Over the years, in various places, I've heard various people put forward a proposal that politicians wear the logos of their donors, like a NASCAR firesuit. I remember first seeing it written by Dave Barry in his book Dave Barry Hits Below The Beltway; it may have come earlier, but that's where I first know of it. In other early mentions, it was used in a similarly jocular manner. However, as the years went by, money pervaded elections more and more until finally the dam broke with Citizens United, and rhetoric in all levels of society became increasingly jumentous, subsequent proposals became progressively angrier and are now only just short of dead serious.
So maybe it's time we took the NASCAR firesuit proposal and looked at it seriously. Its heart is in the right place, so let's try to flesh it out, clean it up, and see if we can make something out of it that we can seriously put forward.
First off, since the idea is to expose for easy public viewing who has "bought" someone, it's only going to do to put the titular logos where they can be easily seen. The most common method by far of viewing a politician is straight-on, while he or she is standing behind a lectern. Which means any ad that is going to be seen enough to matter must be placed in that region. You're not going to get much use out of sticking a BP logo on someone's sock. The logos must also be large enough so that each of them can be made out by someone watching an average-size television. That limits the number of ads that can be displayed. A person can have a million donors, but you can't put a million logos and names on that person's clothing. They'd never fit, especially not on the top-front area. Even if they all made it on, the firesuit would be a jumbled mess. By seeing everything, you see nothing. You'll maybe get ten to fit without problems arising, so that's what we'll go with-- the ten largest donors.
We should also consider the cost of the firesuit itself. Simpson Racing has them starting in price at $110. Each. Also consider that you would have to update each one, every quarterly reporting period, to reflect the new top ten. That's going to get very expensive, very quickly.
I personally see no reason why the firesuit's job can't be handled cheaper and more efficiently by a safety vest, available for $5 a pop. (Besides, it'd be a lot easier to wear in summer. Much less heatstroke-y.) All you would have to do is attach ten slots to each where you could insert laminated tags, like a baseball card album, and you're good to go. I imagine each slot being numbered 1-10, with the bigger donors getting the lower numbers, positioned closer to the candidate's face, like so:
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
Next question: who gets the vests? Obviously, any incumbent or challenger for a seat in Congress. That's the whole idea of the proposal. But who else? We'll expand it to include registered candidates for governor and President. (Though we'll allow the President himself to go vestless when on official, non-campaign business. We don't need him making a speech in front of the United Nations or something while festooned with the logos of Bank of America and United Healthcare and six different PACs. That's just needlessly embarrassing ourselves.) I'll stop there because after that you start to get into cost concerns quickly; the next level down is state legislatures and that's a lot of people. But, if you've looked at Wisconsin lately, you may consider it worth the cost and if so, go for it.
After each quarterly reporting period, everyone will get an envelope from the FEC containing their new tags for the quarter and instructions on where on the vest each one goes. The vests, we'll say, must be worn to every legislative session, signing ceremony, stump speech, town hall, or other campaign event or official function. You also must have all 10 tags in their proper place. (We'll allow them the dignity of being inaugurated vestless. And if some random constituent spots them at Burger King eating a Whopper and starts asking them stuff, they can go ahead and chat.)
The logos and names that go on the tags will be determined on an all-time basis, from throughout your entire political career, with dollar amounts adjusted for inflation. (When someone donated, though, will be how we determine ties for placement; we'll weight things toward more recent donations. If it's still a tie, we'll go alphabetically.) We will include in this dollar count the value of ads that can be tied to benefit one specific candidate. (The existence of third-party candidates may make this more difficult when they are present, as they create a weird sort of deniability, but it's better than nothing.) This means any PAC that thinks they can get away with delaying disclosure until after an election, that then got into the top 10 with those contributions, will show up on vests like a scarlet letter as soon as they reveal, and will remain there until ten other groups spend more and knock them off the vest. Dead companies are also eligible; after all, if a company went Enron and collapsed after cooking the books, you'd want to look around and see who's wearing an Enron logo. If you've self-financed enough to put yourself into your own top ten, that counts as well. You'll go on your own vest.
Just in case someone chooses not to wear the vest, we'll also make this information searchable online. You'd be able to search by person and by donor, so as to see how deep a given group's pockets are and who they've dug their claws deepest into.
Violations will not be a set dollar amount. It's too easy to game. It's too easy to "buy" a violation through thinking that the cost is "worth it". Instead of dollars, we'll fine by percent. That way, it hurts everybody equally. Finland does this with a lot of their penal code, something called a day-fine. Let's go with a violation for not wearing the vest being charged at 1% of receipts newly announced over the past quarter. This is not the same as the money you actually got. This is the money we just found out about. (Again, we are hedging against PAC's holding off on announcing until after an election. If they ever, ever, EVER mention their donations during a politician's entire political career, the very next quarter, it goes on their record.)
Now, 1% may not sound like much, but no matter how much money a politician takes in during a campaign, every cent of it is aimed towards winning that election. It goes out as soon as it comes in. It's designed to. Being made to dig an extra 1% out of the budget, which you may have to get from people who just found out that their money may not be going towards helping you win but rather towards helping you pay your fine for being stupid and/or deceitful, that's going to make some wallets close until the fine is paid. And given that they would close just as you need them to open up extra wide, that's going to cause some problems. Additional violations will add up quickly. If you get up to a 10th violation, your campaign budget will have taken a major hit, both from self-inflicted money problems and from voters wondering just why you're so ashamed to display "who bought you." Misordering the tags, while still a violation, isn't nearly as bad. We'll charge that at a quarter of a percent.
I suppose since we've gone this far already, we might as well talk colors too. Let's just agree that it would be an assault on all our eyeballs to have everyone in bright yellow and orange. That said, there are three ways we can go with this:
1. Politicians may choose their own colors. (One solid color per vest, though. No campaign logos. No McCain star, no Obama sunrise O, none of that. And no gaudy technicolor things designed to obscure the logos' prominence.)
2. Everyone gets the same neutral color- gray, perhaps.
3. Everyone is color-coded by party: Democrats in blue, Republicans in red, Greens in green, Libertarians in yellow, independents in gray, everyone else in whatever color it is they pick. (Non-partisan races, you ask? You forget, those are not the races that would see vests in play.)
There is, I imagine, a debate to be had between 2 and 3- is it better to avoid formalizing the political team-sport mentality more than it already is, or better to give low-information voters a better chance to tell people apart. (The people picking 1 likely don't think color matters much.) I'll leave that debate to the comments section if anyone wants to pick it up.
A couple other odds and ends concerning vest conduct:
*Spare vests and tags are available. They do have to be able to wash them, and hey, someone might lose a tag under the couch or in the laundry or whatever. If you need more, just ask.
*You don't have to wear the vest outside U.S. borders. We seriously do not need that kind of international incident. So if you're willing to do all your campaigning to American voters in Canada just to get out of wearing the vest, well, shine on, you crazy diamond.
*Because the vest is required apparel, we are going to have to make it a crime to yank the vest or any of the tags off the politician in an attempt to take them out of action. Should someone actually do that, the politician will be permitted to go vestless until they have a reasonable chance to put on a new one.
Is this a free-speech violation? No. It's a dress code. Dress codes happen all the time. It is, however, the weirdest dress code we'd be likely to enact anytime soon.
But until we can get ourselves back to the point where this all returns to being a simple silly joke, perhaps it's something to consider.
Showing posts with label proposal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label proposal. Show all posts
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Welcome To Guttenberg
I'm continuing to try and brainstorm any possible way that we as a nation can find our way towards gaining and maintaining a leadership of reasonable, rational adults. I'm sure you have too, but I would like to have ideas to use beyond 'Vote out ALL incumbents! Both sides!' To me, that's not really enough. I mean, the past three elections- 2006, 2008 and 2010- have been considered 'waves', elections where large chunks of seats changed hands, and after three straight rounds of electoral carnage- on both sides- this is where we stand, a place most would agree is even worse than where we started before those three elections.
So a straightforward throw-the-bums-out mentality, with no further direction, isn't working.
'Term limits!'
12 year-limit, right? You tell me what possible good a term-limiting is going to have on someone that's doing their damage within months, weeks, DAYS of taking office. Scott Walker didn't even wait for his inauguration before pressuring outgoing governor Jim Doyle to kill a high-speed rail project. There is no term limit in the world that's going to prevent that. No, I want something else. Something new. Something outside the box.
