Steele on Electoral Reform – Part 10: Legislation
All proposed legislation without exception be published on line, normally one month prior to vote but no less than 24-72 hours for emergencies, to include explicit geospatial pointers for all “earmarks” each of which must be publicly announced.
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“Put enough eyeballs on it, no bug is invisible.” America — as with other countries, but most in contradiction with our Founding Fathers’ intent — has been “ruled by secrecy,” not only from the financial world, where banks counterfeit credit they do not have to earn interest they do not merit, but also in Congress, where secrecy, obscure language, and blatant corruption have combined to make every law a corrupt law, generally containing earmarks that are not in the public interest, but result in the sponsor of that earmark receiving a 5% bribe (the standard “fee” on Capitol Hill for delivering an earmark).
What this really means is that the public treasury is being discounted 95%, and given away for so many things across the military, energy, health, and agricultural sectors, to name just four, that the public is a loser twice: first in having corrupt Members who divert five percent of the public treasury to their own “need” for huge war chests to fund their campaigns, and second in having corrupt Members who sponsor one another’s earmarks despite the fact that at least half the money is known in advance to be fraud, waste, and abuse–this is true, for example, of the Pentagon budget, where 1% of that budget pays for the 4% of the force that takes 80% of the casualties — the other 99% of the Pentagon budget goes to contractors, and I feel very confident in suggesting that half of that 99% or 44.5%, is fraud, waste, and abuse.
By mandating publish posting of all legislation in advance, we make it possible for alert citizens to enforce integrity on their individual Members.
Previous: Part 9: Funding
Next: Part 11: Constitutional Amendment
