Council of 36

Well I've spent about 4 months tuning up. I now have 5 different blogs on 5 different services, most of which were experimental and will now go fallow. I think this is the one where I will post posting my "morning musings," ideas which I typically have after first waking up from a good night's sleep.

This morning I woke up with the following vision, for improving the expression of new ideas and old cultural values within our political social system.

The United States needs 36 people, chosen by popular vote, from the ideas they express through Atavars, and no other information.

Their role is to advise the President and Congress, and to be the stars of a nightly tv show, one night in 3 per person, wherein they also express their opinions. Their goal, to set forth new ideas, review current issues, and allow the populace to examine these people based on their ideas, rather than their worldly party & religious positions, as potential future politicians.

For all practical purposes, any individual wishing to join, will first become a blogging atavar. An atavar is a cyberspace person, typically a 3D character with movable parts built to be a visual image to interact in 3D cyberspace. In this case I am not interested in the visual aspects, but strictly the ability of a person to express their ideas using words, and to otherwise remain anonymous.

These 36 people will go on the air in groups of 12, in rotation, for one hour each night. Each atavar (person, member of the council) will have 5 minutes that is theirs, to do with as they please. They may wish to do a monologue. They may wish to present material from other sources. They may wish to combine their five minutes and debate with others. Each will have a salary and benefits and office and research expenses equivalent to what the average U.S. Senator gets. They have complete freeedom of speech, including hate speech and religious speech and porno speech. They may even choose to sell cars. They just are not allowed to accept outside renumeration for such activities, ever. They will remain anonymous to the public for as long as they please, but once selected, they may "go public, " if they so desire.

So every 3 days, each of the 36 will get to have their say, on whatever. They will appear on tv as their real self, or as an avatar with a faked voice.

The major channels will be required to carry their stuff, in rotation, one day of three, or lose their FCC licenses. Absolutely NO COMMERCIALS allowed. 60 minutes of information, no begging for money or commercial advertising allowed. Or you could do a CSPAN like channel. None of this is set in stone.

To become a member of the 36, six months before a presidential election, a person logs into a site, and publishes to an anonymized blog, that will follow them throughout their career as a potential member and member. They will be able to set up polls, add links, etc. Each and every interested voter will get a serving of 12 blogs the first night for review. They can mark them thumbs up, neutral, and dump. The next night they get the thumbs up ones, plus 12 more. And the process repeats.

In general, no statements are allowed at this time (before selection as a council member) which would enable people to identify a particular candidate. Potential candidates may make statements about their state, and region of the state, but no geographic indicators smaller than 100 square miles are allowed. No statements about running for election or office holding are allowed. General occupational statements are allowed. Statements about membership in fraternal or religious organizations are allowed, as long as the groups so listed are not so small as to allow for identification of the individual. Lying about facts, especially general identifiers, is not allowed, and discouraged via an investigative wing, which checks out all semi-finalists.

Weeding out the losers can be done by, dumping those who, after the first 10 days, are consistently dumped by 99.5% of the voters, after the second 10 days being rejected by 99%, and so on. From those still standing at the end of the 5 months, the highest rated 99 will become semi-finalists, along with 99 more, chosen at random, and all their blogs will be viewable by everyone, and chosable by everyone. Their ratings will not be visible. At the end of the 6th month, the 33 now highest rated will be chosen and announced. Three more will be drawn from all of those remaining at month 3, at random, just to spice things up. Each time a voter gets a new batch of 12, he/she will not have any idea of how each one is ranked so far. If one of their chosen ones is eliminated, they will be notified.

We will learn volumes about the American psyche this way, and what makes America tick.

This will require a Constitution Amendment to keep it free from Congressional or Executive branch meddling. The GAO should issue the funding for the machinery to make it all go.

The normal employer of each person chosen will be funded to find a replacement for the four years. The employer must hold open a job at the salary the employee would have risen to. The employer must offer back the employee's position at the end of four years. The employee does not have to take it. Self employed individuals will be funded to find their replacements too.

Here are a few more twists for the Council of 36:

Each year, six people are voted off, to be replaced by people at random from the 5th month's survivors. The first year the most popular of the three originally chosen at random is kept, so most likely his two "outsider, random 3rd month" types get voted off, along with four "blandies." The second year the 3 most popular randoms are kept. The third year the six most popular randoms have immunity. Those voted off now move to the 2 am time slot, again with 5 minutes every 3 rd day. By the fourth year, there are 24 people there, yakking it up in counter point to the main 36.

Also, by the 4th year, the Council of 36 becomes much more random, and less "blandy." 18 people will be there, chosen from the 5th month's randoms. This should result in some interesting confrontations, just in time for the next presidential election.

Yes, I did watch "Survivor" last night. Funny you should ask !

There would also have to be a ton of money to upgrade libraries and public buildings for wifi and freely accessable/handicap accessable, Internet terminals, open for much longer hours, if necessary via special "semi-outside" enclosed areas, served by busses to the local homeless shelters, to avoid conflicts of that nature.

As I think of other modifications, I'll add them. Suggestions welcomed !

Douglas Keachie

PS For those who really want to know what's being taught in our schools, please visit:

http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/hstgrade12.asp

and tell me that a Republican teacher couldn't teach all they wanted to about the history of our country. I see, you don't believe the Federalist Papers have anything to do with the founding of this country ? Maybe the relationship between salary and the expectations of the employers have much more to do with the lack of Republican public school teachers than what they can teach. Oh yeah, the qualified college educated Republicans are all off in Iraq, fighting the good fight, and so are not available to teach, sure !