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Sunday, February 5, 2006

Question of the Moment
If you could author one legislative bill guaranteed to be enacted, what would you do?

I don't know how many of you have played RPGs but this sort of reminds me of getting a wish spell. It seems like it would be a good thing, but once you're faced with getting exactly what you ask for it becomes a bit overwhelming. Furthermore, you'll notice I said, "exactly what you ask for" and not "exactly what you want." You have to be careful because legislation is like a wish - someone is going to try to mess with it and make it sound like what THEY want it to.

So, let me say that my legislation would be FOR THE PURPOSE OF (i.e., we would redraft it until there was as little wiggle room away from the intention as possible) ensuring full employment. Upon contemplation I realized that all of the basic pieces of Maslow's hierarchy that I might be concerned with providing could be provided by the worker themselves if they were fully employed. I was at least partially inspired by SusanG's great post The Value - and Devaluation - of the Work Ethic over on DailyKos. I have a great faith in the value of work.

Granted, one of the issues still left open by this legislation would be what do we do with those who can't take care of themselves, and those who won't take care of themselves? My contention is that how we answer those two questions underscores exactly who we are as a society. But, my focus would be first on those who will take care of themselves if given the tools and opportunity. Sort of a utilitarian approach, I suppose. The needs of the many... Spock would be so proud.

My husband's legislation focuses on the other side of business. His PURPOSE would be to put a strict limitation on what corporations can do, regulating this merger/acquisition insanity that is ultimately in effect limiting competition. He wants to change anti-trust laws to anti-corporation laws because he believes there is no difference between what trusts were and corporations currently are.

So, Senator or Representative Blogger, what would the intention be of your guaranteed legislation?

1 comment:

  1. Public campaign financing at the Federal level on the same model as Arizona's state law.

    Get control of the process again, and all else will (hopefully) follow.

    ReplyDelete