Ideas for a Twenty-first Century Constitutional Tune-up.

Ideas for a Twenty-first Century Constitutional Tune-up.

The creation of the U.S. Constitution was the collective work of brilliant minds living in an age when political science was the pinnacle of intellectual disciplines and the practice of the political arts among the most honorable of endeavors; it was the moon shot of its day.

But, it was not and is not perfect.  While it justly deserves to be admired, it would be a mistake to think of it as holly script. Indeed, the original document has been amended twenty-seven times. Some, like the Bill of Rights, addressed flaws perceived during the ratification process, while others have come in response to experience, changing conditions, or values.  As change is only accelerating, it should be no surprise that further amendments may be in order.

The focus here is on concepts that would help restore function to our failing democracy.  The need for political reform is one area where there is consensus across the political spectrum. The problem will be getting the political establishment, in our current hyper-partisan money-dominated political environment, to turn the necessary gears.  If the Republicans are sent into the political wilderness in 2020, to contemplate the disaster that has befallen their once venerable party and the nation, the moment could be ripe for such changes as proposed here.  (note: 12/30/2020, this, unfortunately, did not come to pass.)

Citizens United - Only money disagrees that we must reduce the role of money in politics.  Money is the principal poison in our political organs.  We need to undo Citizens United and make way for publicly financed federal elections.

Electoral College - We need to remove this inflamed vestigial organ from the constitution.  The Presidency is too important to be decided by less than a majority vote and the justification for the concept has passed while the independence of the electors which might give it some meaning has largely been removed.  

Attorney General Reform - The Attorney General, as the nation's chief law enforcement officer, must be an independent agent whose overriding loyalty is to the nation and the law.  It is unreasonable to expect the AG, appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the President, to provide objective legal oversite of the government. The independent counsel process has repeatedly proven unsatisfactory.  The very existence of the concept underlines the flaw in the current structure.

Most states, recognizing the need for independence in the AG, elect the position.  But this would make the position more, not less, political in nature, creating the risk of unhelpful competition and conflict between the AG and the administration with which the Justice Department generally should be working cooperatively.

The answer is to depoliticize the position by having the Supreme Court nominate the AG for confirmation by a two-thirds vote of the Senate.  Who better to select the head of the nation's justice department?  Requiring such consensus between and within the judicial and political branches would assure the office is filled, as well as one might ever hope to, with a highly competent apolitical professional, placing law enforcement firmly outside the political sphere of government without creating a competing political agency.

Judicial Confirmation Reform - We need to depoliticize Judicial appointments to the extent possible.  There once was, actually still is, a consensus that a two-thirds vote in the Senate should be required to confirm judicial appointments, this to assure moderate consensus appointments to the bench.  The concept has succumbed to the general deterioration of the political ethic.  We should restore it in the constitution, along with a deadline of sixty days in which to vote on a judicial or justice department appointment, baring by-partisan consent to delay a vote for cause — failure to comply with the time limit resulting in automatic confirmation.  Finally, a nomination should not die with the end of a session of Congress or an administration.  Once made, unless withdrawn, a nomination must be taken up.

Legislative Process Reform - Leaders in both houses of Congress have adopted practices that place partisan interests above doing the nation's business, often by refusing to take up bills that expose the majority party's members to risky and difficult votes.  The constitution should mandate that any bill passed in one house must be taken up for consideration in regular order in the other house.  Likewise, withholding a bill from a vote because it does not enjoy majority support of the majority party should be prohibited.  Any bill that enjoys the support of a majority of the body, as shown by endorsements, must be brought to a vote in a timely manner.

Removing the Debt Ceiling Charade - The nation's debt level being a product of previously passed budgets, voting on a debt ceiling is superfluous, misleading to the public, and contrary to the existing constitutional requirements that the nation honor its debts.  The practice has become a disruptive and damaging lever for political blackmail and brinksmanship.  Accordingly, the constitution should expressly provide that Congress has no authority to limit the nation's debt other than through the budgetary process.

Electoral Reform - The currently dominant election process in which parties nominate candidates to compete in a general election is polarizing.  In too many places, one party is so dominant that the general election is rendered meaningless if there is a contested election at all.  The result is offices are often not filled by a majority of those represented, but by a majority of the majority party.  Those whose views align with the minority party effectively have no meaningful vote or voice in who represents them. The result is to send extremists to Congress, facilitate the threat of being "primaried," which undermines compromise and accentuates the power of money in our politics.  The constitution should mandate some form of Rank Choice voting for congressional and presidential elections.  Doing so would force candidates to appeal to the majority of all voters rather than just to the majority of the dominant party in their district or state.

Voting Rights - The supreme court has been sidestepping obvious manipulations of the electoral process which undermine the legitimacy and fidelity of our elections. We need to expressly provide a constitutional mandate that every citizen has the right to equal access and voice at the polls.

There it is, a list of items to tune up our democracy for the twenty-first century, restore compromise and civility to the political process, and drive consensus-building rather than division and polarization.

