The other day I was fussing and fuming here about the Minnesota legislature, among other things. These recent articles (Chaotic end leaves Democratic Legislature with a few wins and Legislature adjourns with mega-omnibus, loud finger-pointing as DFL leaders shut down GOP delays to meet deadline) reinforce my negative assessment. We have reached a point at which scoring points is more important than solving problems. Politics is (pardon me) trumping governance. But, much of the issue stems from a process problem. Hence, my borrowing the *Jonathan Swift phrase for today’s title. Here’s my proposal to help the kids do a better job of playing together in the sand box we pay them to play in.
I Voted
Photo by J. Harrington
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Let's create and get enacted a constitutional amendment that structures the legislative process to minimize the type of endings that have become all too typical. I presume you know that our legislature meets in biennial (2 year) sessions. The amendment would prohibit, except for emergencies, enacting laws the first year of a session. That year would be spent holding hearings, crafting language, outreaching to stakeholders, including taxpayers, and answering the question a former state senator used to ask in conference committees [at about 2 am]: “What’s the problem we’re here to solve?”
The second year of a session would be used to ensure the required processes and procedures are followed to preclude whatever got enacted being promptly declared invalid for some legal, technical rationale. In that vein, the last week of the session would be reserved for action only on revisor’s corrections to previously passed legislation. No last minute negotiating nor games played. That all has to get done in year one of the biennium.
If voters didn’t have such short memories, or paid more attention in the first place, we wouldn’t find that representatives and senators paid more attention to lobbyists than to constituents. We would then more regularly “Vote the rascals out!”
Does the proposal above seem like a concept worth developing to bring democracy back to our governance? Feel free to leave a comment.
On Laws
Then a lawyer said, But what of our Laws,master?And he answered:You delight in laying down laws,Yet you delight more in breaking them.Like children playing by the ocean whobuild sand-towers with constancy and thendestroy them with laughter.But while you build your sand-towers theocean brings more sand to the shore,And when you destroy them the oceanlaughs with you.Verily the ocean laughs always with theinnocent.But what of those to whom life is not anocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers,But to whom life is a rock, and the lawa chisel with which they would carve it intheir own likeness?What of the cripple who hates dancers?What of the ox who loves his yoke anddeems the elk and deer of the foreststray and vagrant things?What of the old serpent who cannotshed his skin, and calls all others nakedand shameless?And of him who comes early to thewedding-feast, and when over-fed and tiredgoes his way saying that all feasts areviolation and all feasters lawbreakers?What shall I say of these save that theytoo stand in the sunlight, but with theirbacks to the sun?They see only their shadows, and theirshadows are their laws.And what is the sun to them but a casterof shadows?And what is it to acknowledge the lawsbut to stoop down and trace their shadowsupon the earth?But you who walk facing the sun, whatimages drawn on the earth can hold you?You who travel with the wind, whatweather-vane shall direct your course?What man’s law shall bind you if youbreak your yoke but upon no man's prisondoor?What laws shall you fear if you dancebut stumble against no man’s iron chains?And who is he that shall bring you tojudgment if you tear off your garment yetleave it in no man’s path?People of Orphalese, you can muffle thedrum, and you can loosen the strings of thelyre, but who shall command the skylarknot to sing?
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