The Conservative Liberal

We are human beings. We live on Planet Earth. We will obey the laws of physics.

The tangible cost of a government to the people must be greater than the tangible value that the government can provide for the people.

If a government tries to do more and more and grows larger and larger and more and more expensive to do so then the negative differential between the tangible value that the government provides for the people and the tangible cost of the government to the people must become a larger and larger negative differential.

Governments, unchecked, tend to try to operate with many of the properties that would be characteristic of a negative output perpetual motion machine.

Great nations don’t just die. They are assassinated by the uncontrolled excesses of their governments,

A dollar of cost is a real negative value. A dollar of money has a mutually agreed upon symbolic positive value.

The symbolic positive value of dollars of money can be used to move the real negative value of a dollar of cost from place to place to place ad infinitum. The symbolic value of a dollar of money cannot be used to offset and cancel out the real negative value of a dollar of cost and remove a dollar of cost from circulation. The symbolic value of a dollar of money can only move the real value of a dollar of cost from one person to another person.

When Congress writes legislation for government spending what they are doing is writing IOUs or promissory notes that the nation’s people have to redeem and make good on. It is not the symbolic positive value of the dollars of money that are paid in taxes by the people at the top of the income ladder that redeems and makes good on the promissory notes that are written by Congress. It is the real positive value of the goods and services that are produced by the hard working people whose mental and physical energies are being applied to keeping the nation’s private sector economy operating and producing and creating real value who must redeem the promissory notes that are written by Congress. They must do so by finding ways to produce more and more while having a smaller and smaller percentage of the value which they produce and create to be used beneficially by them, their families and any other people who may depend directly on them to be their providers.

If the members of a Congress that uses a decision making process that is derived from and is then driven by the short term demands of electoral politics should make a good decision about anything other than how to get votes on election day then their good decision will have been nothing more than a fortuitous accident.

We, as a nation, have several long term, deeply embedded systemic national problems. Most of our systemic national problems needed to have been addressed decades ago when it was first realized that they were problems. Instead, they were pushed off to the future to be dealt with someday by someone else.

The inability of people in Washington, DC, to get face to face with real problems when doing so may create political risk for them or for their political party is, in itself, the systemic national problem that must be solved as a prerequisite for being able to deal effectively with any of our other systemic national problems.

We and our country need and must have a Congress that actually is and functions as The Congress of the United States: A national institution whose members can consider, discuss, debate and legislate governmental and public policies that are predicated on each policy being in the long term best interests of The United States as an entire nation and in the long term best interests of the citizens of The United States as an entire society.

A Congress that functions as a divided, segmented and fragmented Congress can only be the right Congress for the imaginary divided, segmented and fragmented nation that is depicted on our nation's political map. That nation only exists in the minds of politicians, political operatives and political pundits. No such nation actually exists on planet Earth.

The real United States of America, the one in which we all really live, functions as one nation undivided with each part connected to and interconnected with all of its other parts; with each part dependent upon and interdependent with all of its other parts and with all of its parts dynamically interactive with each other.

We must have a Congress that fits the nation that actually is. If the nation that we have is changed to fit the Congress that we have then the nation that we will then have will no longer be The United States of America.

A prerequisite for being able to fix Congress is to fix our two party ideology-based electoral political system that has become a dead albatross that hangs around the neck of every citizen of The United States.

Those American citizens who the rest of us have elected to offices of governmental and public responsibility have an especially large and especially putrid dead albatross hanging around their necks. Their dead-albatross necklace consists of their political parties and the moneyed special interests who have bought, paid for and now own their political parties outright.

Systemic problems require systemic change. he day has now arrived that must be declared to be the someday to which problems have been pushed and we must be willing to become the citizens of our great country who have the will to get face to face with those problems and do so for the purpose of finding and developing the best available real solutions for our very real problems.

If we are to be able to do that and do so with any positive effect, than we must have a Congress that is institutionally capable of taking the lead and is institutionally capable of playing a leadership role in finding, developing and implementing the best available real and workable solutions for our very real problems.

A Congress whose members duck, dodge, crawfish and whatever else they need to do to avoid getting in front of problems for fear that they will be run over and have their political careers damaged cannot possibly be the Congress that we and our nation need and must have.

A Congress whose members spend all their talent, time and energies playing silly damned intramural fantasy league political games of which party is up and which party is down on the Washington, DC, political seesaw plank while they wait for a policy initiative to be sent to them by the Executive branch so they can then chew it up, digest it and turn it into a pile of crap which they then send to the Whitehouse for the President to sign into national law cannot possibly be the Congress that we and our nation need and must have.

Systemic problems can only be solved by making systemic changes.

If I had one thing that I could do that would go into effect and my intent was to do the best thing that I could do for the future of my country and the best thing that I could for the futures of the citizens of my country then I would use my one opportunity to make a set of six substantial functional changes in Article I of the Constitution of The United States. I emphasize strongly: It is a set of six changes. I would not make any one of the changes or any combination of more than one without making all six.

The first change that I would make would be to delete and eliminate the Constitutional requirement that members of The US House of Representatives be reelected every two years to be able to remain in The House of Representatives.

Second: I would insert a new provision into Article I to Constitutionally enable the American citizens who live in a House district to use a signature petition to petition their state’s governor to declare and call an election for their jointly owned Constitutional property, their seat in the US House of Representatives.

