Confusing Stability and Security

Welcome back. Been quite a while hasn't it? No need to worry, the NSA hasn't taken me down yet loyal readers.

Speaking of the NSA, that's something I wanted to talk about. It should come as no surprise to you all that I'm rather supportive of Edward Snowden and his efforts for a more transparent (and therefore hopefully much less powerful) government. After all, this is guns,beer, and FREEDOM. But instead of looking at the NSA or the government surveillance programs themselves, I think it's more important to look deeper. To look at our nature as human beings. I think this would give a far greater insight into why, especially as of late, we are having all these conflicts of interests between freedom and so called 'security'.

Now I say so called 'security' instead of regular security (thought there is a great overlap here) because in these instances the primary goal isn't actually being safe, but FEELING safe. That's one reason why the TSA spends so much time dealing with airports, but sea ports receive almost no attention. Not many people deal with commerce shipping, so they don't notice the gaping holes in our security there. But people fly thousands of miles every day, and so very overt changes are made.

So we can gather that REAL security isn't the issue. So what is then? The concept of STABILITY. The FEELING of being more secure makes you more likely to go about your daily business. And we know this is true. Humans are creatures of habit aren't we? We love to fall into patterns of predictability and normalcy. We want, generally speaking, to tend towards order. But the problem is is that freedom isn't orderly. It is inherently chaotic and destabilizing.

While I was between writing this, I saw a George Carlin about this very subject. And in it he points out exactly what I'm stating now; that most of these 'security measures' are designed to make people FEEL safe. And I can understand why. People are creatures of habit, and we form these habits because we feel secure in doing so. I mean, if we actively thought that there was a chance we'd die in some way going to get milk and cheese, we'd be a lot more reluctant to do so. It's self preservation. But it's all an illusion. We face death no matter where we are, or what we do. We can NEVER eliminate the risk.

Now if we really think about it, we know this. So we try to mitigate risk. But at a societal level this is much much harder, because it involves an incalculable number of variables because it deals with people. And people are, sadly, often irrational and unpredictable. So ultimately risk mitigation becomes a very personal factor. It's not something that can be done well at a national level.

So where am I going with this? Well the point I'm trying to get to is that because we cannot eliminate risk and because it's so difficult to mitigate at a national/societal level, we should therefore push on the side of freedom. Yes, it comes with more risk and potential for instability, but it allows people to better face their own personal risks in a way that suits them best. It allows them to succeed (or fail) as individuals, rather than as mass segments. ESPECIALLY when we see that the 'threats' we're all told to be so afraid of are unlikely at best. 

Trimming the Fat

Ok. Merry holidays, and happy feast of madness and all that jazz. Holidays are over, and it's a new year. It'd be timely to speak about certain current events, but I said I would finish the Manifesto before anything else and I'll be damned if I don't. So, to recap where we are, I've reformed both houses of Congress and the presidency. But now on to the nitty gritty of what departments we need to keep, and what ones we need to get rid of, as well as some executive powers that would be changed. Like I said in the beginning, this is a revolution; plenty of things are going to change.

First things first, we need to reduce the Cabinet. I know it's popular to say this or that department of cabinet isn't needed, and in some cases that's true. First and foremost, the Department of Homeland Security. They need to go. Next, the Department of Veteran Affairs. It's a important department, no question, but it should be merged with the Department of Defense (which means the DoD can stay). This will make it easier to keep track of information that needs to be shared between departments right now and increase efficiency, something the current VA isn't exactly good with. Health and Human services would also be merged with Housing and Urban development.

Ok, so that's about it for the cabinet that's being eliminated or merged. Now onto the downsizing. Justice will have several agencies removed, namely the DEA and ATF. Education will be downsized and focus more on promoting states to follow certain guide lines and areas of education rather than having a direct hand in the matter.

