All Life Is Problem Solving

This is Part Two of a critical review of The National Journal’s Debate on “Our Fiscal Future” between John Podesta and Douglas Holtz-Eakin with Jim Tankersley moderating, at The George Washington University’s Jack Morton Auditorium. This part provides more observations and evaluation on some of the propositions offered by Holtz-Eakin and Podesta.

H-E: Eliminating tax cuts for the rich will cost 1.5% to 2% GDP annually.

Me: This one is really hard to believe. The tax cuts for the highest income people would average about $70 Billion per year. The multiplier associated with these cuts is only $0.29 on the dollar. So destroying these financial assets through taxation will cost the economy about $20 Billion annually. As a percent of current GDP that amounts to 0.14 percent, not 1.5 to 2 percent. So, I think we need to view this claim of Holtz-Eakin’s with a big dose of skepticism. The question is, why didn’t Podesta question it? [Read more →]

Bernie Sanders appeared on Dylan Ratigan’s show yesterday talking about Elizabeth Warren’s appointment. Towards the end of his interview, he said a few words about his opposition to extending the Bush Tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. His proposal was to end the tax breaks the high income people, take the $700 Billion freed up, spend $350 Billion on sorely needed infrastructure projects, creating millions of jobs over a 10 year period and taking the other $350 million in savings and applying it to deficit reduction. [Read more →]

[Ed. note: This series has been re-posted by Joe Firestone (a.k.a. letsgetitdone) on behalf of author Nancy Bordier with her express permission.]

By

Nancy Bordier

See the series introduction here.

Voting blocs can attain the electoral strength they need to win Congressional elections even when their candidates face strong opponents with seductive messaging machines that are well-financed by special interests. They can do so by conducting sustained, systematic campaigns to increase the membership of their blocs and form electoral coalitions.

Both strategies are built around the Interactive Voter Choice System’s consensus-building tools, including the Voting Utility. These tools enable voters to continue negotiating and even voting on which priorities they wish to include in common agendas, until they can identify the combinations of priorities that attract the number of votes required to beat their candidates’ opponents. This process also enables them to build electoral bases that outflank and outmaneuver those of stand-alone, special interest-controlled parties and voting blocs, whose members are constrained to accept fixed, narrow-gauge, special interest agendas. [Read more →]

Tuesday night, I thought I’d attend The National Journal’s Debate on “Our Fiscal Future” between John Podesta and Douglas Holtz-Eakin with Jim Tankersley moderating at The George Washington University’s Marvin Center. I was interested because Podesta is often thought to be on the left-wing of “mainstream” opinion, and also it is said that he is one of the leading possibilities to succeed Rahm Emanuel as the President’s Chief of Staff. So, I wanted to see if I could find some glimmer of novelty in the point of view he expressed; some indication that he might bring some new thinking into The White House beyond what Obama has been hearing from say, Austan Goolsbee.

Unfortunately, the event filled up too fast and I wasn’t able to go, so I tuned into the live video stream, which is now available at the Center for American Progress web site. By the end of the debate I was very glad I didn’t go. First, because I got to “cover” the debate in my living room, and Second, because I didn’t appear lose anything in translation, especially since the promised Q & A period was limited to answers to one question, and contained nothing that could possibly embarrass any of “the notables” or make them think twice about what they were saying. [Read more →]

[Ed. note: This series has been re-posted by Joe Firestone (a.k.a. letsgetitdone) on behalf of author Nancy Bordier with her express permission.]

By

Nancy Bordier

See the series introduction here.

This part discusses how individual voters can use the web-based tools and services provided by the Interactive Voter Choice System to set their policy agendas and form voting blocs that run winning candidates in a Congressional District. Part 5 shows how voting blocs can use the application to build electoral coalitions that give them the electoral strength they need to win Congressional elections.

Legislative Agenda Setting

At the founding of the Republic, voters and their Congressional representatives were few in number. They had similar backgrounds and views about what policies should be enacted. In contrast to the demographics of that era, a Congressional electoral district now contains not hundreds of voters but hundreds of thousands of voters. [Read more →]

[Ed. note: This series has been re-posted by Joe Firestone (a.k.a. letsgetitdone) on behalf of author Nancy Bordier with her express permission.]

