Friday, December 11, 2009

A political thought experiment.

When I was growing up I lived on the East Coast. We had Elementary Schools (grades K-6), Junior High Schools (grades 7-9) and High Schools (grades 10-12)

In my town we had North Junior High and South Junior High. These schools had their sports teams that competed against each other. There were rivalries. We rooted for, and had allegiance to the team from the school we attended. These were our learning grounds.

Both Junior High Schools merged into one High School. Now, the rivals quit competing and joined into one Football team, one Basketball team and one Baseball team.

Right now we have two major political parties in power. We have the Democrats and the Republicans. We have Independent parties but they do not have enough numbers to make a difference.

The Republicans would like nothing better than to win all of the elections so that they could be in total control. The Democrats want the same thing.

By this I mean all of the Senate seats and all of the seats in the House of Representatives along with the President.

If one party won all of the elections then we would be ruled by one single party. The opposing party with different view points is not going to take this lightly. They are going to try and win back some of the seats in the next election.

What we have now, is one party that has a little more control than the other party. The opposing party is always trying to circumvent the progress of the other party. This is called grid-lock.

We have political fighting that is taking up a lot of time and energy. There is lots of posturing, pompous people flapping their wings like birds in heat trying to out do each other. To me it has become total nonsense.

What if our politics could be changed to resemble the progression from the Junior High Schools, in my example, to High School?

What if we could create a New Party called the American Party (High School). Now this is the party that is really in power. These are the people that are making the laws and running the country.

The Democrats (North Junior High) and the Republicans (South Junior High) are learning grounds for how to run campaigns, how to get elected. Once, these people get elected they go through training like Internships/Residencies for Doctors. This is where they learn to be GOOD politicians. To graduate from this level they have to study procedures and take and pass stringent tests on Ethics, Conduct and the Constitution. They can't write any laws or do anything other than observe.

Did you know that a very large percentage all of the politicians that are elected into office have never read the Constitution, the document they have sworn to defend?

When seats vacate in the American party, those with the highest grades graduate into the American party. They become full members of the American party representing their state.

At this point in my perfect little scenario, we have a UNIFIED collection of people all joined together with a common goal of doing what's best for America. There's no fighting or bickering. There are problems to be solved and these people, who are not concerned about the next election or what they can get out of the deal, are committed to doing a great job. Why, because they only get one shot, one term; one try at it.

The legacy they leave behind is: Did they do something constructive and beneficial?

Without career politicians we won't have these "powerful" politicians. Politicians are supposed to be our servants not the other way around. They are not supposed to be powerful in any way shape or form. Some of the haughty Senators that have been in Congress for decades, the ones that won't stop to talk to people, and the ones that operate behind closed doors and pass unpopular legislation that hurts the individuals of the country and benefits corporations and Special Interest groups are just like the dictators and despots in other countries.

If a person can't run for office a second time and get re-elected then they won't waste any time trying to get re-elected. They are not likely to tarnish their legacy on creating crappy legislation that benefits a corporation and hurts the people. Because just like a Wiki someone will follow them and it is part of the training to make sure that only good and beneficial legislation gets written and passed. When someone finds crappy legislation it is their duty to have it changed, repealed or rewritten and to make a note of who authored the bad stuff.

It's far fetched I know but with some work it could be a great thing.

In the mean time, knowing that my idea is never going to ever become a reality or even be considered, I can say that we can have something that is similar to this by holding these crooks accountable for their actions.

Don't vote for people just because they are cute, or they have been in office before. Each citizen has a duty to follow up on what these greedy slugs are doing. If they don't do the right thing, vote them out after one term.

A lot of our problems in this country come from the fact that the stupid people keep on voting the same sorry dumb ass politicians back into office, the ones that hurt the country because they think it will be better the time around. Why? Because their campaign slogans are what the people want to hear. The professional campaigners and not smart people keep getting voted into office.

For me, regarding politicians, more "experience" equates to more self-serving greed and corruption.

We need to send the message that we are sick of the waste, sick of the fighting, sick of them spending our tax dollars overseas and sick of the greed.

That's it for now … it's just something to think about.

No comments:

Post a Comment