I don't understand why the options are so poor. Here is some of what I would do.

Environment/Energy:
Heavily shift our power portfolio to nuclear power. Subsidize construction of new NPPs, and fund research for next gen plants. Transition away from coal ASAP, to gas turbines in the short term and nuclear long term. Transportation energy usage is a more difficult problem, especially in the US, so that would be a longer term focus.

Pressure the international community into adopting a binding treaty to regulate and optimize ocean fishing quotas.

Guns:
Offer free federal safety courses as a prereq. to buying your first firearm. Build no hassle, instant background check service. Private sales of pistols need to be overseen by an authorized gun dealer or government official with instant background check. Remove import restrictions, especially on ammo, because if you own a gun, you should practice as much as possible.

Economy:
Increase subsides to community colleges, and expand scholarships for state school. Create programs to help guide high school students to areas of study that line up with projected economic needs, and incentivize those fields with scholarships. One of the biggest pressures on our middle class is rising standards of living and educational attainment in Asia. We need to stop making an expensive, generic college degree a barrier to entry for low specialization service industry jobs.

Health Care:
Move to single payer or something similar, but focus heavily on overhauling health care regulation to be more efficient and effective. We are burning through money on pointless perverse incentives and overfit metrics. We can't implement a good system until we address the fact that we suck at developing good systems.



Overall, I'd increase taxes and spending in the short term to do things right and set them up in such a way that long term spending is reduced. Welfare systems and social safety nets would invest more money and focus into incentivizing and enabling self-reliance and upward mobility. People need to stop talking about more or less regulation and start talking about better and worse regulation. We can do a lot more with less overhead if our regulatory approach weren't knee-jerk and ham handed.

yeah man I dunno either

Come on, Jon.

You just do it. You just win. You just win real good. Get the best people and win with the good ideas, and not the stupid losers with the dumb ideas.

Yeah. If only there were, like, some, I dunno, way of choosing policies that fairly represented all of our interests.

Oh well. Vote largest bank account '16

Yeah, you are really missing the point here, though. Implementation is EVERYTHING.

I feel disenfranchised, because people are so busy *****ing about ideological binaries that there is literally zero effort spent on discussing how thing should be done better. If it's nothing something that someone can be angry about it's not worth talking about. This is Bernie Sanders in a nut-shell. I would be at least willing to try ideas similar to what he proposes if they weren't a low effort ****-show when you look at any details that aren't fun to shout judgmentally.

I'd even be happy with big picture ideas that I don't think are necessarily the absolute best approach, as long as they are well though out efforts. Everyone is approaching politics as an ideological battle to win rather than a problem to solve.

Let's take welfare. Conservatives worry that lazy people are having their bad choices enabled. Liberals insist that poor people are model citizens that approximate the Austrian ideal of a rational self-optimizing actor, but are screwed over by the man. Who cares? A welfare system that incentivizes important life skills and education is optimal for both the lazy and motivated persons, so it doesn't really matter what the actual proportions are. There's no ideological reason why anyone should disagree that welfare should be designed to get people off welfare, and it will be far cheaper and better for everyone involved if it works that way.

Abel: "Welfare should be designed to get people off of welfare."

Barney: "How should we do that?"

Abel: "Getting off welfare means finding a job. So I guess welfare should reward people for looking for work, and punish people who use it for too long."

Barney: "Okay, how do we tell which people are needful and which people are abusive?"

Abel: "Abusive people are the ones who could be working, but choose not to."

Barney: "How can we tell who chooses not to work?"

Abel: "We could require them to apply for jobs."

Barney: "That would prove they're willing to look for work, but it doesn't mean they're willing to work. They could turn down the jobs or sabotage their own efforts."

Abel: "Obviously the process would need to be supervised."

Barney: "Obviously, but how should the supervisor make that distinction?"

Abel: "Someone who is willing to work is, tautologically, willing to work. Maybe the supervisor should make them do some work to prove that they're willing. It doesn't really matter what the job is."

Barney: "And they'll get paid for their work?"

Abel: "That's what the welfare is."

Barney: "Okay, but what happens to the person who used to do the job the welfare recipient is now doing?"

Abel: "Who cares? Nobody wants that job anyway."