Something like a political hall of fame.
...okay, how many of you stopped reading and went off to go ogle pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt?
For the rest of you, I'm envisioning an American Political Hall of Fame. First off, halls of fame are awesome. Second, and more to the point, done correctly, it can be used as an inspiration to greatness- a concrete, independently-bestowed, high-profile honor that cannot be bought or campaigned for but rather must be earned. It can also be a humbling device, a way to tell those getting a big head, 'you may think you're some hotshot, but these are your betters, and they expect more of you'.
This might also, incidentally, have an effect on the rest of the public. You see, as much as some of them may deserve it, even when elected officials behave themselves, we're still pretty hard on them. We any offhand remark saying how they'd like to see something or other happen as a "promise" to be filed alongside the stuff they stump for in campaign rallies, and damn the man or woman who then "breaks" their "promise" by subsequently regarding that offhand remark as an offhand remark. Damn the elected official who loses a vote and then fails to find some way to brazenly ignore the vote and ram through their defeated policy goals anyway. Damn them if they ever go home and take a day off of work. Oh, no. They're playing golf. While people are out of work and/or starving and/or getting killed by something or other, which in a total coincidence has been the case at every time ever. The BASTARDS.
When called on this, every single time the response will be along the lines of 'Well, they're being held to a higher standard.' Nobody ever actually defines this standard. It's this morphing, evolving thing that nobody ever actually seems to reach.
With a Political Hall of Fame, that 'higher standard' is no longer that kind of moving target. There's your higher standard, cast in bronze and marble and free on Tuesdays. Here's who you're trying to live up to.
But you've got to put it together properly in order for it to be any of these things.
First, we need a location. Someone's got to house the Hall of Fame. But I want to start by noting where I DON'T want it: anywhere in the Beltway or environs. Too insular. Too self-congratulatory. Doesn't send a good message at all. I also do not want it in any city in the country where it would not be the town's primary claim to fame. A good Hall of Fame makes the town synonymous with its Hall. 'He's going to Cooperstown.' 'He's going to Canton.' That's what I want here.
Think of it like this: take every city that houses a major league team in the five major leagues- MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS. Eliminate every single one of them. Take any city that houses an NCAA Division 1 program. Eliminate those cities too. And Division 2. And Division 3. All out of consideration.
While you're at it, you can also dump any city claiming to have the first or biggest of anything or which prominently claims to be the 'capital' or 'home' of anything or anyone.
All done? There's your starting point.
I'd like to have it in Iowa, near the Mississippi. First off, I've been in that area and it's just lovely. Second, the Mississippi has a nice Americana value to it. Third, Iowa is the home of the first Presidential primaries. Any semi-serious candidate, anyone serious enough to stump in Iowa, would be almost obligated to show up at some point. How much of an effect it has on them is up for debate, but the assumption here lies on it either having at least some effect, however small, on some of the candidates, and/or it having an effect on the voters who visit and then almost certainly look at the candidates and go 'why can't YOU be like that?'
As for a specific town, I'm going to pick Guttenberg. It's a small town, about 2,000 people, and local geography dictates that it'll never be all that much more than that, but that's fine. If you want a town to be destined as a synonym for what we're doing, you don't want any town that's known for anything. Which limits you largely to small towns. Guttenberg's main claim to fame is that they have a lock and dam of the Upper Mississippi. That's it. (The local geography of Guttenberg is that it's a thin strip of development on the riverbank, pressed in by bluffs. The bluffs can be built on, though, and are reachable, so we'll stick the Hall up there. It'll be a nice view and it cuts down on flood risks. Am I thinking about this way too much? Like I care.)
So we have a location. Now the much more relevant question: how to determine who's going to Guttenberg.
First, let's define who's eligible for enshrinement. There are two main rules:
1. Eligible candidates must, of course, have something to do with politics. This could be elected officials, unelected members of the public sector (such as Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, staffers, members of the bureaucracy, etc.), campaign workers, journalists, lobbyists, activists, pollsters, whatever. However, whoever they may are, they can only be judged on their political body of work. John McCain, for example, can't have his Vietnam experience count for him except as it relates to his use of it as a utensil over his political career.
2. Candidates become eligible for induction after having been dead for a minimum of 25 years. No exceptions. Any earlier than that and I feel the process will become too partisan for there to be a good enough appraisal. I do not believe the political world can be trusted to properly judge its own contemporaries; there will be too much partisan posturing and not enough historical hindsight into a candidate. Besides, there really is no 'retirement' to speak of. You can continue to have an effect on politics right up to your final breath and beyond the grave. It really will not do to have anyone who's alive get inducted, run for office on it and win, and then proceed to suck. That costs everyone involved credibility.
Next, the induction process.
Round 1 will be public nominations. I want to, at some point in the process, involve the general American public, give people a sense of ownership of the place. This is my method of doing that. The main ballot- Round 2- will consist of 50 names in any given year. 45 names on the inaugural ballot will be decided by the public, through online nominations. We'll say they can nominate up to 10 people. The top 45 names- after the removals of fakes and ineligibles- go on the ballot. The other five slots will be handed to... well, here we'll just call it the Veterans' Committee like most Halls of Fame call their secondary committee. We can call it something else later. The Veterans' Committee is a panel of whoever the Hall of Fame curators deem fit. Their job is mainly to fill in the mental gaps. They're going to try and put more obscure names on the main ballot, names that the general public wouldn't really ever think to nominate.
Round 2 is the main ballot. Here, let's just be honest, I'm cribbing heavily from baseball's procedure. It's a good way of doing things and fits in nice with what we're trying to do. The main ballot is sent to a group of political historians, none of which can already have been on the Veterans' Committee. We'll aim for somewhere between 500-1,000 of them. They're our equivalent of the baseball writers- they specialize in the knowledge base we need, and besides, of all the groups of people that get dragged into political fights, they actually largely get left alone to do their thing. They're perfect Hall of Fame voters. They'll get the main ballot of 50 names and be asked to vote to elect up to 12 names. Just like in baseball, anyone who claims at least 75% of the vote is inducted into the Hall of Fame. 75% is well and plenty enough to keep above a partisan fight. Plenty of political types would get 50% of the vote. It's that last 25% that'll get you.
If you don't get 75%, you're not in, at least not yet. However, other top performers on the ballot get a consolation prize: anyone who gets at least 10% is guaranteed a place on the ballot for the next year. The remaining places on the ballot are placed up for grabs in the next Round 1 nominations, with 3 spots reserved for the Veterans' Committee in years after the first.
On the other hand, should anyone be so unfortunate as to not claim a single vote- it happens in baseball, so don't laugh- that person becomes ineligible for five years. This will help cut down on people trying to shove a name through the nomination process that are just totally, completely unacceptable.
Usually in a Hall of Fame, that's the end of it. You're in, you're in. However, this is history we're talking about. Times change. Sentiments change. People who seemed like good choices upon their induction can, over time, turn out to not look nearly as good. This has happened before in a related hall, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York City, housed at Bronx Community College. (It also had a dead-for-25-years requirement, though they bent it a few times.) That Hall, while a point of national pride in its time, was intensely campaigned for in only the one round of balloting (this is why the public is not given the final round) and made some very questionable choices. James Buchanan. Stonewall Jackson. Sidney Lanier, campaigned for by the Daughters of the Confederacy after Booker T. Washington had gotten in. You look at such names now, and honestly, James Buchanan is not someone worth honoring like that. That's not like putting Eppa Rixey in baseball's Hall of Fame. That's like inducting Turk Wendell. Bad choices like that cost a Hall credibility in later years.
The Hall died off for lack of interest, mainly because not enough people were getting elected. People were used to electing 10 people at a time, once every five years. (We're doing a much smaller annual induction, so that won't be much of an issue.) It also got overshadowed by baseball's Hall of Fame, which was inducting people who were still alive. (We'll hold firm on that point. We also will refrain from simply reanimating the Hall for Great Americans, as it took from all walks of society and we're focused squarely on politics.)
We're going to allow for the possibility of bad choices with an ejection mechanic. We'll let the first ten years of the Hall go, so we can build up the place a bit. Starting in Year 11, nominations will ask the public which single Hall of Famer they feel to be the least deserving of enshrinement. The Hall of Famer with the most votes will be placed onto an ejection vote on the main Round 2 ballot.
