Broken Capitalist Democracy
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Constitutional Convention Can Succeed
- Mock Constitutional Convention was successful.
- Congress is broken.
- Congress acts when 2/3rds of votes are near.
- Congress will limit topics and set a deadline.
- States and Congress will specify attendees.
- 3/4th of States have to approve any amendments.
Mock Constitutional Convention was successful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Percent_Declaration 2012 national assembly resulted in 15 amendment-like grievances by 75 people in 3 days. Arizona State University is hosting another one. https://constitutionaldesign.asu.edu/2024-model-constitutional-convention/
Congress is broken. 2023 was one of the worst years for Congressional productivity.
Congress acts when 2/3rds of votes are near. 27th Amendment passed in 1992 when state approval was near. See “The People’s Constitution” book page 245.
Congress will limit topics and set a deadline. Congress will limit convention topics to the state resolutions so no new Constitution will result. Congress will also set a deadline.
States and Congress will specify attendees. Some state resolutions specify attendees. Congress will designate the rest.
3/4th of States have to approve any amendments. Per Constitution Article V a whole new Constitution will never pass in 3/4th of States.
Why a Convention?
- Get Capitalism out of politics.
- Rights in the Constitution are for each person not groups of people like Super PACs. (Reverse Citizen’s United)
- Campaign finance limits and lobbying limits are mandatory.
- Term limits are needed.
- Filibusters are unconstitutional.
- Gerrymandering is unconstitutional.
- Unanimous consent is unconstitutional.
What about a runaway Convention?
“Much of the fear surrounding a convention is unfounded. The Convention Clause’s text and history indicate that it grants power to the States to limit the scope of any such convention. In addition, the States have the ability to reject any amendments proposed by a convention through the (3/4th of States) ratification process.”
– The Other Way to Amend the Constitution: The Article V Constitutional Convention Amendment Process, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 30, Issue 3
The Assassination of a Broken Democracy Is Available Now
Featured
PLOT
Three seemingly random characters are running for their lives in this fictional thriller.
BROKEN DEMOCRACY
The book “Tyranny of the Minority” has 15 points to be implemented to fix our Democracy. But they are mostly about voting rights which are hard to quantify and get passed.
Likewise, Bernie Sander’s “Our Revolution” has lots of voting rights proposals. He also has a lot of financial reform proposals but misses the core problems.
“The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism” blames banks and the 1% for our problems but misses the fact that the underlying problem is our broken Capitalist Democracy and concepts allowed under Citizens United.
“The Assassination of a Broken Democracy” uses a thriller story to subliminally propose getting rid of 10 problems that did not exist 200 years ago. Some of the 10 problems include gerrymandering, filibuster and super PACs.
“Tyranny” and “Revolution” propose changing some of these but offer no process to get change done.
On the other hand, “Assassination” proposes a solution to eliminate these problems which did not exist 200 years ago.
Originalists like SCOTUS Judge Alito want to put us back 200 years. Since these 10 problems did not exist 200 years ago, they should agree to get rid of them.
AVAILABLE WHERE AND WHEN
I hope you enjoy “The Assassination of a Broken Democracy” as much as I did in bringing it to you. It is currently available at Lulu.com.
Coming soon to Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.
Michael E Kelley
What Is Wrong With Capitalism?
Sure capitalism is not perfect. Is anything? Let’s examine the problems.
THE FIRST PROBLEM
As long as the minimum wage is below the poverty level, our society will be amoral.
The poverty level is defined as annual wages below $28,450 for a family of 4. Divided by 2,000 hours in a year, you get a poverty level hourly wage of $14.225 per hour (or less) for a family of 4.
Currently the national minimum wage is $7.25 and has not changed since 2009.
People trying to claw their way out of poverty will become pickpockets, blame co-workers for mistakes, cheat on time cards and steal supplies at work. Is that the kind of society we want to live in?
THE FIRST SOLUTION
Raising the minimum wage would help $27.8 million people.
Here is why we should raise the minimum wage according to a small business owner.
Spoiler alert: He thinks it will grow his business.
THE SECOND PROBLEM
This problem involves cheating on taxes and tax loopholes. In other words, giving priority to me, myself and I. As long as the tax system is overly complicated, humans are going to try to get away with something to get ahead of their neighbors. This mess, of course, was created by Congress.
THE SECOND SOLUTION
What can we do? We can plug the tax loopholes as proposed by Eric Schmidt. Google’s Chairman told angry British politicians last year: “plug the holes if you want more tax revenues”.
The result will be a reduction of our $18 trillion national debt.
THE THIRD PROBLEM
As long as you allow average national CEO pay to increase many times faster than inflation, you will have an amoral society. Average national CEO pay increased to $15.2 million in 2013.
The CEO to worker compensation ratio is 296 to 1 today versus 20 to 1 in 1965.
The result is the current wage inequality.
In order to keep up their fast rising salaries, CEOs and executives of financial institutions and other companies are taking huge risks with company and customer stock under the guise of pro-growth mergers and acquisitions using huge sums of leveraged loans.
Richard Baker, chief executive, along with his investment firm, NRDC Equity Partners, relied heavily on borrowed money. Of the $1.2 billion that it paid for Lord & Taylor, only $25 million came in the form of equity [2%], with the remainder made up of debt financing, secured by the department store estate. [The New York Times]
When was the last time you bought something with only a 2% down payment?
THE THIRD SOLUTION
Create annual Top Ten lists of Most Narcissistic CEOs and Highest Paid CEOs.
Maybe this will get us back to a more equitable ratio. 1965 was a pretty good year even though the ratio was only 20 to 1.
CONCLUSION
Capitalism is fraught with greed but it doesn’t have to be.
As the Google IPO started out saying, “Don’t be evil.” Better than that, let’s not be amoral. Thus reform needs to start with each of us.
We should be thinking more about the people around us or, even better, the world around us. The Mormons pledge 10% of their income. So why shouldn’t everyone, that can afford it, give just 1%?
Google stated in its “Letter from the Founders” as part of its original IPO paperwork, “We intend to contribute significant resources to the [Google] foundation, including employee time and approximately 1% of Google’s equity and profits in some form.”
In addition, let’s raise the minimum wage and try to close the gap between workers and CEOs.
Here are 7 suggestions to close the gap.
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WHAT IS AMORALITY
Here is a great article about Silicon Valley Amorality. But amorality can be found everywhere there is capitalism.
AMORAL APP
There is an app to see how corrupt aka amoral you are. At least in Indonesia.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/11/25/corruption-indonesia-app/70086430/?csp=tech
LEVERAGED LOANS COULD CAUSE CRASH
https://michaelekelley.com/2014/12/20/leveraged-loans-predict-crash/
Thanks. Have a great day.
Michael E Kelley 