Travel was by foot, horseback, stage coach, or sail boat. Although the mail was fairly efficient, and there were newspapers and magazines, it took some time for information or people to travel from one place to another. There was justification for keeping goverment changes limited to the speed of communication. Presidents were elected in November and took office in March!
The new American goverment was feared by many as leading to mob rule. Representative goverment was seen as the answer to protect the poor, weak, and minorities from rule by a majority. A system of three branches of goverment was set up to place checks and balances on the administration, law makers, and judges, to help preserve the balance of power. Making states sovern in a federal vs states system helped to balance the power of big states vs small ones. During the growing years our system of goverment led to a two party system. This has hindered the consideration of new political ideas! It has become impossible for a third party to gain power!
Development of a system of canals, steam ships, railroads, telegraph, teletype and the telephone led to a high rate of growth, and powerful new industries like oil refining, gasolene, steel smelting, automobiles, chemicals, factories, etc. leading to the rise of cartels with almost unlimited political power. By the end of the nineteenth century things were getting out of control. There was conflict over monetary policy, gold vs. silver backing for the dollar, labor unions, and business cycles with great growth followed by depression. And changes to political parties, starting with the civil war.
At the turn of the last century, Teddy Rosevelt, a Republican, recognized the excessive power that very rich and powerful companies had over the rights of the average person, especially workers. Anti-trust laws split up the cartels into competing companies. After the depression, worker rights, bank regulations and stockmarket rules began to provide individuals protection from fraud and the excessive power of the rich and powerful. Income taxes broadened the base of income to support social needs. Higher tax rates on larger incomes tended to slow down the accumulation of excessive wealth and undemocratic power, and led to an increase in charitable giving. And, of course, two world wars.
Today, Republicans seem intent on undoing these gains and protections! Witness the recent rise in fraud by corporate executives! When corporations buy out their competitors their power becomes too great and market forces disappear.
Note that business could not develop new avenues for growth if they were not "liberal" in their approach to business! This requires applying new ideas and innovations. Being "liberal" is not always bad.
Maybe it is time to consider changes which weaken the power of the two party system and allow new ideas to develop in our system of government. Candidates for Members of the House of Representatives could be selected by their party, but the number of such party Representatives should be determined by proportional representation elections. (A bad idea? Would this give more power to party bosses?)
When the Deomcrats took control of Congress this January, they had a mandate to change the course of the war in Iraq and failed. It was clear that they could not pass a law and expect Mr. Bush to sign it. But they could have said "Mr. President, you will get no more more money for this war until you sit down and negotiate a change in war strategy." This they did not do even though the polls showed the public was against continuing the war. If the President continued to spend money illegally for the war he could have been impeached!
Lets face it. The terrorists are determined to destroy our culture and take us back 1,400 years! We have no choice. We will be fighting for our lives for the next fifty years! But we must direct our fight against the real enemy, not taking sides in a religious civil war. And we need the help of the rest of the free world! Yes, we should re-institute the draft. But it should include every person (including females) reaching the age of 18 who is not continuing their education. Draftees should be given the option of serving in a large number of service organizations, such as local hospitals, towns, the Peace Core, as well as the armed services!
Congress is supposed to have oversight control over the administration. By claiming the right of Executive Privilige, the administration can short cut the constitutional right of oversight by the Congress. Executive Privilige is not included in our constition and it should not be permitted! Congress should legislate and the next President should sign a law limiting the power of the Judiciary to protect Executive Privilige.
In this day of fast communications, we need to have a way to recall a president by popular vote! Perhaps only after two separate elections spaced thirty days apart. Both proportional representation and presidental recall would require Constitutional Admendments, so it will never happen! Perhaps it is time to have a Constitutional Convention!
When the last big immigration bill was passed in 1986, it made crossing the border to find work more difficult and did not provide adequate opportunity for temporary workers to come here to satisfy our need for low cost workers. Most of us can not afford to pay a worker our salary. We do need workers who can do the things American workers do not want to do at a price we can afford. The result, workers who used to come here to work did not leave because they knew it would be more difficult to come back. We are repeating the same mistake with the current defeat of legislation. If the administration attempts to send back illegal workers today the cost will be really great! First, there is the cost of rounding them up and of transporting them. Then there is the cost from the loss of business and farms which provide us our construction and food production. And finally, the rising cost of food and housing which will reduce our standard of living for a long time to come, and will force future law makers to still provide a temporary worker program!
I believe education should be a local matter. The federal goverment should be involved only to the extent Federal money is provided to states. And states should be involved only as needed to balance local real estate taxes between communities. The question of education quality should be evaluated by independent, non-governmental, professional accrediting associations, not by Federal guidelines! Lets get rid of the Department of Education! Federal educational funding for students should be after community or military service.
Environmentals have fought for things which sound good, but have instead cost society untold damages in human life and standard of living! We need a way to do a good cost analysis before implementing each idea from environmentals. Case in point: When Interstate 70 was being built across the Rocky Mountains west of Denver, engineers proposed an eleven mile tunnel instead of making switch backs all the way to the top of the pass. Environmentals objected, saying the routing of the hyway up a virgin canyon would destroy the natural beauty of the canyon. Instead, all drivers have to spend the time and gasolene to climb that mountain! And in winter, many lives have been lost due to having to go through snow and ice up mountain roads. It's too bad the Environmentalists did not have to pay with their time, money and lives for this blunder!
Another case: The stopping of building nuclear power plants in this country has had disasterous effects. Nuclear power plants can be operated safely. Nuclear waste can be stored anywhere aslong as there is sixteen foot of water over them. Some day that waste will be reproccessed. Only 20 percent of our electric energy comes from nuclear power, while in France, eighty percent comes from nuclear! There is no global warming from nuclear power! In addition, excess electricity from nuclear power could be used to convert water into hydrogen to replace gasolene for our cars! New York State should be made to re-activate the Long Island Nuclear Power Plant they deactivated!
The result, we are poluting the air and are dependent on buying oil from countries which preach hatred of our way of life! And we are not exploiting the oil reserves we have here. When oil was discovered floating on the ground in Pennsylvania, oil rigs were soon all across the skyline. Now, no one talks about oil damage there. The same thing happened in Texas. What damage is done is localized and does not last. The damage along the shore is different. Elsewhere, we should drill where ever there is oil! Drillers and oil companies should be made to insure and pay for their accidents.
Another damage done to members of society by environmentalists: Laws which prevented land owners from developing their land because they met a definition of "wetlands" should have been compensated for the "taking" of their rights as protected under the constitution without compensation! Yes, we need to stop "Love Canal", the use of dangerous chemicals and the dumping of such waste chemicals!
The most agregious harm done by environmentalists and the town of Woodstock is preventing cell phone companies from putting towers on the top of all of our mountains! This means that the people of Woodstock, Bearsville, Shady, Lake Hill, Willow and all the rest of the area have no cell phone support in emergencies. The town and any individuals or groups blocking cell phone towers should be made liable for this disgrace and endangerment of the population! State laws should be enacted to correct this crime!
All of our trade agreements should require human rights, worker rights, environmental and safety standards be met at the same level as in of our country.
Finally, we don't need more laws. Local communities and counties should not be writing laws. State goverment should be the only body able to write laws! Think of the money society would save if local and county goverments were slashed! When people had to travel on horseback it made sense to have local goverment within four or five hours travel time. Today, one can go 40 or 50 miles in an hour to get to a local govermental office so why have so many local ones?