It's too early to tell whether President Obama will take action derived from what he hears when he listens. But he's already doing an excellent job of listening, and his campaign seemed to listen enough to Americans to get us to holler back with a recordbreaking vote count for his election.
So I was pleased to use his transition team's formal government website for taking suggestions. I submitted a whole list of suggestions for Obama to implement my visions for America, and you can submit your vision, too. Here's my list from today...
I've previously published, discussed and refined most of these reform policies here on DKos. Thanks to everyone who helped me sharpen them, whether you agreed or not. I sent each section individually, using the submission form that asked the following question:
An American Moment: Your Vision
Start right now. Share your vision for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country. Where should we start together?
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I'd take some of the taxes Americans are going to have to pay, and instead buy lots of Federal bonds with them, then send the bond notes back to the taxpayers. Take the government off dependency on China and other foreign (especially enemy/rival) lenders. Push more American income into longterm savings. Give people a perfectly concrete return on their "tax" investment.
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American forces should leave Iraq immediately. But from now until the last American troops are gone, while America has responsibility for Iraqi security, I'd stop most of the car bombs in Iraq.
I'd make registering and operating a car in Iraq as tightly controlled as are handguns in New York state.
Every car would be registered or confiscated. Every driver licensed or arrested. Just like guns and their carriers in New York, even though New York issues far fewer gun licenses than Iraq would allow cars and drivers. But like New York State, some places would have fewer restrictions, especially on some kinds of hardware. Baghdad would be tighter controlled than Kurdish villages, just as NYC is less restricted than is upstate Columbia County. Mopeds less controlled than panel trucks or sedans, like rifles are less controlled than handguns. The extreme case is already roughly parallel, in principle if not in execution: Iraqi soldiers and police in vehicles are more tightly controlled than civilians, as are NYC cabbies and their cabs. If I were president, that would be enforced even more carefully and brutally than is NYC's dreaded (by cabbies) Taxi and Limousine Commission ("TLC", with the NY sense of humor ;).
I would enforce it whenever cars are sold, whenever drivers are pulled over, at random traffic stops all the time. But mainly I would enforce it at gas stations. Whenever someone fills up with gas, they're subject to searching their car, checking their license. And those checks would include association with militias and other violent groups. Anyone with any confirmed record of working with anyone or any group that's been proven to have fielded a car bomb is barred from operating or owning a car. Caught in violation means jailtime and investigation of the rest of your associates.
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Switch the Pentagon+intel budget with the EPA+DoE budget (giving the increase to the EPA, not the DoE). Then require the EPA and DoE to spend at least 10% of each of their budgets on joint projects that replace petrofuels with 100% renewable fuels.
Set the benchmarks for delivering at least the amount in those joint budgets in growth in the US alternative fuel product value, with a waiting period for results of 3-5 years. So if the EPA+DoE joint budget in 2009 is $20B, and the cost of all alternative fuel sold in the US is $5B, then by 2014 the cost of all alternative fuel sold in the US must be at least $25B. If they don't meet the benchmarks, then the EPA and DoE budgets should be changed to move the benchmark deficit amount from their non-joint budget into the joint budget (shrinking their other budgets by those amounts).
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I noted President-elect Obama's plan during the campaign to allow up to 10%/$15,000 of tax-deferred savings to be withdrawn without penalty. That plan is a good start, but the limit should be higher, somewhere between 50-100%. For everyone, to be fair to those of us who practiced sensible personal economics but now are put at risk and under loss by those people who practiced reckless economics. Embedded in a structure of justice, fairness and proper economic feedback, we can rehabilitate our nation's personal finances from the bottom up.
The Congress should investigate which loans were fraudulent by the lenders, and cancel those lenders' rights to collect anything but the principal on them. Those lenders should be given loans (like the Prime Rate the Fed is always dropping) at higher interest rates than those with a "good creditor rating". After years of audited performance, they can buy back their creditor rating to the level where they're treated the same as the best creditors they compete with.
Defrauded borrowers should pay an interest rate equal to the median of all loans received (excluding the fraudulent and other subprime ones) in the financial quarter in which they got their loan. Those interest payments should be paid to the government fund, not to a bank, from which wholesale loans are made to banks that they retail to consumers.
The main action to restore liquidity, and even solvency, to this mortgage system should be to allow people to borrow against their IRAs to pay off mortgages on their primary residences. The interest rate should be set as above, by the median rate they would have paid for any loan during the period they got their loan. But they'd have to pay it back to themselves, or forfeit that contribution to their IRAs. They'd have something like a year before they had to start repaying into their IRAs.
To be fair to all those people (the vast majority) who didn't take advantage of "cheap" loans too good to be true and weren't, everyone should be able to borrow against their IRAs the same way.
Some people will still fail to pay it back, and lose much (or all, depending on how much they borrow from themselves) of their IRA savings. That was supposed to fund their retirement. But otherwise they're getting their retirement protected, but can't keep their house until they retire (or they get their stupid decisions protected with no penalty, which trashes any meaning of a market economy). Better that a few people who can't manage money lose their IRAs than that they lose their house and then tap those IRAs anyway (incurring the substantial penalties, including lots of taxes to a government that failed to protect them).
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I'd require US corps to itemize the pollution byproducts of products they consume or distribute, under a quota reinvesting penalties in cleanup/mitigation
American manufacturers outsourced so much directly to China, often retaining exclusive rights to their factories' capacity, that really much of China is just overseas American manufacturing. Sent there explicitly to avoid American pollution and labor laws that could have minimized the damage.
