MY FEDERAL FANTASY

Seriously though, if the federal government came to me and said I could reorganize federal procedures and systems, here's some of what I'd come up with.

It's a little long, but just hear me out.

State Primaries for the Presidential Election

No voter in any state would ever again feel overlooked or uncounted with the following changes.

• States can hold either votes or caucuses as they please, but there will be only two dates on which these will be held.
• The first date will be for all the lower population states, based on the most previous U.S. Census, until the sum of population for these states reaches at least 52% of the total U.S. population.
• The second date will be one month after the first date, composed of the rest of the states making up the remainder 48% of the U.S. population.
• Candidates for President may not announce their candidacy until the final year of the current presidential term.
• Candidates must campaign in every state.
  

Political Party Conventions

• There will be no winner takes all of delegates in any state.
• No superdelegates will be sent to a convention from any state. 
• All delegates must enter their convention pledged to a particular candidate based on their state's primary vote tally.
• Yes, this will take away any suspense of who the nominee will be, but it will free up the conventions to focus on their party platform and campaign strategies.

Presidential Election

• The Electoral College is abolished.
• The direct popular vote will still be carried out county by county to help avoid a national vote hacking event.
• All counties using electronic voting machines must also securely store paper evidence of the votes. Electronic voting machines may not be connected to the internet.
• Every candidate must visit each state of the union at least once in their campaign.
• The President will be elected for a six year term, one term only.

Congress

• A Constitutional amendment will be passed that defines the annual convening and adjournment dates of Congress. The Constitution now states that Congress must meet once a year, and Congress currently sets its own schedule, which is scandalously rife with breaks.
• Also defined in this amendment will be a minimal percentage of votes which a Congressperson must be present for and participate in.
• No political party officials may demand a congressperson spend blocks of time making party fundraising calls. No congressional committee seats will be assigned based on party fundraising efforts.

Congressional Terms

• A Constitutional amendment will be passed that defines a Senate term the same as currently, at 6 years, but with a two term limit. 
• House of Representative terms will be doubled to 4 years from the current 2 years, with a 3 term limit.
  

Congressional Districting

• Each state currently draws its own Congressional districts, supposedly of even population representations. This will no longer be allowed to be done by state legislatures, but rather by elected state commissions. Splitting of cities will not be allowed. Regional/geographic integrity will be the goal. Drawing of boundaries for political party advantage will absolutely not be allowed in any state.

Congressional Legislation Transparency

• Currently, a proposed legislative bill first goes to an appropriate committee, but most bills never see the light of day after that. The committee chairperson sees to that. Congressional website transparency would let citizens easily discover what fluff bills have been proposed and by whom, and what important legislation is being sat upon for political reasons, and by whom.
• Bills must become one issue only. There will be no tacked on hidden amendments that bear no relevance to the main issue. This will force Congress to vote on many more bills, but those bills will be more simple and transparent. Congress will have to do the job it is supposed to. It will no longer be able to sneak tax advantages for lobbyists into a bill.
  
• Bills will be written by Congressional Staff, never by lobbyists.
• Pork barrel requests from Representatives or Senators must be bundled into one big annual Congressional pork barrel bill, with complete transparency about who is asking for what, with complete internet access to this information by citizens.

Senate Approvals

• The Senate currently is supposed to approve or not all types of federal appointments proposed by the President. But the leaders of the majority party in the Senate can choose to do nothing at all as a political jab at the President. This creates large backlogs in the entire federal judicial system especially. A relatively short time limit, such as 90 days, needs to be set, in which approval or disapproval needs to be given, or else an appointment approval will happen by default.
  

Campaign Financing

• If Google can map the entire Earth down to its street levels and into its oceans, there must be a think tank that can study and dissect the costs of state, congressional, and presidential campaigns. I suspect an insane and disgusting amount of money from all sources gets dissolved into thin air, never to be accounted for again. Mandatory campaign spending standards should be set so that a candidate for Congress or the Presidency need not be a one percenter or in bed with the one percenters. Other countries have restrictions. There is no reason we can't.

Campaign Timeline

• A firm timeline standard must be set about when a candidate for Congress or President can publicly announce their candidacy and begin campaigning. That timeline should be the final year of the current term for either office.

So, citizens of the United States, you're welcome!

Remember, the Constitution has been amended 27 times already. What's a little more tweaking?

The big question is, do the citizens of this country have the focus and the will to demand these badly needed changes, or are we just a selfie nation?

