Not issues, issues, issues

Back in the 1780s, some fairly youngish white guys spent a lot of time debating process, not issues. They thought that the process would answer the issues.

Good move, founding fathers. Breaking news New Yorkers (and others): we have the chance to do that again in New York State next year and we need to wake up and grab this chance. If we could make the New York State constitution a model of democracy, we could change the whole country.

We need a new process. It’s obvious. Let me just kick a few out:

Supreme Court justices in the US are on the bench for life. In 1780, life was at most about 80 years. In 2050, it could start to be 200 years. Dred Scott enslaving Roger Taney was among the worst sacks of shits to ever occupy the bench. If Ray Kurzweil gets his way, he’d still be chief justice!

A constitutional amendment to limit justices to 15 years or 20 year would stop the current distortion of politics (“think of the court! vote R or D!”). Also, such an amendment doesn’t clearly favor Democrats or Republicans. I see these Democratic lead posts/fundraising letters (and that’s about all they are as they are making no effort to appeal to Republicans) about an amendment to overturn Citizens United. Better to shorten the terms of the justices and limit the scope of all bad decisions.

Why do we pay for local schools with local property taxes? The property tax is a 18th century tax. Back then, the only way to figure out who was rich and who was poor by looking at their house. It’s an expensive tax to collect, as you need an assessor, who can easily be crooked. If you earn $75,000 a year, your house is worth $300,000 but the bank owns half the house, you are paying a wealth tax on an assets that is worth double your income and maybe be more than 100% of the wealth you actually own. Meanwhile, a billionaire with a 50 million dollar house is paying a wealth tax on only 5% or less than his net worth. Also, the property tax distorts development, as couples with children move to a “good” district and pay astronomical taxes, which drives out young and old people and those with no children, as the taxes are so high as to make it silly to live in that town. A community without young, unmarried people, retirees, etc. is not a healthy community. The worst part of all of this tax is that one town can have tremendous educational resources and the neighboring town has almost nothing. The tax rate is higher in poor communities than rich one.

Low hanging fruit: many people in richer towns do not like pay these high real estate taxes and many people in poorer towns resent being iced out of good school districts. If we abolish the tax and get the money for schools from a graduated income tax or something else that can really be targeted at the 1%, everyone will benefit.

I offer here two process ideas to show what kind of politics I want: a politics that addresses our failing democracy. Change the process and the policies and issues will solve themselves.

Gun control, abortion, school choice, the environment, etc.: all of these are controversial. What about obvious process fixes: can we agree on some of those and then come back and re-consider the issues?

Of course the legalized bribery we have now is so absurd I don’t even need to discuss “campaign finance.”

Also, we need to crack down on politicians and their employees cashing in. No more revolving door. Term limits.

The Democratic Party is, for example, is a con pretending to be a party when in fact the primary purpose of the organization is to enrich its insiders. If we make it impossible for these clowns to cash in, the issues will take care of themselves. I think a lot of Republicans should be on board with this too. The Republicans are exactly and precisely the same when it comes to cashing in and doing for self.

I think I have mentioned a few things that no one really disagrees with, except rich insiders and party apparatchiks.

Here is another process issue that seems important to me but may be a bit more controversial, but its another example of process overriding issues. If the US is to remain an exclusively winner-take-all electoral system, then primaries are or vital importance and need to be conducted openly, fairly and closed primaries, caucuses and other “insider” friendly options are very undemocratic. In a winner-take-all, you really can have only two parties in a period of stability because you dramatically increase your chances of winning by making a coalition before an election. You make coalitions in the primary process.

If the US, or any given state within the US, wanted to adopt proportional representation, then primaries would not be so important. The insiders of the party could meet behind closed doors and pick some candidates. The voter would then have many parties to chose from and if your party got, say, 10%, you’d still have some kind of representation.

Primaries are paid for by the government. The election observation process has no mechanism to guarantee the fairness of these elections, as observers are selected by party. So what about internal party contests?

I would like to file a test case about New York’s closed primary system in federal court. It seems to be that a closed primary is as unconstitutional as anything in North Carolina. I draft this complaint in outline form on every bike ride I take over by the Kinderhook Creek.

We actually all agree on a whole hell of a lot.

Term limits. No revolving door. Campaign finance reform. No gerrymandering (we have algorithms now!). No legalized bribery. No speaking fees for elected officials and their families. More democratic elections. Fix some antiquated aspects of our governmental system, as with the judges and the property tax (the 18th century was a LONG time ago).

The insiders and the corporate media are trying to throw smoke in our eyes. Can we change the process and table discussion of everything else— criminal justice reform, taxes, infrastructure, all of it? If we fix the process, we can talk about issue in an environment when the actual decision makers, the guys voting on the legislation and on the bench, are not in fact feathering their own nests.

If the guy on the board is in it for him or herself, policy discussions are a joke. If we have a broken democracy, talking about issues is pointless (although I sometimes do it too), as nothing good can come out of this crap-infested swine garbage crappola we call a government now.

And we need good government more than ever. The market, technology: we have some powerful gods that run our lives. We need a real, open democracy as a community forum to have some kind of collective check on the other two gods. If one god is owned by one of the others, then none of them will work right.