One way to fix the whole problem would be for the US to include in the "ingredients" in imported products those pollution byproducts that are just not included in the package. And products never imported, but direct shipped from overseas manufacturing to overseas consumers. Just like all consumer food in the US has ingredient and nutrition labels, all products consumed or distributed by American corps could be required to include their pollution "content" in their itemized contents. And then apply quotas on just how much pollution American corps can pay to have produced for them, just like there are limits on their domestic smokestacks. Tax any product exceeding its quota, earmarking the income for pollution mitigation (including building levees).
Let the market do the work reducing the pollution from upstream production supported by American industry.
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I'd have the government pay each voter $5 at the polls once they completed voting, to get out the vote.
I'd make Election Day a (paid) Federal holiday for anyone showing an official "I Voted" receipt to their employer. I'd make the day a floating day anywhere in the following calendar year, as chosen by the voter. If necessary, I'd call the floating day "Presidents Day", and rescind the fixed day currently observed under that name.
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I'd replace property taxes on illiquid property (like family homes)
with a sales tax, calculated from actual services consumed, eliminating tax ballot proposals in favor of only services votes.
California's property tax system is broken. Proposition 13, for example, stops the state from obtaining a fair share of the state operating budget from the Californians who can best afford it. Without replacing the state's revenue for expenditures with some other income, like sales tax.
Even 2% per year increases in property tax base "values" is too much. After 10 years, the taxable base values sum to 210%: the total tax paid during that decade will be based on 2.1x the amount paid for the property. Over 30 years, during which the typical mortgage will have cost at least 2x the purchase price, the tax will be paid on 410% the original value. The average property tax rate in California is about 1.1%, so (410 * 1.1 * 30) about 35% of the purchase price will have been paid additionally in property taxes. Without income during that time to pay it.
California is unusual in its 2% cap (so low the state can't afford services to those homes). Maryland uses real assessment value, which increases faster than 2% (which is close to mere currency inflation). Especially in wild markets like the past decade, without income because they're raising their family, not flipping the house. They could easily have to pay double or triple their home's purchase price in taxes, plus over double the price in mortgage interest, for 5-7x+ the purchase price, over a 30 year period in which they pay their mortgage and raise kids. If their crystal ball didn't anticipate selling into a market that's hot enough, they might never come close to recouping their taxes even in an appreciated home sale when they now have to face retirement, and their work income shutting down.
Any property tax on theoretical value not derived from an actual sale is too much. Because there's no income from the property during that time, there's no money to pay the taxes. The money must come from other income, which is of course also taxed before it can be spent on property tax (and the remainder for other expenses also taxed by the state between 5-10%).
It doesn't matter if the state taxes only the value of the original purchase price against the buyer, even ignoring inflation and appreciation. There is no income from the property to pay that property tax until it's sold. So people can be forced to sell the house they just bought to pay the tax, usually by mortgaging it, which then at least doubles the amount paid (tax principal plus interest).
The state should support all its activities primarily with sales taxes. If the seller didn't have to pay some annual tax on some "market value" that's never realized, they could pay a tax when they liquidate that repays all the services they consumed. In fact, such a sales tax could be paid on actual assessed services for the property during the period in which they lived there. Some taxes like road/sidewalk maintenance specific to the home, just like when their town generates its own power and sends them a monthly bill. And some shared by the entire community, like school, police/fire/ambulance and highway taxes which are spent on the entire community's "general welfare". Voters wouldn't get to just decide they won't pay their taxes, but demand services that create debt (and community collapse when they're cut), but rather just vote for services (and officials who will deliver them), and then pay the bills when they're due at liquidation time. In the meantime, homeowners can invest the money that they're deferring in taxes instead in improving the home and its value. Deriving value from using the home, and then increasing its sale price later, to pay the taxes and keep the extra appreciation value.
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I'd require Americans working for private militaries to first serve in
the public American military.
Congress could pass a law requiring any American who works in a military equivalent "security force" like Blackwater to first serve a tour in the public military. Avoiding military service because the lifestyle, career and ethics are incompatible with one's life is a legitimate choice - so long as there are enough soldiers to defend that choice. But just doing it for a private army when there aren't enough soldiers to defend that choice is indefensible, and national suicide.
Requiring real military service before allowing private military service is a small, completely justifiable change that would improve our military and rein in these mecenaries. The training in actual military tradition and justice would help reduce abuses by these expensive international gangs. And could likely offer a basis that, combined with honor (and free, firstrate healthcare, education and pension), could make the US military competitive with private armies in the long term.
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There's 180K troops in Iraq and 200K mercenaries. I'd bring all but 45-55K troops home over 18 months, leaving some to guard Iraq's borders until Iraqis can do it themselves.
Immediately disengage completely from direct combat.
0-6 months:
* Send 30-50K troops home.
* Redeploy 40K troops to bases in Kuwait, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kurdistan for border control.
* Leave some of the 40K in an Anbar base away from Iraqi population.
* And start building a base in the Southeast swamps near Iran.
6-12 months:
* Send 60K troops home (leaving 70-90K, depending on what's needed to defend their flanks).
* All troops but 40-60K in Baghdad (to defend their flanks) to the borders.
* Redeploy 30K troops to Naval fleet in Gulf and patrolling/resupplying along rivers, and Air Force patrolling/resupplying by the skies.
12-18 months:
* Send 25-45K troops home, leaving 15-20K in Baghdad, 15K in border land bases, and 15-20K in Naval bases (including Air Force).
0-12 months:
* Send all mercenaries home as fast as possible.
* Leaving only those necessary to train Iraqis in civilian jobs like construction and training; maybe 20-30K.
