The Swamp

This season, MSNBC ran a four part series entitled Drain the Swamp with Katy Tur and Jacob Soboroff. The reality is that, as Trump uses it, its Drain the Moat, with the Moat being what protects the nation from pollution and pillage. Let me make a few points in response.

Episode 1, For the People, Buy the People shows investigates campaign finance. The real problem is not speech at all. It's Capitalism. Restrain the rich owning the rest of us and the problem goes away. Even in the Democratic side, the elites fight for their interests, not ours. The biggest fight is to retain incumbency in each party. The threat of being primaried paralyzed the Republicans, although being in the minority should keep their fringe at bay.

Without a constitutional amendment, monies speech will be protected, so any change must be voluntary. I suggest linking congressional and presidential races. Instead of using the party faithful as delegates, have congressional nominees and members select the party standard bearer. To run for Congress in presidential years, candidates would commit to a presidential candidate. This gives the nominee a strong core of congressional support.

As for money, funnel it all through the parties. Before the primary season, each congressional district holds a caucus. Any candidate with 15% of the attendees gets funded equally. The same rule would apply in the midterms as well. Money is collected anonymously. As for dark money, the donors make no secret of who they are. If they wish to cloud the airways, we will simply ignore them. The most effective means of campaign communication is still good old fashioned mails. TV ads benefit the networks more than the candidates.

Episode 2, POTUS, Inc. hints at how hidden Trump's business dealings are. This is not because he is bought but because he is awful. It is hard to be the Patron Saint of the Evangelical and Capitalist Prosperity Gospel when one is essentially broke. When he is finally forced to resign, and he will be once the investigations prove too damaging to his party, his empire will fall apart, both from leverage and civil asset forfeiture. As for Emoluments, Congress has authorized accepting gifts, with any gift over $300 to be given to the treasury. See 5 U.S.C. § 4372, the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act. It requires that each agency, including the White House and Congress, report foreign gifts by January 15th for the prior year. It takes about a year for the State Department's Office of Protocol to publish the report in the Federal Register. There are no criminal violations, save for making false statements. Hotel profits should be included, but Congress would likely have to clarify the law to ensure it.

Episode 3, Voting Rights and Wrongs, as well as last Friday's All In with Chris Hayes , deals with problems in our system of representation, including the Senate and the Electoral College, as well as voter suppression. The recent Supreme Court ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act overturned Section 3, Preclearance, because the list was old. The recent election cycles have provided us a new list for Section 3.

The problem of non-voting comes from the nature of single member representation. In multi-party elections, everyone votes because everyone who gets votes gets a seat in the legislature. Such systems can be destabilizing, however. If you think the Tea Party blocked action, wait until you give them their own ballot line. This would give the Tea Party/MAGA its own outlet. This would make things worse.

As for as the Senate and the Electoral College, the problem Toth the College is the lack of its own power base because the founders did not want a parliamentary system. Add governors to the mix and include Congress and that concern is satisfied. The ending of the Senate and the EC begs the question of why not make the Speaker a Prime Minister, with a stronger civil service and ministers appointing or acting as the Cabinet? The budget would be passed on time and elections would lead to the tyranny of the majority party. Think of Paul Ryan as Prime Minister. We may as well join the British Commonwealth.  I would rather not habe either.

We could go the other way and divide into regions of equal electoral vote strength with regional vice presidents and a member from each regional House and Senate sending a member to a national caucus. It could be done as a matter of electoral vote compact to elect regional VPs and a confessional rules change to elect the caucus. No constitutional amendment necessary and no Senate problem either. Regional caucuses would need two houses to keep New York, California and Texas from dominating their regions. Smaller committees also stop gridlock.

Episode 4, Bill to Nowhere,on infrastructure funding could be solved by bringing back earmarks. States would work with their delegations to prioritize projects rather than having the Department of Transportation do so and increase gasoline taxes to make sure it all gets done. Even the Libertarians would go along. They hate bureaucrats more than earmarks. Deficit finance would handle the backlog. This could also help us cope with global warming, from rebuilding to flood management.

Call me for Season 2.