The New Power Balance Outline: Fill & Download for Free

To fix this problem, lots of things will need to change.Perhaps the biggest problem is that we keep inventing new crimes. Lawmakers should be told that writing new laws that outline more crimes isn't always a good thing. In fact, most of the actions the new laws deal with are already covered by existing statute. The new bills usually add additional penalties and make it easier to prosecute. We shouldn't be making it easier to prosecute when we already have such a corrupt prosecution (anyone read about Leavenworth? I guarantee you we're only seeing the tip of that iceberg).If you can't easily identify a victim, then there is no crime. Maybe there are civil penalties, but without a readily identifiable victim, a crime hasn't been committed.Severe limits should be put on prosecutors. They should have a certain amount they can spend per case, as well as how much their cases will cost society. I mean that prosecutors should have a limit to the number of years they can mete out when it's us, the citizens, that have to pay for it. Prosecutors need to have limited resources so they can go after the important cases instead of just locking up everyone they possibly can.Plea bargaining is sinful. I was told, “Jim, if you don't accept this plea, you'll wind up doing twenty years or more.” How can you possibly be treated fairly in a circumstance like that?There should be no penalty for going to trial. Trial is supposed to be a right enshrined in The Constitution. We've come to treat trials as a costly option. If the crime is important enough to destroy lives, it's important enough to go to trial.Judges should be the most powerful person in the courtroom. Most people don't realize this, but often the prosecutor is the one running the show. The prosecutor uses plea deals to get exactly what she wants, and the judge is obligated to comply.Judges should all have worked as defense attorneys. Most judges are former prosecutors. I believe they need a balanced work history.Judges should be required to check in with people they've sentenced after the first year, again at five and ten years, upon release, and several years after release. How can they know if what they're doing to people's lives is working if they never see the results of it?All evidence should be made available to the defense. Prosecutors are only required to share potentially exculpatory evidence. Who decides what's exculpatory? The prosecution. It's like letting one football team also be the referee. It works just like you'd expect — they cheat.Prosecutors’ offices should NEVER be in the courthouse. This extends a benefit to them the defense does not enjoy.Prosecutors and police who knowingly lie, obstruct justice, or intentionally violate the rights of the accused should face HARSH penalties. We've entrusted them with incredible power. If they misuse it, they should not be able to hide behind any immunity clauses.Speedy trials should mean exactly that. Your right to a speedy trial doesn't work the way you think it does. The clock the judiciary uses has a pause button on it… several pause buttons in fact. There are all sorts of processes that the court stops the speedy trial countdown for… usually its just for the convenience of the court. Again, if the crime is important enough to destroy someone's life, then you'll find time in your busy calendar to make it happen, your “honor.”I'm sure that, as always, once I hit submit, more things will occur to me… but that's a decent start.