By March-April 2009, only 45-55K troops (and 20-30K mercenaries) would be left, mostly controlling the border (and the remainder guarding our Baghdad diplomatic and military staff. And practically all the mercenaries would be gone.
This timeline is not only a feasible orderly withdrawal. It's also consistent with policies stated by John Murtha, McGovern/Polk (though a few stay inside Iraq/Kurdistan), and even most of the Bush/Petraeus rhetoric. It leaves Iraqis to fight/work out their own civil war. While leaving enough of our own troops there to ensure they destroy the few copycat Qaeda themselves, or we do it ourselves. And stay deployed so a legitimate Iraqi government request for a return in the event of spiraling genocide. And we take responsibility for a border we trashed by invading and destroying the only state available that could keep out foreigner instigators. Including not just Syria and Iran, but also infiltrators from our "allies". Including us.
All out. Iraq for Iraqis, until they make it their own.
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Here's an infrastructure plan to fix New Orleans' storm/flood risks, waterway controversies, and role in the global economy.
The fundamental problem with New Orleans hydrology that Katrina exploited was that Lake Pontchartrain's water has nowhere else to go but deeper into the swamps and over the levees when a storm pushes down hard on it. The secondary problems is that the levees were built so crap that they collapsed under an F3 storm. There are other problems, like designing for F3 when F5 is the requirement. And then a host of other problems, like ignoring simulations, failing to train the public, abandoning evacuation and shelter infrastructure, all the way up to an antichrist president.
But the basic problem is where to put the Pontchartrain water. MRGO could be part of the solution. During Katrina, the Mississippi didn't flood, because the regional rains weren't more than the region's hydrology could handle. MRGO could be engineered to shunt Pontchartrain water downstream to the Mississippi. The Rigolets could also be engineered to dump water directly into the Gulf. And the other swamps surrounding New Orleans could also get overflow water.
Including water from the Mississippi, if the river overflows. Though since it's usually one or the other, each could be the reservoir for the other, except in the most dire emergencies. Of which Katrina wasn't one, so there hasn't been one for many generations.
What New Orleans (and the surrounding population) needs is a better pumping system. A really big one. That pumps across another levee system that surrounds the lake. That drains into all the many other swamps. That is started up before the storm arrives to lower the lake and swamp water levels several feet, so there's extra capacity. A good amount of the drainage would have to go down the MRGO, because the Mississippi and other canals aren't enough capacity.
But the MRGO, if closed up, would be replaced by land that wouldn't have anywhere near the MRGO drainage capacity.
"Capacity levees" with extra drainage capacities, dams and locks that force water away from New Orleans when so much more water is on its way. And similar systems that, say, drain the Bayou St John and flood City Park (enlarged to convert too-risky residences into a bigger buffer) as a last resort, rather than indiscriminate flooding once some water gets in. And rails beind every levee for immediate dispatch of freight cars filled with sand. That project would cost $billions. Maybe 50, maybe 100 billion. But right away it's cheaper than the cost of another flood, which would so discourage residents and Americans that the city would be abandoned to rot (except for maybe a couple hundred thousand left to rot because they have nowhere else to go).
But even more compelling is treating that money as investment in America's future global economy. Right away, if the money is spent training Gulf Coasters how to build their own infrastructure, maintain, improve and operate it, that notoriously underperforming region would be floated into 21st Century competitiveness. And, since global warming will create global demand for these kinds of solutions, the Gulf Coast industry will lead the world supplying storm and flood mitigation around the world. Just like in the 20th Century when American demand for hydroelectric and irrigation dams catapulted us into the global lead of that industry (and the related ones of energy and agriculture infrastructure, and construction in general). Instead of the Dutch and the Chinese serving the world's "Climate Defense" demands, that could be Americans from the Gulf Coast. In the process we'd protect our own cities, from New Orleans through Houston, Biloxi, Talahassee, Miami, and eventually LA, SF, Seattle, NYC, Boston, DC...
Or we can just throw away our poorly managed infrastructure. All the many $billions invested in something that doesn't work quite right, because 90% isn't enough to stop a disaster, thrown away instead of a 10-20% change to give us 200% of what we originally planned, but now need.
Louisiana, as always, is the "belleweather" of America. If we invest there to save itself, we're saving ourselves. And turning around, with American ingenuity and investment, the greatest disaster of our lifetimes, into a world-changing opportunity.
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The Democratic Party should set each state's primary day as early as it voted in the general election consistently with the national averages, for the previous two elections. That will give the earliest influence to the most "mainstream" states. The "hit parade" of sequential primaries should wind up with a final "Super Primary Day" of all the rest, before the first primaries mathematically eliminate anyone. So no state votes in a primary knowing its vote has no effect on the outcome.
I think Super Primary Day, whenever it's calculated to fall, would be the best day around which to hold the Democratic National Convention. Finally a reason for everyone to get together, that actually serves to nominate a candidate.
By this method, using just 2004 results (the ones I have at my fingertips), Wyoming would vote 49th out of 51 (including DC). The first 10 would be, by their difference from the national result for Bush, the winner:
1: 0.0003: Nevada
2: 0.0009-: Ohio
3: 0.0077: Iowa
4: 0.0089: New Mexico
5: 0.0103-: Colorado
6: 0.0135: Wisconsin
7: 0.0141-: Florida
8: 0.0175: New Hampshire
9: 0.0227: Pennsylvania
10: 0.0259-: Missouri
With multiple states per primary day, most of those states would vote first. And the bottom 20 or so would probably have to wait for Super Primary Day at the convention to see their choice, and how they determined the candidate:
30: 0.0733-: South Carolina
31: 0.0775: Maryland
32: 0.0834-: Montana
33: 0.0837-: Mississippi
34: 0.0882-: Kentucky
35: 0.0918-: South Dakota
36: 0.0925-: Indiana
37: 0.1044-: Texas
38: 0.1049-: Alaska
39: 0.1063: New York
40: 0.1127-: Kansas
41: 0.1175: Vermont
42: 0.1176-: Alabama
43: 0.1196: Rhode Island
44: 0.1213-: North Dakota
45: 0.1380: Massachusetts
46: 0.1484-: Oklahoma
47: 0.1525-: Nebraska
48: 0.1779-: Idaho
49: 0.1827-: Wyoming
50: 0.2091-: Utah
51: 0.4136: D.C.
