(if I were the) King of the Forest

In the fall of 1996 a friend of mine ran for congress as a Republican in a predominantly Democratic district. In addition to having to overcome the demographics, he was also fighting an entrenched incumbent and the disaster of Bob Dole’s lackluster presidential campaign. Predictably, he lost the election.

While working occasionally on the campaign I began to pay attention to some of the biases built into our electoral system. This essay describes one such bias, the franking privilege, and proposes an alternative.

Create a panel of ‘real-world actors’, people who are/will be directly involved in the implementation of the laws — for instance, in the case of proposition 211 a panel of judges who sit on securities fraud cases — and let them describe what they would do in these hypothetical scenarios under existing and proposed law. Would they allow a case to go to trial? At what cost? Would they bring back a judgement for or against a particular party? Who would they hold liable and to what extent? How big a judgment would they award? Under what circumstances would they declare a case ‘frivolous’? What punishments would they impose, either for a finding of fraud or for a finding of frivolity?

I am writing to you as perhaps the last hope for sanity in the debate over health-care reform; despite my California address I am a native Granite Stater and my respect for both of you predates your current activities on behalf of the Concord Coalition. I, as most people, have become concerned about the direction in which the debate seems to be moving. Because of your commitment to weaning the American public, politicians, and government bureaucrats from the trap of entitlement programs I thought you might have a special interest in what becomes of this potentially gargantuan new entitlement program into which we seem to be plunging. It is my hope that your influence and straight talk may yet prevail over the politics dominating the discussion to date.