke]

I would try to eliminate all money from politics. Public office holders should leave the job with pretty much exactly the same wealth as when they left. No campaign contributions. No lobbying with money (lobbying without gifts or contributions would be allowed). And no cushy board of director jobs when politicians leave office. In essence, remove all material motivation to seeking office and governing. And I have no idea how that would work in a free society.

That's the worst idea.

This just means politicians become even more beholden to special interests, as they are the people who (for a little scratch) will guarantee them a lucrative career post-politics.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Elisha Cuthbert can occupy my territory all she wants.

[TerraPrime]

Re: Ser Scot

Well I did criticize it, for the effects that your changes will bring, not on the plausibility of those proposed changes.

As for preventing the dominant parties from rigging the game, that's why we need these changes written into federal laws so that those attempts can be investigated and prosecuted.

Re: FLoW

I am unsatisfied with full disclosure as the major component of reforming campaign reform because while transparency is desirable, by itself it does not address the unequal playing field that results from disparity in resources (for the minor parties), nor does it help limit the influence of groups with disproportionate amount of influence (on a donation dollar per group participant basis). Or do you have other components that will be implemented concurrently to improve the way that our government is formed today?

Re: Commodore

outlaw all subsidies, bailouts, and guaranteed loans

And this has to do with how the government is run as a political entity, how? This thread really isn't the Penthouse Column equivalent for Libertarians.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

And this has to do with how the government is run as a political entity, how? This thread really isn't the Penthouse Column equivalent for Libertarians.

Meow, pussycat.

Anyway, if you read that proposal as also outlawing earmarks... well, I rather suspect that would dramatically impact how the government is run as a "political entity" (whatever that means).

[ThinkerX]

Oh well...

1) Term limits...as in ONE term, no immediate relection for all offices, including that of President. Terms for represenatives to be four or five years, terms for senators to be eight or ten.

2) Maximum campaign donation from any source of one dollar. Maximum amount that can be spent on a campaign equal to the 'average income of the average US citizen'; except for President, then it would be maybe five times that. The idea is for it to be affordable for the ordinary citizen, without access to extraordinary resources to run for office with a reasonable chance of winning.

3) Total ban on the various SuperPacs and like attempts to buy elections.

4) Mandatory, moderated (publically funded) debates for all candidates. I see this as a sort of 'job interview' type deal.

5) Time to start dismantlingor combining various federal agencies - Homeland Security needs to be shut down (and probably have most of its senior staff prosecuted). ATF and DEA can be folded in with some other alphabet agency. And so on.

6) Health care - go with single payer (at least that is what my proposal is usually called) - you take a job that pays $10 an hour, then a dollar of that goes towards basic health package - you get injured or sick enough to need treatment, then this gets you the basic treatment, free of other charges - period. No job (spouse, student, ect) well thats what medi-whatever is for.

7) Total ban on going from government service to private industry in the same field. Automatic felony.

8) Of more immediate concern - major effort to 'rebuild America' along 'greener' lines. Might be interesting to make participating in this program mandatory for those who have been collecting unemployment for a year or more - they still get that money, they just have to work for it - go where sent, do what told or forfiet benefits.

[Jon Sprunk]

That's the worst idea.

This just means politicians become even more beholden to special interests, as they are the people who (for a little scratch) will guarantee them a lucrative career post-politics.

Well, I did mention no post-politics cushy jobs. And also that I had no idea how to implement it, only the belief that the vast sums of money injected into politics are ruining this country far faster than anything else.

[WillWork4NinjaPowers]

Mandatory drug tests and birth control for welfare recipients, and gay marriage legalized in all states, invitro illegal until at least one child in foster care has been adopted by a family, abortion legalized everywhere, death penalty for child molesters, legalization of pot, make it illegal to hand out religious pamphlets unless they have other "options" like evolution also listed, prisons should be vegetarian, grow their own food and if they don't grow it, then they don't eat; all prisons should be run on human waste, everyone should be given a windmill and solar panel, all cattle and chicken should be free range.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

And they call me crazy around here.

[WillWork4NinjaPowers]

And they call me crazy around here.

You're making me blush.