Those last to vote have the least influence over the other primaries, but they are the least mainstream in their selection. And they get to be the states to decide who is actually the candidate, while the earliest don't have the benefit of as many other fellow Democrats to guide them.
This is by far the fairest ordering method. Perhaps the only fair order that still preserves the nearly as important progress of a campaign season, its sequence of different states to which candidates must pitch, and its horseraces that draw media attention and that of the whole electorate.
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I'd fix the legal system to weed out frivolous attorneys and their vexatious clients.
Any lawyer who brings 3 frivolous lawsuits should be disbarred. In fact, after 2 suits in any 10 years have been determined by a judge to be frivolous, they should be suspended for a year.
To encourage opposing lawyers to persuade the judge to find their opponent frivolous, the lawyer making the charge should receive not only all court costs for their winning client from the losing client, but they should receive the same amount as a bonus from the proven frivolous attorney. To protect attorneys, and to ensure they take even risky clients who aren't actually frivolous, the appeals process of a "frivolous" verdict should likewise return the same double costs to the winning attorney and client.
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I'd reform the Federal Reserve by pegging the wholesale rate to their retailed performance, weighted by social values.
The Fed shouldn't just cut rates to encourage banks to keep credit flowing to the markets that require it. The Fed should cut rates and require banks shrink their profits to the minimum. Banks made so much money, with so little risk, just reselling the Fed's debt, that they've posted unprecedented profits through the "Bush Decession". Those bank profits have hidden the losses everyone else (except Halliburton) has had to bear. Now let banks scrape by while they play their required role in keeping the rest of us afloat. They can afford it.
Anyone who tells us that minimizing bank profits will give them no reason to make loans is just a lying shill for the banks. Minimum profit is better than no profit. And if the Fed prohibits a profiteer bank from getting the best wholesale rate to retail to the public, that bank will issue as many loans as it can. These shills are the same people who say that rich people paying another 3% in taxes won't have sufficient motivation to earn the 97% (or 67%) they keep.
In fact, the fundamental reform this latest credit crunch should force is pegging their wholesale Fed rate to retail lender performance. The Fed should review the performance of the retailed loan in the recipient in which it was invested. The better performers should get their retailers a better score. Those scores should be weighted by the return to the national interest of the final performance. For example, perfect repayments on a $100K mortgage to a family's first home should score better than perfect repayments on $100K loaned to someone whose startup business returned no more profit than the loan interest. Maybe bonus points for first time homeowners whose ancestors never before owned a home, or who also put their kids through college. There's an entire hierarchy of values these Federal loans ultimately support that should be recognized in encouraging more of them.
Instead, today we just hand out loans to people already favored more than those redlined, then forgive their lenders when those "good risks" squander the money.
The Federal Reserve isn't just a big bank in the sky to which investors pray for rain. It's Americans' bank. It should at least protect individual Americans more than it protects the corporations.
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I'd fix "unaccountable judges" with Judicial Peer Review.
Judges have too much unaccountable faith placed in them. Even the rightwing attack on "activist judges" leverages (in the wrong direction, as typical) the accurate perception that judges' power is too autocratic.
Judicial decisions should be subject to peer review. A statistically significant sample of each judge should be reviewed fairly frequently. Say, on a cycle from 2-6 years, depending on an analysis by actual judiciary experts convened by Congress. Congress should maintain a subcommittee that operates the random sampling, redacts identifying details (if possible) that would personalize the analysis, and conducts a review by a large national constituency of other judges, lawyers, academics and professional associations. The running score would be admissible in lawsuits brought to challenge whether a judge could hear a given case, as well as more serious impeachment cases. And would count up cumulatively against a score that would remove a judge automatically. Of course all decisions, including each case's score, would be subject to appeal. But truly bad judges would face more pressure to resign. Or be removed and sacrifice their pension.
I'd also offer bonus pay for judges who retire early, regardless of their record, balanced against any shortage of experienced judges. Maybe just offer to prepay their annual pensions (to their average life expectancy) all at once. Some good ones will retire, but, especially faced with an accumulating score against them, many more bad ones will leave rather than face disgrace without a pension.
One basic problem with our Constitutional system is that the Judicial Branch does not have to negotiate with Congress often enough. It's mostly just Senate confirmations and annual budget begging. This consequential peer review system, along with devolving most of the Executive's Justice Department functions into (mostly) the Legislative and (the truly "Justice" functions, not just investigation and law enforcement) into the Judicial, would fix much of the unbalanced powers (mostly grabbed by the Executive) that conspire to create so much of the injustice we face. But the Constitution accommodates these rebalances without revising the document. All it takes is Congress to act. To protect itself and the Judicial Branch from all three branches.