There is one more amendment called for by changing circumstances that I can't help but mention.  I bring it up here, as an aside, because it does not fit in the political reform portfolio.  But, not having heard of it elsewhere, I can't walk past a postscript mention.  We need to add the environment to the Bill of Rights. In this case, a right that belongs to future generations as well as the current ones.  The constitution should provide that government has a duty to protect and preserve the nation's natural heritage resources and assure a healthy and stable environment.  An idea made necessary as humanity no longer is limited to adapting to the environment.  We have the power to and are adapting it to us and must do so with due regard for those yet to come.

Global Warming and the Drake Equation

Global Warming and the Drake Equation

One day in 1938, Enrico Fermi, a renowned physicist involved in the Manhattan Project, sat down to lunch with colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Among those with him were Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski, and Herbert York, all equally eminent physicists. A recent spate of UFO sightings had entered in the discussions on the walk over to the Fuller Lodge. Although the conversation had moved on, as the group sat down for lunch, Teller recalls, "In the middle of the conversation, Fermi came out with the quite unexpected question 'Where is everybody?' The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange fact that in spite of Fermi's question coming out of the clear blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about extraterrestrial life". 

Fermi had simply considered that the galaxy is billions of years old, there are a billion-billion stars in it, and we are here. What are the odds of being the first and only intelligent life on the scene? Where is everybody indeed?

Twenty-three years later, Frank Drake, a notable radio astronomer, following up on Fermi's logic, was interested in exploring the rationality of searching for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations by monitoring for artificial radio transmissions. So, he devised a rather straight forward equation to evaluate the probabilities of there being other technologically advanced civilizations in our galaxy with which we might hope to communicate. His now-famous formula laid the foundation for the SETI projects ongoing today.  

Starting with the rate of star formation, Drake's equation progressed through a set of six modifying factors: what percent of stars likely had planets, what percent of those would be habitable, of those what percent would evolve life, etc. The final variable, labeled the "L" factor, was how long the average civilization, capable of interstellar radio communication, could be expected to last. Important, because the issue was not how many advanced civilizations have been or would be, but how many are here now.

Drake and the other scientists who gathered to explore the issue plugged in an admittedly speculative range of assumptions for each factor. They knew they did not know enough to get an accurate answer; the goal was only to define a reasonable range within which the answer might lie. When done, the formula suggested there should be between 20 to 50,000 communicable civilizations currently scattered among our galaxy. The factor that dominated this large range was "L". Probably among the most speculative of the factors; they had ventured, doubtless believing it to be conservative, a range of 1,000 to 100,000 years.  

At this point, humanity has had radio technology for just about 100 years and may not yet have the ability to transmit across interstellar distances meaningfully. So, we have a long way to go to log the minimum longevity, perhaps even start the clock, on Drake's L factor.  

At the time of his conference, Drake had already begun searching. SETI programs, as they are now known, have since grown in capacity and sophistication. After sixty years of earnest listening, nothing has been heard, not a peep. Were the assumptions so flawed, or is there something portentous in this silence?

For billions of years, the only route to biological success on earth has been an adaptation to the extant environment whether by physical form or in the case of higher organisms some degrees of intellectual response. But, humans have recently broken that paradigm. We have been adapting the environment to us, on a local scale at least, since the advent of agriculture.  

For the first ten thousand years, it seemed all good to our ancestors even to current generations. In modern times, we have identified isolated demographic collapses in the past, at least contributed to by unsustainable human manipulation of the environment, and in the case of Easter Island, wholly caused by it. But, for the most part, the changes humans have wrought were so localized and slow in implementation that it all seemed natural; whatever we might do, mother earth could absorb and adapt to it.  

But, with the formalization of the scientific method, and the subsequent industrial revolution, our manipulations, we now know, have become global in their impact. No species has attempted to manage an ecosystem and planetary climate before, other than perhaps the twenty to fifty-thousand advanced civilizations that Dark's equation says should be out there that we can't find. 

Our first real hint that there were serious risks involved in manipulating an entire global eco-system was discovering that the ozone layer was disappearing. Fortunately, a fairly painless fix was available. But, now we realize we are presiding over an ongoing and accelerating mass extinction. We are witnessing a decline in biomass. The food chain of the oceans is at risk, due to warming and acidification, a consequence of altered the composition of the atmosphere of the planet in ways that inherently impact the climate.  

The frank reality is, we have unwittingly taken earth off its climatic autopilot and will never be able to hand it back. For sure, other natural variables impact the climate, but that only complicates the situation as it muddies the waters about what is due to us and what is not and what the combined consequences will be of any particular action taken or not taken.  

How we conduct ourselves, as relates to the climate, is now a permanent item on our collective global policy agenda that will impact different places on the planet in varying ways and degrees and with differing consequences. It is as driving a car with an oiled smeared windowscreen on a winding road, the controls of which are attached to the critical components with rubber bands while trying to avoid injuring diverse pedestrians scattered along the roadway.

