{"id":4215,"date":"2003-06-05T15:30:05","date_gmt":"2003-06-05T15:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4215"},"modified":"2003-06-05T15:30:05","modified_gmt":"2003-06-05T15:30:05","slug":"a-strong-good-government-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4215","title":{"rendered":"a strong good government program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It<\/p>\n<p>appears that John Podesta will lead a new American Majority Institute designed<\/p>\n<p>to develop and popularize &quot;progressive&quot; ideas. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/06\/05\/politics\/05DEMS.html\">The<\/p>\n<p><i>New York Times <\/i>story is here<\/a>.) I think this is great news, even from<\/p>\n<p>a non-partisan and non-ideological perspective, because <a href=\"May2003blog.htm#collapse\">the<\/p>\n<p>intellectual collapse of the American Left<\/a> is reducing competition and debate<\/p>\n<p>in US politics. <\/p>\n<p>There are some good idea for broad political movements<\/p>\n<p>that could be adopted by the Left. Here&#8217;s one (more will follow in future postings):<\/p>\n<p><b>Idea<\/p>\n<p># 1: A strong &quot;good government&quot; program<\/b>. To attract the Perot-McCain-Bradley<\/p>\n<p>vote in addition to its usual base, either party could propose the following policies:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Public financing (or at least free broadcast time) for political candidates\n<p>and parties. Politicians always circumvent limits on campaign spending, but direct<\/p>\n<p>subsidies can make politics accessible to newcomers and increase competition.<\/p>\n<p>Public financing is available now in several states and major cities.<\/li>\n<li>Radical\n<p>tax simplification. On a revenue-neutral basis, taxes could be dramatically simplified<\/p>\n<p>so that the tax form became a single page for everyone. The fairness of the system<\/p>\n<p>would improve dramatically if this were done right.<\/li>\n<li>Alternatives to standard\n<p>methods of federal regulation. Administrative agencies generate malleable, complex,<\/p>\n<p>and inconsistent bodies of law that are always full of loopholes and inefficiencies<\/p>\n<p>and impossible to understand. Agencies always get &quot;captured&quot; by special<\/p>\n<p>interests. In each field, there are alternatives to rule-making by administrative<\/p>\n<p>agencies. Sometimes, Congress can replace an elaborate system of rules with vouchers<\/p>\n<p>or other simple payments to consumers. Sometimes, Congress can codify the important<\/p>\n<p>parts of a body of existing regulations into a sweeping new statute. And sometimes,<\/p>\n<p>administrative agencies can use new methods of rule-making, such as citizen juries<\/p>\n<p>or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.la.utexas.edu\/research\/delpol\/\">Deliberative Polls<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The overall theme would be a criticism of <i>both<\/i> regulation <i>and<\/i> unregulated<\/p>\n<p>corporate behavior.<\/li>\n<li>Aggressive efforts to promote diversity, competition,\n<p>and localism in the news media, including support for low-powered radio; aggressive<\/p>\n<p>antitrust enforcement in the media industry; higher subsides for public television<\/p>\n<p>and radio; and laws requiring providers of Internet connections to offer neutral<\/p>\n<p>services so that their customers may freely explore the World Wide Web and easily<\/p>\n<p>post their own material.<\/li>\n<li>More federal support for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.civicmissionofschools.org\">civic\n<p>education and voluntary service<\/a>, to increase the capacity of the next generation<\/p>\n<p>to play an active role in politics and community life.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that John Podesta will lead a new American Majority Institute designed to develop and popularize &quot;progressive&quot; ideas. (The New York Times story is here.) I think this is great news, even from a non-partisan and non-ideological perspective, because the intellectual collapse of the American Left is reducing competition and debate in US politics. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-revitalizing-the-left"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}