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I'd eliminate the income tax system entirely, replaced by a consumption tax with exceptions for simple, universal necessities. This plan addresses most of the problems with taxation. And it's fundamentally fair, by addressing the "two Americas" problem. Not all income (or expenses) are equal. Everyone has to spend on the necessities, after which higher quality and truly discretionary purchases are available to those with extra money for it. My tax system makes everyone equal in buying true necessities, even encouraging those who provide them, so they can provide them cheaper, amidst more competition. While everyone with extra money is justly taxed the same for buying "luxuries".
The basis is a sales tax on every sales transaction. Something like 25% total, split between Federal, state and local governments. There are some exempt transactions, though. Basic necessities for everyone: food, shelter, clothing, education, basic utilities, healthcare, basic transportation would be exempt.
So groceries or any raw food requiring preparation (even if just peeling the fruit) would be exempt. Cloth, thread and tools like sewing machines purchased for end-use (making your own clothing) would be exempt. As would be education by any government accredited organization - plus professional training can apply for exemption.
Charges paid in the bottom 20th percentile (eg, the price is within the range paid by the lowest 20% of those transactions) in the local Congressional District would be exempt, for shelter, utilities and healthcare:
* Renting or purchasing a primary residence.
* Utilities charges (including the Internet) on those homes.
* Private transportation costs, including vehicle purchase/lease, required maintenance and fuel (bottom 20th percentile)
* 100% of public transit, including shared carpooling (driver + 2 or more unrelated passengers)
Further, wholesale transactions would pay a lower rate, maybe 5-10%. And pure equities transactions (including options and derivatives) would pay a very small rate to keep markets liquid, perhaps 0.01%, except where controlling ownership is transferred, which would pay the 15% retail rate.
The US has a $15T economy. Something like 65% is consumer spending, 35% corporate, and probably something like 50% of corporate is wholesale; so something like 80% is at 25%, with the wholesale 20% at something like 10%. Even if the cutouts for necessities reduce the retail taxes to more like 23% of all retail money, that's something like $2.76T, wholesale something like $0.3T, for over $3T. We currently spend over $3.5T Federally, including Iraq and a ton of corporate welfare, as well as health insurance the government should pay instead. We should be able to get our budgets well below $3T, while improving services (like not killing thousands of Americans in war). Plus, the abolition of the IRS will reduce the cost of collecting these taxes, instead collecting taxes from a much more manageable/auditable population of much fewer sellers than the current crop of all adult Americans.
Meanwhile, taxing sales rather than income is a strong incentive to save. And a strong incentive to invest in lower taxed equities. All of which gets Americans to grow our buying power. And reduce waste. While also encouraging people into self sufficiency, which will probably reduce welfare expenses and social dependency.
Also, the abolition of the IRS means more than just a more manageable system. It will therefore also mean much higher compliance. Corporations will pay more of their share. And the government will no longer routinely invade some of the most private affairs of every citizen every year. Which will also return much business development and investment to real business value, rather than to exploit loopholes in the tax code. While eliminating the volumes of "social engineering" tax breaks will allow the government to merely directly fund programmes that it can measure to solve problems. And of course those lost loopholes will also reduce the bribery and corruption that produces them for favored cronies.
Then there's the productivity of Americans who will get at least a day or two a year back from the tax filing deadline ritual. Instead of paying "tax preparers" so much, we can spend that on ourselves.
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I propose how to restructure the Justice Department.
The essential problem in the small scale, Gonzales' runaway "Justice" Department, should have been obvious in Watergate's central flashpoint between Nixon and Congress: the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon fired a series of Attorneys General who wouldn't stop the Watergate investigation, until he got one who'd "play ball", Robert Bork (still sleazing up the scene). Today we have the reverse, but just the flipside of the same problem: a criminal AG who won't quit covering up his president's crimes.
Congress must require that all executives, certainly at the Cabinet level, who require Congressional confirmation for appointment, require Congressional confirmation for dismissal. Maybe "bookending" Senate hearings. Maybe committee votes, maybe joint committees. But not just the president "advising" Congress that he's firing them. If we had that rule in place to protect the US Attorneys from getting fired by a groupthink political consensus designed by Republican election strategies, we wouldn't be playing catchup with so much damage and wasted time. There's probably a middle manager level of appointees down to which Congress can apply oversight with teeth to prevent political firing of all Americans' public servants.
In the big picture, the DoJ now obviously must be truly independent of the Executive. Its power and size under the Executive, rather than mostly under either Congress or the Judiciary, is a severe mutation of our balanced branches structure. Most of DoJ should be moved to Congress and Justice. Mostly to Justice for the "production" work of legal analysis, except for decisionmakers whose interests don't conflict enough with their controlling branch. Most of the rest to Congress, expanded into oversight directly integrated in the critical path of its procedures. With only actual executives, responsible to Congress and the courts, left in the Executive Branch.
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Healthcare in the 21st Century should become like education became in the 20th Century: so universal in its required basics that everyone takes it for granted.
The Federal government should specify a "minimum healthcare guarantee" like the minimum wage, that every American citizen gets from birth (and when a mother, prenatal). The Federal government should pay all services under those standards, the hospitals billing the government directly and just sending a copy of the bills to the patient "FYI". The actual billing and payment services should be administered by each state, to make it structured and manageable, avoiding a "one size fits all" for 300M people across a continent.
Then each state should compete with the other states in offering extra healthcare free for residents, or to anyone else the state decides, including commuters, vacationers, or anyone else the state wants to attract. States would compete with each other for the most valuable residents or visitors interested in getting the "optional" packages by meeting the state's individual requirements, though everyone would get the required basics. Which would mean basic health "insurance" would never lapse, as it would be completely uniform across the country. Switching among extra benefits would be like getting a new license plate for your car when moving to a new state.