By

Nancy Bordier

See the series introduction here.

All U.S. House of Representatives seats and one third of Senate seats in Congress will be up for re-election in 2012. The U.S. House of Representatives holds the “power of the purse” because it initiates all revenue bills. Electing a majority of representatives to this body who are untainted by special interest money is the fastest and most direct way for U.S. voters to get their policy priorities enacted into law and stop the passage of legislation that serves special interests.

With 80% of Americans wanting most Congressional representatives to be defeated, and the two major parties attracting little more than half of all of registered voters combined, there are likely to be enough discontented voters in most Congressional districts to oust their incumbents — provided they have a mechanism for putting House candidates on the ballot that elicit the votes of a plurality of voters. (U.S. election laws permit candidates to be elected without a majority of all votes cast; they just need to get more votes than any other candidate, referred to as a “plurality”). [Read more →]

The other day, in one of their e-mails, Democracy For America (DFA) posed the choice for me in the 2010 elections this way:

This election, the choice is clear:

 

• Republicans like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell want to retain the Bush-Cheney reckless tax cuts for the wealthy that created out of control budget deficits and lead America into a jobs-losing recession.

 

• Democrats like Barack Obama and Patrick Leahy want to return to the booming Clinton-Gore economy that led to balanced budgets and created over 22 million new jobs. [Read more →]

By

Nancy Bordier

See the series introduction here.

Thanks to advances in Internet technologies, the obstacles the major parties and their special interest backers have erected to prevent voters from ousting their incumbents can be circumvented by voters who leverage the large scale collective action power of the Internet via the web application described in this series to get control of U.S. electoral processes. This application, the Interactive Voter Choice System (IVCS), enables dissatisfied voters to self-organize and build voting blocs and electoral coalitions that can run winning candidates in local Congressional elections without special interest funding. The voting blocs and coalitions will be able to run candidates who can defeat special interest-backed candidates, wealthy self-funded candidates, and candidates run by special interest-backed voting blocs, such as the Tea Party, because they will be able to set transpartisan agendas that appeal to a broader-cross section of voters. These voters will decide who they want to run and what their candidates’ agendas will be. [Read more →]

By

Nancy Bordier

See the series introduction here.

The majority of U.S. voters want to see most elected representatives in Congress defeated because they favor special interests over voters’ interests. But, voters face enormous obstacles in replacing the nation’s lawmakers with representatives untainted by special interest money and influence. These obstacles are the result of the electoral monopoly of the two major political parties, the gerrymandering of electoral districts, unfair federal and state election laws, and special interest-inspired campaign finance laws that favor private over public financing of elections. The recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC exacerbates the influence of these factors.

These obstacles make the large majority of seats in Congress “safe seats”. Incumbents and first time candidates running on the Democratic and Republican tickets with special interest financing have virtually insurmountable advantages over candidates running against them without major party support, or special interest financing. Top-down manipulation of elections is the result. Since voter dissatisfaction can’t be expressed through the dominant parties, grievances accumulate over time in feelings of frustration, anger and alienation. [Read more →]

By

Nancy Bordier

The electorate’s dissatisfaction with the nation’s lawmakers has reached a critical stage. A majority of U.S. voters want to see most elected representatives in Congress defeated because they favor special interests over voters’ interests. Unfortunately, legal obstacles erected by the two major parties prevent voters from replacing most of these representatives unless they use the revolutionary self-organizing tools described in this series to work around them.

These obstacles range from federal and state election laws to campaign finance laws and Supreme Court decisions that favor private over public funding of elections. Voters can’t change these laws within the foreseeable future. But they can circumvent them at the Congressional election district level. The web savvy 125 million voters who use the Internet to influence the outcome of the 2008 elections can use new web technologies to leverage the collective action power of the Internet and elect a majority of Congressional representatives untainted by special interests in 2012.