However, just as it's tough to get in, it's just as tough to get yanked back out. It will take 75% of the vote to evict. If 75% vote to evict, out they go. Their plaque will be saved, but placed in a special exhibit outside the walls of the Hall of Fame with a second plaque explaining why they were kicked out. (They are, however, eligible to be re-enshrined.) If they don't get 75%, that Hall of Famer is safe for one year, plus an extra year per 10% of the vote they came in under 75%. If in Year 1 Abraham Lincoln got 74% of the vote to evict, he would be safe in Year 2 but would be eligible for eviction again in Year 3. If he got 65%, he'd be safe in Years 2 and 3 and would be eligible again in Year 4. however, the voters were more reasonable, said 'wait, are we seriously voting on whether to kick Abe Lincoln out of the Hall of Fame?!' and under 5% voted to evict, that's eight years of safety he's got ahead of him.
So when on the calendar are we doing all this? I'm timing the induction ceremony for around late August: nice weather in eastern Iowa, still green and nice but after the worst of the summer heat passes. We work backwards from there: online nominations go on over March and April, the main ballot is drawn up, printed out and deliberated on over the course of May and June, and I'd like the inductees announced on July 4 for obvious reasons.
So now we just need to get someone to pay for and build the thing. Also maybe we should tell the people of Guttenberg, Iowa about the plan. They might not like it if someone came along and just started randomly pouring concrete without warning.
Now how do we find the money? Darned austerity.
So a straightforward throw-the-bums-out mentality, with no further direction, isn't working.
'Term limits!'
12 year-limit, right? You tell me what possible good a term-limiting is going to have on someone that's doing their damage within months, weeks, DAYS of taking office. Scott Walker didn't even wait for his inauguration before pressuring outgoing governor Jim Doyle to kill a high-speed rail project. There is no term limit in the world that's going to prevent that. No, I want something else. Something new. Something outside the box.
Something like a political hall of fame.
...okay, how many of you stopped reading and went off to go ogle pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt?
For the rest of you, I'm envisioning an American Political Hall of Fame. First off, halls of fame are awesome. Second, and more to the point, done correctly, it can be used as an inspiration to greatness- a concrete, independently-bestowed, high-profile honor that cannot be bought or campaigned for but rather must be earned. It can also be a humbling device, a way to tell those getting a big head, 'you may think you're some hotshot, but these are your betters, and they expect more of you'.
This might also, incidentally, have an effect on the rest of the public. You see, as much as some of them may deserve it, even when elected officials behave themselves, we're still pretty hard on them. We any offhand remark saying how they'd like to see something or other happen as a "promise" to be filed alongside the stuff they stump for in campaign rallies, and damn the man or woman who then "breaks" their "promise" by subsequently regarding that offhand remark as an offhand remark. Damn the elected official who loses a vote and then fails to find some way to brazenly ignore the vote and ram through their defeated policy goals anyway. Damn them if they ever go home and take a day off of work. Oh, no. They're playing golf. While people are out of work and/or starving and/or getting killed by something or other, which in a total coincidence has been the case at every time ever. The BASTARDS.
When called on this, every single time the response will be along the lines of 'Well, they're being held to a higher standard.' Nobody ever actually defines this standard. It's this morphing, evolving thing that nobody ever actually seems to reach.
With a Political Hall of Fame, that 'higher standard' is no longer that kind of moving target. There's your higher standard, cast in bronze and marble and free on Tuesdays. Here's who you're trying to live up to.
But you've got to put it together properly in order for it to be any of these things.
First, we need a location. Someone's got to house the Hall of Fame. But I want to start by noting where I DON'T want it: anywhere in the Beltway or environs. Too insular. Too self-congratulatory. Doesn't send a good message at all. I also do not want it in any city in the country where it would not be the town's primary claim to fame. A good Hall of Fame makes the town synonymous with its Hall. 'He's going to Cooperstown.' 'He's going to Canton.' That's what I want here.
Think of it like this: take every city that houses a major league team in the five major leagues- MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS. Eliminate every single one of them. Take any city that houses an NCAA Division 1 program. Eliminate those cities too. And Division 2. And Division 3. All out of consideration.
While you're at it, you can also dump any city claiming to have the first or biggest of anything or which prominently claims to be the 'capital' or 'home' of anything or anyone.
All done? There's your starting point.
I'd like to have it in Iowa, near the Mississippi. First off, I've been in that area and it's just lovely. Second, the Mississippi has a nice Americana value to it. Third, Iowa is the home of the first Presidential primaries. Any semi-serious candidate, anyone serious enough to stump in Iowa, would be almost obligated to show up at some point. How much of an effect it has on them is up for debate, but the assumption here lies on it either having at least some effect, however small, on some of the candidates, and/or it having an effect on the voters who visit and then almost certainly look at the candidates and go 'why can't YOU be like that?'
As for a specific town, I'm going to pick Guttenberg. It's a small town, about 2,000 people, and local geography dictates that it'll never be all that much more than that, but that's fine. If you want a town to be destined as a synonym for what we're doing, you don't want any town that's known for anything. Which limits you largely to small towns. Guttenberg's main claim to fame is that they have a lock and dam of the Upper Mississippi. That's it. (The local geography of Guttenberg is that it's a thin strip of development on the riverbank, pressed in by bluffs. The bluffs can be built on, though, and are reachable, so we'll stick the Hall up there. It'll be a nice view and it cuts down on flood risks. Am I thinking about this way too much? Like I care.)
So we have a location. Now the much more relevant question: how to determine who's going to Guttenberg.
First, let's define who's eligible for enshrinement. There are two main rules:
1. Eligible candidates must, of course, have something to do with politics. This could be elected officials, unelected members of the public sector (such as Cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, staffers, members of the bureaucracy, etc.), campaign workers, journalists, lobbyists, activists, pollsters, whatever. However, whoever they may are, they can only be judged on their political body of work. John McCain, for example, can't have his Vietnam experience count for him except as it relates to his use of it as a utensil over his political career.
2. Candidates become eligible for induction after having been dead for a minimum of 25 years. No exceptions. Any earlier than that and I feel the process will become too partisan for there to be a good enough appraisal. I do not believe the political world can be trusted to properly judge its own contemporaries; there will be too much partisan posturing and not enough historical hindsight into a candidate. Besides, there really is no 'retirement' to speak of. You can continue to have an effect on politics right up to your final breath and beyond the grave. It really will not do to have anyone who's alive get inducted, run for office on it and win, and then proceed to suck. That costs everyone involved credibility.
Next, the induction process.
Round 1 will be public nominations. I want to, at some point in the process, involve the general American public, give people a sense of ownership of the place. This is my method of doing that. The main ballot- Round 2- will consist of 50 names in any given year. 45 names on the inaugural ballot will be decided by the public, through online nominations. We'll say they can nominate up to 10 people. The top 45 names- after the removals of fakes and ineligibles- go on the ballot. The other five slots will be handed to... well, here we'll just call it the Veterans' Committee like most Halls of Fame call their secondary committee. We can call it something else later. The Veterans' Committee is a panel of whoever the Hall of Fame curators deem fit. Their job is mainly to fill in the mental gaps. They're going to try and put more obscure names on the main ballot, names that the general public wouldn't really ever think to nominate.
Round 2 is the main ballot. Here, let's just be honest, I'm cribbing heavily from baseball's procedure. It's a good way of doing things and fits in nice with what we're trying to do. The main ballot is sent to a group of political historians, none of which can already have been on the Veterans' Committee. We'll aim for somewhere between 500-1,000 of them. They're our equivalent of the baseball writers- they specialize in the knowledge base we need, and besides, of all the groups of people that get dragged into political fights, they actually largely get left alone to do their thing. They're perfect Hall of Fame voters. They'll get the main ballot of 50 names and be asked to vote to elect up to 12 names. Just like in baseball, anyone who claims at least 75% of the vote is inducted into the Hall of Fame. 75% is well and plenty enough to keep above a partisan fight. Plenty of political types would get 50% of the vote. It's that last 25% that'll get you.
If you don't get 75%, you're not in, at least not yet. However, other top performers on the ballot get a consolation prize: anyone who gets at least 10% is guaranteed a place on the ballot for the next year. The remaining places on the ballot are placed up for grabs in the next Round 1 nominations, with 3 spots reserved for the Veterans' Committee in years after the first.
On the other hand, should anyone be so unfortunate as to not claim a single vote- it happens in baseball, so don't laugh- that person becomes ineligible for five years. This will help cut down on people trying to shove a name through the nomination process that are just totally, completely unacceptable.
