Two of our regular readers, Steve and John have come to a consensus on what is wrong with government and they’re right. Not politically, but in the sense of correct in their assessment.
Government should be like jury duty. You go and do a year, pass a few laws, get some free lunches, hear all kinds of salacious testimony and, at the end of the day, vote, sign it off and go home. If you can come up with some really good excuses “I’m a convicted giraffe abuser yerhonour so’s I can’t be serving on no jury!” you don’t have to be empanelled.
The same deal should apply for government: Every year they pick 300 to 500 likely suspects by lottery and that’s the government. You meet once a week and do what needs to be done, then go home. At the end of your ‘term’ you turn in the laptop and go. If you can steal enough to retire on, so be it. If nothing else, the damage you can cause is limited enough, and likely less harmful than what the current crop of yahoos in Ottawa and Washington have/are/can cause.
Which made me think: Both the US and Canada have various long-dead politicians on our currency. In Canada we have Queen Betty the Deuce on our $20. We also have a drunkard, a stoic and a whoremaster on other denominations. Meanwhile the US has a slave-owner, a notorious womanizer and a guy with wooden teeth.
The downside of using dead politicians is that some of them were truly polarizing. Mackenzie King used to hold séances at the PM’s residence to talk to his Mother. JFK would have boffed a snake if he could get it to hold its mouth open long enough. Coolidge was so boring, even Mormons ran away from him. If Trudeau was ever on our currency the toilet paper industry would go broke in a month: Nobody would buy toilet paper, we’d just wipe our ass on the $5 bill, just like Trudeau did with the country for several years. And so on.
Here’s the concept: Every four years (the average life of paper currency on either side of the border) we hold a contest. If you want to have your face on the currency, you submit two photos: One, of your head and shoulders, taken in the cheapest photo kiosk you can find. The second photo is of your back yard, deck or the front of your apartment door. It costs you whatever the denomination you want to be on. If you want to be on the $10, it costs you $10. You want to be on the C-note, it costs you a hun’. Plus you get your signature on the denomination.
A random drawing decides who is on the currency for the next four years. As long as the photos don’t have obviously offensive content, that’s what is on the bill, face and obverse, for the next four years. If your back yard has a busted trampoline and an ‘89 Trans-Am up on blocks amid all the other garbage, then that’s what we get. If the front door of your apartment has “Roll Tide!” scrawled in crayon under a battery-powered laughing Santa clutching a menorah, then so be it. Fire up the presses, we got a winner!
Proceeds and profits go to reduce the Federal Deficit.
Thoughts?
RoadDave 
“If the front door of your apartment has “Roll Tide!” scrawled in crayon under a battery-powered laughing Santa clutching a menorah, then so be it. ”
If you’ve seen that, you’ve travelled too far south in the US. If you made that up, you are a sick person, and I should know – I get migraine headaches so bad, I’m stoned out of my mind most days. No wonder you talked about a “high” concept on the other thread!
I don’t know if that would work for the printers. Heck, the US Treasury has several BILLION dollars’ worth of hundreds that were mis-printed due to the complexity of the format. It’d take them months to gear up for a new format. Plus, the guy who sent in the picture could counterfeit all he wanted (assuming he’s not the hick with the T/A on blocks – then again, he wouldn’t be clever enough to work the camera, much less the printer!). Then again, at the rate the Fed is printing money these days, maybe we SHOULD just print our own. We could secure it with our houses – we might not own much of them, but at least the money would be backed by something other than politicians’ hot air! But we can’t lose the beloved Canadian dollar coin. What other country has the guts to declare their currency unit coin a loony?
I’ve been too far South. Of the 50, I’ve missed Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho and Wyoming. The rest have seen my footprints.
You went to Nebraska, and you missed Hawaii? That explains your starting quote. You are indeed a sick person! 😀
Actually, you’ve done better than I have. Haven’t gotten too far west of the Mississippi, with the exception of numerous trips to California. The sci-fi cons get mighty thin between Illinois and California!
Have you ever watched Top Gear? (The real one from the UK, not the new American travesty.) You need to see the episode where they drive used cars from Florida to New Orleans. They go through Alabama, get chased out of town by rednecks, and I swear they go past a trailer with “Go Tide” on the door and a laughing Santa holding a menorah……
Brilliant! I believe the number one problem facing any political system – be it democracy or communism or whatever – is politicians. Those seeking political office should be denied from doing so. Also, no lawyers! Politicians draft laws/legislation. The more convoluted the law, the more lawyers are required. So, lawyers become politicians, draft laws, and ensure their needed employment – it’s a viscious cycle.