These technological advances, particularly the web application discussed in this series, enable voters to build winning transpartisan voting blocs in their Congressional election districts. These blocs can:

• Operate within existing political parties, across party lines or in new parties;

• Form broad-based electoral coalitions with other blocs, parties and labor unions that can outflank and outmaneuver stand-alone parties running special interest-backed candidates;

• Engage broad-cross sections of the electorate in setting legislative agendas which they can use to hold incumbents accountable at the ballot box;

• Stop the spread of special interest propaganda and disinformation by engaging the electorate in informed consensus-building at the grassroots;

• Run winning candidates untainted by special interest campaign contributions against militant fringe group candidates;

• Elect representatives who will break the political stalemate in Congress between the two major parties by removing anti-majoritarian rules like the Senate’s filibuster.

Voters can bring these possibilities to fruition through the breakthrough web-based technologies described in Parts I – V of this series.

(The document can be read in its entirety here.)

Part I. The U.S. Electorate versus the U.S. Congress

The most irate, aggrieved voters are being mobilized by special interests into a new hybrid voting bloc that resembles the bloc the Republican Party used as its electoral base to drive the country rightward, and gain control of government for the better part of 40 years. The IVCS application enables mainstream voters across the political spectrum to build transpartisan voting blocs that can outflank and outmaneuver special interest-funded voting blocs, and elect a majority of representatives to Congress who are untainted by these interests. More . . .

Part II. Why the Political Context Is Favorable for a Populist Takeover of Congressional Election Districts Using the Interactive Voter Choice System

40% of the electorate has rejected membership in the Democratic and Republican parties. Their membership has shrunk to roughly 33% and 23%, respectively, and not all of their members identify strongly with the parties. With more than 80% of the electorate wanting to oust most Congressional representatives, because they favor special interests over their constituents’ interests, typical election districts have more than enough dissatisfied voters to decide who wins and loses in the 2012 Congressional elections.

Part III. Why and How Congressional Elections Can Be Won by Transpartisan Voting Blocs in 2012

The number of voters needed to put Congressional candidates on the ballot in party primaries is small and often requires less than 10,000 signatures on nominating petitions. Also, primary elections are often decided by a small number of votes. In addition, only a plurality of voters is needed to win an election. (U.S. election laws permit candidates to be elected without a majority of all votes cast; they just need to get more votes than any other candidate.) Voters determined to oust their representatives can take advantage of these low numbers and use the IVCS application to build transpartisan voting blocs that run winning candidates in primary and general elections in 2012.

Part IV. How Voters Can Build Transpartisan Voting Blocs and Use Legislative Mandates to Get Control of Electoral and Legislative Processes

Individual voters can use the application’s tools to set their policy agendas. They can then form voting blocs with like-minded voters around shared agendas, and run winning candidates in their Congressional District.

Voters can use these agendas as legislative mandates to set the terms and conditions for supporting Congressional candidates. They can also use them to oversee their representatives’ legislative initiatives, guide them through legislative decision-making processes, and help them decide what compromises to make in order to build support for their initiatives. Voters can also use their legislative mandates to evaluate their representatives’ track records and hold them accountable when they come up for re-election.

Part V. How Voting Blocs Can Expand Their Electoral Bases by Increasing Their Membership and Building Electoral Coalitions with Existing Parties, New Parties, Labor Unions and Other Membership-Based Groups

Voting blocs can use the application’s consensus-building tools to increase bloc membership and build electoral coalitions that increase their overall voting strength to the levels required to win Congressional elections in 2012. As voters seeking to build coalitions negotiate alternative combinations of options, they will simultaneously solve the contrived conflicts over legislative initiatives that political partisans and special interests have created to inflame voters’ passions and prejudices, divide the electorate into hostile camps, and create the appearance of Congressional stalemates to camouflage their obedience to special interest agendas.

Conclusion

Voters can elect a majority of untainted Congressional representatives in 2012 if public-spirited citizens, political activists and web technologists join forces to weave together breakthrough democracy-building technologies like the Interactive Voter Choice System into user-friendly seamless applications.

(Cross-posted at FireDogLake, Fiscal Sustainability, and Reinventing Democracy)