To which part of that quote were you referring?



I'm sorry. I don't know if that is a joke or not. No, Article V convention of the states to amend the constitution.



Can you either expound on who it is you are calling the "GOP of today" or "insanely ideological". Hell, or expound on both.

All of it. You compared the situation to "House of Cards", a television dramatization in which a Machiavellian antihero deliberately seizes control of the federal government. I doubt that anybody in federal office is happy with their circumstances or contributing to it intentionally.

lol. Yeah, amend the constitution. At the height of influence peddling. Have fun pulling that thread.

Palentine for senator!

I'm sorry, I'm still not tracking.



Well, it's not going to be easy but if we really do end up with Trump or Clinton I think it will push things along quicker. It really is the only answer at this point regardless of any of the people on any ballot for any office. It's the only way to restore balance to the force, err system.

Ah yes. A solid majority of government officials react violently to any proposed notion of change.

The key is obviously to just get them to all magically change their minds.

Sounds like a personal problem.

Lobbyists write bills for congress. Do you seriously think they're above writing amendments?

Like, do you even comprehend what the problem with your government is, or do you just like *****ing about there being a government?

The problem with the US government is that it perfectly represents the people who elect the officials that run it.

It wouldn't make a bit of difference what you change, because if the people don't chnage, none of it matters anyway.

Let's say you do manage to pass some kind of amendment targeted at "fixing" it. Well, now you've got a while lot of people who stand to lose a whole lot of power, influence, and money. These are people who are already experts at getting people to vote against their own interests. Do you really think that amending the constitution will stop Charles and David Koch from convincing people to vote for politicians who promise to ban gay people or whatever the hell else the dumbest people in America are worried about?

You aren't going to fix the working parts because you're not even looking at the working parts. Well, that's not entirely true. People like Wookie do have the advantage of actually looking at real things for the most part. The trouble is someone tells you that we have huge bodies of water on earth because gravity causes it to settle in places with the lowest elevation, but you say they're wrong and it's actually because the sky pushes down on water.

It's not that you're fundamentally wrong, it's just that in order to make you feel like you're informed enough to discuss these topics, the people that feed you talking points are giving you the junior novelization version of things, and then you all wander around trying to figure out why everyone acts like the meaning got lost on you.

What's worse is that with the entire ****ing world telling you that you're wrong, you develop this beautiful point of view that not only are you smart, but that you're just *that* much smarter than everyone else because this is just all so easy for you to understand, but none of these hoity toity intellectuals can figure out that while every single type of academia has undergone astonishing degrees of change in the last 200 years, that somehow a bunch of rich white guys in Philly had it all figured out already.

To wit: You believe that the solution to a problem that you cannot even specifically point to is a solution that has a 0% chance of being implemented.

So yeah, you're definitely doing your part.

Basically, yeah.

The core problem with the United States - and similar countries - is that there is socialism for businesses, and free markets for workers. The government acts aggressively to defend the revenues of chosen economic elites while offering nothing to the average earner. Economies simply can't operate for very long under these conditions, and the same would be said if competitive businesses must purchase labor without any coercion. Economies need balanced policies.

But Americans don't want balanced policies. They want what they have, they want welfare for their employers. They vote for congressmen who cut companies sweet deals to bring them into their district. And yeah, you get what you've voted for. Now you've got a room full of actual elected adult people wringing their hands about every sheet of paper, scrying the stock market to guess whether their vote will quote-unquote "scare job creators" away from their state, so of course you end up with gridlock. And Americans are fine with this situation. Most of them love their congresspeople, they think it's the other congresspeople who are the problem.

Democracy is working and it is horrible.

So, well, I guess Trump getting elected would solve the problem.

How long before it becomes necessary for the Roman Empire United States of America to split in half due to the sheer vastness and growing complexity? Where shall be the dividing line of east and west of a once prosperous nation that was the civilization that dictated commerce, trade, and foreign policy to the globe?

I don't think the divide would be between east and west

We tried it for four years. It didn't work out.