SHOULD WE RELATE?

photo by Bill Ray for Time/Life

Look at these guys. There is not a single thing I can relate to about them other than the fact that they are homo sapiens. This does not mean they must be bad men. I wish them no harm.

The question then being, is it wrong to feel less concerned about a group that you can't relate to in your personal life? Does it make you less of a good person? Is it a symptom of cultural egocentricity? 

For example, two suicide bombers killed 43 people in Beirut, Lebanon the day before the ISIS attacks in Paris.

by Reuters

Yet when the next day Paris was attacked, the tragedy in Beirut was all but forgotten. Condolences from around the world went to France.

from The Atlantic Magazine

Is it because the French look like us? Is it because we can relate more to a European lifestyle than a Middle Eastern lifestyle? Would that be wrong of us if that were true?

from Voz Iz Neias

I once reminded a 6 foot 4 inch male friend that his experience of walking down the street was completely different from my 5 foot 1 inch female experience. I don't think we really can walk in anyone else's shoes. But we can and should try to imagine.

Would I feel comfortable walking into some place filled with those biker guys? After all, we're all human. No way. I feel comfortable for the most part in my town and the region I live in. Is that a wrong feeling?
It's wrong if it becomes racism and/or xenophobia. 

Yes, we have differences. Yes, those differences can scare us. Yes, it can be disastrous when different cultures collide. I sadly don't think our human natures will ever move towards homogeneity. What we must do is fight to keep empathy and compassion alive on this planet.

IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE, POCAHONTAS

I came across a Twitter tidbit recently, describing how Dr. Adrienne Keene, an academic of Cherokee descent, pointed out to Netflix that their description of the animated Disney movie, Pocahontas, had an insensitive Eurocentric bent. Much to Dr. Keene's surprise, Netflix apologized and changed the description. Due to social media, this little transaction opened a big can of worms.

Just how sensitive should any racial or national group in 2015 be about the use of their groups' histories or symbols?

Couldn't the appropriation of a national or racial group's music, art, designs, and symbols be a form of admiration of that culture?
It could be, but just as often appropriation is done thoughtlessly, with no regard for or knowledge of the culture's history.
If that culture has been or is oppressed, then this casual appropriation feels like an insult and a theft.

Should a group try and claim control over the designs of their ancestors and culture? 

I think that may be impossible in this technologically connected world.

I think that instead of criticizing about appropriation, we should enter into dialogue with each other about what the symbols mean, and encourage at least some knowledge about who the original people really were and what their history was. 
If people become even slightly more aware, they might possibly in their minds honor the cultures by not casually using their cultural styles and symbols inappropriately. 

Where this line should never have been crossed.

Sports team names and logos. We would never imagine to see a professional sports team from the Midwest named something such as the Detroit Blackskins. Why then is it OK to refer to Native Americans with this same racist terminology? Just because it has always been done? Not a chance.

Two elements that burn deep in the hearts of descendants are historical genocide and slavery. Don't you think the descendants of these cultures might be entitled to carry a little extra sensitivity about their histories?

Part of the Native Americans' challenge in this cultural battle is that there are 561 federally recognized tribes, each distinct. Additionally, they represent a total of only about 2% of the U.S. population, making them politically invisible.

In the town my mother grew up in.

So for the obvious reason of 561 distinct tribes and cultures, there cannot truly be a "Native American consensus" strategy on this issue of cultural appropriations. 

Throw into this mix, the ill-conceived, dysfunctional reservation and land allotment systems, the rampant poverty and unemployment, the poor education systems, the substance abuse issues, and until Obamacare, the poor health care, and one can see with little trouble how the Native cultures' designs and symbols have been easily confiscated and misused by others over all those years and still to this day.

Unfortunately, on one hand there are Americans today that still look down on tribal citizens.
On the other hand there are those who romanticize that the tribes were just nature loving people who only wanted peace.

The cultures and their sagas were complicated. Not romantic. Not peaceful.

my great uncle Rex

I personally believe that living a modern life doesn't mean one is betraying the culture and the history of the ancestors. People who strongly identify themselves with their Native American ancestry rightly have one foot in the present, and one foot in the past. 

In the Plains where my Yankton Sioux great grandmother lived, the "Indian Wars" ended in 1890. That is now 125 years past. 

So today, 125 years later, the descendants should be standing independent, strong, and tall, with careful dignity and grace speaking out to others who have stepped over those culturally sensitive lines. 

And rest assured that the descendants will never stop sharing the stories of the ancestors.

