General Discussion

I'd suggest adding:

• Establish new "Common Ground" party with a platform mandated to only reflect issues and positions with a 2/3rd majority support among the American public in multiple 3rd party polls from different pollsters

Political ideology falls along a normal distribution. Very dumb to draw the line down the middle rather than capturing the norm and excluding the edges.

Let's have progress demand a shift in the national attitudes over time rather than let minor shifts of a few percentage points every few years in a deadlock determine progress or regress.

I will take 1 of those, watered down and neutered, and it would still make more sense than the landfill fire we live in right now.

President decided by sortition (like jury selection) with a less military-focused role, cabinet members decided by voting on a list of working professionals in the applicable field (aka someone who works in agricultural sciences to be secretary of agriculture), housing as a human right, functional petitions that can initiate a direct vote in a special election on any issue with enough signatures. Ban prison labor and for profit prisons. Ban private schools and invest heavily in public schools. Employees of public services like libraries, schools, gov jobs pay no taxes. De-militarize the police. Sever the relationship between police and current/former prosecutors (possibly by only getting out-of-county prosecutors to oversee cases involving police?), enshrine prisoner voting rights, enshrine Land back policy, no corporate ownership of single family homes. Rent for an apartment has to be split to be exactly what the mortgage currently costs for the owner of the building + overhead, repairs and community agreed upon updates (if the building has no mortgage anymore, it is lowered to be only what is needed for overhead etc.- being a landlord shouldn't be profitable, it should be a service), salary has to be clearly marked on every job posting and if it is found out that they are underpaying what they advertise, the labor board can fine the company by percentage of total profit increasing 2x every time it happens. All jobs are union eligible except for police. State tax benefits to influence city centers to become car-free. Loitering is a protected activity. Ban EULAs that can change at the will of the company. Force companies to pay out money to those they stole data from and sold. Ban the NSA, TSA, FBI, and CIA. Ban the stock market in some way that wouldn't be awful. Ban more performant car/truck tires that's causing our microplastics problem in favor of almost entirely naturally decomposing tire compounds. All vehicles and machinery are subject to the emissions standards of cars. Farmers are always allowed to set up a stand and sell products from their farm in parking lots (even parking lots of grocery stores). No unmarked police cars and no police sirens at night. No 24 hour news cycle. Crackdown on javascript's power on the internet. Break up apple, google, Microsoft, and any other behemoth I'm forgetting. Ban court fees. Ban non-competes. 3-4 day workweek. On top of location representation in our federal government, include wage representation and age representation as well. Surprise, all businesses are co-ops now! There's probably way more, but I can only fantasize so much lol

Abolish corporate personhood? No. Someone obviously doesn't understand what corporate personhood is or how it exists.

If there is no such thing as corporate personhood, how do you tax a corporation? How does a corporation own any property? How does a hospital exist? How do groups of people pool capital? How does one sue groups of people who have pulled their Capital and caused harm?

The jurisdiction of all law is based on personal jurisdiction. Corporate personhood is considered a "legal fiction," it doesn't exist to protect corporations, although it sometimes does, it exists by necessity and by operation of law. It would exist even if you didn't want it to, it would just have to be called something else. The alternative is that groups of people cannot pool resources toward a common endeavor, or, they can, but it's a lawless and ungovernable enterprise, with nobody having any enforceable rights.

....

House and Senate merge? No. Read up on bicameral versus unicameral legislative power as limitations on power, and in America the Senate's role as a saucer. It makes sense especially when the Congress is a huge body to begin with and when dealing with classified information and covert matters of state; in which case a higher tier with a smaller group and longer terms makes sense to protect our secrets.

This is the also the only idea, along with Supreme Court term limits, that requires a Constitutional Amendment. The others are much more feasible and reasonable. ...

idk about merge the senate into the house. I like the idea that there is one chamber where each state has the same number of votes and one that goes by population. but hard agree on removing the house rep cap, as-is every branch of the fed is weighted toward smaller, more rural states (senate, house with rep cap, potus via electoral college, scotus because senate and potus pick scotus)

1. Ranked choice voting is great, yes please.

2. Why? Explain your reasoning. Voting needs reformed, but this isn't the way. I certainly don't want NY and LA deciding every election ever.

3. No. Why? What on earth would this accomplish. The house and senate are separate for a reason. We need the checks and balances they provide.

4. Again, why? The house reps are by population of the state/district. We don't need MORE bureaucrats.

5. Yes, please. US "healthcare" is in shambles. It's a complete disaster and the only people that benefit are Insurance companies.

6. I get the idea, but it's a terrible idea. Fixing the rest will even out the income situation. Turning ALL your citizens into entitled brats is not a great idea.

7. Absolutely not. Eliminate mail in voting except in extreme cases that need to be applied for. Instead, institute a FREE Govt Issued photo voter ID. Expand voting areas and hours. Make Voting day a paid holiday. I don't wanna hear any racist shit about "poor black people can't find the voting places". Bullshit. Make AT LEAST one HS Gym a voting area in every county. Make it EASIER to vote in person. It's a duty, honor, and responsibility for people to vote.

8. , 9. , 10. , 13. Soft Disagree. Our tax system no doubt needs an overhaul. You'll have everyone "making" more than $50 getting around it somehow. Look into the Fair tax. Eliminate ALL taxes. embedded, import, state, local, federal, income, capital gains, etc. implement a level sales tax on everything. Don't want to pay taxes, don't buy shit. everyone pays their FAIR share that way, and there is no way for the rich to get out of paying. This would eliminate the IRS and 'tax preparation companies'. Which I don't really understand this issue with those companies. No one is forcing you to use them. And there is absolutely NO WAY i want the IRS doing my taxes FOR me. fuck all that noise. But again, implement the fair tax and IRS goes away anyway.

9. Lifetime appointments are bogus, but i think i a role like SCOTUS, longer terms are required. I read something here about aging out and I like that as an option.

10. sure, on board.

11. Guess i don't really understand this. Explain?

Plenty of other things. Term limits for congress.

Make congress abide by the rules they set for us including insurance, healthcare, stock trading etc. While we're at it, create a congressional village of sorts. You're assigned a house/duplex/dorm etc while you are SERVING in congress. no more "NEED" to have a house in DC and in your home state. If congress people can't survive on their $150k a year salary, what hope do the rest of us have?

Eliminate lobbyists. That's just "legal" bribery.

We need to fix immigration. having an unbridled flow of people come across the border isn't good. I have no problem with people wanting to come to this country, but there's a reason we have a limit. There needs to be a complete overhaul of the process.

Make secondary education WAYYYY more affordable, or free.

Stop giving out so much foreign aid, and close military bases anywhere they are not directly needed around the world. we are not the world police. you can't pour from and empty cup and our cup is empty to the tune of 30some TRILLION dollars. Once we fix our money problems, then we can start handing it out again.

Start holding government officials, included law enforcement accountable. End qualified immunity. Start enforcing laws we already have instead of the glut of new ones every single year.

DEMAND that congress pass a balanced budget every year. no more of this dog and pony show of 'govt shut downs'. If the govt shuts down, those in charge should be fired and replaced by people willing and able to perform the duties they were elected to do.

Allow Cities, Municipalities, States etc to SAVE money. By that I mean, don't treat yearly budgets as "use it or lose it". We as citizens are told to save, save, save, yet every govt entity spends every dime they have every year so their budget doesn't shrink the next year. Putting safeguards into place so the money can't be used as bonuses etc would allow govt entities to have a "rainy day fund" per se.

Eliminate the words "school lunch debt" from our vocabulary. Feed children that need it. and feed them good food. not the radioactive waste that gets slopped up in school cafeterias across the nation.

Eliminate the ability for the govt to use Social Security like their own little piggy bank. If they INSIST on using the money, it needs priority in repayment @ the tune of 150% of money borrowed. This would be the mandatory first thing on the following year's budget.

If we can afford to send people to war, we need to be able to afford to take care of them afterwards.

This is just off the top of my head. The problem is nearly every "solution" here would require people in power to give up that power. That's not going to happen easily or quitely.

I agree with a lot of this, especially ranked choice voting. Don't agree with abolishing the electoral college though. Rural voters and urban voters are generally quite different, if you get rid of the electoral college the rural voters will be completely ignored by every politician simply because there are fewer of them and they are spread out more. I don't think that means their priorities should be invalidated.

That said, I would add one thing. Abolish primary votes. Political parties can nominate as many or as few people as they wish, anybody with enough signatures can get their name on the final ballot. The current primary system basically disenfranchises voters in any state that isn't in the first 10 or 15 primary elections. Half the candidates will have dropped out by the time their state votes.

@3volver Hope you do a v3. There are some good ideas in these comments. It's been a good read.

You forgot abolishing slavery.

• Ban all businesses unless they are worker owned cooperatives
• Immediate de-funding of all military
• Immediate de-funding of local police departments
• End white supremacy
• Dismantling the permanent security state
• Collect all landlords and execute them
• Collect all billionaires who are remaining and execute them
• Redistribute their wealth and land to the workers