Usually in a Hall of Fame, that's the end of it. You're in, you're in. However, this is history we're talking about. Times change. Sentiments change. People who seemed like good choices upon their induction can, over time, turn out to not look nearly as good. This has happened before in a related hall, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York City, housed at Bronx Community College. (It also had a dead-for-25-years requirement, though they bent it a few times.) That Hall, while a point of national pride in its time, was intensely campaigned for in only the one round of balloting (this is why the public is not given the final round) and made some very questionable choices. James Buchanan. Stonewall Jackson. Sidney Lanier, campaigned for by the Daughters of the Confederacy after Booker T. Washington had gotten in. You look at such names now, and honestly, James Buchanan is not someone worth honoring like that. That's not like putting Eppa Rixey in baseball's Hall of Fame. That's like inducting Turk Wendell. Bad choices like that cost a Hall credibility in later years.
The Hall died off for lack of interest, mainly because not enough people were getting elected. People were used to electing 10 people at a time, once every five years. (We're doing a much smaller annual induction, so that won't be much of an issue.) It also got overshadowed by baseball's Hall of Fame, which was inducting people who were still alive. (We'll hold firm on that point. We also will refrain from simply reanimating the Hall for Great Americans, as it took from all walks of society and we're focused squarely on politics.)
We're going to allow for the possibility of bad choices with an ejection mechanic. We'll let the first ten years of the Hall go, so we can build up the place a bit. Starting in Year 11, nominations will ask the public which single Hall of Famer they feel to be the least deserving of enshrinement. The Hall of Famer with the most votes will be placed onto an ejection vote on the main Round 2 ballot.
However, just as it's tough to get in, it's just as tough to get yanked back out. It will take 75% of the vote to evict. If 75% vote to evict, out they go. Their plaque will be saved, but placed in a special exhibit outside the walls of the Hall of Fame with a second plaque explaining why they were kicked out. (They are, however, eligible to be re-enshrined.) If they don't get 75%, that Hall of Famer is safe for one year, plus an extra year per 10% of the vote they came in under 75%. If in Year 1 Abraham Lincoln got 74% of the vote to evict, he would be safe in Year 2 but would be eligible for eviction again in Year 3. If he got 65%, he'd be safe in Years 2 and 3 and would be eligible again in Year 4. however, the voters were more reasonable, said 'wait, are we seriously voting on whether to kick Abe Lincoln out of the Hall of Fame?!' and under 5% voted to evict, that's eight years of safety he's got ahead of him.
So when on the calendar are we doing all this? I'm timing the induction ceremony for around late August: nice weather in eastern Iowa, still green and nice but after the worst of the summer heat passes. We work backwards from there: online nominations go on over March and April, the main ballot is drawn up, printed out and deliberated on over the course of May and June, and I'd like the inductees announced on July 4 for obvious reasons.
So now we just need to get someone to pay for and build the thing. Also maybe we should tell the people of Guttenberg, Iowa about the plan. They might not like it if someone came along and just started randomly pouring concrete without warning.
Now how do we find the money? Darned austerity.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
The Blame Game
Politifact is one of the best things going in political journalism these days. It is factchecking in its absolute purest form: take what someone said, and figure out whether they were right or wrong or outright lying. Note what a politician said on one day and compare with what they said on some other day. Note exactly what a politician promised, and see whether or not they follow through. If you don't already go, do so.
But there is one key weakness in their model. I've spoken about how they avoid using the word 'lie' in their Truth-o-Meter, instead saying 'false' and 'pants on fire'.
That's not the weakness.
The weakness we're addressing today comes on the other major venture, the promise meter. Once elected, a chief executive's promises made during the election are catalouged, numbered, and tracked during the term. All promises start without a rating, but are eventually assigned one of five labels: In The Works, Stalled, Promise Kept, Compromise, or Promise Broken.
Promise Broken is the weakness.
By Politifact's rules, a promise is considered Broken when action has been completed on a promise, but not in a manner consistent with the promise. Fair enough. But it says nothing about why that is so. Sometimes the executive in fact actively went against or neglected the promise. But sometimes they make an attempt on the promise, only to get stifled by the opposition in some manner. Sure. The promise wasn't kept. There wasn't a compromise. But you can't really call it a BROKEN promise either. However, as per the rules of Politifact, that is how the promise is scored. And due to the wording, what will inevitably end up happening is, no matter the cause, too much of the public won't read enough into why. They'll just see 'Promise Broken' and automatically chalk it up as the chief executive being a lying so-and-so that must pay on Election Day, and will just make the situation worse by improperly assigning blame, giving power to people that will only move further away from the original promise.
Sometimes Politifact instead assigns such scenarios a 'Stalled' rating if action isn't yet 'completed', even though it never will be. I don't think that quite works either. That tosses them in with items that have every intention of being completed, but have gotten placed on the backburner for more pressing matters.
I think the promise meter needs one additional category: Promise Defeated.
Part of uncovering the truth in politics is the act of assigning blame when things go wrong. For all the talk about people 'not wanting to play the blame game', we all eventually have to blame someone when we go into the booth. We either blame the incumbent for not keeping their promises (or keeping ones we disagreed with in the first place), or we blame the opposition for defeating promises that might otherwise be kept (or not doing enough to defeat promises we disagreed with). It's not enough to go 'okay, this didn't happen, this didn't happen, this did, this did, this didn't'. Why the promises that didn't happen, didn't happen, is important.
This is what Promise Defeated would help to determine. When it becomes clear that a stated promise will not be fulfilled, Politifact should begin the process of figuring out who had more to do with the promise's death. If it's determined that the chief executive set the promise aside, or took actions contrary to the promise, or was especially weak-willed, abandoning the promise after putting up virtually no resistance, then it in fact would be a Promise Broken. If, however, the matter died because of a lost vote in the legislature, the opposition stalling it to death somewhere along the line, funding being refused, or something else along those lines, that would be scored Promise Defeated.
As Election Day rolls around, and a voter carries resentment over something being done or not being done, far too often they simply blame 'those politicians'. That doesn't help. Sure. Politicians were to blame.
But for matters to improve, they need to decide who is more to blame. No matter how much one wants to claim 'they're all the same', you can't split a vote in half. By distinguishing between broken promises and defeated promises, that decision would be easier.
But there is one key weakness in their model. I've spoken about how they avoid using the word 'lie' in their Truth-o-Meter, instead saying 'false' and 'pants on fire'.
That's not the weakness.
The weakness we're addressing today comes on the other major venture, the promise meter. Once elected, a chief executive's promises made during the election are catalouged, numbered, and tracked during the term. All promises start without a rating, but are eventually assigned one of five labels: In The Works, Stalled, Promise Kept, Compromise, or Promise Broken.
Promise Broken is the weakness.
By Politifact's rules, a promise is considered Broken when action has been completed on a promise, but not in a manner consistent with the promise. Fair enough. But it says nothing about why that is so. Sometimes the executive in fact actively went against or neglected the promise. But sometimes they make an attempt on the promise, only to get stifled by the opposition in some manner. Sure. The promise wasn't kept. There wasn't a compromise. But you can't really call it a BROKEN promise either. However, as per the rules of Politifact, that is how the promise is scored. And due to the wording, what will inevitably end up happening is, no matter the cause, too much of the public won't read enough into why. They'll just see 'Promise Broken' and automatically chalk it up as the chief executive being a lying so-and-so that must pay on Election Day, and will just make the situation worse by improperly assigning blame, giving power to people that will only move further away from the original promise.
Sometimes Politifact instead assigns such scenarios a 'Stalled' rating if action isn't yet 'completed', even though it never will be. I don't think that quite works either. That tosses them in with items that have every intention of being completed, but have gotten placed on the backburner for more pressing matters.
I think the promise meter needs one additional category: Promise Defeated.
Part of uncovering the truth in politics is the act of assigning blame when things go wrong. For all the talk about people 'not wanting to play the blame game', we all eventually have to blame someone when we go into the booth. We either blame the incumbent for not keeping their promises (or keeping ones we disagreed with in the first place), or we blame the opposition for defeating promises that might otherwise be kept (or not doing enough to defeat promises we disagreed with). It's not enough to go 'okay, this didn't happen, this didn't happen, this did, this did, this didn't'. Why the promises that didn't happen, didn't happen, is important.
