Obama Brainstorming - You guys HAVE to check this out.

Post Reply New Topic

President Obama is holding an on-line brainstorming session.
It was originally supposed to end Friday, May 28,
but they have extended, possibly until June 19.

One of the top proposals at the moment is: “End Imperial Presidency,”
Idea # 571, http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/3161-4049
[by David Swanson of http://www.afterdowningstreet.org]

Mine is a little less ambitious: “Who Owns the Media?” Idea #664,
http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/3276-4049

Idea #571 sounds like the usual partisan tripe, also a great idea on how to completely emasculate the presidency and keep presidents of either party for doing anything decisive. Ie. what if the next republican presidency said they were in favor of trying Barrack for treason? That's the can of worms this opens.

Idea #664 sounds like a beautiful backdoor for the government to control the media. Who else is going to have the money or the ability to organize? Not-for-profits even wing-nuttier than some of what we have right now?

I really hope that this is a publicity stunt and that its just a bunch of leftists having a pow-wow rather than the President being involved. If it is, it would pretty safe to say that everything Rush, Medved, Prager, or anyone in that direction said about him is right on the target.

Both of those proposals are extremely poorly thought out and in fact dangerous.

Obama lacks the prerequisites for a brainstorm if he is considering ideas like those.

It's a farce really. He's not looking for real alternatives. He's looking for alternative ways to do the same damn thing.

But wait a minute, aren't those suggestions just from the detestably naive and ignorable "online audience" (who, incidentally enough, donated half a billion to his campaign).

I, personally, think it is quite telling that top members of the financial industry preferred him to McCain. Notice how many Wall Street friendly folks are on his team (Larry Summers and Geithner for instance)? Rather unnerving, is it not?

I also love how upholding the Rule of Law has become political witch-hunting.

If progressives really want to influence Obama's policy, they should organize and pressure him like democratic organizations did to FDR.

I call BS. Obama is expanding the Imperial Presidency, not ending it. He's just changing its tone so it doesn't seem so obnoxious.

I agree with techstepgenr8tion's analysis of idea 664

In terms of idea 571, there are a few things I do not like about it:

1 "Legislate a requirement that, in any war, the military aged children and grandchildren of the president, the vice president, all cabinet officials, and all Congress members serve on the front lines in the most dangerous combat positions -- no exceptions, no exemptions."

Is basically a law to violate the freedom of people who may or may not be involved with this issue. I mean, it seems rather totalitarian to force a kid onto the front lines just because of who his (grand)father is. At least the draft is impartial, and at least regular conscription is chosen by the people who do it.(even if some might consider the choice to be somewhat dubious.)

2 "Change the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster."

This seems to seek to destroy a powerful force of a minority to use against a majority in a situation. I dunno, I don't think that the filibuster is overused.

3 "Amend the Constitution to ban private financing of campaigns, create public financing, and provide free air time to candidates."

The issue I see is that we either are going to institutionalize the major parties, or we are going to devote too much in terms of resources to no-name candidates. Either way, we run into a significant problem.

Moving into the optional section given that I mostly care about the easy pickings

4 "corporations stripped of human rights"

What would this really do that is beneficial? Mostly the rights of corporations are things that help corporations exist as a legal entity. It is hard to argue that corporations are a useless legal entity either.

A lot of the stuff there is just very left-wing, or stuff also covered in idea 664, some seems sort of random, as I don't see a big problem with the Senate one way or another, except for slowing down the political process perhaps.

Don't worry. Such an idea would never pass.

I would support ending the ability of a President to deploy troops for more than 30 days for any military action. If we need to keep troops over there and deal with fighting, we should have a declaration of war from Congress. No declaration, then the troops come out after 30 days...non renewable.

I would also suggest that any "declaration of war" invoke a termination clause which means every person voting for it (as well as the President) must step down at the next election and be "out" for one term before resuming pubic office. If they believe enough in the cause for war, they should be willing to relinquish their office as a show of resolve. Right now, it costs congressmen and the President nothing to commit a nation to military action.




Agreed. The filibuster is a tool intended to force compromise rather than have a pure "tyranny of the majority." It's bad enough that if the majority is large enough, they can vote to break a filibuster anyhow.



We should do as other nations do. All parties get equal exposure. NO CAMPAIGNING outside of 90 days before election day. This BS of campaigns running for up to 2 years is just insane.



Corporations were impossible under the government the Founding Fathers created. Anything without a "soul" was to have no legal rights. A sole proprietor or a partnership has "souls" who can be held personally accountable for the actions of their company. Corporations are almost totally bulletproof in this respect. They have all the legal rights and standing of a real person, but not the accountability. They even get lighter punishments when caught doing wrong because anything that could result in the "death" of the corporation is deemed excessive, but if there was a sole proprietor or partnership involved, the court would deem that as the owner's life was being spared, no amount of monetary punishment would be too harsh.

Corporations are the cause of much of the evil in this world because they can act with impunity on a grand scale.

That seems a little extreme, but the general idea is something to think about. Why don't you propose it? Maybe say something to the effect of requiring some direct, immediate consequence, and use the "step down" part as a possible suggestion.

The point is to expose the fact that the mass media is already 100% controlled by a very small number of people who are not our friends. Just a simple system that is as accessible to ordinary people as the ingredients on the back of a cereal box. Real food vs junk food vs poison.

The point is that we do not have simple, basic freedom of the press. Later, once this becomes common knowledge, we can talk about what to do about it.

The concept behind brainstorming requires initial creativity to generate all manner of ideas - including the wacky and impractical. In the later phases of the process, the critical/analytic mind is engaged and most suggestions are discarded.

y'know, this could just be Obama letting the left wing vent... he can say he listened to their ideas, without having to actually implement them.

Anything changing how a president could send troops would require a constitutional amendment.

No it wouldn't, a regular act of Congress can change those rules. See War Powers Act of 1973.

That law is probably unconstitutional - this was told by a couple Political Science professors I had in college. If a president challenged it it would almost certainly be thrown out by the Supreme Court.