Choose Dishonesty or Lose Honestly. 7 Laws Urgently Needed Reforms to Fix Washington & Improve America
Constitutional Amendments
Washington is broken. Both parties are full of dishonest hypocrites. For 7 years Republicans have derided the Democrats for Nancy Pelosi’s ridiculous statement that “you have to pass the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it.” And rightly so. Mitch McConnell in particular was highly critical of both this statement, and the secretive and deceptive manner in which the Affordable Care Act was passed into law. And now McConnel is displaying a level of impudence and hypocrisy as he uses the same duplicitous techniques to push the deeply unpopular haphazard collection of repeal bills.
7 years of Republican reprobations of the Democrats desertion and degradation legislative cooperation and procedural norms have proven to be extraordinarily insincere. They have demonstrated a willingness to circumvent the filibuster by way of legislative trickery to approve Neil Gorsuch and reconciliation to roll back Obama era regulation. They have taken steps to deny state’s rights in order to further the presidents agenda on sanctuary cities and the justice departments plans to enforce federal drug policy on medical and recreational cannabis. And forget the hundreds of executive orders Trump has been signing daily. The GOP’s return to power has proven their castigations to be more than rich, as the Ryan-McConnell-Trump-Sessions legislative strategy has embraced every dirty trick and executive overreach of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama-Holder centralized authoritative approach to governance.
Not to be outdone in shady and sleazy stakes, just scandalous is the Democrats condemnation of the GOP. How Chuck Schumer maintains a straight face while chastising his colleagues across the aisle for implementing the very bureaucratic techniques and legislative tricks that he used to pass the laws Republicans are now trying to repeal.
So the White House, Senate and Congress are packed to the rafters with thin skinned, lying hypocrites… so what right? It’s always been that way right? Well, no. It’s never been this way. The ratio of executive actions to bills passed has never been close to this level. And for that reason, there has never been a better time to reform what can be reformed, replace what needs replacing, and amend our system to save our politicians from themselves. So here are a few laws or reforms that we desperately need, and the path I see to achieving the goal of actually getting it to pass.
I’ve written out each reason in long form and fully sourced justification for each of the following points that I’ll upload later, but allow me to Buzzfeedify this bitch.
- A constitutional amendment that mandates all bills be written on a single piece of A4 paper. The purpose of the amendment is to discourage cronyism, simplify the legal system, increase civic engagement and eliminate corruption at the federal level. Enforcing law makers to write simple, easy to understand laws that can fit on a single piece of paper. Why? To stop them creating long, complicated laws, that are impossible to understand for the people forced to abide them. It will also reduce lawmakers paper clipping unrelated controversial laws to popular or necessary laws.
- An amendment forcing lawmakers to post all new laws for 7 days before voting, (30 days for anything that increases taxes) to prevent lawmakers passing laws behind the backs of their constituents. This also allows both sides to clearly bring their case to the public. And when used in conjunction with the previous amendment, the common sense, common tongue, and succinct bills, will foster true debate on the issues and serve as a powerful bulwark to the back room cronyism that has plagued both parties in the 21st century.
- Close the loopholes that allow individuals to operate like corporations. This will prevent wealthy Hollywood elites and other freelance millionaires from manipulating the system to conceal their assets, obscure their personal expenses and avoid their rightful tax liabilities. Best of all, it will finally hold these hypocrites to the high tax standards they always call on Wall Street to pay.
- Bring corporate tax rates to zero. Because taxing corporations imposes a high tax rate upon the potential income of all stake holders regardless of their income level and takes capital out of the company that could otherwise be used to pay dividends to shareholders, which once again, would benefit low income shareholders far more than those of a high income. If every company in the country suddenly has 20% more end of year capital, there will be widespread hiring, record setting dividend payments, massive investments in equipment, inventory, raising the wages and attracting better employees from around the country and abroad to improve the company and the country.
- Congress should pass absolute and clear foreign policy doctrine of support for constitutional liberal democracies. That should include on bans foreign aid and military support to any country who’s government does not have constitutional protections ensuring the separation or church and state, free speech, the right for its citizens to start and own businesses, and voluntarily work for any company that wishes to hire them or is unable to provide reasonable assurances of safety for Americans inside their borders.
- Remove all federal education standards and return the power and oversight to the states so that congress can focus on its clear mandate to protect the citizens life, liberty and property.
- Create systems of accountability for all welfare and court ordered payments. One of the major sources of contention between the right and left is the issue of the use or misuse of government assistance. The right says these programs are too generous, the left says they aren’t generous enough. And while there are many reasonable discussions that can be had about the ethics and implications of assistance, if we agree to pay someone’s rent, we should pay it. Not give them too much or too little money to do so. Instead of giving people checks or cash for their welfare, a system of debit cards for most purchases, with the option to withdraw cash and make extra purchases when necessary provided a receipt and photograph of the item purchased is immediately uploaded to an oversight website. Foodstamps buy food, rental assistance pays rent, unemployment could be divided as a 75% necessity (with oversight, debit card and receipts) and 25% discretionary (with no oversight, withdraw as cash & spend on anything you like). The system could also be extended to court mandated payments like alimony, medical compensation or child support. After-all, shouldn’t child support go to supporting the children instead of Louboutin’s? And the same ought to apply for psychological restitution. If it’s not going to pay you for time off, medicine and/or psychological/psychiatric care, surely it is fraud to use the money for anything else.
