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There are only 2 things I don't like
here Ernie: 1) his predisposition to call the tea party folks "nuts"
and 2) your prejudging that I wouldn't like the article. He was MIA in
making the call of "nuts" against the BushHitler demonstrators for
eight years, so I think that his current diagnosis of the tea party
folks is extremely partisan in that regard. Neither party is going to unilaterally agree to "non-partisan" commissions redrawing legislative districts. It would be unilateral disarmament. This might be forced on the parties in states with referendums (like California), but it is less likely in Texas where it would probably have to pass the legislature as a constitutional amendment and then be voted on by the public. That's just how Texas works. That faces more practical hurdles than philosophical ones. In addition, something would have to be done to the Voting Rights Act which now REQUIRES minority representation close to the percentage of the population that said minority makes up. Thus, if Texas winds up with 36 Congressional seats and the black population is 2/36 of the states population, then 2 districts have to be drawn with a black majority. The Act also applies to state representative and state senate seats. One can SAY that such districts are not drawn in a partisan fashion, but with the black population voting over 90 % Democratic, everybody knows that such is bullshit. Libertarians have LONG been looking for such an alternative voting system. Glad to see that someone else is actually talking about it. Then I could 1) Libertarian, 2) Republican, 3) Constitution, 4) My daughter's puppy, 5) Democratic Socialist Workers Party. On second thought, I might move the puppy up to 3. David "A
pleasant natural environment is a good - a luxury good, philosophical
good, a moral goody-good, a good time for all. Whatever, we want it. If
we want something, we should pay for it, with our labor or our cash. We
shouldn't beg it, steal it, sit around wishing for it, or euchre the
government into taking it by force."--P.
J. O’Rourke
On 3/26/2010 2:13 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: Our friend Thomas L. Friedman pushing the Radical Center. I like many of his ideas, but (as with the NAF) worry that it is still defined in terms of a) reaction, and b) a grab-bag of policies, rather than a coherent new philosophy.- Ernie P. P.S. Yes, DRB, I know you don't like his proposals... http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=F1D5E68C1D76F3A6055E5844372865AD.w5?a=566866&f=28&sub=Columnist OPINION OP-ED COLUMNIST A Tea Party Without Nuts Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Thomas L. Friedman By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: March 24, 2010 President Obama's winning passage of national health care is both exhilarating and sobering. Covering so many uninsured Americans is a historic achievement. But the president had to postpone trips, buy off companies and cut every conceivable side deal to just barely make it happen, without a single Republican vote. If the Democrats now lose seats in the midterm elections, we're headed for even worse gridlock, even though we still have so much more nation-building for America to do - from education to energy to environment to innovation to tax policy. That is why I want my own Tea Party. I want a Tea Party of the radical center. Say what? I write often about innovation in energy and education. But I've come to realize that none of these innovations will emerge at scale until we get the most important innovation of all - political innovation that will empower independents and centrists, which describes a lot of the country. Larry Diamond, a Stanford University democracy expert, put it best: "If you don't get governance right, it is very hard to get anything else right that government needs to deal with. We have to rethink in some basic ways how our political institutions work, because they are increasingly incapable of delivering effective solutions any longer." My definition of broken is simple. It is a system in which Republicans will be voted out for doing the right thing (raising taxes when needed) and Democrats will be voted out for doing the right thing (cutting services when needed). When your political system punishes lawmakers for the doing the right things, it is broken. That is why we need political innovation that takes America's disempowered radical center and enables it to act in proportion to its true size, unconstrained by the two parties, interest groups and orthodoxies that have tied our politics in knots. The radical center is "radical" in its desire for a radical departure from politics as usual. It advocates: raising taxes to close our budgetary shortfalls, but doing so with a spirit of equity and social justice; guaranteeing that every American is covered by health insurance, but with market reforms to really bring down costs; legally expanding immigration to attract more job-creators to America's shores; increasing corporate tax credits for research and lowering corporate taxes if companies will move more manufacturing jobs back onshore; investing more in our public schools, while insisting on rising national education standards and greater accountability for teachers, principals and parents; massively investing in clean energy, including nuclear, while allowing more offshore drilling in the transition. You get the idea. How best to promote these hybrid ideas? Break the oligopoly of our two-party system. Diamond suggests two innovations. First, let every state emulate California's recent grass-roots initiative that took away the power to design state electoral districts from the state legislature and put it in the hands of an independent, politically neutral, Citizens Redistricting Commission. It will go to work after the 2010 census and reshape California's state legislative districts for the coming elections. Henceforth, districts in California will not be designed to be automatically Democratic or Republican - so more of them will be competitive, so more candidates will only be electable if they appeal to the center, not just cater to one party. (There is a movement pressing for the same independent commission to be given the power to redraw Congressional districts.) Second, get states to adopt "alternative voting." One reason independent, third-party, centrist candidates can't get elected is because if, in a three-person race, a Democrat votes for an independent, and the independent loses, the Democrat fears his vote will have actually helped the Republican win, or vice versa. Alternative voting allows you to rank the independent candidate your No. 1 choice, and the Democrat or Republican No. 2. Therefore, if the independent does not win, your vote is immediately transferred to your second choice, say, the Democrat. Therefore, you have no fear that in voting for an independent you might help elect your real nightmare - the Republican. Nothing has held back the growth of independent, centrist candidates more, said Diamond, "than the fear that if you vote for one of them you will be wasting your vote. Alternative voting, which Australia has, can overcome that." Obama won the presidency by tapping the center - centrist Democrats, independents and Republicans who wanted to see nation-building at home "to make their own lives and those of others better," said Tim Shriver, the C.E.O. of the Special Olympics. They saw in Obama a pragmatist who could pull us together for pragmatic solutions. But hyperpartisanship has frustrated those hopes. (Alas, though, it is not equal. There are still many conservative Blue Dog Democrats, but the liberal Rockefeller Republicans have been wiped out.) If that radical center wants to be empowered, it can't just whine. It needs its own grass-roots movement to promote reforms like nonpartisan redistricting and alternative voting in every state. It's tea time for the center. 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