Saturday, March 31, 2012

A Proposal for a Working Document

I've been working on what I think should be the working document for The 99% Declaration. It weeds out a lot of what I see as being adjunct issues that can be fixed later. I think that it really cuts to the heart of the issue, and if taken seriously could be a very simple reform.

WHEREAS the pursuit of national service through elected office is ever more prohibitive to the average citizen;
and WHEREAS the presence of money in politics causes undue influence -- real or imagined -- over those elected to represent and serve the people;
and WHEREAS every citizen has a right to free political speech, and the ability of the wealthy to dominate the national conversation through unlimited expenditures infringes on the right of ordinary Americans to make their voices heard, and indeed can alter the speech of the citizenry through the propagation of misinformation;
and WHEREAS corporations as legal entities do enjoy certain rights, those rights are separate from the people who comprise the corporation, and do not include free political speech;
and WHEREAS Congress has become dysfunctional through polarization, lack of civil discourse, and representation of moneyed special interests, thereby neglecting its duty to represent the American people;
and WHEREAS America no longer has a clear direction or goal, resulting in an insular society where the rich seek to get richer and the poor struggle to survive;
This delegation of citizens, formed from the communities of these United States and its territories, convened as their fore-fathers did before, in this city of Philadelphia, do hereby declare:
PROPOSED 1. That the ability of a citizen to seek national office must not be prohibited by the size of his coffers;
PROPOSED 2. That elections must not be bought and sold by the highest bidder;
PROPOSED 3. That those elected must be kept in office due solely to their merit to the people -- not due to the deep pockets of their few supporters;
PROPOSED 4. That all citizens must be able to exercise their right to free political speech without fear of being drowned out by the loudest voices;
PROPOSED 5. That the right to free political speech belongs solely to the people, and not to any other entities;
PROPOSED 6. That corporations must not be allowed to exercise a right that they inherently do not possess;
PROPOSED 7. That there must be a return to civility in our national discourse;
PROPOSED 8. That a clear goal for our country must be developed;
PROPOSED 9. That Congress be bound to furthering our progress toward that goal.
We, the undersigned, on this, the fourth day of July, two thousand and twelve, do hereby petition the three branches of the government of the United States of America to address the grievances above.

Each of the numbered points labelled PROPOSED would be up for discussion by the delegates, and if they were voted to stay, they would change to RESOLVED. I have modeled this loosely on the document created by the First Continental Congress in 1774, the full text of which is here:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Declaration_and_Resolves_of_the_First_Continental_Congress

I welcome suggestions on further points to add, either in the top section or the bottom. I think that by looking at this thing as a full document, and leaving off all of these arguments about the specifics of changing these things (which we shouldn't be dealing with), we will get a better idea of what we are all working toward.

1 comment:

  1. Nathan,

    This is the sort of effort I'd like to see us working on prior to the National Assembly. Kudos for setting finger to keyboard and generating this draft.

    I'd like to suggest some edits, some for general structure, others to clarify points. I've been thinking of trying to set up a moderated wiki of some sort, so we'd have a live document with revision history.

    I wish the nationbuilder webapp had direct/private messaging. I'd like to provide my email, but the only options are on the public pages, and I'm not about to do that. I have enough spam as it is. :)

    --

    Briefly, then, some thoughts.

    Use the first "Whereas", and replace the rest with
    " and ...
    and ..."

    I like modeling off of the earlier works, but feel this is clear enough and sounds more contemporary.

    I started to offer some suggestions for a revision, but this comment space isn't working for me. :) Plus it'd be ridiculously long.

    ReplyDelete