Propose political policies

[Scheavo]

1) No rider to bills. Bills should be about one specific issue of legislation, and nothing more. I think there is a valid point that bills are too long, it makes it easier to hide a tiny little bullshit exception and loophole. By making laws more specific, it makes it easier to know what the law intends to do, what it does, and so that stuff no one likes cant' be added to a bill to make it pass. I'd also say we should think about an amendment to allow Line Item Veto's by the President, but I"m on the fence about that one.

2) Campaign finance reform. The amount of money in our election process is disgusting, it's obviously corrupting, and it has made the election a constant pressure, a constant concern. At the very minimum, we need to drastically reduce individual contributions, and ban corporate contributions (corporations are not people, as obvious as that should be), but there are some models that use basically tax credits to finance elections. That means each and every person can contribute, but only up to a certain amount, and is essentially publicly financed. Not only would this help

3) Basically, end lobbying as we know it. No institutional lobbying, no professional lobbyists. All lobbying serves to do now is corrupt the system, and make legislation corrupt and more interested in a couple of persons private interests over the general public good. Social media is more than capable of bringing important issues to the national stage, regardless of how "big" the issue is. There's also a non-corrupt way to inform legislators of the consequences of their proposals.

[jsem]

Allow line item veto's? Really? I mean, there's a case to made - like the NDAA provision could've been removed while passing the rest of the bill - but it creates a precedent that is HORRIBLE. Bush did line-item vetos tons of times... terrible.

About bills.. well, they get so long you just have to pass it to find out what's in it don't you.. heh.

[antigoon]

Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.

[rumborak]

Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act.

BTW, given the recent JP Morgan debacle, Obama would be well advised to drag this into the election discussions. Clearly the leeway banks have for speculation is way too much.

rumborak

[rumborak]

Make it possible for parties to form coalitions. That way people could vote for smaller parties without hurting their corner of ideology.

rumborak

[King Postwhore]

1) No rider to bills. Bills should be about one specific issue of legislation, and nothing more. I think there is a valid point that bills are too long, it makes it easier to hide a tiny little bullshit exception and loophole. By making laws more specific, it makes it easier to know what the law intends to do, what it does, and so that stuff no one likes cant' be added to a bill to make it pass. I'd also say we should think about an amendment to allow Line Item Veto's by the President, but I"m on the fence about that one.

2) Campaign finance reform. The amount of money in our election process is disgusting, it's obviously corrupting, and it has made the election a constant pressure, a constant concern. At the very minimum, we need to drastically reduce individual contributions, and ban corporate contributions (corporations are not people, as obvious as that should be), but there are some models that use basically tax credits to finance elections. That means each and every person can contribute, but only up to a certain amount, and is essentially publicly financed. Not only would this help

3) Basically, end lobbying as we know it. No institutional lobbying, no professional lobbyists. All lobbying serves to do now is corrupt the system, and make legislation corrupt and more interested in a couple of persons private interests over the general public good. Social media is more than capable of bringing important issues to the national stage, regardless of how "big" the issue is. There's also a non-corrupt way to inform legislators of the consequences of their proposals.

I like all three of these a lot.

[ReaPsTA]

1) No rider to bills. Bills should be about one specific issue of legislation, and nothing more. I think there is a valid point that bills are too long, it makes it easier to hide a tiny little bullshit exception and loophole. By making laws more specific, it makes it easier to know what the law intends to do, what it does, and so that stuff no one likes cant' be added to a bill to make it pass. I'd also say we should think about an amendment to allow Line Item Veto's by the President, but I"m on the fence about that one.

2) Campaign finance reform. The amount of money in our election process is disgusting, it's obviously corrupting, and it has made the election a constant pressure, a constant concern. At the very minimum, we need to drastically reduce individual contributions, and ban corporate contributions (corporations are not people, as obvious as that should be), but there are some models that use basically tax credits to finance elections. That means each and every person can contribute, but only up to a certain amount, and is essentially publicly financed. Not only would this help

3) Basically, end lobbying as we know it. No institutional lobbying, no professional lobbyists. All lobbying serves to do now is corrupt the system, and make legislation corrupt and more interested in a couple of persons private interests over the general public good. Social media is more than capable of bringing important issues to the national stage, regardless of how "big" the issue is. There's also a non-corrupt way to inform legislators of the consequences of their proposals.

Yes on #1.

Campaign finance reform is easy.
 - Put a hard cap on the total amount of money individuals can donate to political causes in a single year.  How you want to allocate that money is up to you.
 - ONLY individuals can donate money to political campaigns.  No businesses or PACS or whatever else.
 - Depending on how much money you want in the system, adjust the hard individual limit to taste.
 - Make it illegal for any organization to even ask about the political contributions of its members, to prevent businesses or unions from "asking" their employees to support who they want politically.

