Imagine a long line of traffic waiting for a light to turn green. You are driving a Ford Fiesta twelve cars back. Now, when the light turns, if every driver is watching and starts accelerating at a reasonable rate, everyone in the line can start moving at the same instant. You advance immediately. That way a maximum number of cars make it through the light, and you are easily progressing toward your destination.

Now, think about what really happens. The light changes. One car lumbers forward. The next driver waits to see that the first is really moving before lifting her foot off the brake. The line slowly unspools. Then one driver, too engrossed in his doughnut, fails to notice the open space in front of him, until someone behind becomes angry enough to honk. The result? When the light cycles back to red, you are still five cars from the front. You shift in your sticky seat and brush the crumbs of a chocolate chip muffin from the folds in your shirt and pants.

At least, you think, in this cracked world there are such consolations as chocolate chip muffins.

Look at the jam in Congress. One side proposes a budget the other can’t countenance; the second blocks all progress. The parties remind us of two overly wide men trying to pass through the same door but wedged shoulder-to-shoulder. Neither will yield, so neither can move.

We at Fiction Writers for Better Misinformation have two proposals that will end the obstruction caused by our misshapen political parties.

Governing Solution #23

Why is compromise so difficult on budget votes? Yes, a relatively small difference in federal spending can make a huge difference in the life of the nation, and so differences of opinion are consequential here, but now it seems that, if one party is proposing to spend $27,155,072,010 on the Department of Energy, while the other proposes $27,155,072,024, they still can’t reach an agreement—as if any compromise is a capitulation. And yet, within each party, there must be individual legislators willing to move up or down from their leadership’s initial position. It’s the enforcement of party discipline, along with the diffusion of responsibility that comes from voting in blocs, that keeps the two sides lined up along their fronts, each man or woman unwilling to set a foot forward alone.

How do we change this? We mandate that all budget votes in the future run as a sort of Dutch auction in reverse. For each department, the funding starts at $0 and is moved up in increments of, say, $1 billion, in a series of turns. All voting members are gathered in a room at the start. As each turn begins, any legislator who believes that is the maximum amount of funding they are willing to vote for leaves the room. So, if you think $0 is the right amount for the Department of Energy, say, you leave the room at turn one. If you think $1 billion is right, you leave at turn two, and so on. When a majority of legislators have left the room, the turns stop, and the budget is set at the last number reached in the count-up.

To increase personal accountability (we all favor that, right?), when leaving the room, each legislator must stop, face a camera, and announce, “I am Representative So and So, and I support funding the Department of Energy at $27,900,000,000 (or zero or whatever) for fiscal year 2013.” That way they’re inescapably on record, as individuals and their records and preferences can be compared with others’ more clearly.

Let’s think about how this will change budget votes. There are two main variations. In the first, the majority party wants lower spending. Let’s assume that the amount proposed by leadership is somewhere near the mean preference of the party as a whole–low enough to keep extremists happy, high enough to reassure moderates or those with competitive districts. In the new system, with each legislator voting his or her conscience (or whatever proxy mental facility members of Congress use for the purpose), the final result is likely to be higher than the leadership proposal, as it has to capture 90% or more of the party. Similarly, when the majority party wants a higher budget, they don’t begin to vote until the minority has spoken, and the lowest 10% or so of the majority will provide the crucial breaking point. In both cases, we get a result somewhere between the two leadership proposals.

Some other features of this system: It creates a strong incentive for individual legislators to negotiate with each other, since one vote can prove decisive. This will happen both within and across party lines, increasing communication and understanding—as opposed to brinksmanship. It increases the amount of information available about each legislator’s preferences. The point is that the power is taken out of the hands of leadership. When you think about it, legislative leaders exercise power largely through control of the process, which means they have the greatest potential power before a vote takes place. Indeed, the vote marks the end of their power. So, they always have an incentive to maneuver and delay. We can change that.