This is what Promise Defeated would help to determine. When it becomes clear that a stated promise will not be fulfilled, Politifact should begin the process of figuring out who had more to do with the promise's death. If it's determined that the chief executive set the promise aside, or took actions contrary to the promise, or was especially weak-willed, abandoning the promise after putting up virtually no resistance, then it in fact would be a Promise Broken. If, however, the matter died because of a lost vote in the legislature, the opposition stalling it to death somewhere along the line, funding being refused, or something else along those lines, that would be scored Promise Defeated.
As Election Day rolls around, and a voter carries resentment over something being done or not being done, far too often they simply blame 'those politicians'. That doesn't help. Sure. Politicians were to blame.
But for matters to improve, they need to decide who is more to blame. No matter how much one wants to claim 'they're all the same', you can't split a vote in half. By distinguishing between broken promises and defeated promises, that decision would be easier.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
September Surprise
One of, if not the, biggest problem with Presidential debates is that they really aren't. Candidates frequently, at the Presidential level, engage in debate camps beforehand. I link to a story about Barack Obama setting up his 2008 camp, but it could have been anyone. We could even link to a West Wing episode about it. They are peppered with whatever questions that they deem the moderator as most likely to ask. They rehearse answers, including rebuttals to what the opponent is likely to say, and how to steer an answer from an uncomfortable topic to a more comfortable one. The result is largely 90 minutes of kabuki theater, with the bulk of the drama centering around who messed up their script and who got off the best zingers.
Not far behind is another major, yet underrated, problem: all sides involved are fighting the battles of the previous term. Questions from a moderator will usually, nearly always, revolve around major topics that have been fought over during the previous 2-4 years. Sometimes, these topics will carry over to the next term as well.
But sometimes they won't.
Monday morning quarterbacking the previous term- 'well, I'D have done things this way, and if you vote for me, I will'- would be fine if issues carried over from one term to the next. And as we just stated, sometimes they do, issues such as the economy and any ongoing wars. Time, however, marches on. Sometimes the issue turns out to have already been settled, and will not come up to a large degree in the next term. Sometimes whether the issue is settled depends on who ultimately wins the election. And the next term is always filled with events which have not yet happened, and will push issues to the forefront that were never covered in the debate and which nobody focused on.
Case in point: how many of you over the course of the previous election figured that Egypt, Tunisia and collective bargaining were issues that merited serious examination before you cast your vote? Whoever raised their hand is a liar.
Obviously, trying to anticipate these things is nigh-impossible to do reliably. Attempts were made to mix up the topics over the course of the 2008 Presidential primaries by allowing people to submit questions online, but the online entries were either fighting the previous term as well, or asking about obscure niche topics that would never in a million years become a hot-button issue.
Both of these issues- the debate-camp problem, and the previous-term problem- can be addressed, maybe not solved entirely, but improved upon, with a debate format I call 'September Surprise', after a month debates will commonly take place in. (Yes, I realize we're a year and a half away from there. Like that's going to stop me.)
September Surprise's premise is to attempt to simulate, as best as possible, the next term, a period filled with unforeseen events that can cover a much wider range of topics than one is currently considering. The first step, of course, is for a moderator to try to figure out what might be one of those topics. This, you do by compiling a list of topics. Obviously, the current hot-button issues would have their place- Iraq, gas prices, partisanship, budget deficits, Medicaid, and so forth. But also in the list should be a wide range of topics that, while they may not be big now, one could reasonably consider to be an issue that might flare up under the proper circumstances or is at least is of sufficient importance. These would be things like tobacco, health food, imported goods, homelessness, bridge infrastructure, any country that stands a fair chance at popping up in the news regularly. I've tried this myself, and I got into the 150's before I got bored and called it quits. I wasn't done. I just got bored.
You can't just toss any topic into the list. Some things will always be minor issues or fringe issues. The gold standard, for example. That is just not going to be a hot-button topic. School uniforms, Swaziland, and college football playoffs may have their place, but they're not going to be big huge things. They just aren't.
Step 2 is to construct one question pertaining to each topic on the list. (Much as one might like to see what happens, you can't just go 'Candidates, you now must discuss corporate personhood. Go.') As the debate goes along, pick topics one at a time, right in front of everybody (use a random number generator, a bingo hopper, slips of paper out of a hat, however you want to do it), and read the corresponding question. If Afghanistan gets picked, fine and dandy. If gun massacres come up instead, or airport security or Taiwan or patent law or multilingualism, well... surprise.
No debate camp in the world is going to be able to completely prepare for that. However, since there are too many topics to anticipate, focus would likely be shifted to trying to steer things toward their preferred topics. But that defeats the entire purpose of September Surprise. A candidate who is unwilling or unable to stop fighting the previous battle is a candidate less prepared to handle the next battle. The moderator must therefore be vigilant about keeping things on topic. If a candidate jackknifes a question about the tax-exempt status of churches into a question about the Bush tax cuts, it's the moderator's responsibility to jackknife it back to the churches, interrupting the candidate if absolutely necessary.
After all, some of these things might become important later.
Not far behind is another major, yet underrated, problem: all sides involved are fighting the battles of the previous term. Questions from a moderator will usually, nearly always, revolve around major topics that have been fought over during the previous 2-4 years. Sometimes, these topics will carry over to the next term as well.
But sometimes they won't.
Monday morning quarterbacking the previous term- 'well, I'D have done things this way, and if you vote for me, I will'- would be fine if issues carried over from one term to the next. And as we just stated, sometimes they do, issues such as the economy and any ongoing wars. Time, however, marches on. Sometimes the issue turns out to have already been settled, and will not come up to a large degree in the next term. Sometimes whether the issue is settled depends on who ultimately wins the election. And the next term is always filled with events which have not yet happened, and will push issues to the forefront that were never covered in the debate and which nobody focused on.
Case in point: how many of you over the course of the previous election figured that Egypt, Tunisia and collective bargaining were issues that merited serious examination before you cast your vote? Whoever raised their hand is a liar.
Obviously, trying to anticipate these things is nigh-impossible to do reliably. Attempts were made to mix up the topics over the course of the 2008 Presidential primaries by allowing people to submit questions online, but the online entries were either fighting the previous term as well, or asking about obscure niche topics that would never in a million years become a hot-button issue.
Both of these issues- the debate-camp problem, and the previous-term problem- can be addressed, maybe not solved entirely, but improved upon, with a debate format I call 'September Surprise', after a month debates will commonly take place in. (Yes, I realize we're a year and a half away from there. Like that's going to stop me.)
September Surprise's premise is to attempt to simulate, as best as possible, the next term, a period filled with unforeseen events that can cover a much wider range of topics than one is currently considering. The first step, of course, is for a moderator to try to figure out what might be one of those topics. This, you do by compiling a list of topics. Obviously, the current hot-button issues would have their place- Iraq, gas prices, partisanship, budget deficits, Medicaid, and so forth. But also in the list should be a wide range of topics that, while they may not be big now, one could reasonably consider to be an issue that might flare up under the proper circumstances or is at least is of sufficient importance. These would be things like tobacco, health food, imported goods, homelessness, bridge infrastructure, any country that stands a fair chance at popping up in the news regularly. I've tried this myself, and I got into the 150's before I got bored and called it quits. I wasn't done. I just got bored.
You can't just toss any topic into the list. Some things will always be minor issues or fringe issues. The gold standard, for example. That is just not going to be a hot-button topic. School uniforms, Swaziland, and college football playoffs may have their place, but they're not going to be big huge things. They just aren't.
Step 2 is to construct one question pertaining to each topic on the list. (Much as one might like to see what happens, you can't just go 'Candidates, you now must discuss corporate personhood. Go.') As the debate goes along, pick topics one at a time, right in front of everybody (use a random number generator, a bingo hopper, slips of paper out of a hat, however you want to do it), and read the corresponding question. If Afghanistan gets picked, fine and dandy. If gun massacres come up instead, or airport security or Taiwan or patent law or multilingualism, well... surprise.
No debate camp in the world is going to be able to completely prepare for that. However, since there are too many topics to anticipate, focus would likely be shifted to trying to steer things toward their preferred topics. But that defeats the entire purpose of September Surprise. A candidate who is unwilling or unable to stop fighting the previous battle is a candidate less prepared to handle the next battle. The moderator must therefore be vigilant about keeping things on topic. If a candidate jackknifes a question about the tax-exempt status of churches into a question about the Bush tax cuts, it's the moderator's responsibility to jackknife it back to the churches, interrupting the candidate if absolutely necessary.