There is no step five.  You can get rid of the byzantine network of campaign finance laws because they're no longer necessary.  You don't have to worry about all the problems inherent to public financing of political campaigns.  Campaign financing can work in the market way it's supposed to, without becoming so out of control that it becomes inherently corrupt.  What's hard is making this happen.  You really think politicians will vote to give themselves less money?  In 1994, Republican congressional candidates ran on the promise of creating term limits for the House and Senate.  How did that turn out?

The problem with #3 is you can't get rid of lobbying completely.  If you want to pass a law regulating oil drilling, it's virtually impossible to not ask oil companies for their opinion, since literally no one else on the planet is more qualified to have one.

If you remove the ability of corporations to inject money on politics, wouldn't the influence of lobbyists on government be pretty much nulified anyway?  Or maybe I'm understanding this wrong. 

[Scheavo]

1) No rider to bills. Bills should be about one specific issue of legislation, and nothing more. I think there is a valid point that bills are too long, it makes it easier to hide a tiny little bullshit exception and loophole. By making laws more specific, it makes it easier to know what the law intends to do, what it does, and so that stuff no one likes cant' be added to a bill to make it pass. I'd also say we should think about an amendment to allow Line Item Veto's by the President, but I"m on the fence about that one.

2) Campaign finance reform. The amount of money in our election process is disgusting, it's obviously corrupting, and it has made the election a constant pressure, a constant concern. At the very minimum, we need to drastically reduce individual contributions, and ban corporate contributions (corporations are not people, as obvious as that should be), but there are some models that use basically tax credits to finance elections. That means each and every person can contribute, but only up to a certain amount, and is essentially publicly financed. Not only would this help

3) Basically, end lobbying as we know it. No institutional lobbying, no professional lobbyists. All lobbying serves to do now is corrupt the system, and make legislation corrupt and more interested in a couple of persons private interests over the general public good. Social media is more than capable of bringing important issues to the national stage, regardless of how "big" the issue is. There's also a non-corrupt way to inform legislators of the consequences of their proposals.

Yes on #1.

Campaign finance reform is easy.
 - Put a hard cap on the total amount of money individuals can donate to political causes in a single year.  How you want to allocate that money is up to you.
 - ONLY individuals can donate money to political campaigns.  No businesses or PACS or whatever else.
 - Depending on how much money you want in the system, adjust the hard individual limit to taste.
 - Make it illegal for any organization to even ask about the political contributions of its members, to prevent businesses or unions from "asking" their employees to support who they want politically.

I'm with you to up. Like I said, there's so many ways to reform campaign financing, that it's really just a matter of having a discussion, and debating numerous options.

The problem with #3 is you can't get rid of lobbying completely.  If you want to pass a law regulating oil drilling, it's virtually impossible to not ask oil companies for their opinion, since literally no one else on the planet is more qualified to have one.

Seems to me there ought to be a way to get this information without getting it from a biased source. We could hire and pay experts, meaning the money goes the other way. There's more than enough economists and experts out there not getting paid directly by the oil company. As it is, the oil companies are going to pretty much lie and tell untruths in order to get the most advantageous policies they can. It'd be like asking criminals and inmates how they think their Prison should be made, prisoners know more about prison than anybody, right?

If you remove the ability of corporations to inject money on politics, wouldn't the influence of lobbyists on government be pretty much nullified anyway?  Or maybe I'm understanding this wrong.

It would remove the openness to which they are able to inject money into politics. Plus, a lot of it has to do with the one-sided nature of the discussions. When all you talk to is oil company lobbyists, you're goin to get a different worldview than you would if you got unbiased, more accurate and factual information.

Allow line item veto's? Really? I mean, there's a case to made - like the NDAA provision could've been removed while passing the rest of the bill - but it creates a precedent that is HORRIBLE. Bush did line-item vetos tons of times... terrible.

Like I said, I'm one the fence. Governors have the ability in several states, and it doesn't go badly in those states. Congress could still overrule those vetoes, and a President would still be cautious about using it too much.

[Scheavo]

Make it possible for parties to form coalitions. That way people could vote for smaller parties without hurting their corner of ideology.

rumborak

Not sure that isn't possible now. For instance, I know the Democratic caucus technically has a couple of Independents in it.

[rumborak]

Yeah, but it's not a coalition in the real sense, where people vote for separate parties, and those parties get together to achieve the majority.

rumborak

[Scheavo]

Yeah, but it's not a coalition in the real sense, where people vote for separate parties, and those parties get together to achieve the majority.

rumborak

I just mean that the problem isn't that parties cant form coalitions, it's that two parties have set the system up to so heavily favor them that coalitions don't form.