[OsRavan]

I wouldn't change anything structuraly. Sure some minor reforms like losing all the gun-control laws and making it illigal for any household not to own an assault rifle, making it legal to shoot lobbyists, and funneling money into space exploration.

But the US is clearly the best goverment system in the world, and arguably the greatest in the history of human civilization. You would have to have an awful lot of hubris to start messing with the underpinnings of THAT. Well, an awful lot of hubris or a god complex.

[lokisnow]

More federal power, less state power, heck, let's amend the silly amendment to say the opposite, all powers not explicitly given to states are reserved to the federal government.

End of Gerrymandering. Computers can do this better than humans can (with some reasonable checks on who is doing the programming to insure it's non partisan).

The HoR is proportional to representation, based on the smallest state population during the most recent census.

so one representative would be 568,158 people, and in order to get your second representative you need 1,136,316 people and so on and so forth.

I'd make it so that if you don't have at least two representatives you don't get two senators, so the 8 states with less than 1,136,316 people only get one senator. To get a third senator you have to have at least thirty members in the HoR (one senator for every ten reps), which would be four states. This preserves a reasonable level of equality within the senate and gives the bigger states a skosh of extra leverage they need considering they deal with 15 times the population of most of the states.

I'd give DC one HoR member and one senator, totally equal in every respect to state's members. DC residents lack of representation is an unacceptable hideous black mark against our country.

Puerto Rico given statehood and representation.

other territories can petition for statehood if they have a population equal or greater to the population of the smallest state.

Change congressional terms, HOR should be four years, elected one year before the presidential election. Senate should be ten years, 9-10 senators up for election every year (initial order chosen by lottery, current seats grandfathered or retired as needed)

I'd allow presidential appointments to staff positions still have Senate approval but they could not be filibustered, every presidential appointment to staff positions has to be given an up or down vote and majority rules, no 60 vote requirement.

I'd still allow filibusters on presidential appointments to heads of cabinets and the supreme court.

I'd require the filibuster to be like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, you have to keep talking and hold the floor and disrupt all other business. If you can't stay talking for weeks on end, then you don't get to filibuster.

I realize the filibuster is a senate rule not part of the structure of government, I think we need a constitutional amendment codifying some of those rules, along with such niceties as what a recess is, etc.

I'd require that the debt ceiling be tied to the budget/spending bills as it was in the past. if you want a tax cut or emergency funding for wars, or a prescription drug benefit, you have to automatically increase the debt ceiling by the amount your insane policies are going to cost the tax payer. No more playing chicken with nuking the world economy by racking up bills and then refusing to pay for them.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1. Repeal the Bill of Rights and abolish the Supreme Court's ability to strike down legislation. If you vote for idiots, it's your own damn fault, and the politicisation of the US judiciary is nuts.

2. Increase size of the House to 1000, and forcibly de-gerrymander.

3. Introduce preferential voting to encourage third parties.

4. Senate filibusters should require a physical filibuster.

5. DC becomes a state.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Re: FLoW

I am unsatisfied with full disclosure as the major component of reforming campaign reform because while transparency is desirable, by itself it does not address the unequal playing field that results from disparity in resources (for the minor parties), nor does it help limit the influence of groups with disproportionate amount of influence (on a donation dollar per group participant basis). Or do you have other components that will be implemented concurrently to improve the way that our government is formed today?

Nope. I just see most attempts to limit political debate as having unforeseen/undesirable consequences that are worse than the underlying problem. If I'm going to err, I'm going to err on the side of having too much political debate rather than too little.

[Guest Raidne]

I think we should set up an adaptation of the matriarchal tribal political structure, i.e. the men can run the military, and we'll take care of everything else.

[Lord of Oop North]

I would support that idea, but only if the women run the military, and by military, I mean the international foxy-boxing league that decides disputes over trade, territory, and honour.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I think we should set up an adaptation of the matriarchal tribal political structure, i.e. the men can run the military, and we'll take care of everything else.

Like, cleaning the toilets? Making sandwiches?

I think OSC had a series where that was the case. Then everything went to shit, the "peacetime" government services ended up collapsing, and all that was left was the men running things.

OSC is a weird guy.