Governing Solution #24

This one’s simple: Dictate that x number of votes must occur each year; each legislator is given one-half x yes votes and one-half x no votes to cast each year. Each party will then of course scheme—err, strategize to create favorable votes for themselves and unfavorable ones for the opposition. But the key feature here is that neither party can dominate or obstruct, having a limited number of yes votes and a limited number of no votes. Congress will hold votes and get business done, with no opportunity for gross unfairness.

We know that the current leadership of Congress will irrevocably and energetically oppose these ideas, if for no other reason than to maintain their hold on the levers of power. And yet these ideas would undoubtedly benefit the country. Let us pass over the considerations of what this says about the characters of our leaders and ask, is there a reason to voice such impractical, even fanciful, ideas?

Yes. It is one of the beauties of imaginative literature that it can conceive what is currently inconceivable and lay the foundations to make the preposterous one day possible.

Join us at FBMisin in trying to imagine a better future.

We will continue to bring you FBMisin solutions.

Read another FBMisin proposal to make government better.

Rebranding Literature is a simple plan to make literature more relevant in the marketplace of ideas by maximizing revenue potential.

Over the course of human history, great works of literature—including wildly popular pieces that are perennial sellers—have generated less revenue in aggregate than a single day’s worth of Starbucks sales.

Why is literature losing out so badly to the coffee mongers? That they sell a drug, legally, we rejected as too simplistic; many retailers of drugs legal and illegal don’t get wealthy. We attempted to answer the question by visiting a local Starbucks. The answer is shockingly obvious if you have eyes to see. Just look around. Everything is for sale. Little racks with branded items pop up like toadstools. Nature abhors a vacuum; so does Starbucks—every empty space is filled with something you could buy. So, we have initiated a project to go back and apply what we’ve learned to great works of literature in hopes of raising greater revenues.

The Catcher in the Rye
by JD Salinger and The Stoneslide Corrective

When Jerome David Salinger was trying to capture the power of the young voice he heard in his head and get it down onto the page, that was his focus. Sadly, that and his artistic vision were his only focus. Salinger, regardless of how brilliant a writer he was or how singularly captivating Holden Caulfield’s voice was, really screwed the pooch when it came to exploiting the potential of product placement. With one deft stroke, Stoneslide was able to fix this problem in the very first paragraph.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. Just read my Facebook Timeline.

This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams and The Stoneslide Corrective

Dealing with the aftermath of having angered one’s spouse has always been a powerful engine of economic activity in literature. Consider how many times you’ve watched a protagonist buy gifts  or a bouquet of flowers because he’s done something moronic and ticked off his wife. Maybe it was something he couldn’t avoid, like going to war against the Trojans or becoming chair of the department of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. Or maybe he just selfishly effs up, like the narrator of Williams’ famous poem, thereby fueling more economic growth due to the implied need to purchase more fruit. Stoneslide has improved this seemingly unimprovable masterpiece of guilt-driven mercantilism with just a few effortless inclusions.

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the Sub-Zero

and which
you were probably
saving
for a nutritious breakfast
that would include one serving of heart-healthy Cheerios

Forgive me
but these Connecticut plums
from Bishop’s Orchard
were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
and so fresh due to the tri-ply
Ziploc bags.

Read other Rebranding Literature articles:

The Song of Solomon

Obama

Lincoln

Thoreau, Thomas

Keats, Lawrence,  Hopkins

Once more, with callused, exhausted fingers, we take up the pen.

On November 6, 2012, as the last voters filed through the polls, we at Fiction Writers for Better Misinformation hung up our ink-stained capes, thinking we’d done all we could to keep America together through the divisive campaign season. We looked on with some satisfaction as votes were counted, winners named, and the machinery of democracy chugged forward.

The republic survived. We rested.

But now, we fear we feel a new political threat tearing at the unity of the American body politic. The unending, fruitless quarreling between Democratic and Republican national leaders is not only causing direct harm to the economy, but is also keeping alive the deep sense of tribal division that made life so testy during the campaign. It’s almost as if the campaign never ended. If only someone would win these fights already! But, no, the politicians have our constitutional republic in a head lock and they’re going to keep squeezing until fair lady liberty blacks out.

