How do we structure the government to prevent a another nutcase president from being elected?
Ending gerrymandering would be a great start. Declaring the Republican party a criminal organization would be another.
Socialism
socialism tends to be very nazi-resistant.
Soviets
Step one would be a viable second party.
A transition to socialism/communism. Trump is the result of capitalism gone wild. This is what it always turns into.
What we really need is a digital liquid democracy platform, and removing power from leaders. No more of unchecked corruption until we can get around to another election. In liquid democracy, people can remove their pledged vote whenever they want.
Roll executive power back at least to how it was pre-9/11, overturn Citizen’s United, and make drastic cuts to the military in order to invest in communities and improve people’s material conditions.
let’s not forget about probably the most important part- punish these people so severely that not a soul will ever consider doing this shit ever again.
Said investment in communities also needs to involve a significant improvement to our education system.
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Proportional voting on all levels of government. Fixes gerrymandering, electoral college, etc: your vote percentage matches your representatives proportionally.
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Redundancy. Allow a board of state governments to prosecute US government actors for violations of law. A board of the five largest US states (by pop) and a rotating roster of the remaining states should be authorized to enforce any federal law in addition to the executive branch.
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Balance of Powers. eliminate discretionary presidential pardon powers, force congress to approve all pardons and commutations and force them to do it in a separate vote from any bill or law.
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Abandon the current supreme court model. The supreme court as it is should be dissolved and a lottery board of existing judges should serve as the supreme court when a constitutional question arises. The supreme court should be convened only when a lower court has a constitutional question and dissolved once it is answered.
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Overturn citizens united and make bribery illegal. Ban political donations. Provide a lifetime pension for all congress members (to reduce the congress to lobbyist incentives and selling of secrets). Provide mandatory public funding for elections
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Tax the rich to the point their wealth no longer creates corrupt incentives.
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Media Reform. breakup the news and private media. Establish heavy tax on for profit media companies larger than a certain size. Create news libel laws where libel can be enforced against a media company or social media celebrity if a percent of followers/viewers are shown to believe something provably, factually untrue due to repeated editing decisions.
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institute modern healthcare reforms. Each state. should be responsible for providing their residents healthcare at no extra cost.
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Referendums on states and territories: Any US territory can become a state if they have a referendum that succeeds by 55% or more. Any US territory can become its own sovereign country with a referendum vote of 55% or more. Any land policed or controlled by the US government for more than 10 years should be considered a US territory.
I feel like point 9 can be abused, but everything else is perfect
I think something needs to be done for DC and puerto rico, if you have a solution that sounds better I’ll replace 9.
Imo i’d also be a fan of merging the two smallest adjacent states and splitting the largest one every 10 years, but I think that solves a problem so long term it would never get addressed in a democracy.
My fear is about all of the military bases that the US has all over the world and how those could in theory become US land through the way you worded that
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The problem isn’t really with the structure of the government. It started with the voters. This chucklefuck got elected twice. Twice. If the first time wasn’t bad enough we fucking knew how awful he’d be and he was elected a second fucking time.
The mechanisms to remove him from office for being a senile insane pedophile rapist murdering war criminal are all in place, but half the government sees him as THEIR war criminal and the other half are too timid to do anything.
Even if we restructured the government or reinforced impeachment powers, it doesn’t matter so long as imbeciles will vote a monster like him in and cowards will keep him there.
How deep are you willing to go? The biggest obstacle you yanks have is your religious adherence to the Constitution and your enslaver Founding Daddies. You got to kill of the American Civil Religion, man, it’s a cancer.
Beyond that, if I could wave a magic wand here are the reforms I would force on the US political system:
- Massively curtail presidential power, and to do that, actually weaken the federal government, massively. Sorry to sound like a Repubilcan, but it is true that your federalism is too coupled and states are too weak financially because the federal government takes most of the tax money. Canadian federalism is better in this respect: 50%-50%. Let states actually experiment with different economic models.
- Abolish the electoral college and create election standards and procedures, automatic voter registration. Actually create independent election agencies, like Elections Canada. If you need to have each state manage its own affairs, have them all have their own agency, but with each one strictly adhere to the same standard. Voting should be simple and straightforward. No more shennanigans with gerrymandering and arcane laws.
