Contract FROM America

Have you been following this? I first heard about the Contract from America from Glenn Reynolds:

Though the name may remind some of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, this is something very different.

It's a set of ideas developed via an interactive Web site, where voting determines which elements are most important. And it's not a top-down contract consisting of promises made by leaders to the voters -- it's more in the nature of a contract of employment from the voters, which politicians may choose to accept, or look for alternative employment.

This is basically a crowd-sourced party platform, with the smoke-filled rooms and convention logrolling taken out of the picture. More dis-intermediation. I'm guessing that the political class won't like it much, either.

TheContract.org is no longer accepting new proposals, but you can help narrow the list and draft the final version of the Contract from America. Click here to vote on your priorities. You can vote for 10 of the 21 proposals. The final document will be unveiled on Thursday, April 15, 2010

Here are some of my favorite proposals:

• Commit To Real Government Transparency: Every bill, in its final form, will be made public seven days before any vote can be taken and all government expenditures authorized by any bill will be easily accessible on the Internet before the money is spent.

• Let Us Watch: Broadcast all non-security meetings and votes on C-SPAN and the Internet.

• Pass An “all Of The Above” Energy Policy: Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition.

• Protect Freedom Of The Press: Prohibit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from using funds to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine in any form, including requiring “localism” or “diversity” quotas.

• No More Bailouts: The federal government should not bail out private companies and should immediately begin divesting itself of its stake in the private companies it owns from recent bailouts.

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Sunlight and Simplicity

Much of the anger generated by ObamaCare was a result of the Democrats’ cowardly attempts to sneak it past the voters. The legislation was unnecessarily complex and unnecessarily lengthy. Bad ideas were buried in intentionally mysterious language. Key votes were held at night, on weekends and on Christmas Eve.

Unless Congress is dealing with some national security crisis or natural disaster, is there any excuse for voting at odd hours?

No more attempts to pass bad bills while America sleeps! It’s time to rise up and stop this sort of nonsense.

Here are some suggested reforms for sunlight and simplicity in Congress:

• No late night votes on non-emergent legislation (Vote 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday only).
• No weekend votes on non-emergent legislation.
• No holiday votes on non-emergent legislation.
• No changes in the congressional schedule for non-emergent legislation.
• All congressional activity should be broadcast online on a government website. No closed-door sessions of any kind unless it would be a threat to national security to make a meeting public.
• Every non-emergent bill, in its final form, is to be made public 10 BUSINESS days before any vote can be taken.
• Limit legislation to 250 pages (or some other reasonable number).

The era of stealth legislation needs to come to an abrupt end. In this era of broadband internet access and social media, there are no more excuses for opaque government.

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Contract FROM America

Music: Reflecting Light