After all, some of these things might become important later.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
UN Reform That Will Never Happen, But Hey
The United Nations is one of the world's more confusing and needlessly vexing institutions, when you get a good look at it. Here is a gathering of all the nations in the world, carrying a mutual goal, ostensibly, of world peace. (A worthy goal even if you never actually get there. You might try and fail to, say, put a man on Mars, but you're sure to invent a whole lot of useful things in the attempt.)
But at the same time, the countries that comprise it have a habit of using that institution's stage as a platform for theater, using the attention of the entire world to simply embarrass another nation.
Here is an organization that seeks to use the force of the entire world to stand up to any nation that acts out in a belligerent manner.
But many other nations elect to either not contribute to the effort, or are utterly hamstrung by political expediency back home, causing many missions to look utterly aimless, and, depending on which countries are involved, can even be counterproductive.
Here, ideally, are representatives of everyone on earth, all the world's many peoples and cultures and ways of life, hammering out how to achieve a brighter future for everyone, rich and poor, moneyed and impoverished, well-fed and starving.
But at the same time, many topics covered of the UN are led by countries with little to no credibility to say anything on that topic, most famously the Human Rights Council, which currently seats countries such as China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia. In addition, the part of the organization with the most teeth, the Security Council, is hamstrung by the collective wills of five countries, all extremely powerful, who can each singlehandedly kill any proposal agreed upon by the entire rest of the world. Countries that were decided upon in 1945.
And yet... through all that, the dream somehow endures. As incompetent and selfish as the body is at times, somehow, someway, everybody keeps pressing gamely forward. The UN, the dream, still endures.
How to improve it, though.
The longstanding most hated part of the UN, the Security Council veto has been the source of no end of anguish among everybody that isn't busy vetoing something, mainly because the vetoes are routinely used for selfish interests, most notably any United States veto regarding longtime ally Israel.
Any change to this arrangement, including any proposal to remove those vetoes, requires approval by... guess who. That's almost certainly not going to happen. But why let that stop us? Worst-case scenario, this isn't the first international organization devoted to world peace. So, for our purposes, let's make a third one. Let's assume that a sufficient number of member nations decide they've had enough, withdraw from the UN en masse, and create a brand new organization, same basic format, that seeks to avoid the pitfalls of the UN, tweaking where needed. We can stick it somewhere in Switzerland or Canada or somewhere else extremely unlikely to act up. The United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China are left just bickering amongst themselves while the rest of the world tries to actually get something done, and if they want in this new organization, they'll have to join on the rest of the world's terms. The US wouldn't be able to act as Israel's diplomatic bodyguard, China wouldn't be able to fend Taiwan off with a stick, etc.
The proposed solution by many seems really, really stupid, though: add more vetoes. There's no end of countries angling for them. Name a country that thinks that they're a major player, or thinks they should be, or even thinks they're a regional power, and they're probably looking for a veto. The problem there is, you're just adding more gridlock to an already gridlocked system, and who says these new countries will still be behaving nicely 50 years down the road?
We'll keep the veto concept- the idea of five countries known to be responsible being able to step in is good- but I say we make the vetoes modular. We'll keep the 15-member, five-veto format. The ten non-veto seats are voted on annually, for two-year terms. The veto seats, however, we'll make annual. And they must be earned.
If one wants the vetoes in the hands of countries that are currently being responsible, make the selection process such that this is enforced through design.
What I would propose is a scoring system. List off as many of the characteristics as possible that a responsible nation would possess. Make it exhaustive, but not overly unfair (for example, biggest producer of various raw minerals wouldn't be usable- no country can control what's underneath them). Then score countries on each characteristic, using raw statistics, making categories competitive whenever possible (e.g. grading on a curve). Weight the categories according to importance (this would be something to hand off to an independent group). After adding up all the points, the five countries that score highest overall are awarded vetoes for the year.
And if you release no information for a statistic, or do not release enough to be independently scored, you are penalized by being automatically given the worst possible score in that category. Some will add points, some will subtract, but it doesn't really matter to the rankings which is which.
I've compiled this group of categories, mostly drawn from here, and no, I am not going to go figure out the scores for fear of accidentally fudging the results in favor of certain countries, though:
*10 points to the nation with the highest literacy rate. Everyone else is scored in relation to first place, for this and everything else unless otherwise noted.
*5 points to the country with the highest life expectancy for men.
*5 points for the highest life expectancy for women.
*5 points for highest combined life expectancy.
*Negative 6 points for the worst equilibrium between birth rate and death rate.
*Negative 10 points for highest infant mortality rate.
*7 points for highest GDP per capita.
*1 point for the largest producer of each of the 20 most widely-used food crops.
*Negative 1 point for the largest consumer of each of those same crops. (To promote sustainability.)
*Negative 1 point for the largest consumer of each of the 20 most widely-used raw minerals. (As stated earlier, the largest producers can't be controlled, but one can control usage.)
*3 points for the largest producer of each of a host of renewable energies- wind, solar, etc.
*Negative 3 points for the largest consumer of each of a host of nonrenewable energies- oil, coal, natural gas, etc.
*1 point for every World Heritage Site declared by UNESCO within your borders.
*Negative 8 points for the highest murder rate.
*Negative 4 points for the highest suicide rate.
*Negative 6 points for the lowest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate.
*10 points for the most equal income distribution, according to the Gini coefficient as the UN calculates internally.
*7 points for lowest poverty rate, with 0 points scored for a 100% rate.
*5 points for lowest unemployment rate, with 0 points scored for 100%.
*Negative 8 points for highest debt-to-GDP ratio.
*6 points for best raw account balance.
*6 more for the best account balance as percentage of GDP.
*6 points for highest student performance in each of science, reading and math.
*6 points for the best score in the Index of Economic Freedom.
*Negative 12 points for most carbon dioxide emissions per capita.
*8 points for highest environmental happiness.
*Negative 15 points for most nuclear weapons.
*Negative 15 points for most military spending, in dollars.
*Negative 10 points for most active troops.
*Negative 15 points for most reserve troops (e.g. troops that you currently do not even need).
*A 10-point bonus if no military is kept at all.
*12 points for most countries with which you have diplomatic relations, as shown by at least one open, functioning embassy. (Combining three or four countries in one regional embassy only counts as one.)
*6 points for highest level of property rights, according to the International Property Rights Index.
*8 points for best gender equality in positions of government leadership.
*10 points for most globalized country, according to the Globalization Index.
*Negative 12 points for the worst score on the Failed States Index.
*Negative 9 points for the worst rating on the Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders.
*10 points for highest Human Development Index score.
*7 points for highest Satisfaction With Life Index score.
*3 points for highest percentage of Internet users.
*5 points for the best score on the UN's Technology Achievement Index.
*A country's Global Innovation Index score, times 3. (Scores currently range from 2.26 to -1.63. Failure to be included here ties you for last place.)
*4 points for highest Digital Opportunity Index score.
*A country's E-Readiness score, out of 10 available.
*7 points for the most charitable country as a percentage of gross national income.
*9 points for the highest score on the Global Gender Gap Report.
*Negative 8 points for the country with the highest percentage of population suffering from undernourishment.
*10 points for the highest score in the Sustainable Society Index.
*A 5-point penalty if the death penalty is used in your country.
*A 5-point penalty if homosexual acts are illegal in your country.
*A 3-point bonus if gay marriage is legal anywhere in the country, and 2 more if it's nationwide.
The weightings are pretty rough, but I gave it my best shot. As stated... add up all those scores in all those categories, give the worst score in a category to any country missing in a category, and the top 5 scores are your Security Council vetoes. Whoever they happen to be.
Anyone want to add it all up?
But at the same time, the countries that comprise it have a habit of using that institution's stage as a platform for theater, using the attention of the entire world to simply embarrass another nation.
Here is an organization that seeks to use the force of the entire world to stand up to any nation that acts out in a belligerent manner.
But many other nations elect to either not contribute to the effort, or are utterly hamstrung by political expediency back home, causing many missions to look utterly aimless, and, depending on which countries are involved, can even be counterproductive.
Here, ideally, are representatives of everyone on earth, all the world's many peoples and cultures and ways of life, hammering out how to achieve a brighter future for everyone, rich and poor, moneyed and impoverished, well-fed and starving.