While we're at it, might as well specify what should be cut from the military. All overseas bases except Diego Garcia should be shut down and sold off as surplus. In fact, we should surplus off everything we don't use or have an interest in using. Great way to boost revenues. Active duty Army gets cut down to a lean 250,000 over 12 years, with 750,000 as active reserves. Air Force can get rid of the F-35 disaster and drop about 25% of their combat air craft total. The Navy would receive the fewest cuts, but still I'd chop off 3 whole carrier groups and put another into reserve status. The Marine Corps would be dropped to about 75,000 active duty with another 175,000 as active reserves.

These are the big sweeping cuts that should be made. Obviously there is a great deal more when one delves into the minutia of it all, and plenty more to cut from everything. But even just ONE of these changes would show serious interest in a better, leaner, more efficient government.

NOTE: I apologize for the lateness of this update, I've very busy and not the least bit burnt out on writing and creating. I've decided to take a different approach to the rest of the manifesto. In short, updates will now be a mix of whatever I feel like writing about again.

A Special Post on Our Rights

Tomorrow, January 19th 2013, is, for those in America (or abroad and concerned) that do not know, Gun Rights Appreciation Day. I wanted to finish up at least my ideas about reforming the executive branch before veering off course (again) but the current climate simply will not allow it.

I could spend this time talking about how we got to where we are, and why this struggle for gun rights is incredibly important (far more so than most know), but I won't. Instead I would ask that for those that support ALL rights, not just gun rights, contact your elected officials tomorrow. Email, phone call, letters, and if possible arranged meetings, should all be employed to remind the people that we put into office that they ARE accountable for their actions. Their careers depend on us.

I'm going to admit I've been burned out as of late. I'm tired. For those readers who aren't members themselves, in addition to running the greatest website ever made, I'm also an admin at a political message board. And I'm simply tired of dealing with the vast majority of fools that infest every facet of the internet. People who willfully and gleefully ignore facts, reason, and logic. They prefer instead to argue based solely on emotion and feelings, which as anyone who's read GBF before knows, I am firmly against.

So bearing this in mind, that I am tired, that this constant fight weights heavily on me, so much that it makes even my fingers seem burdened by lead, I say we must not give in to the temptation to cloister ourselves and simply attempt to weather this storm as we have in the past. We MUST fight on. The war for our rights, ALL our rights as Americans and as human beings, will not be won by the sunshine soldier and the summer patriot. And more than anything else, this is a fight we must win.

That is all for now. Be sure to contact your reps. I know I will.

And then there were two...

Alright, with a nice healthy break after the legislative changes, it's time to get on to the executive.

The office of president is, or at least WAS, supposed to be an office of limited power domestically. But two presidents, Lincoln and FDR, fundamentally changed that. It couldn't be helped I suppose. Both came about in times of extraordinary crisis and turmoil. And it's typical of people to want to rally behind a strong decisive and autocratic leader during those times. I could speculate that it goes back to our tribal days, but since I'm not an anthropologist, I can't say with any certainty. What I can say though is that power, once given, is very difficult to take away.

Today we have a presidency that is often termed as the most powerful position in the world. There is a great degree of truth in that. Our president has, theoretically, the power to destroy the entire planet. But on a much more practical level the president, and the offices under the president, have the power to do all of the following things;

Kill American citizens without trial
Kill non-American citizens by remote control
Indefinitely detain both American citizens and non-Americans without trial or appeal
Enter your home without warrant
Trace/tap your phones without warrant
Frame you for crimes without fear of punishment

There are far more exercises of power that the president has, but these are some of the most egregious violations. Congress isn't absolved from blame in these instance either, as many times Congress has abdicated its own power to that of the executive. Declarations of war and the non-defensive use of military force is a power reserved for Congress alone and yet so often do presidents ignore the Congress that it doesn't even illicit a response.

