COMMENTARY
My grumble about all of this is that is that politics is only a small part of the problem ... achieving good democracy and free and fair elections is a step, but only a step. There is a need to address many other problem many of which are independent of politics and all about individual and corporate self interest. Individual people and business entities are not held to account by elections, and not constrained very much by either ethics or law, so getting these elements of society under control is critical.

The communist model did not work at all well to control the economy for the benefit of society, and the capitalist market economy has been a much better system, but it also has some serious flaws. It seems to create a bubble and bust cycle or worse. The recent housing bubble that turned into a global financial meltdown reflects some famous flaws in the capital market economy. Something better should be possible.

What we need is for resources and economic activities to deployed to satisfy needs, and to use resources that exist to the best effect. This is something that the Wall Street economists do not seem to understand. Wall Street seems happy as long as there is corporate profit growth, with nothing else of very much importance. The appologists for Wall Street and the capital markets seem to think that the events of three years ago are not going to happen again, but it is actually in the process of failing again around the situation in Europe. A rethink is needed.

This is, of course, why TrueValueMetrics has been developed.
Peter Burgess

Jeff Smith - After sharing and spreading this post earlier, I did some digging and found some very well reasoned arguments that this is actually a bad idea. I encourage you to check it out, and I'll also say that one of the best arguments is about halfway down the page in the comments.

Fraud: Congressional Reform Act of 2011

Congressional Reform Act of 2011, health insurance, Social Security, term limits

By now, you’ve no doubt seen the so-called Congressional Reform Act of 2011 in a viral email, in a blog post or on Facebook. A lot of people are saying things like “this is something we can all agree on,” but I’ve got some strong objections to it. One of my objections is on principle, but the rest are on a factual basis — the author of the email too often presents a world that does not exist and proposes solutions where there is not problem. In short, the “Act” is factually mistaken. Repeatedly.

1. Term limits: I object to this on principle. Arbitrary limits on the length of service is an arbitrary limit on the will of the people. If the people in a congressional district like the person representing them, they should have the right to keep that person in that role; if they don’t, they can vote that person out. Think of Russ Feingold: Had he not been defeated in this past election, he would have been forced out of office by term limits. I, for one, strongly prefer Russ as my senator over anyone else I know involved in Wisconsin politics. Term limits also greatly increase the power of staff members, bureaucrats and lobbyists, because they will have the in-depth knowledge of both the issues and how the government works that the “fresh” members of Congress will lack. Members of Congress will become heavily dependent on non-elected personnel and the special interests represented by lobbyists, even more than they are now!

2. Factual objection: No one in Congress achieves “tenure” – which is the permanent appointment to a position until retirement or death — so the author is confused.

Objection on principle: Eliminating or reducing pay and pension for members of Congress will make it far more likely that Congress will be populated by incredibly rich people — a problem we are already having (44% are millionaires) — who can afford such a break in their earnings and pensions. This would make it more likely that Congress is ruled by people who don’t know and don’t care about the lives of the millions of us who have to work for a living.

Factual objection: The author makes it sound as if members of Congress draw their full salary until they die, even after leaving office. This is not true. They draw a “pension,” but it is determined by a number of factors, such as length of service, when they entered Congress, their age at “retirement” from Congress, the specifics of the pension options in which they enrolled upon retirement and their salary level at retirement. By law, their pension is capped at 80% of their salary, and they’d have to serve a very, very long time to get to that level.

Factual objection: Members of Congress do pay into their own retirement funds, as well as Social Security, just like the rest of us must. The average pension of members of Congress under the current Federal Employee Retirement System is $36,732 per year. That’s pretty darn good, but it’s not outrageous and it’s certainly not a burden on the budget.

3. Factual objection: Since 1984, all members of Congress DO pay into Social Security exactly like we all do (there are a few technical exemptions, but none of them are for Congress). Moving their pensions into Social Security would simply create a higher SS tax rate for them than for us, presumably without a higher payout rate. Do you want whatever pension, IRA or 401K you have moved into Social Security? If I had one, I know I wouldn’t.

