Why and How I am a Committed Radical (10th in Series): Congress and the Full Society Budget
by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Monday, April 16, 2012 at 10:09am ·
This Note will be about the Section Five of Article Two in my Model Constitution. For those who want to see the Model Constitution I propose as a whole you can go to the following link:
The Congress in this Model Constitution will be a much larger body and and will interact with a more complex structure. This in turn will coincide with an economic philiosophy which has a particular set of realities to contend with in guiding society. This fifth section of article two is one of many sections dominated by a list which is given meaning elsewhwere in the Constitution, one will need to know what a guild is under the new regime, what the Imperial Tribe is and a great deal about the Household. Those things are defined but elsewhere. Should this Constitution be ratified it would be published with crossreferences, footnotes and a glossary. The crossreferences alone would have a more or less official quality, the other two would be unofficial reader’s aids. However, in this note discussing a text in which lists dominate I will get the reader used to dealing with lists by having several in the discussion section of the note itself. There have been many regimes founded mostly on an economic philiosophy such as Communist and Socialist transformations most of all and even Fascist and National Socialist revolutions to a lesser degree. While Capitalists sometimes say so, this Second Union of the United States of America was scarcely founded on the basis of an economic philosophy. There are elements of economic philosophy in its founding but that is a different thing. This transformation is more economic in nature as is the Constitution of the Third Union compared to the current Second Union. Nonetheless, economic philosophy is not the central much less the vastly preponderant basis and theme of this transformation. Also, this economic philosophy is not the work of a single man such as this writer seeking to impose an effective theory on everything. The econmic philosophy can correctly be said to have elements of very ancient European, Acadian, American Aboriginal and even African Tribal roots. It can be said to have elements of classical capitalist, pure free market capitalist, socialist, communist and fascist ideology — this mixture is unusual but not as unique in practice ast the public discourse might make it appear to be as one reads these lines. The main feature of this economic philosophy is bow it works itself out and how its limits are defined. Here is the first list in this note:
1. Mostly this regime leaves intact the edifice of economic definitions and structures created by State and Federal Law, by corporate and individual contracts and by professional codes and regulations in this the Second Union.
2. Through the creation of the new Jurisdictions and the establishment of an Empire it reshapes the functioning of certain trends in the economy.
3. Through reforms like the removal of the social goal of reacial equality, the creation of the line item veto, the maps and varied property regimes required for special jurisdictions and creation of small dedicated set-asides the regime establishes a framework for wealth and prosperity of the Union as a whole which does not currently exist.
4. Through replacing the anti-trust system with the guild system the Union will be able to at least aspire to an economy that can survive and prosper in the real world without becoming an increasingly decadent economic oligarchy.
5. Only in a relative handful of fairly small and minimalist new institutions does the new regime truly positively act to produce one of several influences on society in an affirmative sense.
There is no disputing the fact that in some ways our current society is a very great and powerful ecnomic success. Nonethless, it is more difficult to measure such things than is admitted. There is in this regime a great settling up of accounts that is not reflected on modern balance sheets and a restructuting few accountants would acknowledge as such. Less emphatic a certainty than almost all believe it to be we may still be currently the largest economy in the world ( by about half the reported margin). However, the fullness of the economic policy of this regime has implications for how Congress will do its job. The current fiscal and economic system is showing signs of strain and disorder. There is an economic reality to fiscal policy which many of us want to avoid confronting and dealing with in life. This regime puts into concrete form an alternative economic philiosophy to the one currently in effect. The fiscal crisis is part of the total geopolitical crisis which is in paret related to the careful defining of capitalism, socialism and other highly developedeconomic theories and philosophies of our time.
Our overall vision of the way fiscal policy ought to work is out of line. We must face the consequences of not having a healthier view of things.
We must create a sound fiscal policy.It must in turn be tied to a sound economic philosophy. Furthermore, it must respond to the state of affairs in which this constitutional transformation is occuring. This Section Five of Article Two helps to define how Congress as a whole can be connected to an even larger definition of this constituted society than the Federal government itself.
