Looking forward - how do we fix ourselves?

[bmcatt]

I have given voice to my fears and am gratified beyond words to read what everyone wrote. Now, feeling a bit better about myself and the world, I want to give voice to my, and, more importantly, everyone else's hopes.

So... I want to look forward, either to 2007 or, if needs must, 2009. I want to start by assuming that, somehow, somewhere along the line, we collectively stared into the abyss and were frightened - enough so that there exist Democratic majorities in Congress and a Democratic president.

What do we do then? How can we, legally and constitutionally, prevent a (now, hopefully re-)United States from being hijacked by neocons or whatever fanatic fad-of-the-month appears next?

Rather than giving completely free rein, I want to make the following assumptions / restrictions upon anything that comes up:

• No discussion about Iraq, Afganistan, North Korea, etc. This is about the United States.
  
• Similarly, no discussion about how we get *out* of Iraq, etc. I'd like to assume that we can find some smart and diplomatically astute people to figure out how we extricate ourselves without leaving any of the formerly occupied countries either in chaos or ready to attack us as soon as we leave.
  
• No national constitutional amendments. So, merely as an example, this means that we still have an electoral college.
  
• Action at the state level (including state constitutional amendments) *is* possible. This means, as the one example that I want to use as another assumption, that we can institute hand-counted paper ballots *at the state level*.
  
• Congressional rules and procedures *are* followed. We choose to not win on legislation by holding votes open for 3 hours to allow for arm-twisting. If we lose on votes, we lose fairly and honestly.

So... We've got brand new Democratic majorities (but not super-majorities) in the House and Senate. We've got a Democratic President. All have stated that they wish to act to clean up the system that allowed our government to be corrupted by special interests, and, more importantly, they mean it. We will fight to restore true honor and dignity to the institutions of government, but we *will* play by the rules. We will not denigrate nor attack people, even hateful right-wing radio and TV personalities, merely for the views they espouse. After all, free speech, including speech in dissent, is a right in this country.

Within the law, and such laws as could be passed (and be reasonably considered to be constitutional), what's the roadmap from there? All suggestions welcome, please.

[savemefromdumbya]

1. The country needs to devolve and shake off the federal influence

Communities, states and devolved government needs to happen. shake off the tyrants of DC. Power to the people!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. More self-reliance will be needed

for I fear Bushco will be doing their best to destroy any form of social safety net we have.

[savemefromdumbya]

4. he's trying - but we are not yielding

this country has a lot of resiliance.

[calmblueocean]

9. I think you're absolutely correct.

For the longest time, we've let conservatives define us as "big government" liberals, when it's the conservatives who need, use, and abuse big government the most. They use it to give multibillion no-bid contracts to their wealthy buddies; they use it to force their morality on others by promoting Consitutional Amendments against gay marriage, flag burning, etc.; they use it to start wars of choice; they use it to bankrupt the budget with pork so that that eventually everything will be privatized.

I'd love to see some liberal candidates turn the traditional logic on its head and run on a states rights, local government platform. Make it against the law for the Federal gov't to use National Guard troops without the governor's permission. Make it a requirement that, even with the governor's permission, any action using state National Guard troops for out-of-state purposes triggers an automatic referendum on their use after 90 days have passed.

Let's start defunding the federal government and allowing individual states to negotiate the use of that money between themselves. No more waiting for a red state dominated Congress to pass national health care -- the blue states can pool their money and do it on their own, for their combined citizenry. Take away the welfare for the red states. If they want to keep their roads in shape, they can come to the blue states and ask them for help. And we'll be glad to do so, so long as they recognize our values in their laws.

It's taken me a while to get to this place. Having a strong federal government has been important for enforcing civil rights in the past. But the problem is that just as the federal gov't can be used to do good things when good people are in power, it can be used to commit atrocities when bad people are in power. And I'm tired of sitting here watching as my government commits atrocities with my money, in my name.

There's a strong case to be made for local government liberalism. I think it's time we made it.

[savemefromdumbya]

16. State government should use their muscle

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Clean elections

and that means paper ballots. It also means election finance reform. I also think that the review of the House/Senate rules about who can be invited in to the conference committee should also be done. Definately daylight should be shed upon all government actions-no more secret energy meetings.

Frankly, I have a feeling by 2007 we'll be looking at a major crisis when it comes to oil/gas. I think there is a distinct possibility that our economy will be near collapse and that our money will be nearly worthless. Whoever is in power must get folks together who can figure out just what we do to pay down our enormous debt while, at the same time, increase jobs in the US. One way to help the job situation is to stress development of alternative resources and using recycling a lot more than we do now.

[savemefromdumbya]

5. Crucial

[bmcatt]

6. Agreed about clean elections

which was why I'd included it as one of the assumptions. :)

I also like the ideas of reviewing the rules on conferees and no more secret meetings.

I'm not disputing that we'll have major energy and economic crises. I think, though, that such crises don't alleviate the need for structural changes in how we run the government and how we prevent the special interests, etc., from creeping back in, in another form.

Which brings me back to the original question...

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. If special interests are viewed as having been the problem,

it will be hard for them to be an influence for quite some time. During the Depression years, banks and bankers were looked upon with suspicion; this was when many if not most of the banking regulations went into effect. We really didn't have a loosening of these until the Savings and Loan debacle in the 1980s.

