When he takes the oath of office, President Obama must deal with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the unfavorable opinion of other countries (including our allies), an unfair federal tax policy, a nearly bankrupt US economy, the decrease in the value of employees’ and retiree’s 401Ks and IRAs, the high cost of credit, low industrial productivity, high unemployment, a deteriorating infrastructure, global warming, broken health care and educational systems, as well as religious, racial and sexual bigots who cover their prejudices with politically correct terminology.
And Obama must do everything in the first 100 days of his administration. Or at least, that’s what the Washington magi say. Undoing eight years of Bush-Cheney cupidity, cruelty, and incompetence in 100 days is like reconstructing the World Trade Center in one year. Yet we persist in this destructive fantasy, because, so we are told, FDR created the model that subsequent Presidents had to follow. See Professor Julian Zelizer’s article at www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/27/zelizer/hundred.
However, I believe our hired help have promoted this 100-day limit so that Senators and Representatives can stop legislating and return to the activity that concerns them more than any single issue. Namely, fund raising for their next election campaign. As I am writing this, Google lists about 1,060,600 listings to answer the question, "How much time does a Congressman spend to raise campaign funds?" The answer: Too much!
Time is money, so to see how much money your Senator and Representative took from corporations, lobbyists, and individuals in the top 1% of wealthy Americans, go to http://www.opensecrets.org/.
Not to express it ironically, the corporate underwriters of our democratic process gave generously to the election campaign funds of both Democratic and Republican Party candidates. The underwriters include Chrysler, which donated $585,159; General Motors, $692,765; AIG, $653, 860; Ford, $724,116; Wachovia, $828,006; ExxonMobil, $1,032,334; Bank of America, $2,046,174; Citigroup, $3,016,303—a total of $9,578,717.
These contributions tell our elected representatives that American corporations and their executives are above the market system. Their profits must not be taxed, and their losses must be reimbursed by our tax money. Billions of dollars of our tax money.
That message will be used in the next presidential, senatorial, and congressional elections, if our laws are not rewritten. However, that is impossible. The Supreme Court ruled that campaign contributions are free speech protected by the First Amendment. So it will take a Constitutional Amendment to keep lobbyists and corporations from unduly influencing national elections.
This amendment must contain wording that eliminates, without loopholes, all private and corporate campaign contributions to those seeking elected office in the US government. Candidates will, instead, be limited to accepting campaign funds, to be determined by legislation, from the US government, for both primary and final elections. All radio and television networks and stations, regardless of size must give, free of charge, a specified amount of prime time, also to be determined by legislation, to the candidates.
The primary campaign season must be limited to three months, during which, say, six regional primaries will be held. Primary elections to nominate party candidates for Congressional seats and for President and Vice President will be held on the same day for those states in a single region. For example:
Region 1: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.
Region 2 : West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina.
Region 3: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota.
Region 4: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas.
Region 5: Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho.
Region 6: Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii.
After the primary elections choose the final candidates, the election season must be limited to eight weeks, during which there will be four debates between the Presidential candidates.* Candidates for the Congress and the Senate will debate according to rules developed by each state.
What about commercial stations’ losing money during this process? These stations are licensed to use the airways, which are the property of the citizens of the United States, and giving broadcast time to candidates every few years will not be an unreasonable burden.
The amendment will not prevent citizens from expressing their political opinions, but it will eliminate the enormous advantage that corporations, PACs, and wealthy individuals have to spend their money to spread their influence over the debate. Bumper stickers will blossom on our cars. Campaign buttons and signs will dot our lapels, lawns and billboards. Op-ed pieces in print and broadcast media will continue; Russ Limbaugh, Frank Rich, David Brooks and Mark Shields will continue their commentary.
The amendment must also eliminate the Electoral College, even though it was advocated in The Federalist Papers, Number 68, by Alexander Hamilton. He believed that a small body of men, elected by their fellow citizens, was in a better position to deliberate over the qualifications and personal attributes of candidates for the Presidency. These electors would be more likely than the general mass of voters to possess the necessary information to make such judgements. And since they would meet in their own state to cast their votes, they would be less likely to be subject to "any sinister bias" or "enter in sinister combinations."
Hamilton lived in a time when information traveled by horseback and stagecoach, so farmers in Georgia and merchants in Massachusetts seldom knew what the other was thinking. This is no longer true. In our time, cable television’s 24-hour news cycle, cell phones and e-mails provide us with an unending flow of what people everywhere, at home and abroad, think and do. Despite this ceaseless flood of information (or as a result of it) we are all biased, and it is easy for all of us to enter in combinations, sinister or otherwise, with people in other nations, as well as other states. Members of the Electoral College in the twenty-first century are biased and part and parcel of the combinations that we call the Republican and Democratic Parties.
More important than Hamilton’s concerns about biases and combinations is the power of the individual vote. The Electoral College creates a favored-voter status to citizens in several states. For example, Wyoming has a population of 515,004, and has 3 electors. Each Wyoming elector represents 171,668 citizens. However, New York has a population of 19,306,183 and 31 electors. Each New York elector represents 662,781 citizens. This inequity can be solved by giving each vote for a Presidential candidate equal value, by electing the President by popular vote.