The Federal government should offer to veterans the best payment package in each state. Between top healthcare and education for free, the military would once again attract some of America's best people, towards patriotic people with families and plans for a life after the military.
Private insurance would still have plenty of business above and beyond what each state offers. Shortsighted states offering just the minimum Federal coverage ("no new taxes") will still offer private insurance for the rest. Private insurers might offer special insurance to classes of risks, like smokers, motorcyclists without helmets, experimental procedure patients, or vacationers, the way people buy collision/liability insurance when renting a car.
But everyone will have minimum healthcare guaranteed, the way we now have minimum education guaranteed. With the costs spread across everyone, minus the profit to the financiers, costs will go way down. And with a government more accountable to the people than insurance corporations ever will be, the people can manage the costs better.
We already have the basics of this system: Medicare and Medicaid. The system I'm describing can learn from the Canadian model of per-province health coverage. Americans can finally strike paying for being sick and getting old from our list of worries, and our corporations can get out of the healthcare/finance business and just do whatever their actual business calls for.
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I'd fix the airport congestion problemsfor fuel
efficiency, security, ensured baggage delivery, less hassles.
Many air travel "delays" are also a scam to coverup the airlines' overbooking not just flights with seats, but also gates with planes. So another "fuel efficiency" play is laws that prohibit that overbooking. Even just applying the "truth in advertising" laws would fix it.
There is also a tech fix to make the de/boarding process faster. Airports should all have moving sidewalks to every gate from the security gate, with their exact transit times reported every time the passenger gets a notice. Some slackers will still arrive late, thinking they can run on the belts to catch up, but that would minimize the straggler delay. I'm sure the airlines have some scam related to baggage that's why they force us to walk miles with dozens of pounds of carryon, but that should get sacrificed for fuel efficiency, too.
In fact, we should ship all baggage separately from passengers, anyway. We should ship baggage ahead of time, on cargo flight circuits, picked up by FedEx/etc or their own carrier. Those bags could also get shipped by rail or water for extra efficiency. When we get a receipt that our bags have arrived ahead, we'll lose much less luggage, or at least have the airlines send another bag at their expense ahead of time, so we're not left without their contents. The cargo planes can be much more efficient, more async in scheduling, combined into a route for efficiency, not heated/pressurized/fed. And the security benefits of examination without the urgency of a waiting passenger, plus the much lower target risk of a cargo plane, means that the passengers can breeze through security. All of which combines for much less fuel consumed, both in the distribution and security processes, per passenger. While clearing possibly double the passenger capacity per plane. And, since the baggage portion is async, spreads the load around the daily schedule more. All of which means more profit for airlines, including lower fuel per passenger costs.
Another big step would be literally pre-boarding passengers. The gates should seat people in actual "cartridges" that fit the fuselage of the plane. When a plane arrives, passengers are already seated, the plane releases its incoming seating section cartridges into one side of the gate, while cycling the outgoing cartridges into the outgoing plane. The entire passenger cycling could take 10 minutes, with cleaning at the airport among extra cartridges offline rather than in realtime in the cramped plane. Empty planes just traveling to another airport without passengers could fly lighter with no cartridges.
And better routing IT could tighten all that complexity. There's no way airlines are matching the ideal routing, because they're so generally incompetent, especially when interconnecting between different people, controlled by different personnel. Every time passengers wait around is inefficiency, and there's surely a lot of that.
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I've got a farm program that makes farmers into a progressive base for conservation, sustainable energy independence, and mutual self-reinvestment.
- Renewable Energy (Biomass
Biomass programs, not just corn ethanol. Federal biomass processing facilities inputting into the Federal Strategic "Petroleum" Reserve that prioritize purchasing American biomass at the same price as the equivalent energy content of oil. Low (or zero) interest loans to biomass producers for equipment to produce it, and to consume it for all their energy consumption, including very local distribution. And switch all government vehicles/machines to consume that biomass.
- Healthier Crop Encouragement
Federal diet research that promotes the American crops both healthiest for consumers and most sustainable and profitable for American farmers - with least dependence on foreign oil for pesticides, fertilizer, machine fuel etc. And with least dependence on immigrant labor. Then mandate that Federal money spent on any program, even if it's just building a school, not buying its cafeteria food, buy any food according to those guidelines.
- New Farmers' Land and Small Operations Credit
Education loans to people who commit to working underserved farm lands. Low interest rates determined by academic performance. New loans/grants to top performers for starting farming careers. Invested farmers pay extra to repay their investments, after double-quintuple their academic career spent farming. For extra community growth, transition the Federal program to one funded more by successful program graduates.
- Cap Big Farms' Federal Subsidies
Of course. How about defining "big farms" as "top 2/3 of profitable farms per acre" (or some more appropriate scaling unit)?
- Conserve Lots of Undeveloped Land
Here's a truly "conservative" government programme that isn't just a bait & switch brand game. Start by renovating waterways, then buy their banks for parks, extending to the watersheds. Invest in equipment for accessing the land, like campers, that locals (eg. within a county or two nearby) use free, subsidized by rentals that locals can promote to visitors for a commission.
Let's make America's land stewardship into self-sustaining community self-interest.
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Political parties are private clubs. Primaries are the way these clubs pick their candidate. The clubs each have their own rules, different from each other. Picking in a ballot that looks like a general election is up to the club, which could pick by lottery otherwise.
The real problem with primaries is that they are already too institutionalized as if they were a public government function. Which is part of the overall scam of political parties, making them a pillar of the political process when they're conspiracies to control power outside the Constitutional system. If anything, these primaries should be entirely private, governed by the kinds of laws that govern other clubs, but not funded or subsidized by the public except the way perhaps other clubs sometimes are.
