The US Constitution has been the overriding law of the land for over 230 years. It has been amended 27 times. The Amendment process is slow and cumbersome. This may be by design. In my opinion, many aspects of the Constitution have become unwieldy and hold overs from a no longer relevant era.

I have some thoughts for reform, which I will present here. This list is not meant to be exhaustive.

• The ERA must be ratified. It is about 200 years overdue. I looked online and its status is a hot mess. We need to fix this. I don’t know if this would provide a permanent fix for the Dobbs decision, which also needs to be fixed
• The electoral college must be eliminated. Everything must be by popular vote. That is the easiest type of Democracy to understand. If it wasn’t for the electoral college, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now in.
• Supreme Court reform: The number of justices should always be the number of district courts. The number of district courts should always be an odd number. When the number of district courts is expanded, the expansion of the number of Supreme Court justices should be adjusted automatically. There should be term limits. The term should be the number of district courts in years with one new justice appointed each year. The terms of the existing justices would be adjusted based on the number of years served in descending order to coincide with the one appointment per year schedule. In the case of resignation due to illness or whatever, an appointment would be made to fill the unexpired term. In either case, at the end of the term, if its warranted, the justice can be renominated for another term, going through the full vetting process. As part of any vetting process, candidates must release five years of tax returns and financial statements, to be thoroughly scrutinized by the FBI and Forensic accountants. A viable system of ethics review and recusal must be set to prevent conflicts and the integrity of the court. The appointments would become effective, coincident with the retirements, on June 1 of each year. In the event of a resignation, the current president shall nominate the replacement if they are of the same party as the president who nominated the retiree or there is more than six months left in the term of the current president and the appointment will become effective as soon as confirmed.
• Senate reform: All rules of the type as the filibuster must be abolished forever. It doesn’t make sense in a democracy. The whole structure of the Senate is anti-democratic. States such as South Dakota and Wyoming should not have the same influence as states such as California, New York, and Pennsylvania. I would like to see the Senate go away completely, but that’s not going to happen so aggregating their vote with the house on bills would cut down on the unfairness.
• Second Amendment reform: The Second Amendment was created to make foreign powers think twice about invading a country weakened from a bloody revolution. Elimination of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines aren’t going to change that. The Second needs some clarification to become a reasonable law of the land. Its purpose would be served with 25% of the weapons currently available. What country would attack the largest defense budget in the world?

I can only live, be alive when all aspects of my personality, who I am, what I believe, are allowed to flourish fully. Be at one with the world. I must expose myself to the world without suppressing their right to do the same. To say we tolerate something, or someone is to imply something is wrong and we are benevolently giving it a pass. Unless the person is a genuine psychopath or sociopath, there is nothing to tolerate, they are ok. We must both acknowledge and allow differences. We all need to be good people and respect humanity. We all benefit from this.

When I decided to start writing again, the immediate question is what to write about. When the random topic pops into my head, I will feel free to write about it. The thing left hanging from some of my previous writing is my solution to all the World’s problems. This has been racing around in my brain for some time. One of the things I found with my previous writing is getting something down in writing allows the brain some peace. The ideas are preserved. Its time for another brain cleanse.

One of the things I see lacking is most of the cries I read for this reform or that reform or improvement is a sense of how it all fits together. I believe the world is one big living organism. Everything effects everything else. Take for example the $15 minimum wage. The moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt has the concept of sufficiency. Is this sufficient? What must be paid out of this? Does it include health care. What about the escalation of the cost of living? What about the variation in the cost of living in different areas of the country? What about special needs? What about families, multiple wage-earning families, childcare, etc.? Surely increasing the minimum wage will benefit a lot of people, but what is the intent? What are we trying to achieve? Will this accomplish our goals? Everyone has different actual needs. If it is indeed inflationary, will it be adequate after its effects are rolled into the economy?

Borrowing again from Frankfurt, what is sufficient? The immorality of the huge income disparity existent now is not that the rich are so rich, but the poor aren’t elevated to a level of sufficiency. Then there is the problem of Climate Change and planet resource cannibalization. What about the goal of global political stability, human rights, global economic disparity. All this in a context of a future in which computers and robots will be performing an increasing percentage of the world’s output of goods and services. Our task in thinking about this, let alone integrating it all is almost overwhelming. Is mankind up to the Task?

One of the biggest problems we face is no governmental body is anxious to implement any policy that might inconvenience or irritate the electorate. The other problem is the world is primarily controlled by the money interests that are the poster definition of selfish.

I am not looking for the world to accept my concepts. I want the world to be aware of them, let a little of it sink into their thinking and get their brain up off the sofa and start working on the solution. We are working on the problems with a delicate surgical scalpel when we should be using a meat axe.