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what would you change?

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
Take money out of politics- all candidates get free air time equally, get a European healthcare system & forget all this private medicine/Obamacare junk.

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and no more anchor babies!

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
What about targeting the inherent concepts that cause the flaws and discrepancies in society? Like money itself.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:

I'll be happier in the 23rd Century....

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Wait another two hundred years and you can bang Erin Gray.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
I would make "V For Vendetta" required viewing for all Americans.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Sig posted in another thread:

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Specifically, I'd like to know which aspects of the USA you think are worth keeping, which ones you'd like to change, and how far is "too far" in terms of change in the USA.

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She suggested we start a new thread, so I'm game, we'll see if it goes anywhere. Here's my contribution:

I guess I'd start, for one thing, with redistricting, that's a real biggie for me. The parties should never be in charge of it. If we changed just that, I think we'd at least have a more representative form of government, tho' it wouldn't make a gigantic difference.

Term limits--for ALL government offices. I watched our Willie Brown control this state for decades from various offices, and it taught me a lot. It's a two-edged sword, unquestionably, because it takes time to accomplish anything in government, but the way it is now doesn't work very well.

Election reform, that's a biggie. The 501c-3 thing is a travesty; thus far JUST money hasn't been enough to buy everything, but given time, it'll just get worse. There's a lot more to election reform, but that would be a start.

Lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court. Another double-edged sword, but one that, the way it's become now, is really screwing us. And the involvement of Supreme Court Justices in politics, which is wayyyy out of hand right now.

Lobbyists, and the revolving door of politics/lobbying. None of these would be easy to fix, even if there was the will to do so, and I don't know how they could be fixed, but they're working against us as a country.

Organizations like ALEC being able to dictate to politicians. NO idea how you fix something like that, but the way it is now, with them WRITING our fucking laws, is abominable.

A real biggie for me--and you can't "make" it happen, would be more than just the two-party system. I think more VIABLE parties with power would go a ways toward improving what's happening today.

That's off the top of my head, nothing more, and I haven't the vaguest idea how to change any of that, all I've done for years is just try to bring things to peoples' attention, I don't know what more can be done.

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Ironically, everything you posted I would agree with and most of them would make it on my top of the list to do if we actually had any pull.

My number one thing would be to find out a way to make a politician PAY for not living up to their promises. Fucking Tide gets sued if their top-shelf product doesn't clean clothes or it cleans them but makes mothers bear children with birth defects. Why should GWB be able to lie to us for 8 years straight, followed by 8 years of Obama lying to us?

Glad to see you finally thinking Third Party Niki.

Welcome to the club ;)

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
Signy for Prez.

I think I've said that before....

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That could potentially murder kids, if it involves deporting them back into a clusterfuck. And what about the contributions of children of hard scrabble immigrants to society?

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And why is english speaking so important? That's would ruin cultural enclaves in America that spice up our country and force everyone to be assimilated. There's a reason the Borg were bad guys.

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I agreed with pretty much everything you said up to that, since razing the existing economic power structures to the ground and going back to the very basics seems the only way to fix the current problems. But then it went somewhere strange.

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And also, I didn't really want to get into this much, but... What about targeting the inherent concepts that cause the flaws and discrepancies in society? Like money itself.

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Or what about SCIENCE as solutions to some problems? Like mortality?

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Illegal laborers are low-wage laborers. Saying that illegals have contributed (or are contributing) to our society is like saying that low-wage Chinese labor is contributing to our society. The only people who really win in that scenario are business owners.

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but if you're going have a nation, then you need a common language- one that everyone is expected to know fluently.

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We're the ones who've caused the very disasters that we're facing, and until we take a long, hard scientific view of ourselves, and understand why we create such self-destructive clusterfucks and how we can prevent that in the future, we will continue to be a threat to ourselves.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I was amazed in Europe how people switched from one language to another effortlessly. Only the French resist it, and they really do have a bug up their collective asses about language.

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But what about LIVING in our society? They left their old society behind for a reason. Some of them did have to do things we would frown upon (like smuggling) just to get here because they were poor. It seems inhumane to just toss people for that.

Only the business owners win because they're free to exploit the laborers. Your solution is don't let the business owners exploit them by KICKING THEM OUT OF THE COUNTRY?

Hey yeah, what other things can we punish victims for because they have a less-than-legal status? I know, let's deport all the prostitutes even if they've been passed around by the trafficking rings or if they're children.

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Hell with nations. Nations is how you get pride and NATIONALISM. Know what Nationalism causes? Intolerance and war.

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Hmm.

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Right now the only thing standing between you and sheer, naked, global fascism is nationalism.

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You see any exit signs?

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but then I think I just saw you approve of outsourcing manufacturing jobs to exploitative sweatshops.
And you also said that somehow international problems like immigration would be solved with a one world government.
I would have to seriously disagree on those points.

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As for the language issue, I think the main problem is that we don't provide people enough opportunity in their immigrant enclaves. If most exchange and manufacture of goods and services were local, immigrants could provide for each other and their culture would thrive without having to interact outside of that world. Then they could learn whatever language they wanted to if they so choose to, instead of being forced to learn a language by economic pressures and the cultural oppression of the majority.

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No it's not. Nationalism is rapidly ACCELERATING the world in the direction of global fascism. The US is desperately trying to take over a lot of nations via economics and puppet governments in a bid to maintain superpower status. I'll grant you that China is trying to resist that for nationalist reasons, but if the US failed for whatever reason, you really think China wouldn't then try to take over the world themselves?

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The counter to it is innate human resistance to being told what to do by strangers or authority figures or both.

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I don't disagree with the whole live like we have to live here thing, but I always get a little skitchy when people seem to be suggesting that we shouldn't EVER leave. That way lies extinction whether we sort out our problems or not.

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Free trade (as currently practiced) manages to do that- make the pie smaller for everyone.

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This paper compares the performance of the Mexican economy with that of the rest of the region over the past 20 years... it finds that Mexico ranks 18th out of 20 Latin American countries in growth of real GDP per person, the most basic economic measure of living standards; Mexico’s poverty rate of in 2012 was almost identical to the poverty rate of 1994; real (inflation-adjusted) wages for Mexico were almost the same in 2012 as in 1994; and unemployment has increased significantly. It also notes that if NAFTA had been successful in restoring Mexico’s pre-1980 growth rate – when developmentalist economic policies were the norm – Mexico today would be a relatively high income country, with income per person significantly higher than that of Portugal or Greece. It is unlikely that immigration reform would be a major political issue in the United States, since relatively few Mexicans would seek to cross the border.

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Now, why do I insist on having immigrants learn the official language? Because if you cant' speak the language, you will be isolated form healthcare, from training, from police services, from politics, and from the million-and-one things that you personally don't encounter as a problem because you speak the language.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:



You see any exit signs?

Yeah, me neither. And yet, with the evidence staring us in the face that we have to LIVE HERE, we keep on doing as if we have someplace else to go.]

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