STILL CAVEMEN AFTER ALL THESE YEARS?

I just watched a thoughtful TED Talk given by President Jimmy Carter this past May, reflecting his feelings that the abuse of women's rights is the number one human rights problem in the world.

I can't help but wonder how is it that women in general have never lived with full social equality even though there are roughly the same amount of women and men born on the planet?

My own thoughts on this:
A.    It's not about the brains.
B.    The larger physical build of men. This obviously does make a difference in the power balance.
C.    Many societies and cultures have trouble seeing women as little more than sexual objects/targets.
D.    The fact that women bear the task of growing the next generation within their wombs, placing women in a vulnerable physical state during pregnancy. 
E.    Women typically spend more time in child rearing than men, which often lowers a woman's financial earning capability.

These biological  and societal facts cause so much societal grief. 

Grief if a daring career woman chooses to delay pregnancies or to bear no offspring at all. 

Grief if a woman chooses to spend more time at that job than in personally nurturing her child. 

Grief if a man chooses not to help support the woman he has impregnated and the child she has borne. 

Grief especially, if men do not respect the miraculous process of pregnancy and birth which women are vessels to and which women seek to have control of.

I don't know if this lack of respect for women's contributions to life on this planet is a type of unconscious jealousy by men of women's ability to grow new life. Or is it some caveman instinct to try and to control one's bloodline? 

At this point in time in human history I would have hoped for more than that!

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS CONSTITUTION

If the Founding Fathers had some of today's cool they might have had a brainstorm session and their stream of consciousness about the items in the Constitution might have sounded something like . . . . 

What's is this Congress? What's that President? What's the Supreme Court? What's the deal with states? If we have to, how can we fix this thing? OK,OK, go ahead, choose your own god. We do affirm all these things. Congress dudes, you can't have a raise without the people saying so. Pray to whomever you want. Say what you want. Write what you want. Hang out together if you want. Complain as you want. 
Sure, have a gun! And you never have to let the army into your house. Hey, I'm not doing anything wrong, so you can't look at my stuff! If you accuse me, I can keep my lips zipped if I want. And you can't go accusing me twice. Hey, if you're going to say those things about me, where's my lawyer? And where's the jury? Wow, that sentence you gave is sooo harsh! Hey, you can't just make up new rules in order to crush my rights. And what does the state have to say about it? What if someone attacks the state? No slaves. No, no nevermore. We're not counting those darn Indians though. 
You gotta be a grown up white male or you don't count in anything. 
OK, now you can be a black male and vote. Surprise - all you working stiffs, you gotta pay taxes now. No booze anymore, baby! OK, OK, you women can vote now. What'll we do if the President's dead? OK, you can drink again (as if you weren't already). Want to be President forever? No, baby. Twice is enough. Didn't pay your taxes? Go ahead, vote anyway. 
What the heck do we do if we need a new VP? Now we're sending your 18 year old ass to war, so we guess we can let you vote too.

A HOUSE PAINTER'S GUIDE TO LIFE

During a slow renovation of my old apartment, I realized there are a couple of rules to wall painting.
    1. You WILL get paint on your clothes.
    2. There WILL be drops onto the floor.
    3. All the tedious work is worth the effort in the             end.

Last night while watching some TED talks on Netflix it dawned on me that these rules certainly have a wider application to life.

STRANGERS WITH CANDY, & THE HERD MENTALITY

We were all told as children not to take candy from strangers. Look at us all now, having been offered the sweetest treat imaginable, and most of us gobbling it up quite willingly. The treat is seemingly limitless technology at our fingertips.

How is that bad? Well, the strangers who gave us that candy now track our every word, whim, and movement. And we are so happy with our sweet treats that we try not to care that they're doing that. 

To make things worse, the strangers have opened back doors for other characters with very bad intentions who can enter into our spheres.
Here's how I rationalize this risk to myself. Safety in numbers. I and my accounts which are full of information are but one target within a herd of millions, like a life and death chase on the Serengeti. What are the chances that I will be the one data buffalo singled out by the information predator?

And does some nefarious information collecting program really want to see a text in which I've invited a friend to lunch? Or might my blog attract untoward attention? There are millions just like it.

Statistically, those of us Americans who live regular, typical lives, at least as of today, probably will not have a negative, life changing event caused by the information sweep of the planet that is currently going on. 

But we could. And we each need to be and continue to stay vigilant about our own data footprints, and have a healthy wariness for those strangers with candy.