So I had this idea to improve American Politics:

If you get elected, you become a ward of the state. 

You can never again receive a salary, own property, own stock, work on behalf of a company owned in any part by family members, pay family members to work for you or your re-election campaign, marry anyone who ever worked on your campaign.  You are not allowed to lobby for any bills ever again.  All your assets are distributed to whomever you choose (children/charity/other) before taking the Oath of Office.

Any money in campaign bank accounts can be gifted to the campaign of your choice if you fail to be elected/reelected.  You have 10 years to make the choice.  If you don't choose or you pass away without choosing, it's distributed equally among all active campaigns in the next election.

Trump: no more paying family to work for you.  Give up all your assets, either to charity or to kids.
Pelosi: Has made millions "investing" in IPOs not available to general public immediately after killing bills that would have hurt certain industries several times.
Maxine Watters: Paid her daughter 1.1 million from her campaign fund.
Ilhan Omar: Married campaign worker/manager after paying him hundreds of thousands from campaign.
Mitch McMcConnell: Well, I'm sure he's dirty too.

While in office, you get two government sponsored houses if working for US.  One in DC and one in your state.  You just get the one if you're a state representative.  All travel and meals are paid for by the state for life.  When you retire, you retire to a "political home" in your home state.  All retired politicians live out the rest of their lives in this home.  There are no expenses.  All meals, utilities, medical care, are provided.  Probably somewhat lavishly as those still making the rules want to live comfortably when they retire too, but this could theoretically severely cut down on the rampant corruption in the US.

Unless we can root out the corruption, I don't see the US lasting much longer.

Thoughts?

EDIT: forgot staffers.  Current rules would mean that all the corruption would go to permanent staffers instead.  Basically, "the power behind the throne."  Term limits for staffers then.  Staffers can only serve on two staffs.  So they can be trained in on one and serve on another while training the next generation.

choose the president at random he gets paid the minimum wage.
ostracize greedy people ,banishment+all of their money/possessions go to the people

Theres a really easy way to fix our government. It involves a rope, a long drop and a sudden stop.

In US (and many other countries) politics is expensive. Every candidate has to spend considerable amount of money on electoral campaigns. One need to either personally invest or get backed by investors to run for both national and local political positions. So every single politician is either part of the elite or backed by the elite, no matter their political positions.

The solution is to make politics cheap. Electoral campaigns should be simple and inexpensive. Only election posters and party members and volunters handling out flyers, candy and pencils on the street.
Then everyone can become a politician, not only the elite.


Morphy wrote on Feb 27^th, 2021 at 11:50pm:

Curious Aardvark wrote on Mar 10^th, 2021 at 7:20am:


good for elections but really bad for politics in general, because the strong will enforce it on the weak and it will be practically infringement on the freedom of speech and there will be no criticism on the government.

Morphy wrote on Mar 10^th, 2021 at 10:02am:


Yes, another idea is to make all proposals, amendments, and votes public.

As it is, someone in congress slipped a bill protecting food giant Monsanto into a budget bill.  We don't know who did this.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/monsanto-protection-act/

The person that added the amendment in a closed committee meeting was very obviously bribed, which is why they made sure we don't know who they are.

Curious Aardvark wrote on Mar 10^th, 2021 at 7:20am:


Love this! Great idea! If only....