The idea that "independents need a primary, too" is not entirely bad, given the unwarranted power the parties actually have in our system. The way to do it is to have an independent primary, with no party whatsoever, which has its own candidates based on the same kind of minimal standards the other parties have. In which anyone not registered to any party can vote.
The lowest number of petition signatures required by any recognized party for its primary, no matter how small, would get any independent candidate onto the independent ballot. Writeins also allowed, if allowed in any recognized party's primary. These entrance requirements could be amended to any proposed criteria by independent referendum for the next primary.
The winner of the independent primary would win a place on the general election ballot, just like the parties. Benefitting from the primary promotional and weeding-out process just like the parties do. The alternate methods for getting on the general ballot without party affiliation, or even newly-contrived parties (like Lieberman) would remain in place, if there's enough public support without the primary promotion. But those already vetted by an independent primary would have the kind of momentum that those vetted in party primaries have.
That kind of normalization of independents would kill the lock that party candidates have on access to general voters. Since the lack of party "get out the vote" apparatus (as well as the apathy represented by not registering with a party at all) in the independent primary will probably make for smaller independent turnout in that primary. Which means that really marginal candidates, still more popular than the other independents, still have a chance to get equal consideration on the general ballot as the slick party candidates.
Independents already pay out of public funds for party primaries from which they don't benefit. The public should pay for the independents to primary. With independents already more numerous than Republicans, and probably more numerous than Democrats within a generation, it will fair only for the public to pay for independent primaries, not necessarily for party primaries for dwindling private clubs.
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The Constitution specifies all the powers a president and government have. If it's not in the Constitution, the power doesn't exist. The Constitution doesn't give the government power to invade our privacy. It doesn't create even fuzzily-interpretable powers that can invade our privacy without due process of law.
Which means reasonable searches, which means probably cause, which means evidence or strongly credible testimony to a judge on record, challengable by the defense, who takes responsibility for invading that privacy. On which reasonable search is based admissibility of any evidence produced.
Just to be certain that such privacy protection was unmistakable, the Constitution was immediately amended to include the 4th Amendment, which explicitly states that our privacy rights in our persons, homes, papers and effects must be protected by the government, not invaded. Because the Constitution signers knew from recent experience with George III the tyrant that governments will exploit any possible ambiguity to violate our privacy to abuse us with whatever they find, or with just the invasion itself.
But even that 4th Amendment wasn't enough. That's why we have extra laws like the 1974 Privacy Act, to reverse the damage done by American tyrants like Richard Nixon. The FISA law was another "patch".
Obviously now those mere laws aren't enough to stop a criminal tyrant like Bush. He's been breaking them for years, as we now know, and is even "proud" of it (part of his defensive coating of attitude over legality).
We need a Privacy Amendment to the Constitution. It's long overdue. It's now clear that Nixon's crimes required such an amendment, because the flimsy substitutes haven't protected us.
The privacy of the people in their homes, persons, papers, effects, property and information about them shall not be violated, except as Congress shall specify before the actions, within the due process of the law, to accommodate emergencies and overwhelming threats of clear and present danger, as determined by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Congress can then create a law creating a Senate committee (of senators) proportional to the House party membership, composition voted by the whole House, which can specify a panel of experts like the FISA. The panel can review each exception, make recommendations to the Senate panel, which votes on them. The House can vote out the Senate panel and reconstitute it whenever it wants. Matters of "national security emergency" can use FISA rules to immediately act, so long as the Senate committee grants a warrant within 72 hours. Penalties for bad exceptions granted without justifying a warrant within 72 hours, especially if "frequently" abused (like more than 5 a week, or more than 10%, or some combination) can include criminal investigations and penalties. Senators colluding with such abuse can face censure and removal from the committee.
Another reasonable, overdue law under that new Constitutional clause would protect our personal info:
Any personal info submitted by a person to another person or organization shall be confidential to the transaction to which it was submitted, not to be further distributed either within or beyond the receiving organization, or stored longer than the duration of the original transaction, except when explicitly authorized by the submitter.
With that protection, and the criminal penalties for violating it, the local/state/Federal police and justice agencies will have the tools to track and prosecute ID thieves, fraudsters, phishers, spammers, and all kinds of abusers in the Info Age. Instead of pretending to fight terrorism while real criminals terrorize and damage us and the infosphere in which we live, the government will actually protect us from real, and increasing damage to our increasingly essential privacy.
The US pioneered the distinction between public and private, and their relationship. The private is sacrosanct, clearly divided from the public. The public answers to the private. The public is charged by the aggregate private of all Americans to police individual private domains, under strict laws that favor the private over the public, except when proof in the face of adversity is obtained. We have slipped woefully back into the medieval divine right of kings under pressure from Bush, Nixon, and their "unitary executive" tyranny corps. We have to act now to force the government we create to always protect our privacy instead of routinely violating it.
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The US should redeploy its troops to border control of Iraq. Now Republicans are copying Murtha's plan, which is as close as possible to McGovern's plan without its full 90% withdrawal (essential to McGovern's plan, but its fatal flaw, though not as important to consensus). So there's rough consensus for withdrawal/redeployment "to the perimeter", though the mission there is still undefined. That mission should be border control and standby for support in the event of new crises appropriate to our status as an Iraqi ally with a mutual security pact. I have a detailed plan under s aimple strategy for exiting Iraq
We should withdraw from Iraq's interior to occupy bases in neighboring countries, except on the Iranian and Syrian borders. Bases inside our "allies" Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, and Turkey, with camps just inside the Iraqi border for control of the mutual border, in conjunction with our allies existing border control. Naval support in the Persian Gulf, and river bases for protecting supply lines. Railroads and highways for rapid redeployment across the country.