Bearing all this in mind, what I propose doesn't seem that radical. In fact it may be rather benign after the shock of such an idea wears off. But I propose it none the less; Instead of one president we should have two. Equal in nearly all power (with one exception I'll get to in a minute). The office of vice president was supposed to fill this slot by being the runner up in the presidential elections. Of course it then changed to allow the president to choose his or her own running mate. The office of vice president was supposed to be a check on presidential power, to force the executive to cooperate on issues. So in that sense I am simply reviving an old idea.

Of course those who are familiar with Roman history know this sounds exactly like the consulships of the republican era, and to a great degree that's intended. No one man should have the degree of power our current presidents do. By limiting both the powers of office and the ability of one man to abuse those powers with a equal who is of different political insight, we can therefore reduce the power of the president and return it where it belongs; to the legislature.

There are practical considerations for this change as well. For example, with twice as many chief executives, twice as many tasks can be accomplished in same amount of time. Half as likely for an assassination to be devastating to our government.

Now, for practical purposes, there would not be two presidents elected at the same time. Our presidential elections would take place every 4 years like normal, but each person elected would serve a term of 8 years. 4 years as the junior, and 4 years as the senior.

Now the next limitation shouldn't be a surprise, given that I am a huge opponent of the two party system. The candidates submitted each year CANNOT be from the same party as the senior president. This will keep one party from being dominant in the executive branch.  And because it will obviously require at least two candidates (who cannot be from the same party), this will encourage the growth of other parties, or the destruction of the party system for executives completely. Already Representatives from the HoR would not likely make it to the office of president, as they were elected by lottery. Senators would only be eligible if they had not served their allotment of terms. This increases the pool of individuals to pick a president from, allowing for greater democracy.

"But what of the Cabinet?" Well, aside from the offices I'd eliminate (more on those later), the cabinet would be nominated by the senior president, who will have had experience prior with members of the previous senior cabinet. This will give the new senior president good insight into both compromise and cooperation, and help them determine the characteristics that are best suited to cabinet members. The people would, hopefully, choose a president that can accomplish the goals the public wants while at the same time working and compromising with the current establishment. In short it makes change slower and more deliberate, allowing reason, evidence, and logic to cool emotions, and hopefully force the voting masses to be more deliberate and thoughtful when they cast their ballot.

As far as powers of office being divided, the presidents could block each other via vetos, though only one signature would be required for a law to pass. Other nominations for non-cabinet positions would be handled the same way, where both presidents would select candidates and the legislature would confirm or deny them as they do now. The use of military force beyond our own national borders, would require explicit orders from both presidents in order to be constitutionally valid. Presidents would not be able to testify against one another in impeachment cases, save for cases of treason.

So to wrap this up, we would have two presidents. Every 4 years we would elect 1 for a single 8 year term. After the 1st 4 years, the sitting president would move from junior to senior. With the exception of cabinet appointments, both presidents would be equal in power and responsibility. Neither of the presidents would be of the same party affiliation. Beyond this, and the requirement for natural born citizenship, there would be no other qualification to run for the office.

Senatorial Selection

This is part 2 in the massive multi-part update that holds in it the secrets to keeping and revitalizing our great republic. Last time, for those that did not read, I discussed the House of Representatives and how they should be chosen by a lottery. This update we will be focusing on the Senate.

Now if you're anything like me, and chances are you're not, you'd be a big fan of ancient Roman history. Watching the decline of the Roman Republic I can see a lot of those elements within our own American Republic. And the greatest embodiment of republican virtue was, and should be, the Senate. Now unlike the Romans we do not determine senators based on birth or social class. We do it by democracy. And in this, unlike the House, I have no problem. The Senate shouldn't necessarily be a representation of the people but be a body to represent the whole of the nation. The people and the nation itself do not always share the same interests, which is part of the reason for distinction between the two houses. The Senate is also supposed to be a more enlightened, impassioned body of legislature, where cooler heads reside.

