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My proposal for fixing the US government.
Jun. 8th, 2013 02:00 amThe Millionaire Law:
Anyone possessing more than one million dollars in assets, solid or liquid, is ineligible to run for public office of any kind. The same rule applies to appointees to major state and federal offices. If a millionaire sincerely wishes to serve their country in this way, they have the option of donating the remainder of their wealth to the Social Security fund. Those worthy of the public trust should have no problem with this.
It's a felony for an office-seeker to "hide" money in any way; putting it overseas, donating it to a nonprofit which will hire the individual and/or their family members, divorcing their spouse for the duration of their term in office/term of employment, and so on. It does not need to be proven the individual was "knowingly" a millionaire at the time. If a person has over $500,000 in assets, he or she certainly knows where to find a good accountant. Ignorance is not a defense.*
The minimum sentence is at least five years, and again, the social security fund gets whatever is left over after rewarding any whistleblowers who may have been involved in bringing this to light. Whistleblowers get 25% of the recovered money with a cap of two million. They're also granted immunity from prosecution for any nonviolent crimes which they may have committed in the course of acquiring their information.
There are obviously other things that need to be done - SuperPACs and the revolving door still need to be dealt with. However, the root of our problem is simply that the extremely wealthy don't belong in public office, unless they're willing to demonstrate that they value their duties over their wealth.
We'd lose a few good people from this, I'm sure, and I regret that - but we'd lose a lot more bad ones.
* There may need to be a severance clause for this part. I think the nature of felony convictions generally requires intent, but the thing is that extremely wealthy people often make a choice not to know exactly how wealthy they are. If there are no legal repercussions for "accidentally" misrepresenting yourself, people are going to "accidentally" misrepresent themselves.
Anyone possessing more than one million dollars in assets, solid or liquid, is ineligible to run for public office of any kind. The same rule applies to appointees to major state and federal offices. If a millionaire sincerely wishes to serve their country in this way, they have the option of donating the remainder of their wealth to the Social Security fund. Those worthy of the public trust should have no problem with this.
It's a felony for an office-seeker to "hide" money in any way; putting it overseas, donating it to a nonprofit which will hire the individual and/or their family members, divorcing their spouse for the duration of their term in office/term of employment, and so on. It does not need to be proven the individual was "knowingly" a millionaire at the time. If a person has over $500,000 in assets, he or she certainly knows where to find a good accountant. Ignorance is not a defense.*
The minimum sentence is at least five years, and again, the social security fund gets whatever is left over after rewarding any whistleblowers who may have been involved in bringing this to light. Whistleblowers get 25% of the recovered money with a cap of two million. They're also granted immunity from prosecution for any nonviolent crimes which they may have committed in the course of acquiring their information.
There are obviously other things that need to be done - SuperPACs and the revolving door still need to be dealt with. However, the root of our problem is simply that the extremely wealthy don't belong in public office, unless they're willing to demonstrate that they value their duties over their wealth.
We'd lose a few good people from this, I'm sure, and I regret that - but we'd lose a lot more bad ones.
* There may need to be a severance clause for this part. I think the nature of felony convictions generally requires intent, but the thing is that extremely wealthy people often make a choice not to know exactly how wealthy they are. If there are no legal repercussions for "accidentally" misrepresenting yourself, people are going to "accidentally" misrepresent themselves.
