H
hohenseerick@yahoo.com
Guest
PLATFORM RICK HOHENSEE FOR PRESIDENT edited May
07
One must look at my platform in totality. Parts of it will impinge on
a particular individual negatively. One must make an assessment of
the overall effect. This is especially true, for example, as pertains
to something like "labor policy". I have no explicit labor policy,
but have several proposals that dramatically favor people typically
categorized as "labor". This is how problems are solved; by breaking
them into smaller and smaller problems, solving the smaller problems,
and letting the little things take care of the big things. Most
politicians, however, have no interest in solutions at all. Most are
lawyers, and make their money perpetuating problems. 3/4 of Congress,
for example, voted to invade Iraq.
Based on what I know from an adult Internet account, basic cable,
modest but extremely varied everyday experience, and various print
and broadcast media, I want to be President so that I can try to...
In short, give the USA a much-needed overhaul.
In the contemplated short emergency term replacing a profligate
President for a period of less than two years, my emphasis will be
diplomacy and law enforcement, and this platform expresses
legislative positions that may not get their deserved emphasis. This
is particularly true of financial policies. A tax code
simplification may be feasible as preparation to something more
fundamental, like a federal sales tax.
SPECIFICS (in very roughly top-down priority) (my basic Iraq
plan is the next few paragraphs)
Get out of Iraqi cities immediately, including vacating the Green
Zone, and retire to functions of a regional interim federal
government, until the cities form regional alliances analagous to,
and perhaps with external, nations, as they, the representatives of
the Iraqi cities and sub-regions, see fit. This may involve a turf
trade between Shi'a and Kurd areas of Iran, for example. If Iraq
chooses to reform as Iraq, make it as easy as possible for the new
Iraq to be a secular democratic republic at the federal level.
(Jan '06) Jack Murtha's epochal 6-month withdrawal proposal is
basically a military _expression of the above political framework.
His "quick-strike force" and an "over-the-horizon presence of
Marines" is my 'functions of state and federal governments'. My
withdrawal is within Iraq, however. Murtha wants completely out ASAP.
I'm one step less abrupt.
Reaffirm that the "war on terror" is mostly diplomacy and police
work when prosecuted by the competent, and only becomes all-out war
when prosecuted by the incompetent and/or corrupt. (Jan '06)
Desperate right-wingers are now in the habit of justifying any and
everything by noting that we are at war. We need to call it off.
Claiming that some group declared war on the former USA on 9-11 gives
said groups far too much credence as an opponent.
Hand over Halliburton functions in Iraq to the US military and
mideastern engineering firms. Let Iraqis rebuild Iraq. Reduce US
funding for the purpose of rebuilding Iraq by a factor of 4, paid
directly to locals. I expect this to get 10 times as much
accomplished at 1/10 the cost.
Similarly localize the flow of FEMA money into the gulf region.
Guarantee jobs to soldiers injured in Iraq, with preference for
aquisitions roles in the Pentagon, such as making sure Halliburton
recieves funds due to them.
Arrest and prosecute George Walker Bush for crimes against humanity
under US law, most notably the violation of the UN Charter, which is
US law, in the failure to get Security Council approval of a violent
invasion. Note also that creating a 'doctrine of preemptive war" is
plain thuggery and has no effect on the inate and inarguable
criminality of an unprovoked invasion.
Signal the end of anglophone imperialist belligerence by isolating
and peacefully dismantling the Zionist proxy political establishment
in Palestine. Isolate Israel, in other words.
Pressure Israel to relinquish its nuclear weapons. We can't disallow
nukes to Iran et cetera if Israel has them.
Fire all Bush/Reagan appointees in the Executive Branch. Work
diligently to destroy every legislator that voted for the invasion of
Iraq, and are thus complicitous with a major war crime and disgrace
of the USA. (Nov '05) There is one class of Bush appointee that is of
particular interest for retention. Those who have quit or been fired.
I am of course speaking of the Gunns, the refugees from a corrupted
CIA, and so on, not the Michael "It's Not My Job" Brownies.
Unilaterally or otherwise liberate Darfur from the "Sudan"
"government" in Khartoum. (I had suggested a no-fly-zone over Darfur.
This has since been agreed to.) (July 05) There has been some
semblance of a change of regime in Khartoum, I believe. I will
revisit this issue as President with better information, and the
understanding that the epochal cultural seam between East and West
currently runs through Sudan. (Nov. 05) The situation in Sudan is
deteriorating once again. Remind the Khartoum government that there
are certain standards even in the Sahel that must be met to be
considered the government of a people. Provide Darfuris with
defensive weapons such as low-cost .22 caliber rimfire pistols and
..22 caliber rimfire manual action rifles.
Un-offshore America's corporate tax base. I've heard sheltered
offshore income is on the order of 10 trillion dollars. If that's
even remotely true, fixing that problem can basically solve all the
former USA's fiscal problems.
Visit New Orleans for about a continuous week, and render its
recovery sustainable. Address the subsidence issue of all similar
regions. For New Orleans in particular, my current thinking is that
it should be in-filled to sea-level using fill provided by barge
and/or rail, beginning along levees and proceeding over the long term
until the entire city drains by gravity. That is an earthwork in the
few billions of dollars. The drainage canals also strike me as a
severe mis-design, such they they should be dry canals with pumping
stations at their outfall ends. When I get to New Orleans, Senators
Landrieu and Vitter will want to avoid me, which they are welcome to
do.