The problem with the Senate arises however, where much like the House, it has essentially become a social class of its own. This promotes two equally bad qualities in senators; legislative stagnation where senators are relatively the same across the board and seek only to maintain their opulent lifestyles, and to combat this, it increases radicalism in new candidates seeking to differentiate themselves from the incumbent they run against. Simply put, power stays in too few hands for too long. This is never good for a modern government. But to combat this I do not propose a radical new system of democracy. No, what I propose is much more mundane and established; term limits.

The basic system of senatorial elections is, for the most part fine. But with term limits it forces new people into the system, which decrease incentives for senators to promote a self sustaining power system. After all, Senators are going to be back in the civilian system after a period of time, it's unlikely they're going to support a opulent lifestyle that they won't get to enjoy for very long.

Keep in mind, I think a large portion of senators aren't the problem. The problem is the party system. It subverts actual change to the APPEARANCE of TRYING to change or accomplish something. Senators are forced to rely on the party to continue to be reelected, and as such they aren't going to try and dynamically change things if the situation calls for it. Which means we as a nation stagnate. Ensuring that senators only have 2 possible reelections to worry about, weakens party controls but it frees senators up to worry about things other than themselves. 

But what should the limits be? Well, to be it's fairly simple. No more than 3 terms of 6 years apiece (grand total of 18 years) with no more than 2 consecutive terms to be served. In simple terms it means that any senator cannot serve more than 18 years in a life time with at least 6 years of a break somewhere between terms.

Now, this won't have the drastic change on the Senate that the lottery would have on the House, and in truth it's not supposed to. The goal is to keep the Senate from becoming a social club for its members and increase the pool of people who have experience in government. The only radical change I'm suggesting is that the vice president, who presides over the Senate, would be a new position; one that is not tied to political parties. The sole duty would be leading the Senate and casting tie votes. This ties in with my suggestions for Presidential changes but I won't give those away until the next update.

To me the Senate should be the primary means of governing our nation. Not the House, even though it is a more direct representative of the people, nor the President, because that is an office more for representing our nation to other nations. Which means we need to promote the best and brightest to the senatorial ranks and we need to keep forcing the best and brightest into it. Let someone younger, hungrier, more driven, into the ranks.

2-4-23-38-46

The numbers in the title, for those unaware, were the winning numbers to the largest lottery jackpot in American history, a grand total of over $650,000,000. That's a lot of money, even after taxes. But what if there were a lottery that gave away something even grander? And what if they gave it away every few years. The same immense prize every 4 years or so? Sounds pretty crazy to say the least right? And I haven't even mentioned what the prize is. Because what could be a bigger prize than $650,000,000? A billion? A trillion? No, the prize I'm talking about isn't money at all. It's power.

This being an election year, we as Americans are being inundated with ads from political parties and PACs and super PACs and telemarketers and special interests and every other manner of cog in the vast political machine that we have in this country. And maybe it's just me, but it seems we're getting more....disenchanted with it. Now it might be easy to understand. Democracy is a relatively new thing for most of the world but it's here as our nation itself. We've always been a form of democracy. Or at least styled ourselves as such. I'll get to why I say 'styled' in a moment but let's focus on the disenchantment of elections in America. I think we're becoming more disenchanted with elections because we're losing our faith in the ability of elections to really change things. More and more national politics is taking on the role of being one side with two slight variations. I've talked before about elections based on two choices with very littler variation before and this is in the same vein. Because we are so entrenched in a 'two party' system, the parties themselves have been drawing closer and closer together. Sure they might differ on an issue here or there, but by an large they're the same group. Which means that significant change cannot occur. It's no longer built into the system. And if you cannot change things in an election, well how is that really a democracy?

We call ourselves a democracy because we are under the impression that each election brings about choices. But when the choices you're given have the same net effect, it isn't choice at all. Instead democracy should be about the ability of the governed to affect the government. And the easiest way to do that is to get elected. And we all know that the chances of any particular person trying to enter the system against an incumbent are essentially nonexistent. So then how are we to change things? Well I'm glad you asked, because that's the grand prize I was talking about. The Lottery.

