Couple of ideas, should these be proposed

1) Constitutional Amendment banning filibusters

2) Ban on no-bid government contracts such as Haliburton and Solyndra (going bipartisan here)

1) Yes. They serve no purpose other than to delay a vote without contributing to the process.

2) Yes. No bid contracts are pure cronyism.

SA_Flarestar wrote:1) Yes. They serve no purpose other than to delay a vote without contributing to the process.

2) Yes. No bid contracts are pure cronyism.

This leads to the 2nd part: how do we make these viable, concrete planks that aren't going to be worked around easily? That's the part I'm having difficulty with.

Banning filibusters is probably the harder of the two. Implementing speaking time limits of a reasonable length would help, but doesn't stop a small bloc from still doing the same thing.

A moderator for the assembly would probably be more effective, provided you could find someone that wouldn't abuse the power to say "Sit down and shut up".

I really don't know how you'd do it, frankly, without someone either finding a way around it or being open to abuse.

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As far as no bid contracts, that one's a bit easier. All contracts must be open to bidder, the terms and compensation for the contracts must be concrete before the bidding opens, and the contract must be evaluated by a pool of consultants before approved. The specific consultants from the pool would be randomly chosen for each contract and the names not released to the bidders to avoid bribery, with consultants from companies involved in the bidding process to be ineligible for that contract.

Solyndra was not a no-bid contract.

Haliburton had almost no no-bid contracts. And were one of only two companies that could have done those that were no-bid, and were already in country at the time.