I was a centrist. I know I was. I remember snatches of it like a fuzzy dream. Since then the President called a mob to the White House and sent them to the Capitol to interrupt the election of his successor, a shocking climax driven by irresponsibility with power and facts. Centrism has been doused by the chatter class. Algorithms amplify antipathy. Tribes cling to self-contradicting lines of thought because that is where the battle lines have settled. The public watches like it is reality TV and utterly without consequences.
My sociologist mother and banker father may have had something to do with me being a fiscal-conservative social-liberal. Mom worked at the Fellowship House, an organization whose stated purpose was “to promote mutual understanding, fellowship and respect among the people of the community through programs and projects which were designed to replace fiction with fact, conflict with cooperation, fear with love, and distrust with faith, to the end of developing a community free of prejudice, discrimination and intolerance.” Dad was a vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Denver during the heady inflation of the seventies, heavily involved in the first rollouts of out computerized credit card transactions and direct deposit payrolls. These are not contradictory. By my twenties, I was a fiscal-conservative, social-liberal, what would become a Bill Clinton Democrat.
The primary job of our representatives is to face the tough decisions about what we need in our society and make the tougher decisions about how we are going to pay for it. These are adult conversations that require conflict, compromise and cooperation. It is a difficult task in the best of times, but our current political biome is not helpful. It seems the most valuable aspect of our system is that it has been able to withstand and outlast horrendous spasms of chaos to date.
Still, if I made the rules:
Elections:
- One person, one vote for every citizen, even prisoners and children.
- Abolish the unjust electoral college and stop losers from winning the presidency.
- Proportional Representation in the Senate such as one Senator per state plus one per 5 million population.
- Term limits: Limit Representatives, Senators and Supreme Court justices to 12 years in each office.
- Outlaw gerrymandering. Isolate politicians from reapportionment. Agree on an impartial geospatial mapping algorithm and abide by the results.
Warfare:
- Limit military spending to 3% of GDP, except in time of a declared war.
- Congress must reauthorize the President for protracted engagements every six weeks.
- Limit cost-plus contracts. Say F-35 thrice.
- Mandatory one-year draft for civil or military corps, including men and women.
- Audit the Pentagon and its programs.
- Abolish the 2nd Amendment. Gun ownership is earned and irresponsibility punished.
Transparency and Fairness:
- Transparency in pay. Transparency in wealth.
- Median-based compensation limits for all directors, officers, and board members.
- Cap stock options and other high-value alternative compensation.
- Streamline the tax code, including eliminating deductions for charities and mortgages.
- Fund the IRS to calculate tax returns, process challenges, and investigate fraud.
- All people do matter.
Fiscal
- Utilize sequestration to drive difficult department level decisions on spending priorities.
- Fund investments in our society that will return rewards (infrastructure, education).
- Maintain Federal Reserve and Consumer Financial Protection Board independence.