Aftershock Prep

In Aftershock, the authors cite four reforms that will be necessary after our sovereign debt meltdown and national bankruptcy. These are: 1. campaign finance reform, 2. media reform, 3. lobbying reform and 4. increased government efficiency. It is imperative that we think about what reforms will work before this meltdown occurs, otherwise we will have a banana republic with a military dictator.
One would have to be an idiot, or a Democrat to propose any blueprint other than the original Constitution and Bill of Rights. We will be forced to return to these. If the government is bankrupt, then downsizing to small government is an attractive alternative.

What went wrong and what caused our government bankruptcy are easy to diagnose. Government, by allowing special interests to contribute to campaigns meant that our Representatives would necessarily be “for sale”. If you didn’t own your Representative or a stable of them, you were not a wealthy, successful special interest group. If, on the other hand, you were a registered voter in the city, county, district or state these candidates purport to represent, you have had very little control over the legislation, court rulings or Presidential orders that got us in this mess.

Campaign finance reform should allow only registered voters in the city, county, district or state of these candidates to contribute to their campaigns. This alone would clean up most of the media reform and lobbying reform, as both are special interest segments, who would no longer be allowed to play. If we really want limited government, then we remove Representatives from the payrolls of wealthy special interests; they will get bored with the new arrangement and leave our Representatives alone. Candidates would post their resumes, positions on issues and their world-view on their websites and answer voters email questions. Yes, we voters will have to make campaign contributions and put up more yard signs, but we wouldn’t have to listen to those Attack Ads on TV.

There would be no bail-outs, no favored groups, no social safety nets, no subsidies and very little taxes. Business could no longer use the U.S. Government to intimidate other countries into having anything to do with us. Our prosperity would be in our own hands and we had better be customer and quality oriented. I doubt that we would continue to have an income tax or a Federal Reserve, so much for inflation. Yes, we should really reduce government to the size and scope we maintained before we let the special interest groups screw it up. Our military could come home and win the Mexican border war against the cartels, then build the border wall.

The efficiency we seek already exists. All government business should be done on the internet, even popular votes on issues to be dealt with by our Representatives. House and Senate Resolutions should be judged as a waste of time and done away with. All Bills should be read, studied, understood and explained in detail with email input and questions by the voters before Bills are released from Conference Groups. All Bills should be stand-alone with no riders attached, especially appropriations Bills. All education should take place on the internet and should be the responsibility of local concerns. The new education model should be built by parents’ internet interaction. Much healthcare could be done on the internet as self-care; drugs that really do not require a prescription should be available over-the-counter from anywhere. All trade protection laws could be repealed, including the Jones Act that is keeping foreign oil skimmers from saving our beaches in the gulf. The law allowing government employees to join unions should be repealed, especially in California. All public transportation and utilities should be private, non-union and unsubsidized. All laws giving advantage to any groups should be repealed.

Environmental issues should be subject to thorough scrutiny, conclusive proof and cost-benefit analyses. We should agree that the planet is big enough to take care of itself as long as we don’t dump garbage or chemicals into lakes, rivers and oceans, on the beaches or on the road-side. Consumers and environmentalists should agree on what to do with aluminum cans, plastic bottles and adult-proof packaging via internet discourse and let consumer product businesses know our preferences; no laws should be necessary. Real necessities should receive priority including more than adequate drinking water and crop watering supplies and road expansion and repair. All local and world-wide criminal enterprises that bother us should be found, hunted down and destroyed. Illegal aliens should be deported and Immigration should be reduced to a dribble of geniuses we want to hire.