But at the same time, many topics covered of the UN are led by countries with little to no credibility to say anything on that topic, most famously the Human Rights Council, which currently seats countries such as China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia. In addition, the part of the organization with the most teeth, the Security Council, is hamstrung by the collective wills of five countries, all extremely powerful, who can each singlehandedly kill any proposal agreed upon by the entire rest of the world. Countries that were decided upon in 1945.
And yet... through all that, the dream somehow endures. As incompetent and selfish as the body is at times, somehow, someway, everybody keeps pressing gamely forward. The UN, the dream, still endures.
How to improve it, though.
The longstanding most hated part of the UN, the Security Council veto has been the source of no end of anguish among everybody that isn't busy vetoing something, mainly because the vetoes are routinely used for selfish interests, most notably any United States veto regarding longtime ally Israel.
Any change to this arrangement, including any proposal to remove those vetoes, requires approval by... guess who. That's almost certainly not going to happen. But why let that stop us? Worst-case scenario, this isn't the first international organization devoted to world peace. So, for our purposes, let's make a third one. Let's assume that a sufficient number of member nations decide they've had enough, withdraw from the UN en masse, and create a brand new organization, same basic format, that seeks to avoid the pitfalls of the UN, tweaking where needed. We can stick it somewhere in Switzerland or Canada or somewhere else extremely unlikely to act up. The United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China are left just bickering amongst themselves while the rest of the world tries to actually get something done, and if they want in this new organization, they'll have to join on the rest of the world's terms. The US wouldn't be able to act as Israel's diplomatic bodyguard, China wouldn't be able to fend Taiwan off with a stick, etc.
The proposed solution by many seems really, really stupid, though: add more vetoes. There's no end of countries angling for them. Name a country that thinks that they're a major player, or thinks they should be, or even thinks they're a regional power, and they're probably looking for a veto. The problem there is, you're just adding more gridlock to an already gridlocked system, and who says these new countries will still be behaving nicely 50 years down the road?
We'll keep the veto concept- the idea of five countries known to be responsible being able to step in is good- but I say we make the vetoes modular. We'll keep the 15-member, five-veto format. The ten non-veto seats are voted on annually, for two-year terms. The veto seats, however, we'll make annual. And they must be earned.
If one wants the vetoes in the hands of countries that are currently being responsible, make the selection process such that this is enforced through design.
What I would propose is a scoring system. List off as many of the characteristics as possible that a responsible nation would possess. Make it exhaustive, but not overly unfair (for example, biggest producer of various raw minerals wouldn't be usable- no country can control what's underneath them). Then score countries on each characteristic, using raw statistics, making categories competitive whenever possible (e.g. grading on a curve). Weight the categories according to importance (this would be something to hand off to an independent group). After adding up all the points, the five countries that score highest overall are awarded vetoes for the year.
And if you release no information for a statistic, or do not release enough to be independently scored, you are penalized by being automatically given the worst possible score in that category. Some will add points, some will subtract, but it doesn't really matter to the rankings which is which.
I've compiled this group of categories, mostly drawn from here, and no, I am not going to go figure out the scores for fear of accidentally fudging the results in favor of certain countries, though:
*10 points to the nation with the highest literacy rate. Everyone else is scored in relation to first place, for this and everything else unless otherwise noted.
*5 points to the country with the highest life expectancy for men.
*5 points for the highest life expectancy for women.
*5 points for highest combined life expectancy.
*Negative 6 points for the worst equilibrium between birth rate and death rate.
*Negative 10 points for highest infant mortality rate.
*7 points for highest GDP per capita.
*1 point for the largest producer of each of the 20 most widely-used food crops.
*Negative 1 point for the largest consumer of each of those same crops. (To promote sustainability.)
*Negative 1 point for the largest consumer of each of the 20 most widely-used raw minerals. (As stated earlier, the largest producers can't be controlled, but one can control usage.)
*3 points for the largest producer of each of a host of renewable energies- wind, solar, etc.
*Negative 3 points for the largest consumer of each of a host of nonrenewable energies- oil, coal, natural gas, etc.
*1 point for every World Heritage Site declared by UNESCO within your borders.
*Negative 8 points for the highest murder rate.
*Negative 4 points for the highest suicide rate.
*Negative 6 points for the lowest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate.
*10 points for the most equal income distribution, according to the Gini coefficient as the UN calculates internally.
*7 points for lowest poverty rate, with 0 points scored for a 100% rate.
*5 points for lowest unemployment rate, with 0 points scored for 100%.
*Negative 8 points for highest debt-to-GDP ratio.
*6 points for best raw account balance.
*6 more for the best account balance as percentage of GDP.
*6 points for highest student performance in each of science, reading and math.
*6 points for the best score in the Index of Economic Freedom.
*Negative 12 points for most carbon dioxide emissions per capita.
*8 points for highest environmental happiness.
*Negative 15 points for most nuclear weapons.
*Negative 15 points for most military spending, in dollars.
*Negative 10 points for most active troops.
*Negative 15 points for most reserve troops (e.g. troops that you currently do not even need).
*A 10-point bonus if no military is kept at all.
*12 points for most countries with which you have diplomatic relations, as shown by at least one open, functioning embassy. (Combining three or four countries in one regional embassy only counts as one.)
*6 points for highest level of property rights, according to the International Property Rights Index.
*8 points for best gender equality in positions of government leadership.
*10 points for most globalized country, according to the Globalization Index.
*Negative 12 points for the worst score on the Failed States Index.
*Negative 9 points for the worst rating on the Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders.
*10 points for highest Human Development Index score.
*7 points for highest Satisfaction With Life Index score.
*3 points for highest percentage of Internet users.
*5 points for the best score on the UN's Technology Achievement Index.
*A country's Global Innovation Index score, times 3. (Scores currently range from 2.26 to -1.63. Failure to be included here ties you for last place.)
*4 points for highest Digital Opportunity Index score.
*A country's E-Readiness score, out of 10 available.
*7 points for the most charitable country as a percentage of gross national income.
*9 points for the highest score on the Global Gender Gap Report.
*Negative 8 points for the country with the highest percentage of population suffering from undernourishment.
*10 points for the highest score in the Sustainable Society Index.
*A 5-point penalty if the death penalty is used in your country.
*A 5-point penalty if homosexual acts are illegal in your country.
*A 3-point bonus if gay marriage is legal anywhere in the country, and 2 more if it's nationwide.
The weightings are pretty rough, but I gave it my best shot. As stated... add up all those scores in all those categories, give the worst score in a category to any country missing in a category, and the top 5 scores are your Security Council vetoes. Whoever they happen to be.
Anyone want to add it all up?
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
In Which We Throw Another Immigration Proposal Onto The Pile
Immigration is and always has been a thorny subject in this country. I've long figured that there are 20,000 different ways to handle immigration, and listening to any debate on the topic, you will find every single one of them to be wrong.
One of the big problems behind that is that immigration, by its very nature, does not deal with people coming from anything even remotely resembling equivalent backgrounds. Billionaires immigrate. Penniless political refugees immigrate. Some people are essentially stateless. Some people don't really have a concept of geopolitical borders. No one way of handling things works for everyone.
The result, at least for the United States, is that there is what can be a decade-long process sorting out who is who-- in this particular story, the wait is actually 17 years- and for many of your more desperate cases, they simply cannot afford to wait that long. They're too poor. They're fleeing political instability. There's someone back home looking for their head. Something that makes them unable to go the over-the-counter route to citizenship because the wait makes them far too likely to die trying.
With no guarantee that they'll actually get accepted.
And then there's the matter of children who had no choice in the matter whatsoever because their parents were the ones making the decision, and simply dragged them over the border.
The real tragedy comes every time one of these children dragged over the border by their parents decides to make the most of it, turns out to be a prodigy that does something like pull a 4.0 GPA and snares a scholarship to the Ivy League, and just generally proves themselves to be a much better citizen than some of our actual citizens, and just then someone finds out they're an illegal immigrant and immediately the calls come to deport them just like everyone else. What was the child to do, fend off their parents with a stick so they could go the legal route? Go back home by themselves, sans parents, to God knows what? Say 'Mommy, I don't wanna go', assuming they were even old enough to speak at the time?
I won't speak for the situation of the proverbial parents here. The proposal I'm about to float would cover the proverbial child prodigy.
Well, maybe the parents too. It depends on how they've got on since they crossed.
