Everyone knows that the French government is utterly without any corporate corruption, right? Right?

(insert sound of crickets chirping here).

And we know that the English system of government is uncontaminated by banking interests, right?

(more crickets).

The first solution to the problem is to get campaign finance “reform” repealed. It was nothing more or less than “incumbent protection.”

For all the people proposing “European” solutions to our problems: Please go live in Europe. It will be a much faster way of achieving what you want, ie, to live in a European nation.

The political system is beholden to greedy and rent-seeking corporate entities, and the system works very well for them. Now we have a “reform” bill that formalizes TBTF with $4 trillion dollars of free insurance for the big banks. Of course, the bill does not mention the words TBTF, but I think the banksters are very happy with the plan. When in the world are we going to see the perps from Countrywide and IndyMac wearing orange jumpsuits? Is everyone going to skate away with their fortune intact?

“How do we break the two-party duopoly?”

The answer is a more parliamentary system of government. You can’t do it to the Senate, without amending the Constitution, but you can do it to the House. That’s a good start.

It would work the same way as this initiative to effectively end the Electoral College, without amending the Constitution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says you have to use a Congressional District. Voting Representatives into the House is controlled at the State level. If a State were to amend the State Constitution, so that all Representatives were elected “At Large”, then that would be Constitutional. With Reps elected “At Large”, you can get rid of winner take all and have proportional representation.

Obviously, this would work best in the larger states, with at least 10 or more Representatives. The people no longer vote for individual candidates, they vote for parties that submit party lists. If the state has 10 Representatives, then the party lists have 10 candidates. The seats in the House are won, based on what percentage of the vote they’ve received. For example

Democrats win 41 (44) % of the vote, they get 4 seats (first 4 members on their list win seats)

Republicans win 27 (30)% of the vote, they get 3 seats

Green Party win 14 (19)% of the vote, they get 2 seats

Christian Theocracy Party win 4% (7%) of the vote, they get 1 seats

Cannabis Legalization Party win 4% of the vote, they get 0 seat

Extreme Looney Party win 3% of the vote, they get 0 seats

Bunch of minor parties get the remaining 7% and 0 seats

While you’re making this change, you also want to switch to STV (Single Transferable Vote). For example, people who voted for the Cannabis Legalization Party marked their ballot with the CLP #1 , the Greens #2 and the Democrats #3. The CLP didn’t get enough votes for seats, but the people who voted for CLP didn’t waste their votes, those votes then transferred to the Green Party (the revised percentage for the Greens is in parenthesis).

Extremely Looney Party made the ELP their first choice, the CTP their second choice.

The votes for the other parties that didn’t get seats were also transferred, based on their voters ranked preferences. More details about how STV works here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote

Have a seat that is a little shacking – Banking or Finance for you. In a solid seat and it’s veteran’s afiars or worse ~~~~Ethics~~~. :o

What an ugle part of our society.

For all thes years. Sad but true.

Can there evr be a better world? America was supposed to show the way.

Sorry to dream for minute. The skies here in Bali tonight are clear and full of stars. That is, I’m out of it. And never was a Bnaker!!