Recent Complications in our Federal System

Good morning

We’ve seen it a lot this past year- elements of the government made unable to act by the strictures of the system.  Most recently, the Hobby Lobby decision in which the Supreme Court held that corporations need only claim religious status to not only weasel out of compliance with the law of the land, but also to block their female employees from obtaining reproductive healthcare from any other source.  Now we see an Appeals court ruling that government subsidies to insurance companies’ customers/prisoners are unconstitutional if their state of residence has decided to make it so.

On the other side, we see a potentially game-changing climate plan from this administration being delayed until 2018, millions of people being kept from obtaining insurance privately or through Medicaid, and drastically different levels of access to education and healthcare based merely on the whims of our government’s constituent states. 

The bottom line is our congressional system was designed to thwart popular action and maintain the dominance of the southern planter class.  Its bicameral structure needlessly increases the number of goals needed to advance a bill, and the senate systematically undervalues the votes of urban citizens, sometimes by multiple orders of magnitude.  Furthermore, our supreme court has a unique status worldwide in that it is unelected, serves life terms, and has effectively uncheckable power, as the amendment process is nigh impossible, even with a competent and representative election system which we lack.

Judicial Review has certainly proven useful over the years- can you imagine school integration, legalization of consensual sodomy, Gay Marriage (for some), (temporary) extension of the Bill of Rights to high school students, or a Woman’s Right to Choose happening when they did, if even at all, if it hadn’t been for a court of unanswerable power?  Conversely, can you imagine corporate personhood, the destruction of campaign finance, complete fabrication of a universal right to play with weapons, or the present erosion of union rights happening without it?  I’ll leave Bush v. Gore off the table for now.  The events of recent weeks have been sufficient to push “People’s History of the Supreme Court” to the top of my list- it’s accomplished so much good, due in large part to its invincibility before public opinion, and until recently I was willing to call it a wash.  Now, with an irrevocably broken election system fueling those who choose its members and no real means to control our legislators, let alone unelected judges, it seems just one more barrier to democratic action- this can be a good or a bad thing, but does anyone think it wouldn’t be easier to get a functioning government under a parliamentary model, with a weaker court and dependent executive?

The problem with trusting to democratic processes to figure this out is that our system is not democratic and systematically disenfranchises millions while deciding elections based on a woefully corrupt, ridiculously expensive, and technically obsolete system of campaigns and voting.  The artificial guarantee of rights to states at the expense of citizens (witness the weighting of small states vs. big states, undercounting residents of the big ones) is a further complication.

I recognize the theoretical merit and historical use of judicial review, as well as the present excitement possible by state-based reform, but here are some changes I would like to see.

Parliamentary government- ok off the table for now, but we can adopt many of its common advantages, namely

                Proportionate Representation in legislatures

                Unicameral legislatures

                Ideologically responsible parties

I actually think the present level of state power is manageable if we had a unified federal government.  As we don’t, I’m left pondering a more Unitarian model.  At the very least, legislation should permit fewer loopholes for dissenting states to flout regulations.

Elections- public finance, public finance, public finance

                Party Based voting

                More representatives, smaller districts

Once private money is out of the picture, the initiative, referendum, and recall become viable tools once more, which may be all that’s needed to save the concept of judicial review.

I know this is short and a bit incoherent, so please post.  I want to discuss possible fixes, not just spitball my own ideas.

Solidarität, Genossinnen und Genossen.

Genosse Graham