The tragedy of an overburdened planet.  More to come.

At the same time, a great deal of humanity still lives in subsistence poverty. Climate impacts, combined with overpopulation, are forcing mass migrations, stressing economies, and undermining civil order in many places around the world, in turn causing serious political divisions in the most advanced nations on the planet. Our military considers all these dislocations an existential threat to national security.    

It seems obvious now, in retrospect, that we are and have been for some time wading into a critical and inherently dangerous transition in status - from a subject of to manager of our planet's environment.  By tapping what seemed to be a huge buried treasure of stored energy, that we assumed we could pull from the ground without consequence, we have walked into a dead-end ally.  We have built a world and a population that we can't currently sustain without that energy and yet now realize we can't keep using it either.  We are, in short, out on an environmental and economic limb. 

What makes a connection with the Drake equation is the realization that this transition, which we now can see is inherently fraught with danger, is like a fairytale right-of-passage that every civilization must navigate successfully to advance to the state of development contemplated in the Drake Equation.  Having progressed to the point of learning how to read nature's laws, every civilization risks overplaying newfound powers over their environment before discovering consequences they had not dreamed of.  Perhaps, Drake was one factor short in his equation: the T factor, representing the percent of advanced scientific civilizations that would successfully navigate this critical threshold challenge and advance to the stage assumed by L, which we have yet to achieve.  

So how serious is our situation? As a result of a combination of ignorance, scientific conservatism, and political and public relations expediency, I think the problem is being understated. I think humanity is about to go through the most profound change since the advent of agriculture. What people aspire to, how we measure personal worth and success, how we define freedom, economic structure and theory, our political values, and how we govern are going to profoundly change in response to this existential challenge. The question is how traumatic the passage to the other side will be, whether it will be utopian or dystopian in direction, and what will be left of the natural biological diversity we inherited on the other side. 

But all that is for another post.  

This issue is not a recent one for me.  Here is an earlier less formal take on climate change and our collective approach to it.  

In Defense of Liberalism

(Originally published in Talk Business Quarterly)

Liberal is derived from the Latin word “liberalis,” meaning freedom, as in not to be owned by another. Conservative is derived from “conservare,” meaning to conserve the existing order. The terms define a long-standing political conflict, which emerged from the Enlightenment.

A Tax is not and Economic Black Hole

Contrary to the economic right’s dogma, government expenditures, and public investment are not less valid than private ones. It is incredible to hear tax cuts cure all crowd argue that government expenditures don’t create “permanent jobs”! Where…what is a permanent job in our culture? Which job is more permanent and which, particularly of late, the more productive, a school teacher or a mortgage banker?

The Three Monkeys

The Three Monkeys  

How Thinking Almost Ruined My Life

(Author unknown, if you do know share it with me.)

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then, just to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.

That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's. I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka.

I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it, exactly,we are doing here?" One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job."

This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey, I confessed, I've been thinking." "I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!" "But Honey, surely it's not that serious." "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep onthinking, we won't have any money!" "That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently. She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.

I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot, with NPR blaring on the radio, and ran up to the big glass doors...They didn't open. The library was closed. To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was lookingout for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra a Poster caught my eye,"Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked.  You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinkers Anonymous poster.  Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.

I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.  I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.

Today I made the final step: I registered to vote as a Republican.

Same Sex Marriage, Law vs. Religion

Some have argued that in addressing the issue of same-sex marriage, the state cannot escape dealing with marriage in religious terms and hence the definition should remain that of religious tradition, i.e. no same-sex marriage.  However, the assumption that marriage is a theological or religious invention is fundamentally invalid, as is what may be seen as a corollary proposition that morality itself is sourced in religion. 

ITS A SUNNY DAY

The other night all the kids were over. When it came time for the Phillip unit to go home, Lizy asked James if he would like to stay with us overnight, to which he promptly said yes - a departure from recent trends. Shortly after that, the question arose as to where he would like to sleep; with Becky in her bed, in Sid's bed, or Becky suggested, with granddaddy Bruce in Becky's bed. To my surprise, he immediately responded affirmatively to the last suggestion.

While we have kisses and hugs and such, granddaddy has not been the warmest spot in the room over time. Granddaddy dishes out more discipline than Ice cream and Grandmother is just hard to beat for tolerance and attention.

Anyway, he was obviously fading fast, so we promptly went upstairs and hopped in bed. I put a hand on him, just so he would know I was there, he reached back and gave me a few pats and was gone to the world.

Next morning when I awoke, I rolled over to check on my charge. There he was wide awake, completely still and staring at me. Before I could say anything, he announced in a very flat monotone manner, "It's a sunny day," which indeed it was.

I just wanted to let those of you who may have felt a bit burdened of late by my emotional neediness, that you now have some relief. I think I have a new friend.

PS I have another location for things like this.  Not sure why really, but I have chosen not to make access public, but willing to provide to just about anyone who asks.  Just leave a request here and I will provide you with an invitation.  Thanks.