deep down, i’m a political dork…

…and I heart these videos with the Washington Post’s Dana Millbank

things a progressive government would do, part III:

nobody’s perfect.
when reputable newspapers get stuff wrong (which they do all the time), they publish corrections. many have a little section devoted to such fixes. it assures us that they’re observant and careful and ultimately interested in the truth.
when they get stuff really wrong (say, the WP publishing janet cooke’s infamous story), they stick their ombudsmen on the case. readers get not just a correction, but an investigation into what went wrong, and, hopefully, some reform intended to prevent it from happening again.

what happpens when an administration gets stuff wrong? do they come out and admit it?
what if they get a LOT of stuff wrong? do they say, oops, sorry, my bad?
what if the administration is really into faith-based stuff…and the whole mea culpa thing seems not too far out in left field. Do they admit errors?

A healthy executive branch would do as much.

transparent government

yet another idea sure to not get me elected:

In the name of transparent democracy, the White House Press Secretary should be hooked up to a lie detector device whenever he opens his mouth, and there should be a HUGE live-feed display of the thing directly behind him, for all reporters to see. Imagine one line that measures temperature. Another that measures sweat. And another that measures pulse. And maybe some other that measures some other general indicator of pulling-lies-out-of-your-ass.

Someone asks McClellan: “Scott, did the president know about extraordinary rendition in the months after 9/11?”

And as McClellan tries to doubletalk his way out of it, we have the answer, without him even having to open his big mouth.

That’s the kind of transparency I’m talkin’ about. If you’ve nothing to hide, prove it. Then I may put some faith in you.

call me an age-ist

Call me an age-ist, but I think a voting system that takes into account the amount of time the voter has yet to live would be mighty progressive, and might lead us to, I dunno, think ahead, plan ahead, build some smart infrastructure-related systems. Someone out there could do the math, figure out the logistics, but the essence of my idea is this: a 25-year-old’s vote counts more than an 80-year-old’s vote. Why? Cause the 25 year old has to live with the consequences, whereas the 80 year old has two feet in the grave already. Is that so loony?