The House of Representatives is supposed to be the legislative body that represents the whole of the people. To me it would seem best if the representatives came from that body. And the best way to get new people into the House is a lottery for office. The rules would be simple. You have to be a citizen of at least 5 years in your district, and you have to have filed a tax return in the year prior to the election. We could still even include direct democracy in the process by selecting four eligible candidates from each district, and having them campaign against each other 3-5 months prior to election day. Now in my version of things the term of a House Representative is extended from 2 years to 4 years, so they have a bit more time to settle into things and get used to working as a public servant, but otherwise the position would be the same as today.

What advantages does my system have? Well first and foremost it breaks the power of special interests in elections. No smart business would invest very much into someone who they don't have time to build a relationship with, whose position itself is based primarily on luck, and who won't be holding the position for more than one term. It also would remove the pressure of reelection from the minds of House Representatives. If their position is determined based on luck, then they have no incentive to worry about maintaining it. Instead they can focus their efforts on getting things done. Additionally, because the political makeup of the House would be changing so massively (in theory) every 4 years, you wouldn't have safe votes. And House Representatives would actually have to compromise and cooperate with one another to get something accomplished. Possibly even with people the disagree with on a number of issues. A shocking concept to be sure. Plus there is the added advantage of people who best represent the demographic of the district would most likely be selected in the lottery drawing. Now a good number of districts would need their lines redrawn, because years of gerrymandering has made them far from logical or practical, but the lottery would do away with that too. No point in redistricting to maintain power for one party when the lottery leaves it all up to luck and chance.

Now some might say that this is a pretty severe and arbitrary change. Well, yes it is severe, but its hardly arbitrary. We already use a similar concept for jury duty. And we have a similar concept again for the selective service. We often view the draft as a duty to the state, but why should we not view public office in the same way? Something that some are chosen for, at random, for a term to help serve their country. Same concept. And because of this, it is my hope and belief that we would affect actual cultural change in our country. We would be far more critical of politicians and the political process, because after all, we might have to be a part of it in a couple years. It would, hopefully, drive us to be better citizens in general.

There are of course disadvantages to this system as well. The largest being the possibility of a bad representative being chosen at random. That's certainly cause for concern, don't get me wrong, but we've survived avowed racists, the technologically challenged, the religiously guided, the war mongerers, and a whole slew of other undesirables as representatives, and they had the benefit of being able to be elected again and again and again. With the lottery the longest any district would have to suffer under a bad representative is 1 term. Still a flaw yes, but a mitigated one.

There is also the flaw that people entering office would be inexperienced in a great number of things. This sounds bad, but it's again not as much a problem as one might think. Public officials of the olden days were expected to be the best of us, the most fit to lead based on their merits and their intelligence. But the world was, and this is a very simplistic statement, a smaller place. 200 years ago House Representatives did not need to know the benefits and problems associated with nuclear waste or the reclamation of such waste. They didn't need to concern themselves with 300,000,000 people, or terrorists from across the Atlantic, or copyright protection on the internet. It was easier to be informed and experienced because there was less to be concerned about. We don't have that luxury today and it's a problem that we expect our elected officials to be THAT much smarter than we are. A little smarter, yes. But the information of the world is far too vast for any one government body to be even passingly familiar with all of it. That's where special interests come in. I'll discuss them more later though, as I'm certain that this is the limit of what most of my readers want to hear.

So with that thought in mind, here are the cliff notes. We should embrace the idea of a real democracy where the governed stand a legitimate chance of changing the system and being able to participate in it. To that end the House of Representatives should be determined by a lottery for candidates for each district, so that they may better represent the district as a whole, and to help foster a change in the way we as Americans view the political system. Additionally it would improve our democracy because it would put greater power in the hands of the people.

In my next update I'll move on to the OTHER body in our national legislature; the Senate.