My point isn’t to defend the current system, which needs serious reforms, and I was no fan of the court rulings that overthrew earlier restrictions and led to the creation of Super PACs. My point is that no system for campaign finance could possibly be as simple as the one you proposed, at least without serious restrictions on free speech. Even simple old-fashioned in-person campaigning for Statewide office in a large state like Texas or California would involve a lot of travel expenses even if everyone on the campaign was volunteers.
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For all the talk of “civil war”…all I can say is if the white supremacists made it through 8 years with a guy they believed was a black marxist born in Kenya named Barack Hussein Obama in the WH without starting a war, very doubtful they’d get much traction now. Plus who are they going to shoot? It’s not like we are 2 armies, one wearing blue and the other grey.
Right?
Does NOBODY study Strangelove in school anymore?
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Well, one side seems to mostly wear blue
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The people they’re already shooting?
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I’m not going to argue that this would not have had a better outcome. It might have. On the other hand look at what was done to Germany after WWI, and that humiliation ultimately led to WWII.
Although, some argued Germany was not treated harshly enough, and perhaps if the equivalent of literal salting of the earth as proposed for Southern plantations had taken place in Germany WWII might not have happened.
But ultimately, reconciliation works better than vindictive punishment. Those who will not be reconciled remain a problem, however, and here we are today with the irreconciled sticking their heads out in every major Western state, encouraged by the success of scheming bastards voted in by fuckwits.
Education, education, education (and a lot of history in the curriculum, too!)
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Longer. Ever since Reagan, really.
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It’s always been this way. When I went to Europe in the 80s, I had guidebooks suggest that I sew a Canadian maple leaf on my backpack. Back then, it was Reagan and his policies that the rest of the world hated.
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De denazification after WW II is a better lesson. Support the economy, but make sure to crush and discredit the ideology that caused the war. There never should have been any statues of southern generals.
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It is … not good news that people are not making the connections between the various formations of global White supremacy and settler colonialism. The US is not an anomaly
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Haha! My dad taught me this back in the '80s when we traveled and I’ve always kept doing it, I seem to recall him turning around an encounter with an Austrian cop that way, although my memory of this is kind of vague.
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In the UK election periods are mandated at around 6 weeks. Political TV Ads are always illegal - but during the campaign parties get (one or more) free primetime TV slots to produce an ad. No-one else can, charities will lose their charitable status if they are involved in any campaigning etc.
If a candidate is mentioned in the news (Say, the PM or prominent MP is at risk in their constituency for example, all the other candidates on the ballot for that location must be mentioned (They usually show a list on the screen).
It’s not perfect - but it’s cheapish, and quick.
Spending is capped at £20k per constituency contested.
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But don’t forget to add that any party can spend as much as they like on national advertising on hoardings, social media, etc. This needs to be curbed.
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This works even in USA. I remember a Swedish couple in LA who described how they took the wrong bus and figured they could walk a mile to where they were supposed to be. They were stopped by a cop who thought it was crazy for a white couple to walk through that part of town. When they insisted, he suggested they speak Swedish, since as foreigners they would be safer.
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I don’t believe that is the case, individual candidate spending is limited to £8,700
Party spending uses the ~£20k per constituency for national expenditure. - That includes all advertising.
The grey area is with un-affiliated social media ads, which are illegal, but still out there.
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Except leave all the nazis in place, because it’s time to bristle at the Soviets/capitalists.
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Okay, let me amend my proposal about financial gain restrictions: All the restrictions I suggest to fix the country would only apply to running as a Republican.
Yep, I’m biased. The other thought is just outlawing wealth from being a representative for any population. Part of this is intended that if you represent the population you need to be in touch with the population. If you make more than $250,000 than the base salary of any home in your district, you can’t run for anything.
The thought on a citizenship test is not to back up years of racism but to manage the great idiocy found in the GOP and its representatives. So I’ll just say if you are a WHITE REPUBLICAN, you have to write an essay on the history of your state, in order to represent it. How’s that.
A lot of resistance here to term limits and basic civic intelligence as a metric. I understand the racist history of such laws, but I’m saying specifically this is intended to ban corrupt white lawmakers from being in a position of power.
Other idea:
If you are at a poverty level, you are automatically qualified to be made a Senator for a week. This is a rotating position, so each state would give up one of its Senators and have 52 rotating individuals a year to be the other Senator. Essentially if your taxes show you are at poverty level, you’re automatically entered into a random database, similar to being in a jury pool, but it’d be for giving you a week of power. Your card comes up, you can be a Senator for a week. One guarantee would be one speech on the Senate floor, and one vote on any bill. Some details to work out, but I seriously doubt it would fuck the world up any worse that the two Senator system we currently have.
You think I’m being totally unreasonable, which is fine, a lot of resistance on this thread to basic flexible proposing. Ideas like this happen across the world all the time to deflate the power of authority. Good example is Sweden’s experiment with giving the Twitter handle for the country to random citizens each week: Curators of Sweden - Wikipedia — They ended up stopping the program, but can you imagine America giving such a prominent platform to random citizens? Hopefully we can work back to that, and part of this involves making Senators partly laughable and less important in terms of power than dishwashers.
(That said, Dishwashers do some of the REAL work in this world, and regards to them)
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Our current vibe:
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We’ve been living in “interesting times” for 19 years in the US. I’m damned sick of it, but the “interesting” keeps increasing by the year, seemingly growing logarithmically over the past 3.5 years. If I had a time machine, I’d go back to 1997 just to enjoy some of the general ennui it had to offer.
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Please just invade us. For your own safety of course.
