Dissident Politics: Policy Proposal: Defense of Democracy and Rebuilding Trust

By now, most minds are made up about the president. Further complaining about him isn’t going to change hardly any of those minds, if any at all. It is reasonable to believe that if he is re-elected, we will get four more years of what we got to date. In view of what is incoherent messaging by democrats, a positive vision of policies that may be possible to at least consider seems to be timely. This is the first of a series of posts on policies that would generally seem to make at least some sense to most people.

Other likely topics include 1. economic sustainability, budget, tax gap, taxation, wealth distribution,2. health care, 3. immigration, 4. jobs, 5. environment, 6. foreign policy, 7. education, 8. church-state separation, and 9. social policy, racism and social polarization, safety net spending.

This post centers on defense of democracy and means to rebuild trust among Americans toward democracy, democratic institutions and fellow citizens. A defense of both are sorely needed because both have been under sustained attack for years. Several of the policy proposals are taken from HR1, the first major legislation the democratic House passed after taking control in January 2019. The Senate majority leader has promised to block the bill, so there is no chance of HR1 becoming law as long as the GOP controls the Senate or the White House.

Defense of democracy and trust-building – anti-corruption, anti-tyranny, pro-transparency

Policy	Rationale
1. Public campaign financing: Provide $1-5 in public funds to match each $1 in direct or indirect private funding for candidates and political parties	Public opinion: about 65% of Americans want the role of special interest money in politics reduced; Reality: private entities backed by campaign contributions write laws for their own benefit not for the public interest; the process is usually cloaked in secrecy to hide the truth of law-making from the public; Cost: Unknown; estimate $1-5 billion initially; Benefit: public financing will at least partially reduce special interest money influence and partially counteract the propaganda and lies that special interests and many or most politicians routinely employ against the public
2. Tax returns: At least 45 days before a primary, general or special election, all candidates for federal office and all federal judges must make public their tax returns for the previous 6 years All senior federal employees must make public their tax returns for the previous 4 years within 60 days after passage of this law and at least 45 days before they assume a new senior federal position	Public opinion: 59% of Americans believe it is necessary for presidential candidates to publicly release their tax returns; Reality: Requiring elected federal officials, judges and senior bureaucrats to publicly disclose their tax returns shows possible illegal conflicts of interest and that is evidence the person’s loyalty is to the constitution, the rule of law and the public interest, not self-interest; Cost: very low; some persons will refuse to disclose, resulting in loss of those politicians and employees; Benefit: transparency increases and disclosure provides a basis for trust that politicians, judges and bureaucrats are not conflicted or tax cheats
3. Campaign financing transparency: Super PACs and “dark money” political organizations must make their donors public within 2 weeks of any donation; violation is a felony and carries a minimum mandatory jail term of no less than 10 months for the first conviction and 24 months for each subsequent conviction	Public opinion: about 65% of Americans want the role of special interest money in politics reduced; Reality: private entities backed by campaign contributions usually go to the limit of the law or beyond to avoid disclosing their identities; most wealthy individuals and interests fight against transparency to hide the real extent of their influence over government from the public; Cost: very low; Benefit: transparency increases and disclosure provides a basis for the public to see how much money private sector special interests spend to buy influence over politicians and laws
4. Campaign and government operations transparency: Require social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to disclose the source of money for political ads on their platforms and disclose how much money was or will be spent within 2 weeks of the order for the ads Require disclosure of any political spending by government contractors to show the flow of domestic and foreign money into the elections by targeting shell companies and all other sources of money into federal politics Strengthen law and oversight to prohibit any coordination between candidates and Super PACs Violation is a felony and carries a minimum mandatory jail term of no less than 10 months for the first conviction and 24 months for each subsequent conviction	Public opinion: about 65% of Americans want the role of special interest money in politics reduced; Reality: private entities and foreign adversaries, including Russia and China, pay for propaganda and lies on social media to undermine trust in democracy, democratic institutions and trust in fellow citizens; these efforts are successful and have adversely influenced American society and social harmony; Cost: very low; Benefit: transparency increases and disclosure provides a basis for the public to see how much money foreign adversaries and domestic special interests spend to buy influence over politicians and laws
