Rethinking IRV, PR, Range Voting, Election Reforms

My interest in FairVote.org has become more mixed.  I like the idea of Proportional Representation, and have proposed an idea for it recently.  I'm less sure about Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) because I'm not sure it will be as effective as Range Voting at defeating Duverger's Law, but I think even the gesture of IRV might increase the visibility of other political parties. (But I think we might be able to do better.)

Some of the other FairVote reforms, I don't like so much.  First of all, I think the 26th Amendment is not a good thing for several reasons.  One is that it takes power away from the States to decide when their youth are entitled to be part of the decision-making, and rather unnecessarily.  The rationale, I believe, was that those young enough to give their lives were young enough to elect the Commander-in-Chief.  (Young women got this benefit for free, since they were never subject to draft -- and feminism was nary so critical of this.)  This was all right as far as it goes.  I would be all for an Amendment that guarantees the right to vote for those serving or having served in the military.  I would be all for there being a separate vote in the Electoral College for those in military service (makes sense to me) and a legal guarantee that their votes will all be counted.  (Did Al Gore do the same thing?)  I think the general effect of the 26th Amendment is that it adds to the pool of votes those more likely to make decisions based on what they were told about history rather than what they've experienced of history.

Plus, the "old enough to die for their country" argument has, I think, a bit of an insidious implication: that somehow youth are being sacrificed by the older people.  We are generally talking about their parents voting for the Congress that declares war (or in the 21st century, the President that unilaterally declares war).  For most youth (hopefully, still) there are two eligible voters that have a vested interest in them not dying.

The Third House of the Legislature

In light of our worsening budgetary problems, I'd just like to explore a fanciful idea about adding a third House to our federal Legislature with the following considerations in mind:

1.    The menu is determined by those who are paying the bill. Democracy shouldn't be two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. People that take more from the government than they provide shouldn't be able to simply vote themselves money at their neighbor's expense.
2.    Americans should have more direct say on how such a considerable slice of their income gets spent. Of necessity, they can't control all of it, but they can at least override the influence of their legislators to some degree. If a citizen does not want his money spent on defense, he/she can earmark up to 50% of his/her income for something else. If she wants 30% to go to Social Security and 20% to pay the debt, she can do this.
3.    Each district would get financial representation that would be answerable, not on policy of who gets which entitlements (that's for the Senators and Representatives to work out with lobbyists and special interest groups), but to be judged solely on certain financial matters. The Senate and the HoR can still spend the money on wasteful enterprises, but they won't be able to arbitrarily run us into debt to do so. Meanwhile our financial representatives would have no say over culture war issues. They will mainly act as our budget balancers and investigate how our money is being spent. They determine how much the other Houses get to waste.
4.    Not just anyone should be allowed to act as our accountants. Most legislators have legal training (lot of good it does them) and not much business sense beyond how to exploit the political process to make money. This is really, really, really bad for the rest of us.

With these considerations in mind, I introduce the Third House of our new Tricameral Legislature by Amendment 28 to the Constitution!

There used to be fewer branches of government...

I need to update my compendium of the branches of government:

Presidency/Executive
Federal Courts
Federal Reserve
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
Independent Payer Advisory Board (new! with broad powers)
National Labor Relations Board
Environmental Protection Agency
National Science Board
Trial Lawyer's Association

Now that we've covered most of the legislative branches, let's not forget the spending branch:
Congress