Why do liberals think conservatives are "pushing an agenda" when in reality it's the other way around, conservatives are trying to retain their rights in the face of a liberal agenda?That’s an interesting question, given that folks calling themselves ‘conservative’ are arguably the most-active drivers of aggressive/radical policy change nowadays.The question tells us something- that either the querent (the person asking the question) honestly believes that today’s conservatives are just defending the status quo, or that they want to cue others to believe that it’s so.But, there’s a problem with this view: it isn’t really all that supported by anything like an objective reading of modern history. Sure, liberals have seen specific narrow advances in social attitudes (weed being legalized, gays marrying) and the occasional policy push (like enactment of the ACA, which really only offered subsidies to private buyers just like those with employer-provisioned health insurance have long received), but in terms of concrete policy agendas, it’s folks calling themselves conservative who are doing the following:Doubling down on substantive changes to tax policy (like cutting taxes on the wealthy without balancing those cuts) despite the repeated evidence that tax cuts don’t ‘pay for themselves by causing growth’.reversing centuries of openness to immigration (FFS, America is a nation of Immigrants)repealing financial regulations we enacted decades ago (with bipartisan support) to prevent another great depressionrepealing environmental regulations we enacted decades ago (WITH POPULAR SUPPORT FROM CONSERVATIVES) to prevent more rivers from catching firerepealing civil rights rules and regulations we enacted to end centuries of racial terrorism in the United StatesIn the face of a contracting conservative base, engaging in voter suppression and gerrymandering and thereby subverting democracy itself as a means of retaining power without the having-to-appeal-to-majorities’ interests part.Liberals take the view that they are defending settled law and institutions that people calling themselves ‘conservative’ are out to undermine. Things like the EPA, Social Security, Medicare, the Voter Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, these were all well-established and are now a part of our history, fundamental pieces of the America we all grew up in.In a very real sense, Liberals are out to conserve the America that America chose to be. The last century’s worth of decisions taken democratically- (the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Glass–Steagall legislation, etc) that’s what the people calling themselves ‘conservative’ are out to subvert. That’s not a conservative undertaking, it is a reactionary one[1].Liberals think conservatives are pushing an agenda because they’re often the ones defending the status quo, while people calling themselves ‘conservative’ do their utmost to Roll Back the 20th Century.It’s also interesting to note that liberals are used to hearing conservatives talk about ‘The Liberal Agenda™’, and are used to it not being things liberals actually want. For example: they aren’t interested in having open borders, they don’t want Sharia, and their support for climate regulation and Universal Health Care aren’t all part of some secret plot to impose socialism on everyone. In this sense, when liberals hear conservatives talk about ‘The Liberal Agenda™’, they tend to understand it as something absurd, whatever fiction conservative media made up about liberals this week to keep their audiences good and outraged.Of course, this does not mean Liberals don’t have policy preferences or that they aren’t pursuing them with some success. For example, the Supreme Court finally figured out that the 14th Amendment means gay folk can marry- and along the way, SCOTUS handed down Roe v. Wade, which put a bee in Evangelical bonnets ever since they made it a mainstay of their politics. More recently, voters have passed referenda in several states to de-criminalize weed. Sure, the arc of history going where it does probably feels like it infringes on conservative prerogatives. And yet, conservatives haven’t been passively defending their rights against some sort of ever-encroaching onslaught; the right has undeniably been attacking and subverting the status quo ever since the 1960s, since the New Deal, even if you go back to the Reconstruction.[2] All of these were watershed moments of our history- in which we abolished slavery(only to see white supremacy be channeled through state laws that would be known as Jim Crow), in which we limited financial speculation (only to see capital supremacy channelled through efforts to subvert it). The enactment of the Civil Rights acts would galvanize further efforts to resist full equality, up to and including efforts to pack the court systems with judges sympathetic to the notion that the constitution does not require things like equal standing before the law, despite the 14th Amendment calling for precisely that.The far right has engaged in an effort to un-do the last century ever since the New Deal, ever since the USA became a first-tier global power- in large part because that’s when as a Democracy the USA decided it must check the abuses and excesses of its industrial titans and barons of industry in order to protect the prerogatives of everyone else. Ever Since, big money has spent big money to engage whomever it could to put Government back into its bottle- and it was especially effective when it created organized religion as its political sock puppet: [How 'One Nation' Didn't Become 'Under God' Until The '50s Religious Revival][How Corporate America Invented Christian America]. It has also funded and organized astro-turf political movements[3], groomed a judiciary favorable to its own interests[4][5] , and it funds cozy arrangements by which pliant legislators introduce legislation written by private parties- essentially turning legislators into a rubber-stamp for private interests[6]. In this manner, the activist right has managed to win for itself the ability to spend virtually unlimited amounts of money to influence politics, and has enacted a legislative agenda despite its particulars being largely unpopular with the public.[7] [8] [9] [10] [11] .By virtue of their ability to fund think tanks and dark money networks (and, of course, the presence of right-wing media networks to promote the view that “the liberals have gone crazy and are attacking you”), a good number of American conservatives are honestly afraid that it’s true- but their being worried about it doesn’t mean it is.Footnotes[1] Andrew Sullivan: Why the Reactionary Right Must Be Taken Seriously[2] What Is the Far Right’s Endgame? A Society That Suppresses the Majority.[3] The Secret Origins of the Tea Party[4] The Conservative Pipeline to the Supreme Court[5] How the Trump Administration Is Remaking the Courts[6] Exposing ALEC: How Conservative-Backed State Laws Are All Connected[7] Deeply unpopular, DeVos and ALEC in lockstep in trying to destroy public education[8] Conservative Group ALEC Outlines 2019 Agenda to Erode Union Power[9] ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection[10] What Is the Far Right’s Endgame? A Society That Suppresses the Majority.[11] https://www.nelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/NELP-ALEC-Wage-Suppression.pdf

"The developing coherence of Asian regional thinking is reflected in a disposition to consider problems and loyalties in regional terms, and to evolve regional approaches to development needs and to the evolution of a new world order."Richard Nixon, in Foreign Affairs (October 1967)I think Henry Kissinger has outlined this best in this Essay:Henry Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World OrderMy understanding is that the diplomacy exemplified by Nixon's administration (up until Water Gate) served as a tenuous balance between super-powers in the name of globalization. With the release of his recent book, I think that Kissinger is reiterating calls for international temperance and not imperialism.See Also:Kissinger's Counsel