5. Anti-corruption and ethics: Ethics opinions by the Office of Government Ethics are binding, not advisory; all appearances, even tenuous appearances, of any kind of a conflict of interest are strictly prohibited, as are all actual conflicts of interest of any kind; expand the power of the Office of Government Ethics to do more oversight and enforcement; establish stricter lobbying registration requirements, including more oversight of foreign agents by the Foreign Agents Registration Act All ethics opinions are to be made public to the maximum extent possible as soon as possible	Public opinion: a majority of Americans' views of government remain negative; trust and approval ratings of the executive and legislative branches is low; Reality: Ethics has been reduced to at least an appearance of being relatively ineffective in fighting against both opacity and conflicts of interest; majorities hold unfavorable views of both major political parties; Cost: estimate tens of millions in added oversight and enforcement costs; some possible loss of federal employees due to refusal to comply; Benefit: transparency increases and ethics is elevated to a status of mandatory compliance; ethics is returned to a status of having real impact on all federal employees and that provides the public with some empirical basis for trust in terms of ethics, transparency and conflicts of interest
6. Vote integrity, vote participation and voter registration: Create automatic national voter registration that asks voters to opt out, rather than opt in; shift responsibility to states to maximize voter registration with loss of federal infrastructure or other funds for states that fail to register at least 95% of eligible voters Mandatory early voting at least one week before any election Election Day is a holiday for federal employees and private sector businesses are strongly encouraged to do the same where possible; move elections from Tuesdays to Saturdays or Sundays Require poll workers to provide a two week notice if poll sites are to be changed; make colleges and universities a voter registration agency, in addition to the DMV, etc. End partisan gerrymandering in federal elections and prohibit voter roll purging; prohibit use of non-forwardable mail to remove voters from rolls Increase election security, including requiring the director of national intelligence to do regular checks on foreign threats and make public as much of the findings as national security permits; provide federal funding for security measures Impose a tax penalty for eligible voters who do not vote, unless they are unable to vote for good reason, for example, $25 for low income non-voters, $200 for middle income non-voters, and $10,000 for high income non-voters; adjust penalty rates up or down to attain at least 85% voter participation by imposing the lowest effective penalty Conduct a mandatory evaluation of electoral changes such as a national popular vote for president and ranked choice voting; make the findings public	Public opinion: 74% of Americans believe that voting is a top priority for good citizenship; Reality: voter participation is under attack, primarily or completely by conservatives falsely claiming massive voter fraud and other untrue reasons; voter purges and other measures that conservatives tend to implement amount to voter suppression, not fraud prevention; Cost: unknown; estimate tens of millions to hundreds of millions in the first election cycle, with costs possibly decreasing for election cycles thereafter; Benefit: voter participation increases; voting is easier for more people; the tax penalty incentivizes voting
7. Legislative transparency and public opinion: For all new significant or ‘qualifying’ laws from congress (spending or saving more than $100 million), conduct fair and neutral but rigorous opinion polling to determine the level of public support and opposition for the law; for laws where reliable public opinion data exists, that can replace the polling requirement Congressional supporters and opponents must attach to each new qualifying law a detailed rationale (no less than 3,000 words with no upper limit) for their support or opposition, including a detailed list of individuals and business entities that directly or indirectly contributed money or promises of anything of present or future value to support or oppose the law, what and how much was contributed, and how much key legislators who supported and opposed the law received; the rationale must be complete and as transparent as existing law allows, and if existing law does not allow a complete, honest rationale, then all interested parties are given notice that privacy, trade secrets or any other information they want kept secret will not be heard or considered in drafting of the law so that the public can be fully informed; when private sector individuals or attorneys draft any qualifying law or any part thereof, their identities, contributed language and employers must be included in the rationale The detailed rationale must clearly and directly identify the key facts, key assumptions and lines of reasoning for support of, or opposition to, the qualifying law; it must also provide an honest assessment of all significant positive and negative impacts on all significantly affected individuals, groups and entities The detailed rationale must be made public at least 2 weeks before it can be sent to the president for acceptance or veto Failure to provide a timely complete and honest rationale is a felony and carries a minimum mandatory jail term on the individuals responsible (at least one person in congress on each side and optionally one or more other federal employees on each side, including all private sector individuals who wrote any of the law) for failing to provide the detailed rationales; the jail term will be no less than 10 months for the first conviction and 24 months for each subsequent conviction	Public opinion: unknown; Reality: research data suggests that public opinion is irrelevant in affecting policy choices and laws; wealthy individuals and organized special interests dictate policy, not public opinion; public trust in congress is low and opacity in legislating is a major reason for that distrust; Cost: unknown, likely hundreds of millions per year; legislation may be slowed more than it is now; Benefit: the public is shown (i) the rationale of both supporters and opponents for why they support or oppose any new law, (ii) who contributed how much to whom, and (iii) who wrote what portions of each law; light is shed on the legislative process and that affords the public with some basis for trust in congressional legislation