The crisis we face is not marginal. Our overall point of view is unsustainably bad and very unsuitable to our situation. It is time to fix the value of our money to a nuanced metallic policy. That metal standard is defined elsewhere in this constitution. Instead of doing all sorts of extreme and unsustainable things to curry favor with the world we should fulfill the obligation that we entered into when we became the world’s default currency of record after World War II. America left this responsibility behind when Nixon changed the policy and unpegged the US currency from gold. We foment a policy of dishonor, chaos and random suffering when we constantly meddle with other currencies and have no basis or standard for our complaints or behavior.
America shows evidence that it is under deep and dangerous strain. Congress needs more than a warning to deal well with a crisis but it does need that early information and the opportunity to be warned. Americans had a little news at almost this time last year that Standard & Poor gave a negative outlook report on the nation’s credit rating– as it is expressed in the US government’s credit rating. The notice merely indicates that the credit rating may be reduced from a triple A rating (AAA) to something lower. It did not actually lower the rating when it sent that April 18 notice. The action that actually lowered the rating did come but it came later.
However, it was a significant bit of financial news that gave Congress and the reat of us a chance to react to what might be coming our way in terms of fiscal and economic developments. I think that in the ability to service paper debts the United States is still very strong indeed and yet it is much weaker than it once was and it is still dangerously and badly structured debt. It is still part of a currency sytem that troubles me. Whether the degradation in our system is bad enough that it is necessary for people mostly concerned with the single aspect of wealth which involves paying ones debts to lower the credit rating that relates to paying debts I do not know. I do know that as regards this aspect of wealth America is very resilient.
Congress will need to play a role in the complex interface with the new Imperial structures which in many ways are so much smaller than the continuing Federal and Union structures from our current republic. This bridging and a larger focus function will be achieved through an annual full service budget conference. This is outside the regular legislative function and that is why it has its own section in this article. Even the conference is narrow compared to all that is the true economy. The economy widens our view to things Standard and Poors seldom considers as well as what it does consider. The totality of our economic problems goes far beyond even what the conference directly is here required to address. I will empower some groups to work togeether in broader ways and that will be an improvement. However, there are other measures of wealth about which I am more concerned. Here are twelve measures of wealth in which I feel the United States of America is on the wrong track or an insecure footing that Standard and Poor’s rating probably did not take into account in most cases, and only barely concerned themselves with in other cases. The following things which will be addressed in the new regime as economic do not show up on a national spreadsheet at the current time.
1. I am concerned about coastal erosion in Louisiana and the Mississippi delta region and the loss of land hurricane barriers, habitat and the natural support of what are among America’s most viable fisheries industries.
2. I am concerned about the Atchafalya estuary and the failure to invest in routing fresh water through it in the countless ways that could and should have been done cost -effectively long ago.
3. I am concerned about ending our heavy lift rocketry and human crew space travel capacity and about what the cessation of the shuttle program means.
4. I am concerned about the absence of apprenticeships, “shop classes” in sound high school programs and the network of real liberal education programs and employers as all resources flow to a shallow conception of technocracy.
5. I am concerned about the toxic relationships I perceive between labor, industry and government which join to block off hundreds of good futures.
6. I am concerned about the many signs of the erosion of marrige in a society where the family was already too weak to allow for many good things to happen.
7. I am concerned about the declining resources of newspapers as a sector and the vaccuum created by their decline.
8. I am concerned about the weakness and shrinkage of the varied family farm sector in its better incarnations.
9. I am concerned about the wastage and weakness of human intelligence and diplomacy assets over decades.
10. I am concerned about the lack of a stronger reserve infrastructure of gardens, cottage industry and kinship networks.