The proposal is to introduce a group of what I call 'fasttrackers'. Their job would be to identify those people who are showing themselves to be not only worthy American citizens, but exemplary ones at that, and in fact so worthy that the United States could use them right this very second. A fasttracker, once they have identified such a person, would be able to permit their find to bypass the rest- or all- of the immigration process and, with a small bit of substitute paperwork (because there does have to be SOMETHING), singlehandedly bestow citizenship themselves. One stroke of the pen from them and all the red tape is gone.
Essentially, the fasttracker would be able to tell the immigration people, "It's cool. They're with me." That substitute paperwork would suffice until the rest of the now-citizen's documents can be obtained.
These would be people in the State Department- one under the employ of every foreign embassy and consulate the United States has, as well as, within the United States, one per state, as well as one for DC and each of the territories. By my count, that's 213 foreign fasttrackers, plus 55 domestic (50 states, DC, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam), for a grand total of 268 worldwide. (I didn't count the diplomats in the international organizations.) That's about the right number. You want enough to make sure the whole planet is adequately covered, but not so many that you just have this constant stream of people coming in. It needs to be a special thing, handed out rarely in the grand scheme of things. Attainable, but rare.
So you're aware, the current spread of embassies as shown on the Wikipedia page gives these countries more than one fasttracker:
23- Mexico
9- Brazil
8- Canada
7- China, France, Italy
6- Germany, Japan
5- India
4- Australia, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom
3- Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, Iraq, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Turkey
2- Colombia, Ecuador, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Vietnam
They'd be based in the embassies, anyway. If they chose, they could get out of the office and do some milling about, or they could be homebodies and wait for people to come to them. It's their call how they want to go about looking... and, in fact, what qualifies as 'exemplary'. They can use whatever criteria they see fit, and admit as many or as few people as they like.
And in the event of the proverbial child prodigy 'too bad they're illegal' story, it wouldn't necessarily fall to the local fasttracker. If the person's in Texas, the Texas fasttracker wouldn't have to step in. It could be the one from Vermont, or Sweden, or Fiji, if they happened to get there first. Not every country has diplomatic recognition, and not every country we're on friendly terms with has an embassy, so you need to be fairly laissez-faire when figuring out who's fasttracking who. Whoever gets there first.
They don't want to go crazy, though. No walking up to a refugee camp and giving every single person within citizenship, though one might get soft-hearted enough to want to do so at some point. As far as job security goes, that is a death wish. Among that substitute paperwork is enough documentation to track the new citizen and tie them to the fasttracker. The citizen doesn't have to worry about it. The fasttracker does. They would be held responsible for the actions of each and every person they bring into the country.
If they are truly admitting the exemplary, the people we'd be proud to have as Americans, there's nothing to worry about. But remember this is supposed to be used only for the cream of the immigration crop. If one of the fasttracked citizens turns out later to be a drug dealer or racks up six DUI's or something else to make it clear the fasttracker chose poorly, there will be hell for the fasttracker to pay. It won't take very many wrong decisions for the fasttracker to be fired and for someone else to take his place. Which means a fasttracker would have to do their own due diligence when determining who to let in.
In short, they could bring in whoever they want whenever they want, but they damn well better be right.
It would only clear out a tiny amount of the immigration backlog. You'd still have a whole bunch of drugs and violence on the border with Mexico, you'd still have millions of people to deal with, you'd still have people waiting a decade-plus on the over-the-counter route. But a little- a very stellar little- is better than nothing.
One of the big problems behind that is that immigration, by its very nature, does not deal with people coming from anything even remotely resembling equivalent backgrounds. Billionaires immigrate. Penniless political refugees immigrate. Some people are essentially stateless. Some people don't really have a concept of geopolitical borders. No one way of handling things works for everyone.
The result, at least for the United States, is that there is what can be a decade-long process sorting out who is who-- in this particular story, the wait is actually 17 years- and for many of your more desperate cases, they simply cannot afford to wait that long. They're too poor. They're fleeing political instability. There's someone back home looking for their head. Something that makes them unable to go the over-the-counter route to citizenship because the wait makes them far too likely to die trying.
With no guarantee that they'll actually get accepted.
And then there's the matter of children who had no choice in the matter whatsoever because their parents were the ones making the decision, and simply dragged them over the border.
The real tragedy comes every time one of these children dragged over the border by their parents decides to make the most of it, turns out to be a prodigy that does something like pull a 4.0 GPA and snares a scholarship to the Ivy League, and just generally proves themselves to be a much better citizen than some of our actual citizens, and just then someone finds out they're an illegal immigrant and immediately the calls come to deport them just like everyone else. What was the child to do, fend off their parents with a stick so they could go the legal route? Go back home by themselves, sans parents, to God knows what? Say 'Mommy, I don't wanna go', assuming they were even old enough to speak at the time?
I won't speak for the situation of the proverbial parents here. The proposal I'm about to float would cover the proverbial child prodigy.
Well, maybe the parents too. It depends on how they've got on since they crossed.
The proposal is to introduce a group of what I call 'fasttrackers'. Their job would be to identify those people who are showing themselves to be not only worthy American citizens, but exemplary ones at that, and in fact so worthy that the United States could use them right this very second. A fasttracker, once they have identified such a person, would be able to permit their find to bypass the rest- or all- of the immigration process and, with a small bit of substitute paperwork (because there does have to be SOMETHING), singlehandedly bestow citizenship themselves. One stroke of the pen from them and all the red tape is gone.
Essentially, the fasttracker would be able to tell the immigration people, "It's cool. They're with me." That substitute paperwork would suffice until the rest of the now-citizen's documents can be obtained.
These would be people in the State Department- one under the employ of every foreign embassy and consulate the United States has, as well as, within the United States, one per state, as well as one for DC and each of the territories. By my count, that's 213 foreign fasttrackers, plus 55 domestic (50 states, DC, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, Guam), for a grand total of 268 worldwide. (I didn't count the diplomats in the international organizations.) That's about the right number. You want enough to make sure the whole planet is adequately covered, but not so many that you just have this constant stream of people coming in. It needs to be a special thing, handed out rarely in the grand scheme of things. Attainable, but rare.
So you're aware, the current spread of embassies as shown on the Wikipedia page gives these countries more than one fasttracker:
23- Mexico
9- Brazil
8- Canada
7- China, France, Italy
6- Germany, Japan
5- India
4- Australia, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom
3- Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, Iraq, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Turkey
2- Colombia, Ecuador, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Vietnam
They'd be based in the embassies, anyway. If they chose, they could get out of the office and do some milling about, or they could be homebodies and wait for people to come to them. It's their call how they want to go about looking... and, in fact, what qualifies as 'exemplary'. They can use whatever criteria they see fit, and admit as many or as few people as they like.
And in the event of the proverbial child prodigy 'too bad they're illegal' story, it wouldn't necessarily fall to the local fasttracker. If the person's in Texas, the Texas fasttracker wouldn't have to step in. It could be the one from Vermont, or Sweden, or Fiji, if they happened to get there first. Not every country has diplomatic recognition, and not every country we're on friendly terms with has an embassy, so you need to be fairly laissez-faire when figuring out who's fasttracking who. Whoever gets there first.
They don't want to go crazy, though. No walking up to a refugee camp and giving every single person within citizenship, though one might get soft-hearted enough to want to do so at some point. As far as job security goes, that is a death wish. Among that substitute paperwork is enough documentation to track the new citizen and tie them to the fasttracker. The citizen doesn't have to worry about it. The fasttracker does. They would be held responsible for the actions of each and every person they bring into the country.
If they are truly admitting the exemplary, the people we'd be proud to have as Americans, there's nothing to worry about. But remember this is supposed to be used only for the cream of the immigration crop. If one of the fasttracked citizens turns out later to be a drug dealer or racks up six DUI's or something else to make it clear the fasttracker chose poorly, there will be hell for the fasttracker to pay. It won't take very many wrong decisions for the fasttracker to be fired and for someone else to take his place. Which means a fasttracker would have to do their own due diligence when determining who to let in.
In short, they could bring in whoever they want whenever they want, but they damn well better be right.
It would only clear out a tiny amount of the immigration backlog. You'd still have a whole bunch of drugs and violence on the border with Mexico, you'd still have millions of people to deal with, you'd still have people waiting a decade-plus on the over-the-counter route. But a little- a very stellar little- is better than nothing.
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