Syrian and Iranian borders require deployment solely inside Iraq. But those long borders are largely Kurdistan, which should be treated as a US ally like the foreign states. US support of their border control also would position us to reach back into the Iraqi interior, while also "keeping the Kurds honest", as we would with legitimate integration with all our allied "neighbors" in the region. Bases in Jordan, Turkey, and on the Euphrates and at Rutbah near Jordan complete the base perimeter with Syria, and naval bases on the lakes near Iran in the South complete the perimeter with Iran. American satellites, air and land patrols complete the reconaissance to call in backup in the event of incidents.
Most troops should be occupied solely providing cover to reconstruction, also worked by US troops and Iraqi contractors rather than the fat American contractors outside the chain of command and the reach of any law. That will bring engagement with saboteurs, inculding intelligence infiltration, which can destroy their networks.
And it will keep foreigner out of Iraq's civil war, including American foreigners. Let Iraqis fight among themselves if they want. They've got an elected representative government, even if they want to throw it away like we did our Articles of Confederation. And the chance to see how bad the alternative "sectarian" infighting is for everyone, like we did with our own bloody civil war. Meanwhile, we are keeping out the foreigners whose only goal is to incite civil war, terrorism, and attacks on US troops before an Iraqi audience.
The US should redeploy immediately (over the next 3 months), though at first keep a 20K force remaining in Baghdad even after the redeployment. That force could be withdrawn over the following 10-14 months, unless a majority of the Iraqi parliament votes in support of the Iraqi PM for a specific plan created by their government justifying a longer stay for specific missions, only if the basic security plans fail to train something like 50K Iraqi police and "national guard".
We should be able to withdraw down to a force of first 100K, then 70K after the 3 month redeployment. After a year, down to 50K. That's about the order of scale of our "DMZ" forces elsewhere, like on the Egypt/Israel and N/S Korean borders. We should abandon those positions, too, and withdraw from most of the world (except Afghanistan), but that's another post for another BushCo crisis story.
This framework also protects Iraqis who the US train. Even better would be paying neighbors from the allied countries to train the Iraqis, forging lasting trade relationships while investing in those neighbors to develop those links. We should be able to show Iraqis their country has definition without Saddam, but is defined by them. While they're killing each other, we can show them what they can have today, together, if they build instead of fight. Combined with the barriers to instigators, the country's problems will be presented to its people to "sort out" among themselves.
We've been actively destroying Iraq for at least 3 years, and more or less passively for over 16 years, including the devastation of Iraq War Sr. We're probably facing at least 5 years of direct intervention, at least at their borders. Maybe 10 years, if their civil war lasts longer than ours did. And maybe within that 10 years they'll redefine their political situation so we have to come up with yet another plan. But we have to put them directly in charge, by leaving a power vacuum into which they can move. If it turns out that our (literally) "constructive disengagement" undercuts a constitutional republican democracy, perhaps letting theocrats install sharia or a warlord replace Saddam, we'll have to pick a side, or at least a side to attack militarily. But at least we'll have political and strategic leverage to do so, unlike any other plan which either destroys Iraq or leaves it to be destroyed. Neither of which we can afford, in either security, political, diplomatic or economic terms.
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House Representatives are chosen by too large a group of voters to accurately represent them. It's now about 400K:1. Since vanishingly few Americans can relate to any group larger than 30K, if that, in any distinction up to 1M, we should make Reps represent the scale of a town or small city. 1 Rep for every 30K people would mean 10K Reps. That would both represent people better, and create the "management bandwidth" for the House to actually process a lot more business without bottlenecking. And offer enough personnel that they could work at overseeing each other's groups, in competition for each other's budgets.
That many Representatives would also require changing the attendance for voting. We would have to let them vote from their home districts. So we could even force them to spend at least 67% of each year's weeks in their district each year.
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We should set all elected representatives' salaries at exactly the median of their constituents' incomes. To raise their incomes, they'd have to raise the incomes of at least the upper half of their constituency. We should pay them their entire term's income up front, and an extra term's income if they decline reelection. That would attract investors in the future. We should set their pension to 80% of their constituents' income, too, cutting it off at Social Security retirement age. And prohibit any other income other than return on investment in US government instruments. Then audit them on the same schedule as their office's election cycle.
We'd equate politicians' income to that of their constituency. The payment schedule would strongly attract planners and investors in the public. Anyone "in it for the money" would get only the money everyone knows. Bonus for not running for reelection. The maximum cost of these salaries would be under $10B:y, as about 15K working officials cost about $40K:y, and about 20 years of retirees cost about $32K:y. To spend about $2T:y, or earning 0.5% of the budget for 0.1% of the people. That's 5x the per capita expenses for controlling 1/6 the economy, which makes the entire industry more efficient than the overall economy, even carrying 95% of its members in retirement.
Throw in the free office in their constituency (where they'd spend at least 67% of the weeks each year) the free (shared) office and snazzy home in DC, combined with up to 33% of their entertainment (in DC) free. And that government health insurance they'd get to taste before returning to the private sector, which would inspire them to take it with them by giving it to us.
I think there's lots of ways to start getting to that model. The first might be starting with the 67% "in district" requirement, which is a great way for a real "outsider" to "run against Washington". It favors candidates whose constituents want them in town, rather than in the DC bubble, which is a campaign advantage, so it's accessible. If the 67% is part of a publicly known program branded with marketing, then we can encourage the passage of the rest.
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