11. I am concerned about the decline of many of our most secure tax bases.
12. I am concerned about the decline of constitutional education and thought among certain vitally influential groups.
So, these are my concerns. What kind of country will we have left when we pay off our staggering debt — if we do pay it? The Congress will host a conference which will enable the Congress and others to do the hard work of shaping the economy through a set of specific and rather minimal influences that will begin in the Conference and then continue mostly under Imperial auspices.
I have gotten around to advocating large-scale change.That is what this Model Constitution is mostly about. The future is not at all certain and so I am playing the long pass and the swing for the fences. I think that unless we succeed in greatly and profoundly transforming the discourse we are just burning through all hope, long-term capital, and resources to make a decent and livable future. However, in the end perhaps a brutal stupidity is the greatest of all superior powers. If one has enough brutal stupidity one can always feel that one is doing the best that can be done. One can always believe that one’s faults and shortcomings or inconsequential and the myriad lies, offenses and acts of intellectual and other kinds of looting and thievery can first be justified and then rationalized.
Our destruction of linguistic and cultural wealth is real and horrific. Our support of ecological degradation around the world in countless ways is real and horrible. Our failure to recognize the ugly truths of ISlamic desert making in many areas is real and horrible. Our failure to educte young women in the difficult reality of both all that they can be and also of the reality of how a woman’s place in society must be secure in ways that amn’s need not be and not by constant regulatory meddling and welfare. Our misallocation of helathcare resources is real and horrible. Almost every day of my life I have lived in the sense not of how gosh darn wonderful life is but of how amazingly horrible the world and the human adventure has become and how (in so many both distinct and combining ways) we live in the worst of all possible (really possible that is) worlds. It is certain then that despite efforts at moderation, this regime would come into being with many enemies in many parts of the political and economic world. In return the regime can mostly offerthe sober rewards of sanity which always seem a bit small compared to the possible rewards of looting and insanity. The programs and changes I propose would involve one of those periods when a significant part of humanity engages in setting things right and cleaning things up. It will be a costly period of progress if it happens and that progress will not endure forever as a living process. However, I believe that it from such periods as I hope to see coming into being that much of the survivability and almost all the good progress of the human race has largely come. Great and vast projects , a healthy economy, habitat growth, a strong military and real conservative caution are all required goals for our society. This regime will put us all in the business of dealing with all those demanding realities to differing degrees. Our view of what is necessary is very deficient.
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Our dreams are also in trouble. The Bible is not (except in a handful of places) really in the category of dreams, fiction and what could be if all were perfect. Far more often, the Bible contains elements of history and biography as written in a particular time on the one hand. While on the other hand it includes advice for imperfect communities of imperfect people aspiring to a perfect communion and a plan of life progressing towards perfection. However, science fiction is about dreams and I have also written about it in these posts. I really enjoy the things that are being filmed and written today. I see a lot of good in them. However, I see that there is so little being done about using resources of our own solar system and of our seas in ways that we could if we perfected and enhanced existing technologies and had the heroic spirit easily created in fiction. Even our dream machine is failing to lead us forward.
When I think that we put men on the Moon more than forty years ago and exploded a nuclear device more than fifty years ago it makes me very aware that we have not followed the paths to a full a rapid development of the kind of resources in outer space which would make it possible for us to have a more slow and cautious pace in the full and rich development of ourselves. One great truth which Thomas Jefferson was very aware of and wrote about a good bit during his life was that America offered humanity a chance at a better path of development if it allowed people to slowly evolve from healthy agrarian communities. This kind of development need not oppose science and venture such a s founding universities (like Jefferson’s University of Virginia) nor need it oppose technology (just as the USA led demand and assisted in the growth of key technologies like rifles, railroads and telegraphs more than other countries of comparable importance because it had so many agrarian centers to link together over a large area). We really should have a thriving colony on the Moon by now just as we really should have many other things as a human species. Like many of the challenges involved in developing the United States we would find that the colony was pushing nuclear, communications, solar power, recycling and other vital technologies. However, working on these technologies without a great cause like the space colonies will not pay as well and therefore will harm far more people and other living things than necessary. We can define free market capitalism as we define and practice it these days as the fine art of kicking the can down the road. Many other economic systems have been worse. However, the fact that there are so many other worse alternatives does not mean that there are not also better ones left untried. In fact it does not mean that we do not face terrible consequences for not doing better than we are doing.
