Beyond Labels

We agreed to revisit our two-party system and elections:

The Two-Party System

• How’s it working?
• Is it broken, or operating as designed?
• What structure/system would we prefer?
  • Ideally?
  • Realistically?
• How can we get there? (Or closer?)

Here’s a link to one of my “go-to” articles on the subject.

Money and Politics

There’s been a lot of talk about Citizens United, but the real issue seems to be how best to address the value of money (as distince from policy positions, charisma, etc.) in politics–whether that money comes from corporations or from individuals.

Here’s a recent article on Elon Musk’s interest and activities in Wisconsin.

(And maybe we’ll spend a bit of time discussing how we feel about elected vs. appointed judicial positions.)

Last week’s edition of The Ellsworth American included a commentary by Peter Sly proposing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. At the end of today’s session, we identified this as a possible topic for next week’s meeting, if Peter is able to join us then (or if not, at a later meeting) and tell us more about how he sees this working.