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Josh is Back!  This week gets into further ideas about the rough draft State of Jefferson Constitution.  Some ideas Phil and Josh came up with, others were suggested to us through word of mouth.  Some ideas are good, some sound good at first, and others are kinda stupid, but we kicked them around anyway because why the hell not.  Some of the ideas discussed, with varying degrees of success include:

-Idea borrowed from Thomas Jefferson: Mandatory year long waiting periods before bills can be voted on, so the legislature as well as the people can fully evaluate and consider each one before it passes.  This avoids having only three days to read a 10,000 page bill or something before it is voted on.

-Each law passed shall have a sunset, perhaps one year, then it has to go through the process again before it can be renewed.

-Limits on how many words each law can contain.

-Stricter requirements for amendments than what we have now.  Avoid situations like California whose constitution has become so huge and convoluted that it has lost its sanctity and became meaningless.

-Laws need to be simple and concise.

-Selecting legislators at random like jurors?

-Funding options: excise taxes, a flat income tax, the government competing in the gun dealership market, or a publicly owned bank, and how there should only be one and not a bunch of overlapping forms of taxation.  The pro’s and con’s of each are explored.

-Dumping the federal reserve note in favor of a commodity backed Jefferson currency… “X” backs?

-Instead of departments blowing money they didn’t spend right before the end of the fiscal year, it gets put into an interest bearing account to make the money grow without affecting the taxpayer.  In theory, if this practice reached critical mass, the government could sustain itself off the interest and the need for taxes would disappear entirely (!)

-Separation of business and state.  Find a way to ensure that the government doing good for its people the path of least resistance.

-Sheriff’s being sole enforcers of the law, both what the people have to obey and what the government has to obey.

-Absolute, total, complete transparency in government.  As in to the point of government officials professional lives (not private of course) to be monitored full-time.

-Thoughts on being able to opt out of the system entirely.

-What to do about education?  Jeffersonians need to be wary of an education system ran exclusively by the government, and that education standards must be mutually agreed upon, and that our children’s education ought to have more parental involvement, because we want them to have the tools to run the show when we’re dead and gone.

This episode also comes with a free tangent about the Secret Service’s Sexploits in Columbia and a bonus anecdote!