Third: I would delete and eliminate the Constitutional requirement that Senators be reelected every six years to be able to remain in The Senate.

Fourth: I would insert a new provision into Article I to Constitutionally enable the American citizens who live in any one of the fifty states to use a signature petition to petition their state’s governor to declare and call an election for their constitutional property that they own jointly with their state; either of their state’s two seats in The US Senate.

The language of the second and fourth changes would be such that when a state’s Governor was presented with a qualified petition, he or she would be compelled by The US Constitution and his or her oath of office as Governor to immediately declare and call an election for the seat in question and instruct their state’s chief elections official to schedule and publicize the election and then oversee the candidate qualification process and the election.

Fifth and sixth: I would insert new provisions into Article I to create a Constitutionally defined mandatory retirement age for members of both houses of Congress.

I would not be establishing a mandatory retirement age because of a belief that when members reach a certain age they are no longer competent and can’t do the job that they have been doing. I would be establishing a retirement age to have a Constitutionally defined “refresh” process whereby seats in each house of Congress would be vacated periodically and could then be filled by someone new who has different personal knowledge, different viewpoints, different opinions and different perspectives. I would specify a retirement age of 75 for members of both houses.

There are three people who represent me in Congress: One member of The House and two Senators. I can only speak for myself but I would ask that each of the three of them to do just one thing to represent me the way I want to be represented in Congress. I would ask that they use the best information that they have available to them; use their knowledge, their wisdom and judgment and apply their talents, time and energy to making the best governmental and public policies that they are capable of making for my country.

If they would do that, I would ask nothing more of them. If Congress, as an institution, did that then it is my opinion that we and our country would have the best Congress that we could reasonably expect to have. We could have a Congress that is worthy of our respect and appreciation rather that having a Congress that is an object of our frustration and disgust.

There is a saying that has been credited to people from Whitman to Churchill to Einstein as well as many others. Perhaps all of them said it at one time or another.

If you do the same things the same way over and over then you should not expect that you will get different results.

The citizens of The United States have been voting in national Congressional elections every two years for the past 220 years. The long term, deeply entrenched institutional culture of Congress has likely become more deeply entrenched with each succeeding Congressional election cycle.

Long term, deeply entrenched systemic problems can only be addressed and solved by making systemic changes. We must have the will to find a way to bring about systemic change. Time is no longer on our side if it ever was.

We must have a political system and a system of governance that works to the advantage of this once great nation and its citizens rather than a system that is to the advantage of political parties, political operatives and the moneyed special interests who now own the parties.
To choose to do nothing is not a choice that we can afford to make.

I believe that having a Congress that is institutionally capable of functioning in a way that would make the Legislative branch functionally capable of actually being the first branch among three branches of our federal government that are equal in power is absolutely essential to our futures and the future of our nation. The Legislative can be first only if Congress is institutionally capable of taking the lead and going first. Until then, members of Congress can claim the Constitutional prerogative of being the first branch of government but just as all previous Congresses have for 220 years, Congresses of the future will continue to have the Legislative branch be the branch that dragasses along in the vanguard of the federal government by staying bogged down in petty partisan politics rather than being policy makers for The United States of America and for the citizens of the United States of America.

We like to think of our Constitution as being a perfect document. It's not.

We like to think of our nation as something that is and will always be without having to be maintained and sustained. It’s not.

I believe the writers of The Constitution envisioned that the Congress which they defined and created when they wrote Article I would function in much the way they were functioning. They convened in Philadelphia in the spring of 1787, used their collective knowledge, wisdom and judgment and applied their collective talents, time and energy to doing the best that they were collectively capable of doing for the new nation for which they were defining and creating a federal government.

I believe that they hoped they were defining and creating a federal government that would govern the new nation in accordance with the principles and ideals that had been written into the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Many, most, perhaps all of them believed, quite rightly, when they adjourned and returned home that September that the Constitution that they had written was a flawed document. But the members of the Continental Congress had a very real constraint. They had to write a Constitution that would be approved and ratified by enough of the 13 states for it to be adopted and then used as a functional document, a verbal blueprint for creating the federal government.

I think that they believed that when the Constitution had been ratified and adopted, and then the members of The Congress of the United States were elected and selected and took office then the new Congress would address the flaws which they believed were in the document. I think that if the Congress of the United States had functioned as members of Continental Congress had envisioned that they would, then changes and amendments that still haven't been made would have been made in The Constitution very early in the nation's history.

A nation, to be a nation, must function as a coherently functioning system. But a nation is not a natural construct that functions in accordance with the laws of nature. For a nation to exist and persist it must be able to do so while being in constant conflict with the most fundamental of the laws of nature. A nation must be maintained and sustained if it is to exist and persist. It is the citizens of a nation who must do the heavy lifting that is needed to maintain and sustain their nation. The only way that a nation's government can contribute is by pursuing policies that point the way and then smooth the road for the people and then provide effective leadership to the people.

If a nation's people rely on and ask their government to do the heavy lifting, then what they are really asking for is for their government to become an additional burden that the people have to carry along with the heavy lifting that the nation's people must do if their nation is to be maintained and sustained.

We, the people, are human beings. The persuasive power of effective leadership can accomplish far more than can the coercive power of legislation and regulation. But only if we, as human beings, can trust that those who would be our leaders will not lead us over a cliff or into a swamp for reasons of perceived personal political gain or gain of another kind for those who would pretend to be leading.