Certainly I'm not trying to persuade anyone here on this issue but the core problem in our country now is that our federal government is dysfunctional and there are some things that can be done by amendments proposed and ratified by the states, bypassing congress altogether, which will, certainly partially, repair the federal government. Some of the amendments I support are term limits for representatives, senators, and supreme court justices, a process for repealing supreme court decisions, and the repeal of the seventeenth amendment,. This will reduce the problem of corrupt career politicians, lengthy unbalances in the supreme court, and restore the states' role in the federal government.

Too bad those aren't the amendments you'd get. You'd get the Disney Amendment making copyright eternal. You'd get the Exxon Amendment making talk about global warming a form of theft.

The problem with Congress is regulatory capture. The largest corporations and richest people only dream about renegotiating the constitution, because then they'd own that too.

Don't forget the Charles and David Koch amendment. That's the one that lets nazi collaborators spend their stolen fillings to directly flip a congressional vote!

Oh, whoops, I meant Republican-leaning international businessmen and innocent war memorabilia.

Yeah, I imagine that temporarily eliminating the entire system of checks and balances under which the US Government operates is likely the best way to bring things back to a level playing field. Now we've just got make sure that everyone participating during that time period has everyone's best interests at heart. Lemme know when you've worked that out, Wookie.

I love that two aspects of this suggestion are:

1. That the states themselves will advance initiatives at a federal level that will supersede the policies enacted by the congressional representatives elected by the citizens of said states. I mean, I suppose that given the generally accepted idea that elected officials don't actually care what their constituency wants, they might as well act in open contempt of them. What you're suggesting is that instead of this group of elected officials doing something, this other group of elected officials needs to do it. Can't imagine this scenario not working out.

2. That we need policies that allow elected officials to bypass pretty much anyone that stands in their way. A means to bypass the Supreme Court? I assume that the reasoning behind this is that elected officials could override an unpopular decision, but at that point, what the hell do you even have a Supreme Court for? Let's use the gay marriage ruling as an example. The overwhelming majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, but an assload of conservative lawmakers do not. So, if they're able to override it via a majority of some sort, you could very easily just get rid of the goddamn court and let lawmakers create and repeal legislation as they already do. There's also the incredibly important issue of creating a legal precedent for this sort of thing, but I'm not even diving down that hole.

All in all, those are both really, really, really stupid ideas. Really.

Gosh, you would really think the other amendments I support are really, really, really, really stupid then! But your knee-jerk thoughtless response would demonstrate total ignorance of the purpose of a federal system if it is that you actually cared about such things. Oddly it was this forum that reassured me that a Clinton, Sanders, or Trump presidency could have the positive results of helping to further push this reform along. I doubt the movement would be as far as it is if we were halfway through a Romney regime right now.

Hmm, why would that be, I wonder?

Because the temperature in the pot rises more gradually so the frog is less likely to jump out.

The amendment movement is being spearheaded by ALEC, a nationwide corporate lobbyist. Among many others they are funded by Charles and David Koch, Exxon, Pfizer, BP, Allergan, and AT&T, but nobody has a solid accounting because they are so secretive. They operate a private club for conservative legislators that teaches them how to force through unpopular ALEC ideas. And what are those ideas? Austerity. Trickle-down. Stand Your Ground. Voter disenfranchisement strategies. Outlawing free speech as economic terrorism. Prison privatization and mandatory minimum sentences. Keystone XL. Defunding public schools. A cavalcade of the worst, most harmful, and most disastrous ideas in modern society.

These influence peddlers are who would control your constitutional amendment process. These are the people who would write the amendments, who would pay the politicians to ratify them.

I don't think the amendments you support are stupid, Wookie06. But it is stupid to think this process is a good idea given the people involved.

I don't dispute reasonable concerns with the process but if it is corrupted or fails then it really is too late anyway. It's either a positive change or the final nail. I appreciate your input and will look into the information you provided.

I like how you've managed to avoid actually responding to anything in lieu of whining about my tone.

"If we can't fix the problem tomorrow, we will commit suicide today." Well, thanks for trying.

Vote anti-incumbent. If one of the non-incumbent options is 3rd party or non-party, then choose them. Do this every election until term limits are instituted for all political offices and campaign reform is instituted that prevents politicians from running for another office while serving and prevents companies (or anyone that has an interest in a business) from contributing to a politicians campaign (directly or indirectly).

