Better governance, better society

Here are some ideas that might improve our society -- reducing unnecessary suffering, increasing justice and truth.

1.  In the House of Representatives and Senate, every vote should be held twice, once in secret and once overt.  In the secret vote, every member would choose what he/she believes will make America stronger and more just.  In the overt vote, every member would vote as traditionally influenced by the party leaders.  Only the overt vote would be official, but the difference should be discussed.

2.  Double the fairness of the electoral college by giving each state as many electors as it has representatives plus one (not plus two).

3.  Devise a more just drawing of representative districts by using a computer program that minimizes distance traveled by voters to their polling places.

4.  Each year after a downward revision of tax rates by congress, change the tax rates 10% back toward its previous values each year that the deficit is greater than before the revision.

5.  Place a 1% tax on each person’s net worth above one million.  Alternatively do what Elizabeth Warren proposes.

6.  Modify items 4 and 5 so as to keep interest on the national debt less than half of the military budget.

7.  Restore original Senate procedures: Simple majority and one-person live filibuster. 

8.  Levy foreign-manufacture sales taxes instead of tarriffs.  This can be accomplished easily now that every item of commerce has a unique 2-D bar code.

9.  Provide communities in which to house homeless populations and outlaw camping on streets.  There could be substance-specific settlements in abandoned mining towns, for example.

10.  Place limits on off-shoring of US-established manufacturing operations so as to keep a fraction of machinery and expertise in US.

11.  Place high-altitude month-long-soaring camera planes above US border areas to record locations of moving objects one-frame per minute (eg).  That way, illegal substance traffickers can be located and identified.

12.  Require email promoters to halve the frequency of messages to a given url for each week that they receive no response from said url.  That way, email can be resurrected as a reliable means of communication.