4. Factual objection: As noted in #2 above, members of Congress DO pay into their own pension plan just like the rest of us.

5. Factual objection: The author makes it sound as if Congress can give itself any raise it likes, but this is not true. The cost of living increase for Congress is set by a formula based on changes in private-sector wages and salaries as measured by the Employment Cost Index — a far more logical measure than the CPI. The automatic pay raise for Congress, set by law, would have amounted to a raise of 0.9% — less than 1% — and President Obama has signed into law a bill wiping out even that small increase for 2011 (the second year in a row Congress has gone without a raise). Russ Feingold led the fight in the Senate to eliminate the raises. The pay raise elimination was a purely symbolic measure because it saved less than $1 million (a fraction of a drop in the federal budget bucket).

6. Factual objection: Members of Congress have good health insurance by any standard, but it’s not free and not reserved only for them – and it’s not government insurance. House and Senate members are allowed to purchase private health insurance offered through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, which covers more than 8 million other federal employees, retirees and their families.

It’s not a “single-payer” system where the government acts as the one and only health insurance company. As President Bush’s chief of personnel Kay Coles James said in 2003, while lecturing at the conservative Heritage Foundation, “the FEHB program is not centralized, government-run health care.” It has drawn praise both from conservatives and liberals, including President Obama, who held it up as a model for his own health care proposals.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the FEHBP offers about 300 different private health care plans, including five government-wide, fee-for-service plans and many regional health maintenance organization (HMO) plans, plus high-deductible, tax-advantaged plans.

7. Factual objection. This is a loaded one, because it implies there are laws from which Congress exempts itself but imposes on the rest of us — but does not provide a single example. Now, it so happens that the Founding Fathers were quite adamant that members of Congress have some extra protection. They worried that presidents might try to bully House or Senate members by threatening to arrest them on trumped-up charges. So to preserve the separation of executive and legislative powers, the founders gave elected lawmakers a certain degree of immunity:

U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 6

“They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

But the only protection they get is that they can’t be arrested going to work, during work or coming home from work, and they can’t be harassed by police for things they say on the floor of the House or the Senate.

8. Factual objection. What contracts is the author writing about? Regardless of the the contracts in question, however, the reasoning behind the proposed nullification is faulty. We don’t have direct democracy, we have representative democracy, and for good reason, the most basic of which in this case is that you could not have 330 million people sign a contract. The contracts were created by our elected representatives, in accordance with the Constitution, and signed into law by our elected president — that makes them constitutionally valid and the “contract” legally binding. This is how the “people” speak in our system, so the contracts are, indeed, created between the people and the members of Congress.

If we’re talking about members of Congress investing in firms that have government contracts, that’s another and more productive discussion, but from the email’s quip, it’s not clear this is what the writer has in mind.

Side notes: The 26th amendment, contrary to the author’s implication, took quite a long time to arrive. The effort to lower the voting age to 18 began shortly after WWII and didn’t come to fruition until half way through 1971. Now, ratification was quick, but that reflects two things: 1) the issue had been debated for decades; 2) tens of thousands of young men were dying in Vietnam before they were old enough to vote, and the searing injustice of it was obvious to almost everyone.

The author is wrong in saying seven amendments took less than a year to achieve ratification. The actual number is nine:

26th — 100 days
23rd — 285 days
21st — 288 days
20th — 327 days
17th — 330 days
15th — 342 days
13th — 309 days
12th — 189 days
11th — 340 days

But even if the author had the number right (didn’t the writer know about Google?), the reasoning is faulty. The speed with which an amendment is ratified does not indicate some great popular demand. Can you imagine a grassroots uproar over federal court jurisdiction (11th), electoral college technical glitches (12th), the lame duck session length (20th), or representation of DC in Congress (23rd)? Me neither.

The real kicker, though, is that the one amendment that is closest in spirit and aim to what the author proposes is the 27th — “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.” — took the longest to be ratified. It was originally proposed as an article of the Bill of Rights in 1789 and wasn’t ratified until more than 100 years later in 1992 (74,003 days to be exact).