- Massively expand the size of legislatures, ideally also get rid of FPTP for proportional representation. Abolish idiotic things like supermajorities and filibusters. Your legislatures need to be able to function. It cannot be that a few senators can hold 350 million people hostage.
- Massively expand and depoliticize your Supreme Court. 9 justices for life? WTF. There should be term limits, and a pool of justices that rotates. It can’t be that everybody hangs from the whims of a couple of geezers.
- Lobbying and PACs and shit, all that is just corruption. Go after it.
Basically, its just Selectorate Theory: the fewer the decision makers and the fewer the people they are answerable to, the more “cosmic” each election becomes and the higher the chance for corruption and therefore dysfunction. Democracy, democracy, democracy. Kill the ghost of Madison and Hamilton. Bury those fuckers forever.
Proportional representation. End gerrymandering. Ban corporate political free speech protections and corporate lobbying. Publically funded elections. Approval voting or STAR voting. NPVIC. End broad immunity for the president immediately. Reform the War Powers Act to require congressional approval for wars or war-like operations.
You forgot to add removing the arbitrary size limit for Congress imposed by the apportionment Act of 1929 which directly led to gerrymandering even being a possibility. “Representation” is so inaccurate now that it’s hard to even claim it could be constitutional at this point.
which directly led to gerrymandering even being a possibility.
Gerrymandering goes back to 1812.
Replace the president with a co-equal cabinet, representing all parties with seats in the House.
If money were removed from elections and secondarily if fptp and electoralism were ended…
Then basically every other problem would solve itself for the better.
furthermore If money isn’t removed from elections then social unrest will worsen and intensify. -This alone will at minimum require the packing of the supreme court to get around Citizen United.
just a little history to know who your up against, The last senator to attempt to end electoralism was from my state. The last amendment he submitted on the matter was voted against by(among others) Joseph Biden.
Kill the monopolies. The ultra rich fuck over everything, always will. And that is always a struggle but there’s no choice.
- fix the 2 tier justice system that favors the rich
- actually punish corruption
- reverse citizens united, money out of elections
- bring back the fairness doctrine
- allow citizens to sue the news for lieing
- 18 year term limits on supreme court jusices
- recall elections triggered for house and senate via popular vote (1 new judge every 2 years)
- eliminate first past the post for all national elections.
- 6 national voting days every year.
- enforce anti monopoly laws, break up many large companies.
- remove the income cap on social security
- tax loans made agaist stocks, same as selling
- make student loans eligible in bankruptcy
- mandatory financial education in high school
- voting maps drawn simply by algorithm, politicians can not draw their own maps.
- if corporations are people, allow them to be jailed or disolved same as a person commiting the same crime.
- first past the post for all national elections.
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I have to assume he meant abolish first past the post for all national elections.
Thats correct, I should have said, switch to ranked choice or similar.
I was just checking. I have progressive family members who insist that ranked choice is actually an inferior method. I asked them to explain why and they just tell me that there are ways to game it that are too complicated to explain…
They are quite politically involved but still, for some reason, trust the Democratic Party “old guard”. Likely because they are their own generation and had a great life during their time in power.
18 year term limits on supreme court jusices
Why, specifically 18 years? I agree with term limits, I’m just curious on the length you have chosen.
With 9 judges, we would replace 1 every 2 years.
That’s pretty good. Also means changes are staggered out.
Kavanaugh staggered in.
Funny thing is the current system should have prevented him but, corruption.
No, the current system enabled him, because it doesn’t take partisanship into account. The fabled checks and balances of the US constitution was created in a fantasy world where people of the same political party was meant to forget about that partisanship in favour of the plight of their office.
Actual realistic constitutions do not do that.
The purpose of a system is what it does
Isn’t it like… the exact reason… the electoral college exists?
Like… “Hey dumb shit voters, we don’t trust you to not be deceived by a conman populist piece of shit, so we’re going to have an elector make the final call whether the one you voted for should actually be allowed to win.”
Yes, but the electoral college has basically never functioned in that manner. People rightly argued that they should get what they vote for, thus electors in most states are legally bound to vote for the winning candidate.
There should be a role against winner take all. All of California doesn’t vote Dem and all of Texas doesn’t vote fascist. A proportional electoral college would have a more center left leaning.