One can think of the billions of gallons of untreated sewerage that enter the water surrounding cities at the same time when many of thee cities have people who need low-level jobs and a demand for the fodder that could be grown on marginal lands with slightly treated waters and their heavy organic waste loads. We are all drunk on and addicted to the kind of liquidity our economic doctrines, models and concepts. We can think of how little attention we have given to fixing our decaying dams and sewer lines in the United States and remember that we are still above average in regards to some of our infrastructure. Katrina in New Orleans and 9-11 in New York are both small tastes of the horrible feast being served to the world. Worldwide humanity is failing to make key improvements to its infrastructure as it make widespread increases in demand on both the infrastructure and the surrounding environment.
Family farms and foundations as well as all sorts of laws and programs which support varied forms of community striving to be viable in a complete way must be successful participants in the change we need. We must include the right kind of input from the groups which can reward respect for the slow and precious values capitalism ( and many other systems) can only destroy unless they are kept in check by other values. Those values must be supported by the institutions which are able to act within a structurally secure position within society. The guilds which will usually represent various regional industries and be required to have a guildhall in Direct Imperial Government Jurisdiction will be joined to special estates and the new Jurisdictions to change the values of our country to an economic system that attempts to preserve and enhance the greatest and most enduring values.
Congress and the Federal Government will not seek to control all that the new regime will be and that in itself makes it
challenging to decide exactly what belongs in this Model Constitution.
1. The era we live in focuses more on society as an institution than on family or community and to a degree that is not desirable. Yet ironically we also deemphasize society too much compared to the concept of the economy and the drive of personal gain. These are important things but are often excessively prioritized in this era.
2. I have reached the point where I am openly working to help usher in a new era. I am encouraging others to take more or less pronounced actions to help bring us into a new era. This is not a position to which I have applied myself as directly and for as long in the past although I have worked for several transformative causes.
3.We will need constitutional support for the structure of families and communities within a more intrinsically stable society.
This Constitution urges a citizenship and populace to function as effectilvely as a free people in a complex society, On the other hand it is not an entirely new thing either. That is how both America and the international order of things would be after being revamped and brought into a new order. This has been a bit of a rambling discussion but has reached it conclusion anyway. Here follows the text of the Section of the Constitution under review in this Note:
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Section Five: Hosting the Annual Full Society Budget Conference
Subsection One: Scheduling and Logistics
Provision One: Two weeks before the meeting of the Grand Senatorial Congress Session the leaders of each Chamber of the Congress shall elect fifteen members of their own chamber along with between ten and fifteen leaders in office to host Annual Full Society Budget Conference. This Conference shall last a week.
Provision Two: The Senate shall host five Censors elected by the Censors, five GRIHHA members elected thereby, five members Imperial Tribal Conseil des Droits elected thereby, ten members of the DIG Council of Nobles elected thereby and fifteen Jurisdictional Electors for life by scheduled rotation.
Provision Three: The House of Representatives shall host five guildlords it shall select itself, two representatives selected by the lower house of each Compact Legislature, five representatives of the Lower Chamber of the DIG Legislature elected by themselves, seventy untitled persons chosen at random from the rolls of the Imperial Tribe and twenty seats sold at auction with proceeds paying into the Conferences Budget.
Provison Five: The Administrators of the Imperial House and Household Bank shall administer the work of the Conference and the Bank’s Comptroller General shall be the President of the Conference. The Censors, the Internal Revenue Service and the Senate Working Group will submit a summary of collections and how they were derived on their first meeting and the Senate-hosted Confreres will certify it. The House Working Group, the Congressional Budget and the Internal Revenue Service will report on the work of the last year’s conference and projected changes and the House-hosted Confreres will certify that report. This shall be done on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday there will be a joint conference of all members and Bill of Constitutional Set-asides of Federal Collections will be read.
