No Coke! Pepsi!

After posting the last article I had a long phone conversation with Che Bob from Lonestone Revolution. After our hour long discussion I wish to modify my comment that we need a third party of moderates, and leave the far right and far left to define these positions.

What Che Bob pointed out to me is that we Americans live in a political "Samurai Deli". Those of us that remember the early days of SNL, John Belushi played a samurai that owned a deli, and the customers could only have one kind of drink not other, the catch line was "No Coke! Pepsi!"

We basically have a political process of no choice. Where else in our live would we accept only two choices for anything. Go to the convenience store and there at least 14 different beverage choices, go out to dinner and unless you live in a one-horse town you have literally dozen of choices for your dinning experience.

So why do "we the people" accept a political menu with only two choices. If we are going to be a wedge issue voting country then we should have a political party for all of these issues. If your big issue is universal heath care then you should belong to the People's Health Party. Once that is accomplished, change your party to the next issue that is most important to you.

With more political parties, then "we the people" can frame the debate, not have the debate framed by one or the other of the existing parties.

Of course some would say that a new party can't compete with the entrenched two party system. That may be true, there are definite changes that need to be made to our political process, but isn't our country supposed to be the flagship of democracy on the planet. Why can't we make some simple changes that will make us a true example of democracy?

Some of the changes that I would suggest are:

1. Nationalize the elections; Take back the election process from PAC's, lobbyist, corporations and special interest. This is the only logical way to make this happen nationalize political funding. We the people pay for the results of the who is elected why can't we pay for the elections themselves. Each candidate would get exactly the same amount of funds from the public treasury, no limit to the number of canidates that can apply for the funding, just that the candidate have petition with 1% of the population of the district inwhich they are runnung for office. Once the candidate has a signed petition then they can get public funds for their campaign.
   
   Additionally, if the airwaves are in fact the property of the public then why can't the public demand a lease payment for all the profits the telecommunications companies make from the use of these airwaves. Each telecommunications company can pay us back by giving air time to each candidate, and airing and producing 5 debates for the candidates.
   
   
2. More representives at the fedral and state level, I believe that we should at least have double the number of representives in the House of Representives as we do now. Same holds true in all state houses. How can we have a representive government when we have only 400 representing 300 million. Better yet why not use established geographical devisions to set up representive districts, geremandering is a big problem with entrenching poticitian into life time jobs, why not use the counties and parishes to define the House districts on the fedral level and school districts on the state level.
   
   
3. Pay raises for congress by refererendum only; why should our public servant be in control of their own paychecks? Where else in this country would a sane employer give the employees the ablity to write their own paychecks? We need to have some more control over how much or public servants are renumerated for their service.

I guess the basic message that I am trying to say is RED and BLUE isn't enough of a choice anymore we need an entire rainbow of political choices, just like we do when we go to the deli and have more than one choice of drinks.

No Red or Blue

I have had a few days to consider the out come of Election 2006. The amazing fact of this election is that less than 35% of this countries citizens voted and that control of the senate came down to less than 10,000 votes. This in a country of 300 million. That means that the population of one large town, held the power to decide the course of this nation.

When one looks at the country colored by county it looks a lot more purple that red or blue. This in a country were only one out of three people vote. How would the map color change if we had more than 70% of us voting. Would it be more one or the other, or would the color blend even more.

Perhaps the reason so few of us vote is because we really don't have a political party that represent the true feeling of the US voters. Why can't the moderates of both the Republican and Democratic parties come together on there common ground and have a moderate party, and leave the extremes to the two parties we now have.

The Neo-Republicans could pursue their far right agenda and the Neo-Democrats could define what a liberal agenda really is without everyone that isn't a republican being defined as a liberal. Leaving the majority of voters that are moderates be just that, moderate. Then if one or the other party wants to get a issue pasted or introduced into the public debate then they would need the participation of the moderates to get support into the political arena.