Investigate allegations of bombings of the New Orleans levees.
FEMA's role in the early phases of an emergency is to be one of
passive auditor and passive money provider, with the utter inability
to prevent anything. FEMA must be prevented from preventing anything
when hours are lives. FEMA must be enabled to smile sweetly and cut
billions of dollars in checks to the likes of Gov. Blanco and Mayor
Nagin without question, but with full expectation of reportage of
where the money went when the dust clears. Think Federal Emergency
Money Auditors.
The Coast Guard will be tasked with creating a hurricane follower
fleet to provide most time-critical relief, communications and
surveillance at the trailing edge of all hurricanes making landfall.
Said fleet may be offered to neighbor nations in severe cases. Said
fleet should contemplate a 'Katrita' scenario, and should contemplate
high-wind aerial surveillance, water and other
hour-timescale-critical supply, emergency ship-generated electricity,
hospital capability, and a general expectation of the unexpectable.
Replace the Pledge of Alliegance with daily recitals of varying
paragraphs of the Constitution. People that like oaths of subjugation
can pledge their allegiance to the students every day. If you can't
live without the Pledge of Allegiance, join the Marine Corps.
Provide every public school student in grades 5 and up a copy of
the Constitution every year. Include dissemination of explanations of
phrases like "writ of mandamus" and "letters of marque and reprisal"
(which latter I personally don't currently understand, by the way)
which occur in the Constitution. There is an effort under way to put
a synopsis of the constitution on paper currency. This also might
better be a matter of varying excerpts.
Overhaul the White House press corps to exclude the major war
infomercial networks; Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS and so on. I'll probably
limit that access to newswire services, Mother Jones, The Nation, Al
Jazeera and so on. That is, credible outlets.
Reduce legacy government secrets as closely as possible to nothing.
That is, I will massively reduce "classified information",
particularly older documents, probably everything over 5 years old
except for nuclear technologies and similar. Set up a periodic
challenge and review system for classified information to remain
classified on about a 5-year periodicity, with increasingly difficult
tests and decreasing periodicity to remain classified as time passes.
A jury-like mechanism may well also be useful for this purpose. This
could be a Judicial Branch matter.
Semi-legalize drugs. Implement a closely controlled
self-prescription program for adults to use such drugs as cocaine,
heroin (and/or opium), marijuana and penicillin. That is, I will call
off the corrupt counter-democratic drug war and de-glamorize
narcotics. Drugs are for sick people. Sick people can obtain drugs
cost-effectively in a healthy society. This will reduce the US black
market economy, reduce the outflow of capital from the country,
improve the image of small business, improve patient information
recieved by doctors from their patients, vastly reduce the area of
the world hostile to the US, reduce medical costs, reduce the use of
needles, wipe out several rogue militaries in Latin America, and many
other unimaginable benefits one would expect from choosing to
discontinue losing a war. PCP and similarly destructive toxins will
not be legalized, nor will truly sophisticated drugs actually
requiring a doctor to even understand the accepted purpose of. I
don't think any amphetamines such as meth and ecstasy will be legal
(self-prescribeable) at this point. The LEAP group, Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition, leap.cc on the Internet, has useful information
and contacts on this issue.
Remove the degenerate military term "intelligence" from what the
CIA claims to do. Replace it with the degenerate military-style term
"strinfo", a contraction of "strategic information".
De-commission the CIA entirely, and un-authorize them totally,
immediately. Out them all in about 6 months. Re-deploy them if they
choose to hang on under INS. The counter-proliferation forces may
reconstitute under the Nuclear Regulatory Agency or similar.
Otherwise, if a CIA agent or analyst wants to go to work for another
strinfo agency, of which there are some 14 in the Executive Branch,
they will have to get personal approval from me, and I'll be very
busy with other things. The Legislature is currently (Sept. 04)
fiddling with the CIA organizational chart. That's not going to make
me listen to their garbage reports. (Nov 04) The CIA is basically
fired anyway by their own total lack of credibility. With the
internal shenanigans going on there now firing them all will probably
be the most humane option. The current US intelligence problem would
largely be solved by a President that can use a web browser and
search engine. There will be some premium placed on
counter-proliferation agents seeking re-assignment. (Nov '05) The
CIA's concentration camp network is in fact not surprising, and
doesn't effect this platform item. This item was based on such
assumptions.
In particular, eliminate covert operations outside actual war zones
immediately. Such behavior is well beneath the greatest and most
powerful nation ever, and if you are so patriotic that you want to
commit psychopathic acts for your country, you should be willing and
expectant to die or spend the rest of your life in a small cage in
Asia to do so. The US will only remain the world's sole superpower if
it does so with some sense of fair play, and the CIA has no such
sense.
Naturalization of undocumented immigrants becomes an issue of
documentation. Biometrically identify every non-citizen on US soil I
can get my hands on. Emphasize undocumented aliens in lieu of the
dehumanizing term "illegal". Aliens are entitled to basic human
rights, but security and other concerns greatly compromise further
rights of aliens. Naturalization thus becomes a matter of good
behavior for a significant period of time, i.e. a matter of
very-long-term personal accountability.
Promote the vote for ex-criminals. There are too many election
abuses now and abuses of the term "felon" to disenfranchise
ex-felons. Conversely, soldiers can not be presumed to have any
freedom from political pressure, and thus should not be allowed to
vote. