A Dream of a Better Washington

I wanted to write about the Shrub's petulance at getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar but somehow his spying on us just fits with his personality, his anger at being caught with his personality type, and his attempt to justify it with his megalomania. He's finally crossed the line from "wartime president" to "despot in training". Nixon resigned for less. Clinton was impeached for a spot of spuge on a blue dress. Bush's actions were clearly illegal. You get the point.

Anyway, at some point in my housecleaning today I began to ruminate about a better Washington. In my idealized national capital, Senators and Representatives were paid fifteen times the Federal minimum wage in keeping with guidelines recently proposed for CEO pay. The President got twenty times but had to pay taxes on it because his housing in Washington is provided. All elected officials got a health care plan, Medicare, and they all got a retirement plan, Social Security. The limit on the value of gifts they could receive was zero unless the gift was purely symbolic such as a plaque or a certificate. Likewise the amount of income they could gather from public speaking engagements was zero. Lobbyists had to be registered, could not enter the Capitol or the White House in official capacity and could not spend money on congressmen.

The campaign finance laws were completely overhauled to prohibit campaign contributions from any entity other than a living, breathing person and were limited to $500. The bulk of campaign financing came out of our pockets anyway, campaigns were publicly financed. We had a system similar to California where we could make our wishes known through the ballot initiative process on a National level. Organizations wishing to classify information were required to prove the information should be classified and defense of one's ass was not considered grounds for classification.

We had a recall system in place should the President fail us as badly as the current one has. Once a year, he could face a revolt from the voters and lose his job, along with his entire cabinet. The House and Senate ethics rules were simple: Violate ethics rules or do something serious enough to get yourself indicted and go home. Both House and Senate rules prohibited introduction of measures unrelated to the law they were being introduced into and finally, political appointees had to meet minimum job requirements regardless of how much money they brought into the appointer's political war chests.

I'd like to say and then I woke up but unfortunately this dream involves politicians, most of whom are lawyers, ninety-five percent of whom give the other five a bad name. Since none of this will ever happen, I'd settle for two of the provisions in place in my ideal Washington, ballot initiatives and Presidential recall.

Of course, ethics would be nice....