Political Mapping

We don't vote in this country.

But what we have is a lack of good options. So I propose that we force the Crats and Cans to break up their parties into something actually meaningful. When there isn't a clear ideology then it is not a party. And there is no clear picture to say, ok he's a Democrat, that means he'll vote a particular way. Mostly the only clear picture is that in general the two parties will vote against each other on everything for no particular reason except pay raises; which they seem to do quite well on agreement there. So what I'd propose to do is defeat the three major problems by creating a series of coalition parties out of the core issues that actually matter. Sorry flag burning, gay marriage and even abortion are irrelevant; tax policy and social security are a bit higher on the burner for GOVERNMENT.

There are three issues involved. One is the perception that lobbies are bad. They are right now, but we can get around this by having a number of strong parties with solid core values, rather than a FOR SALE sign on the party platform. At that point lobbies would have to instead influence policy through advertising and grassroots campaigns (as they are intended) rather than campaign donations in exchange for access and scandal. It would be pretty clear for example that a Green isn't going to take money from oil companies or vote to support them. The second problem is lack of interest. We aren't interested because there are no good choices. We cannot choose and so feel disinclined to exercise our ability to choose. This is solved when there are parties that speak directly to our values and will actually try to represent them. And lastly, we are concerned with the issue of fair and clear elections. Not because they have been rigged or stolen, but because the elections are basically a joke involving two people who aren't that different. It should instead be a range of choices with often radically different outlooks. Right now because of the way elections and the money involved are set up, very few minor parties have even a sniff of winning, much less creating meaningful and influential change of policy. Meanwhile the two major parties have a range of outlooks so confused as to make it difficult to say what "democrat" or "republican" means. So when I get around to it, I'm going to go down and find out what the top lobby groups are, outline what the core issues of governance are, and what some core ideologies would be and craft around a dozen major parties to compete for our votes in an ideal world.

Religion will have a place at the table. It seems to be trying to get in the back door (considering creationism is still being taught). I'll just set it aside as its own interest and let people vote for it if its that big of an issue (faith-based stuff is almost totally illogical and often irrelevant to the real issues of the day). I'm fairly confident that won't be a constitutional issue, for one, there are a number of minor parties based on some religious context. For another, I don't think enough people in this country will vote purely on some faith-based ideology for it to matter. Politics and God don't meet often enough for that to be a good basis for our votes on the broad range of issues we must deal with.