Finally, I just love the cowardice of the final line: If you disagree, just delete the email — in other words, shut up and walk away. The email writer is not interested in discussion or debate. The email writer is not interested in learning what errors he or she has made. The email writer is a coward.

Original text of the “Act”:

1. Term Limits.

12 years only, one of the possible options below..

A. Two Six-year Senate terms

B. Six Two-year House terms

C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

2. No Tenure / No Pension.

A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.

The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.

The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.

THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!! If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete

A good friend forwarded a viral post titled Congressional Reform Act of 2011. It proposed a Constitutional Amendment that would limit the generous congressional benefits package and capacity to raise Congressional salaries, and limit their terms. She asked if this is a a good idea.

It should certainly sound good to most of us in an era when approval of Congress has justifiably dipped below 10% for the first time. That’s not much higher than the number of people who either pay Congress (about .25% gave more than $200 in 2010) or serve those who do (the “political class,” about 6% according to one pollster). The rest of these contented 10% must think Congress still serves them as mere voters.

To think Congress serves voters, you would have to go back before 1976, when the Supreme Court mislaid their dictionary of democracy and said money is speech. Since then five corporatist judges kept their hand on the money-in-politics spigot till January 2010 when they just cranked it wide open in time to get the result that Roberts and the Rights wanted in November.

So punishing Congress in their pocketbook has got to feel good to most people who have been paying attention. But I answered my friend that I must have missed the part where it says no member of Congress may receive any gift while in office or on account of being in office, nor work for compensation at any other job. Because for most of them, their whole pay package from the public is just small change compared to the private money they receive from generous donors for systematically selling out the public’s interests. Cutting off their private money supply would really hurt them. Combined with a few other changes, like re-regulating political broadcasting to serve the public, it might even do some good by making Congress responsible to the voters again. That would make it worth paying them decently to actually serve the public instead of that .25%.

If we are not going to cut off their private money supply, why stop with this modest proposal to limit benefits and terms. If we are going to try to amend the Constitution we might as well go all the way. Why stop with the chump change of cutting benefits and forcing them into the lobbying profession sooner than they might otherwise. Why not just cut off their salaries altogether. Almost all of them would continue doing the same work they do now for nothing as long as they get most their money from private sources anyway. They wouldn’t starve and the taxpayer would save a dime.

That’s what really corrupt countries do. They pay all their government employees next to nothing because it is expected they will live off their corrupt earnings which will be much more lucrative than what the government could pay. For example, the head of the Kabul prison paid $1 million to get his job from Karzai. What does he need with a $100/mo salary. Light his cigars?

But then if we were really smart we could condition the whole pay package deal on not taking money from anywhere else. Keep a clean record with no private 'contributions' or phoney speaker’s fees from the US Chamber of Commerce? You keep your generous pay package and chosen career path. You don’t? You want to resort to that First Amendment right to be corrupted that the Supreme Court gave you as a Declaration of Independence 200th anniversary present? Then don’t take anything from us, and start lining up that lucrative job on K street.

Without some such way of getting money out of politics, including a law taxing or prohibiting independent electioneering expenditures, Congress will not change. This proposal as good as it felt on first glance is really lame. The basic reason most people don’t like Congress is because they work for a tiny minority of rich people, not for us. So they don’t do anything for us and much against us. The richest 1% have gotten about three times richer than us since this money is speech regime started in 1976. That has left little on the table for the rest us. Before 1976 the trend since the New Deal was toward greater equality and people were much happier. The whole idea of democracy and the pursuit of happiness set out in the Declaration of Independence was that we are in charge and our representative would work for us. Now those who are represented don’t get taxed and the rest of us taxpayers aren’t represented. Where is the real Tea Party now we need them? So the remedy for this situation is for us to pay Congress less so they work even less for us and more for rich people who will be happy to make up the difference for a price? Duh. This is just going to make the problem even worse, if possible. By cutting what we the people pay Congress to work for us will make Congress even more greedy for private money.