Until that piece is resolved, there is no point in even trying to resolve other issues.

"Do this thing that would in no way result in this other thing, because unless the second thing happens, we might as well have chaos."

Voters only really have two options. Either vote to keep doing what we've been doing and hoping to get different results (definition of insanity?) or use the voting power to actually force things to change.

Think about it for a moment. At the very least, if every politician was forced out at the end of every term by the voters, how would that affect lobbyist spending/influence? If nothing else, it would force them to write a new playbook.

If I was running for President, political terms and campaign reform would be top priority, followed closely by common sense legislation reform (fix the way bills are written to prevent, for example, funding for a bridge to no where in a bill that has nothing to do with infrastructure). Congress is the bottleneck to everything that Americans want to see actually get fixed. Until we fix congress, nothing else will get fixed. It's like trying to build a house with a broken hammer. We can't build the house with the broken hammer, but we can replace the hammer. As President, I would veto everything they put on my desk until congress fixes itself, even it that meant a government shutdown. This isn't a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. This is a systematic issue. It's a design flaw. The only way forward is to fix the problem at the source.

If you want to keep beating your head against the wall with your fingers crossed, then be my guest.

Established, experienced legislators aren't generally as susceptible to influence peddling because they don't depend on lobbyists as much for funding or staffing. Also, lobbyist influence is the most effective when their carrot (lucrative job) is on a short stick (starts sooner).

The Tea Party tried this, and predictably influence peddling has gotten worse.

What you need is a congress that spends more time governing and less time hand-wringing about bringing jobs into their districts.

That's the problem right there. You can force people to try or pretend to try to apply for jobs, but if they are on welfare, clearly that is not working for them.

We have people pointlessly wasting their effort trying to pursue a dead end. What does that solve?

A good welfare program would provide work. If you have substance abuse issues and no discipline, you can start by showing up on time and doing whatever menial labor you are capable of. You'd rather get high and blow off showing up for work? You can go to rehab or reapply for the welfare program in a month. Tough ****.

However, if you show up and at least learn to keep your drugs separate from your work, you have the skills to hold down a basic job. Maybe you don't like that? If you prove yourself, we'll send you to community college to get one of certain economically valuable certifications or degrees, if you can keep your grades up. Blow it off, and you go back to the menial job, or whatever ever entry level job you can find for some period of time. There could be a whole range here. You could even use it to help respecialize skilled labor in response to economic changes.

Basically I'd make it so you can survive on welfare, if you need to, and gain social mobility if you prove your are willing to put effort into it. But if you are just abusing it, you get assigned less desirable work, or cut off. That way you don't have to speculate about whether the poor are lazy or just unlucky. If people shows up and tries their best, awesome. If people won't show up, than too bad.

I'm willing to put serious money into a well thought out social safety net. I'm not willing to make the blanket assumption that everyone without work is a wonderful hard working person who is down on their luck. Certainly true for some, but not all.

Eh, this is why corporate taxes are dumb. Yes, there's state to state competition, but there's also a lot of international competition as well, and you can't do anything about that. Just jack up taxes on individuals, like most first world countries, and the problem basically takes care of itself. Wealthy people aren't going to move to Kansas or Mexico just to pay lower taxes. It all winds up in the hands of individuals anyway, eventually.

This is called Workfare. We've already tried it. Workfare actually increases unemployment and amounts to a direct subsidy for low wage employers.



Yeah, we've tried that too. Turns out that 2007-ish things happen when corporations become untaxed stores of wealth.

The only 99% that matters is the amount of my annual income in unrealized capital gains. By the way, what the heck is a dividend? - every CEO, 2016

That's all well and good until you acknowledge that as President there are 300 million citizens whose lives depend on you doing you job instead of being an obstinate brat.

Oh, and I love this notion that we just need to get everyone in America to vote against the incumbent politicians.

All you need is for everyone - independent of political party - to agree to do so. That oughtta be a ****ing cinch.

The best part of political discussion is attempting to identify the least feasible solution offered to a problem. It's like Donald Trump's suggestion that the Iran nuclear deal would have gone differently if he were President. He'd have just said "no" to Iran. My god, it's so simple. I can't believe no one has ever considered just fixing the problem!