Also, the vote count from the Electoral College often exaggerates the margin of victory in the popular vote. In the recent election Obama received a popular-vote margin of victory of slightly less than 7%. If the electors were to vote today, they would give Obama a margin of 37%.
I hope that Obama takes the popular vote more seriously than the electoral vote. Seven per cent of the voting population can change their views quickly, and and Obama will need all the suport he can get to solve the problems mentioned in the first paragraph. But he won’t be able to do all those things in 100 days. The American electorate must be patient. And they must demand that their elected representatives give up their fund raising and ideological postures and get to work.
______________________________
*My proposal for the format of the Presidential debates is found in my blog October 11, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Proposition 8
California voters approved Proposition 8, which changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California, and provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
According to several newspapers and television news teams, evangelical Christian denominations, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the Roman Catholic Church spent money on air and print media advertisements to encourage voters to approve the ballot initiative.
One of the arguments to approve the proposition was the idea that all churches, regardless of their beliefs, would be forced to marry gay and lesbian couples. That is a lie.
Ever since the California Supreme Court approved gay and lesbian marriage, not one clergyman has protested that he was forced to marry a couple against his will and beliefs. Nor have any Roman Catholic priests been forced to marry gay, Jewish, Protestant, or atheist couples. A church, with or without Proposition 8, may keep anyone from holding a wedding ceremony on its premises. It may keep its clergy from holding the ceremony anywhere.
But here is core of the controversy. The state’s interest in a couple seeking a marriage license—and it is a secular interest—is limited to their health and ages. Thus we have in most states the requirement of proof that the participants have reached the age of consent or their parents’ consent. And thus we have blood tests that both participants must undergo to show they have no venereal diseases. However, no state has a legal interest in the religious beliefs of the couple applying for a marriage license. Nor in their sexual orientation.
And consistent with the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, no religious organization has the right to determine whom the government may approve for a marriage license. They may practice their own beliefs as long as their practices do not infringe on the rights of their fellow citizens. The Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and many evangelical Christians denominations spent money to influence a political issue, thus overstepping their role in our secular state and breaking the rules of conduct of not-for-profit charitable institutions.
Proposition 8 infringes on the interests of the State of California to determine its own secular interest in the issuance of marriage licenses. Its presence on the ballot is due to the political organizing and fund-raising of religious organizations who want to see their beliefs become the standard for state government. That is a frightening prospect.
Our secular state must be protected, and Proposition 8 must be repealed, nullified, cancelled. By any legal means necessary.
According to several newspapers and television news teams, evangelical Christian denominations, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the Roman Catholic Church spent money on air and print media advertisements to encourage voters to approve the ballot initiative.
One of the arguments to approve the proposition was the idea that all churches, regardless of their beliefs, would be forced to marry gay and lesbian couples. That is a lie.
Ever since the California Supreme Court approved gay and lesbian marriage, not one clergyman has protested that he was forced to marry a couple against his will and beliefs. Nor have any Roman Catholic priests been forced to marry gay, Jewish, Protestant, or atheist couples. A church, with or without Proposition 8, may keep anyone from holding a wedding ceremony on its premises. It may keep its clergy from holding the ceremony anywhere.
But here is core of the controversy. The state’s interest in a couple seeking a marriage license—and it is a secular interest—is limited to their health and ages. Thus we have in most states the requirement of proof that the participants have reached the age of consent or their parents’ consent. And thus we have blood tests that both participants must undergo to show they have no venereal diseases. However, no state has a legal interest in the religious beliefs of the couple applying for a marriage license. Nor in their sexual orientation.
And consistent with the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, no religious organization has the right to determine whom the government may approve for a marriage license. They may practice their own beliefs as long as their practices do not infringe on the rights of their fellow citizens. The Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and many evangelical Christians denominations spent money to influence a political issue, thus overstepping their role in our secular state and breaking the rules of conduct of not-for-profit charitable institutions.
Proposition 8 infringes on the interests of the State of California to determine its own secular interest in the issuance of marriage licenses. Its presence on the ballot is due to the political organizing and fund-raising of religious organizations who want to see their beliefs become the standard for state government. That is a frightening prospect.
Our secular state must be protected, and Proposition 8 must be repealed, nullified, cancelled. By any legal means necessary.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
On Accountability and Bailouts
During George W. Bush’s freebooting capitalist days, he was a flop. As an oil man, and then as the owner of an NFL franchise, he had to be bailed out by his father and friends of the Bush family. As President, he was responsible for no-bid government contracts going to cronies of various neo-con officeholders. He was responsible for the lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He was responsible for the torture of prisoners of war. He was irresponsible when, with the aid of signing statements, he subverted the intention of almost every legislative act that he signed. George W. Bush did not have to pay for his mistakes as a capitalist. Worse, he probably will never be held accountable for anything he has done as President of the United States.