New Jersey Republican Governor Christine Whitman calculated that for every $100 of private money received by a member of Congress, they waste $8700 of taxpayers money doling out favors to corporations. Anyone would like to meet that one arm bandit, paying 87:1 on a sure bet. Which reminds of how Casino Jack Abramoff got his name and new career as federal prisoner and now recent parolee. He promised his Indian tribes a 400:1 return. There are examples of much higher returns. But sorry, this is an exclusive casino Congress maintains. Not for every individual. They have expensive lobbyists at the door, and only that .25% of high rollers can afford the ante at the high stakes table where public policies are dealt out..

When the Republicans voted against the public financing of presidential elections, they made essentially the same proposal as this Congressional Reform Act nonsense. Lets us save $1 by just removing, instead of repairing, this broken window where the public pays for presidential electioneering. What a great deal. And then the taxpayers can pay that $400 bill for the money blowing out that open window into the waiting hands of some former client of Casino Jack who will happily pay that dollar to elect their own president. For every public dolar given to finance our elected representatives that gets privatized we will pay from $87 to $400 or more in giveaways. No one has ever studied the total value of all giveaways and damage done compared to the total amount of money in politics. For any but the science-challenged or conflicted, it looks like we have gambled human civilization on earth for billions of dollars just from the carbon lobby. Congress in bought these days for only a couple billion a year. That’s would be a one per cent tariff on the bonuses of the bailed out banks.

A better solution than driving Congress further into the embrace of private money – after all, this is a Constitutional Amendment we are talking about – is you make it illegal for them to take money from elsewhere. That way you get your Congress back, and then you get to like them again because you can control what they do through the ballot box, including their pay package, benefits and all. This is what used to happen before 1976, when Congress represented voters and not their financial benefactors. Then they were afraid to vote themselves pay increases and special benefits. Why waste a Constitutional Amendment on something that does not fix the underlying problem?

It begins to dawn how dumb an idea this really is, wasting people’s time thinking that they are going to change something in Washington with this proposal. Then you realize its not only diverts you from the real problem of private money in politics; and it makes that real problem worse. Doesn’t that sound like a typical inside the beltway policy proposal?

Where does such a proposal come from ? A totally anonymous source, an “I” without a letterhead or signature. Hmm. I imagine some smart Republican congressional staffer, formerly in corporate communications, proposing to cut the public’s financing of politicians without saying a word about their private funding, so that private funding would even be more dominant, if possible. Meanwhile the proposal will deflect the public discontent into something that makes the real problem even worse. Sounds just like Washington

And then I asked, What’s the deal with making this proposal a Constitutional Amendment? The email makes the really lame argument that it’s easy “if people want it”. The last Amendment, the 27th,(giving rebellious draft age 18-21 year olds the right to vote in the middle of the unpopular Vietnam War) sailed through in a few months and was given a signing ceremony at the White House by Richard Nixon. Gee whiz, we can do it too. That was 1971 – just about the high point of American democracy, five years before the Supreme Court fired their money-equals-speech torpedo at democracy. Lewis F. Powell could complain in his infamous 1971 Memo to the Chamber of Commerce plotting to take the country back from its citizens, without fear of being accused of exaggeration, that “as every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders … Politicians reflect what they believe to be majority views of their constituents.’ . He was not a joking man. That was 1971, this is now. The same words could only be a joke in 2011.

So the idea of getting politicians in Congress in 2011 to vote for anything that they will not get paid to vote for, let alone to cut their own salary is a non-starter. But do so first by a 2/3 majority in both houses and then to get politicians in 3/4′s of the state legislatures (many of whom must imagine themselves in the big show some day) is so farfetched as to be a joke.

Then I finally figured out the joke. There is no need for a Constitutional Amendment anyway. All of these proposals could be passed by a simple majority vote in Congress. Nothing in the Constitution would prevent it and it would be much easier to pass a simple law than getting Congress to pass a Constitutional Amendment, and then getting 38 state legislators to agree. So why propose something that is harder to do than could be accomplished much more easily? Because the proposal is a joke. A joke to divert our attention from the really serious issue of money in politics. It is not even intended to succeed, and if it did, it is not intended to change anything except to make the real problem worse. Its a lot like the faux Tea Party’s ideas in that respect.