Post by POA on May 17, 2004 16:39:01 GMT -5
This party platform development thread is for issues related to governmental reform. Here are some starting ideas I have:
1) Form a nonpartisan (NOT bipartisan) federal election committee. It is ridiculous that our current federal election committee's members are shown on C-SPAN with a D or an R after their names.
It should also be entrusted with the basic responsibilities for debates (ie, getting campaign coverage/buying time until there's a federal news channel/providing moderators, et cetera). It should be clear to all that moderators from the dominant media are totally incompetent and are part of the reason why Kerry got selected and Kucinich got drastically undercovered.
2) Referendum to block out-of-state money from being used in state elections. We've discussed this before, and I'll have more on that soon.
3) Eliminate institutional barriers to third party participation.
4) Eliminate the 'revolving door'. This means that governmental employees are barred from working for corporations or foundations where their information would be a boon for a time after they leave government (but still given a stipend for perhaps 5 years).
5) Work towards getting referendum, recall, and initiative procedures in all of the states. (This is also an issue that we can frame in terms of us, as people, against politicians/the duopoly).
6) This (depending on how events go) may either be a long-term or a much shorter-term priority: Constitutional reform. A big problem that has often been ignored with the exceptions of authors such as Dahl or Lazare is that the way that the Constitution has been structured functions in such a way as to lock Americans into ways of thinking that benefit conservatives over liberals or leftists.
Reforming the Constitution is, in my opinion, the only way that the changes that we want in common can be made semi-permanent.