[NewJeffCT]

7. Some of my ideas

1) get rid of McCain-Feingold and have elections be totally financed by the public.
2) Raise the minimum wage to $7/hour for 2007 and $7.50 in 2008 (still not great, but I want to be realistic! Raising it to $10/hour would get filibustered)
3) propose a universal health care system. Sell it as pro-business and needed to compete with Europe, Canada & Japan in the global economy.
4) revoke the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest. This will spur the markets & help long term rates, as it will show that we're trying to get the budget under control
5) attempt to pass a law that puts social security money into a "lock box"
6) repeal the max salary cap for social security (right now, I think it's around $90,000 - meaning, you only pay SS on the first $90,000).
7) pass a law that anybody working for the US government must follow US law, even if not in the US (currently, aren't the mercenaries in Iraq on the payroll of the Dept. of the Interior or something, since Clinton passed a law requiring any mercenaries hired by the Pentagon must obey US law)
8) Using George W. Bush's own words, pass a law that allows civil unions of gay couples. (full marriage, at this time, would also be filibustered)
9) roll back changes to media ownership laws. If possible, re-institute the Fairness Doctrine.

Even if they all get filibustered, at least the public will know where the Democrats stand on issues important to the poor, working class & middle class.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. All great ideas!

:thumbsup:

[NewJeffCT]

15. Thanks

I tried to be somewhat realistic, but I know with the money that Big Pharma & Big Health Insurance have to throw at the idea of universal health care, that would be an uphill battle.

[SheilaT]

11. I'm not so sure you should be assuming

that we'll have Democratic majorities in either the House or the Senate. It would be nice, but I wouldn't count on it. Remember how certain almost everyone was that Bush would lose and Kerry would win only a year and a half ago?

The simple truth is, that this administration came to power in a coup, and they will not give up their power readily, and certainly not to anything so silly as a free, fair, and honest election.

What we should be working on RIGHT NOW is to get good people elected at all levels of government, to get actively involved, especially at the state level where you so rightly noted we can have a real affect. And at the national level (meaning House and Senate) work very hard to support real Democrats who clearly see how evil this government is, and who are actually willing to stand up to the bullies in this administration.

In short, focus on the here and now, NOT what might possibly happen in a year or three.

[bmcatt]

13. Of course we have to act right now

But, by the same token (and as I specifically made reference to) - talking about how to act now does, ultimately, feed back into my fears that the current administration *won't* give up power easily, if at all... I want to get past that. I want to "go to a happy place", as it were, and that means being able to look forward. It means being able to visualize what "winning" looks like and, if/once we win, how to maintain the true sanctity of government.

For example, I'm not actively opposed to the two party system, except that's not what we've got right now. Even discounting any arguments about how "both parties are the same", too many in the Democratic party aren't acting like an opposition party. They should all go spend a few weeks in Parliament in the UK and pay attention to, at the very least, how an opposition party *sounds*. So, if/once we win, I don't think we'd even try and do something stupid like attempting to outlaw the Republican party. That doesn't mean, though, that we can't contemplate what we can / should do to prevent the excesses of the current incarnation of it.

I'd be thrilled if the *real* Republicans stood up and took back their party. I think that we have more in common with those folks than either of us have with the fascists. I'd at least *like* to think that we could have a dialogue with them.

[SheilaT]

14. It's nice to plan ahead,

but since the starting post for this thread is to assume we control the House and Senate next year, and the Presidency two years later, suggests a kind of complacency that I think is very dangerous.

I really would like to hear that more people here on DU are doing genuinely activist things to take back the Democratic Party. Starting with becoming precinct committee chairs, running for office or helping someone else who's running by going door to door for them, raising money, and so on.

Simply looking ahead to the magical day when we're back in power overlooks the genuinely hard work that it's going to take.

I'm a precinct committee chair. I ran for office (Kansas State House) in '04. I lost, sadly, and don't plan to run again, but do plan to work very hard for other candidates.

THAT'S the kind of thing we need to see much more of, rather than skipping over all that and assuming we'll be back in power real soon.

[cascadiance]

12. Restore some of the top marginal tax rates from the 60's.

I wouldn't make this permanent, but it has to be there enough time to allow the net worth gap between wealthy and poor to get back into balance again. In the 60's, JFK actually lowered the top marginal tax rate from 90%+ to around 70%+. I think we should at least restore it to around 70% or so at the very high end of the income levels so that we can get back a lot of what has in effect been STOLEN from us and the government for the last 20 years or so.

I would agree with an above poster that putting in place a national "clean elections" public financing system for election campaigns is ESSENTIAL to begin to tear down the corporate ownership of our government.

Also, restore funding to alternative energy research (solar, wind, etc.) and not have any increases of funding to things like ANWR (which should be AGAIN protected).

Review NAFTA,CAFTA, etc. treaties and pull out of them unless there is not only a global enforcement for "fair trade" but also global enforcement through a WTO like organization for fundamental workers' rights and pay so that there can't be any more "race to the bottom" by multinationals. A WTO so empowered would be one that I could support.