Subsection Two: Distributions
Provision One: Four percent of all Federal revenues in each year will be set aside in advance of each conference. It is to be understood that much of this money is to be recovered by the Federal budget proper.
Provision Three: On Wednesday evening all special tarrifs and milages collected by the Federal government and dedicateded to others shall be paid. Thursday morning Imperial House funds for the Grand Senatorial Council will be certified. Then all Constitutional transfers between the Federal government and the Imperial tribe. this includes the transfer at that time of one half of one mil of all funds collected by each of these two parties to the other or the difference transferred by the larger budget.
Provision Four: The Budgetary Conference will oversee and certify all of the transaction of the last year in the DIG’s report on Guilds as specified in the following provison and fund their federsal share of the following year according to these same billings and rules:
1. The federal government will distribute one percent of all revenue it collects among the capital trusts of the guilds each year. A third will be divided among the guilds according to a formula that does not take into account annual performance. E third will be divided by the fulfillment of the general standards for best guilds and each guild will receive a share according to a performance score. The last third will be in a relatively few awards presented at a banquet for winners of prizes based on great excellence which will be held the week after the Budgetary Conference .
2. No less than seventy percent of all Federal government vendors in each and every sense and category shall be Guild approved interests. Complaints related to this will be certified by the Conference.
Provision Five: The Senate-hosted Confreres will appoint five members of the Senate to the next year’s Senate Working Group. The House-hosted Confreres will appoint ten members of the House of Representatives to the House Working Group.
Provision Six: The Imperial Household Bank will charge the Federal budget one percent of the amount of the specifed Constitutional federal set-asides. Then the Bank will report how much is left in the four percent set-aside from general Federal funds. The Confreres by simple majority of each house will dedicated at least a tenth and as much as half of the remainder to the Conference Continuity Project.
Provision Seven: The Conference Continuity Project will be staffed solely by the the Imperial House and Household Bank, the Senate Working Group and the House of Representatives Working Group. Their funds shall consits of up to ten percent for admistrative contracting, ten percent for their own properly billed services and the rest divded equaly into three parts or returned on the next year. These will be emergency grants to any government in the empire, innovation grants to any guild in the Empire and honors awarded to the best bureaucrats and bureaucracies in operating with fiscal discipline and economic efficiency in any and all governments within the Empire. The Emperor will be the veto-power President of Conference Continuity Project.
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f you have the energy to discuss this with friends that would be great. But the basic point here in this Section Five “Hosting the Annual Full Society Budget Conference” in Article Two “Congress ” is that for our system to work there must be an effective means for Congress which is at the heart of that political life which we will all share under the proposed Model Constituion. The Senate is already tied to a larger set of institutions through the Grand Senatorial Council but the Congress entirely and jointly be allowed and encouraged to interface with the rest of society. That includes the guilds which are vital to the new larger economic philosophy and ideology . There are varied economic institutions which have their own nature and their own exigencies even under our current Constitution. However, there will be all the essential functional componenets of a particular royalist monarchy. In addition both government economic interest and functions and those of private enterprises are affirmed. They are preserved and are more different in the Model Constitution than under the one currently in force. The private enterprises in the Empire and Union’s sway have a new life in the establishment of Guilds which embody a sort of public economic covenant that is not the government. This is a path that is neither capitalism, socialism or fascism as these ideas have been understood. The functions of the Congress are delineated in such a way that one can see that although they are a legislature their functions are broader than legislation proper. This conference is a function outside of legislation proper required of the Congress by the new consitution.
I have tagged a few FB friends and I will in some or all my notes. Any kind of political radicalism at any time is a risk for those associated with it and so I am keeping the tagging to a minimum and while a great deal of endorsement will be needed to effect these changes there is no indication that someone tagged in a note in this series is actually endorsing the note. As always I am willing to respond to posted comments, chat and private messages.
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