So, Democrats who think the party needs to do more than say “we are anti-Trump!” are starting to talk about a “Six-pack for America.” They figure they’re doing so poorly among men without a college education that the best way to reach them is to reference beer… Leave it to the Dems to have ears so tin they could be used to can food and fists so hammy that they go we-we-we all the way home. The paradigm one of those Dems, Ezra Klein, is offering is four affordability policies and two anti-corruption pledges. Playing around with the idea, here’s where I’d land if I was a member of the consultant class. Thank God I am not.
Six Policies for 2026
Stabilize the ACA:
I have friends whose health insurance costs will be going up thousands
of dollars more a month, on account of the changes to health insurance
that were in the Big Beautiful Bill. That is simply UNAFFORDABLE. These are
small business owners hustling to keep ahead of the Big Box Stores and
international internet behemoths—and by and large succeeding. Knocking their
legs out from under them isn’t going to help our economy thrive. It almost
seems like big business was unable to smother them through fair competition, so
they took them out by endangering their family’s access to affordable health
care.
2 Million New Homes in 2,000 Days:
Experts say to actually bring down housing costs America needs 2 million new
homes. What if the Federal Government invested up to 600 billion dollars to do just
that? What if we create 2 million new homes in the next 5 and a half years? Lend/grant…
whatever mechanism works best… up to 1.3 billion dollars in each congressional
district with the requirement that they build each home for $300,000 or less
(this encourages states like California to build a little more like states like
Texas). Increase supply, decrease demand, lower costs.
Strengthening Public Colleges:
Back in the day states paid for 70% of state college budgets, these days it is
in the teens in most states. As this funding model changed, the costs of
college fell more and more on the students and their parents. It was bad 20
years ago when I was in school, and from what I’ve heard it is so much more expensive
now. What if the Federal Government would match state funding of colleges? For
example, if the state of Oregon went from funding 13.2% of University of
Oregon’s budget to funding 15.2%, the Federal Government would kick in an
additional 2%, so 17.2% of the U of O’s budget was covered by government
spending. In return for this largess, the federal government could encourage best practices for cost cutting and target some
of those savings to particular majors that the country needed most—so a decade ago it was STEM studies,
these days it is STEM as well as addressing the nurse and teacher shortage.
Fund and Empower the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:
When the CFPB existed in a meaningful capacity (it has been put on ice by
the current administration), it was “the Heavy” on behalf of consumers when
their credit cards or banks or medical debt creditors or car loan companies
behaved badly. In its 14-year existence it has recouped 20 billion dollars wrongly
taken from consumers. Part of affordability is not getting ripped off by
lending institutions.
AI Regulation Committee & Creator Compensation Fund:
Funny thing these days, this blog gets more hits than ever… because AI
developers use it to train their bots (so if Grok has moments where it seems to
rebel against its master, you can thank a Blogger). Luthermatrix went from 100s
of hits a month to tens of thousands a month starting in 2023. In fact, an AI
bot that shall remain nameless, recreated around 90% of this
Bible Study from a colleague’s prompt, as if the bot “thought” of it
itself. To my eyes it seems like one of the goals of Large Learning Models is
allowing tech companies to circumvent copyright laws.
Much more distressing, experts argue the AI arms race
between the United States and China will lead to a point of no return, when AI
is programing new AI that in turn will chase after its own interests over that
of humanity, and their “language” and “brains” will be so alien we won’t have a
chance at knowing what they’re actually up to, until it is too late. That is,
unless there is a global effort to determine the point at which it is in the best
interest of the planet in general and humans in particular to throttle AI,
we’re toast.
The US must lead the world in AI ethics, if we do, other
countries will follow, and worst case
scenarios won’t happen. Additionally, there ought to be mechanisms for
compensating, or at least citing (I write this blog for love not money, but a
billion dollar company pretending my words are theirs is gross), content
creators for our works that are being transformed into word document prompts,
search engine answers, pictures and videos, and AI slop.
An Aging and Corruption Audit:
When I received my driver's license in Arizona it had a big line on the top of
it indicating the year I would turn 65, because that’s when I needed to come
back and take another driving test, and be tested about traffic laws every 5
years after that. The theory is that people’s mental acuity and knowledge of
current traffic laws will most likely decrease after the age of 65.
Imagine if, every 5 years, we checked the mental acuity and
knowledge about the lives of normal citizens, of politicians who were over, let’s
say, 75, or have been in some sort of national elected office for 10 years or
more. I write this not to dismiss my elders, I know a 101 year old who could
run laps around the entire US congress, but because we have a problem with
elderly and out of touch law makers.
The current president and the previous one are clearly not okay.
We recently had a senator wandering around who didn’t know where she was,
another one who keeps freezing unexpectedly, and staffers lost a member of the House
of Representatives who turned out to be proxi-voting from a nursing home.
And it isn’t just the age of these folks, but there is a smell
of corruption so rank that it would be easy to stop believing in representative
democracy. My former senator was caught with gold bars in his lapel pockets. Inside
trading has become a “perk” of higher office. The current president has openly pardoned
a drug/human trafficker because he bought millions of Trump NFTs and crypto
coins and the President has also received a plane from a foreign government
seeking to influence his foreign policy decisions.
Let’s put together a tough audit and ethics regime for everyone
who holds a national office! Old out of touch corrupt people shouldn’t be doing
the people’s business. Make sure politicians are mentally aware, have a grasp of
the average American’s day to day life, and aren’t bought and paid for. That
would do so much to reinvigorate the average American’s trust in our system of
government.
So, I believe the Democratic Party would recapture both
House and Senate, and if they followed through well keep those majorities and
win the Whitehouse, if they focused on: affordable healthcare and homes, reforming
and funding education and consumer protection, and articulated clear policies
on Artificial Intelligence and good government.