We need new ideas that will jolt us out of this pointless grappling. Clearly, the political class has no such new ideas. We need creativity. We need imagination. We need Fiction Writers for Better Misinformation.

We will rise to the challenge. Here is our first humble suggestion:

FBMisin Governing Solution #1:

Democrats drop their demands for stricter gun control legislation in return for pegging future top-bracket income tax rates to the number of gun-related deaths in the country in the preceding year. We will create an index of gun deaths per million in the population, setting 2010 as the benchmark year. If gun deaths rise one percent in 2013 compared to the benchmark, then the top tax rate rises one percent. If gun deaths fall, then so do taxes on the rich.

To the naive this may sound morbid, but it gives the right a chance to prove that, as the saying goes, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Since, if that’s the case, then we can find ways to stop those people. Suddenly, Republicans have an incentive to support effective mental health care, improved early childhood education, poverty mitigation programs, anti-domestic violence initiatives, heck, even quality research into what works. Democrats, of course, will jump to support all these things, as well.

We will bring you more FBMisin solutions soon.

Read the original notice of the launch of Fiction Writers for Better Misinformation.

Our nation is divided and many of us are pained by the seemingly irreconcilable differences between two groups of our fellow citizens.

Gun control advocates, on the one hand, shocked by the devastation a disturbed person can cause with the aid of a few pounds of carefully machined steel and explosive powder, want to restrict the availability of these implements. They point out that some guns have no purpose other than to kill and maim human beings, unless you count the thrill of pulling a trigger and watching a target explode as a legitimate purpose. And even if it is legitimate, any action that saves a life at so little cost must be worthwhile.

On the other side, gun rights activists fear that they will have something precious, even vital, taken away from them for no good reason—since criminals will always find ways around gun laws. They themselves, of course, have been responsible gun-owners all their lives. And, if government can take away their guns, which are doing no harm, what’s to stop government from taking anything else—their cars, their checking accounts, their children, even their flat-screen TVs. The Second Amendment is as clear as clear can be: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That is the bulwark against tyranny.

We have passionate intensity and conviction on both sides. We have ideals and deeply held beliefs that drive people in opposite directions. You may see no space for compromise.

However, as always, the wisdom of the Founding Fathers hovers over us to show the way. We at Stoneslide have followed their counsel and found an originalist solution to this dilemma. In fact, this solution is so originalist that, after you read it, you’ll feel like you just watched Antonin Scalia wearing a tri-cornered hat trying to mount a horse.

We have to stop thinking about taking guns away. The Founding Fathers wanted the people armed. There is no question on this point. Read More »

Rebranding Literature is a simple plan to make literature more relevant in the marketplace of ideas by maximizing revenue potential.

Over the course of human history, great works of literature—including sacred texts—have generated less revenue in aggregate than a single day’s worth of Starbucks sales.

Why is literature losing out so badly to the coffee mongers? That they sell a drug, legally, we rejected as too simplistic; many retailers of drugs legal and illegal don’t get wealthy. We attempted to answer the question by visiting a local Starbucks. The answer is shockingly obvious if you have eyes to see. Just look around. Everything is for sale. Little racks with branded items pop up like toadstools. Nature abhors a vacuum; so does Starbucks—every empty space is filled with something you could buy. So, we have initiated a project to go back and apply what we’ve learned to great works of literature in hopes of raising greater revenues.

If sacred texts cannot be brought under the just great yoke of wealth-generation, what texts can?

The Song of Solomon: The Bride and the Bridegroom
by God, Solomon, and The Stoneslide Corrective

1

I have compared thee, O my love,
to a company that retails luxury goods.
Thy cheeks are comely with Tiffany’s jewels,
thy neck with pearls from Harry Winston.

We will make thee borders of gold
with studs of silver.

While the CEO sitteth at his table,
my Chanel No. 5 sendeth forth the smell thereof.

An Xbox 360 console is my well-beloved unto me;
he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.
My beloved is unto me as a cluster of syrah
in the vineyards of Domaine Jean-Louis Chave.

Behold, thou art fair, my love;
behold, thou used Nivea;
thou hast doves’ eyes,
thou hast eyes lined with Mac mascara.

Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant:
also our bed is a handcrafted McRoskey.
The beams of our house are cedar,
with Dricon fire-retardant treatment,
and our rafters of fir,
our rafters cost $12 a linear foot at Lowe’s.

2

I am “A Rose for Emily,” and the lily of the
Valley of the Dolls, both available at Powell’s,
Amazon, or your local independent bookstore.
As the Hana Morae among the confinement hog buildings, Read More »

Rebranding Literature is a simple plan to make literature more relevant in the marketplace of ideas by maximizing revenue potential.

Political discourse has always been an important constituent of literature. Think Cicero, Locke, Jefferson, Marx, King. These titans bequeathed to us words and ideas that make the heart soar and the polity quiver.

But literature does not have the broad audience it deserves, and that includes political literature. Literature’s failure to embrace commerce hamstrings it; without profit, there is no prophet. Even a speech made before huge throngs of people is often soon forgotten. This cannot continue.

Not only novels and poems can be improved with rebranding (See rebrandings of Keats and others here.); the canon of political discourse can be, too. (For proof, notice how Stoneslide has improved Abraham Lincoln’s work.) President Barack Obama is an orator of great power and depth. But he, like other greats, could make his work more engaging, more vital, and more resilient for the ages with some rebranding to pump it up. Herewith, Rebranding Literature: Obama’s Second Inaugural Address.

Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional—what makes us American—is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing—unlike contracts drawn up by Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLC.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires freight railroad companies, such as BNSF and Union Pacific, to speed commerce; together, we determined that a modern economy requires long-haul truckers, and antacids, amphetamines, and truck stop condom machines. We determined that we need schools and colleges to train our workers, places like DeVry, Everest, and Chippewa Valley Tech.

Together, we discovered that a free market, like NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc., the inventor of the electronic exchange, only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play, and that rules must be balanced with reasonableness, that to shackle commerce with the Master Lock of too much regulation is to shackle democracy, but especially for job-creators, wealth-protectors, and the people upon whom their liquid assets trickle.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and we created for-profit nursing homes like ManorCare. Together, we resolved that a great nation must protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune with sentinels of compassion like Allstate Insurance. Together, we reconfirmed our knowledge that Chris Christie is a Republican who cares about everyone, not just the well-off.

Together, we’re Giant.

You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time—not only with the votes we cast, but with the dollars we spend, preferably taking advantage of the convenience and near-universal acceptance of MasterCard credit and debit products.

Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of commerce.

Thank you, God bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.

Read other Rebranding Literature articles:

Lincoln

Thoreau, Thomas

Willams, Salinger

Keats, Lawrence, Hopkins

The Song of Solomon

On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. Having led the nation through its most cataclysmic years, with the hard work of remaking the country in front of him, his speech was a miracle of economy, saying just what needed to be said and no more. Today, standing as we do in a nation that has endured economic cataclysm and is deeply divided by political conflict, we think it is right to look at Lincoln’s words again—and to improve them ever so slightly with some appropriate commercial opportunism. We believe Lincoln’s sentiments can again help us be a better nation.

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an Extended Stay America address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail, in consultation with the great consulting firm McKinsey & Co., of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of this great contest, Super Bowl XLVII, which still absorbs the attention of Fox News viewers and engrosses the energies of Sports Nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our playoffs, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself (I follow the action on my Yahoo! Sportacular iPhone app), and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to whether the Pats will cover the spread is ventured.

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural (Rebranded). Click for full image.

Both sides’ fans read the same Bible and shop for authentic team jerseys at nflshop.com. They pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing the anterior cruciate ligament of other men’s starting quarterbacks’ knees, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both can not be answered.

With malice in The Palace toward none of my opponent’s fanatics, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, as through a windshield cleaned by The Windshield Wonder, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds with Band-Aid brand bandages, to care for him who shall have borne the gridiron battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Let me append one final observation: with pitchers and catchers reporting in a few short weeks, may the Nationals prosper.

Read earlier Rebranding Literature articles:

Keats, Lawrence, Hopkins

Thoreau, Thomas