Now come the presidents of the Big 3 automakers (a stupid nickname for companies whose management has run them into near bankruptcy), asking Uncle Sam to bail them out of their difficulties. They spent the last decade as freebooting capitalists. Their corporations paid almost no taxes as they flooded their markets with gas guzzling SUVs and handed out huge bonuses to their executives and kept their workers’ wages as low as possible. Like George Bush, these executives have never been held accountable for what they have done, and they want the U.S. Government to pay for their mistakes.
The U.S. Government—that is, we U.S. taxpayers—have already committed ourselves to a $700 billion bailout of the financial services and housing industries. It is likely that the Congress and the President will give the auto executives what they want.
Members of Congress will vote for whatever the executives ask for, because almost all members of Congress are obligated to those corporate execs and their PACs for all the money they have contributed, loophole by loophole, to election campaign funds. In Congress, accountability is not to the voters, but to the contributors who are now begging relief from the free-market woes that they brought upon themselves. They want to feed from the public trough that is underwritten by Joe the Plumber, Max the Machinist, Adele the Administrative Assistant, and Nancy the Nurse.
I am ready to support the bailout, but the executives, stock holders, and boards of directors of these companies must be held accountable. Any legislation authorizing the funding of this bailout must insure detailed government oversight of the money spent by the companies. The companies must accept the following rules.
When the U.S. makes the loan to the automakers, none of the money may be spent on directors’ fees, executive compensation and bonuses, or dividends to stockholders. Nor on executive stock options, or any other perquisite that comes with their position. For example, they must give up their chauffeur-driven limousines, their executive dining rooms, their company-owned vacation resorts. Any use of corporate transportation will be limited to business travel, and must be recorded and justified. No family members may use any form of company-owned transportation.
All presidents, chief executive officers, chief operating officers, vice presidents, chief financial officers, comptrollers, chairmen and members of the various executive committees, financial committees, and boards of directors must accept a fifty-per-cent pay cut and forego all bonuses and salary increases for the next five years. All the officers covered by this legislation may not retire or leave the company for five years.
The companies must immediately undertake the development of automobiles that will have a minimum gas mileage of thirty miles per hour in the city and forty miles per hour on the highway. The cars must be available by the fall of 2010. By the fall of 2015, the companies will have to produce autos that use alternative energy, such as ethanol, electricity or water.
If they want our money, they will have to perform. If they fail to meet any deadlines, the executives each must pay a fine of no less than $3 million. If auditors find that they are misusing the money for personal gain, they will be charged with embezzlement.
How do we make Congress accountable to voters instead of to donors to election campaign funds? That’s the subject of my next blog entry.
Now come the presidents of the Big 3 automakers (a stupid nickname for companies whose management has run them into near bankruptcy), asking Uncle Sam to bail them out of their difficulties. They spent the last decade as freebooting capitalists. Their corporations paid almost no taxes as they flooded their markets with gas guzzling SUVs and handed out huge bonuses to their executives and kept their workers’ wages as low as possible. Like George Bush, these executives have never been held accountable for what they have done, and they want the U.S. Government to pay for their mistakes.
The U.S. Government—that is, we U.S. taxpayers—have already committed ourselves to a $700 billion bailout of the financial services and housing industries. It is likely that the Congress and the President will give the auto executives what they want.
Members of Congress will vote for whatever the executives ask for, because almost all members of Congress are obligated to those corporate execs and their PACs for all the money they have contributed, loophole by loophole, to election campaign funds. In Congress, accountability is not to the voters, but to the contributors who are now begging relief from the free-market woes that they brought upon themselves. They want to feed from the public trough that is underwritten by Joe the Plumber, Max the Machinist, Adele the Administrative Assistant, and Nancy the Nurse.
I am ready to support the bailout, but the executives, stock holders, and boards of directors of these companies must be held accountable. Any legislation authorizing the funding of this bailout must insure detailed government oversight of the money spent by the companies. The companies must accept the following rules.
When the U.S. makes the loan to the automakers, none of the money may be spent on directors’ fees, executive compensation and bonuses, or dividends to stockholders. Nor on executive stock options, or any other perquisite that comes with their position. For example, they must give up their chauffeur-driven limousines, their executive dining rooms, their company-owned vacation resorts. Any use of corporate transportation will be limited to business travel, and must be recorded and justified. No family members may use any form of company-owned transportation.
All presidents, chief executive officers, chief operating officers, vice presidents, chief financial officers, comptrollers, chairmen and members of the various executive committees, financial committees, and boards of directors must accept a fifty-per-cent pay cut and forego all bonuses and salary increases for the next five years. All the officers covered by this legislation may not retire or leave the company for five years.
The companies must immediately undertake the development of automobiles that will have a minimum gas mileage of thirty miles per hour in the city and forty miles per hour on the highway. The cars must be available by the fall of 2010. By the fall of 2015, the companies will have to produce autos that use alternative energy, such as ethanol, electricity or water.
If they want our money, they will have to perform. If they fail to meet any deadlines, the executives each must pay a fine of no less than $3 million. If auditors find that they are misusing the money for personal gain, they will be charged with embezzlement.
How do we make Congress accountable to voters instead of to donors to election campaign funds? That’s the subject of my next blog entry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)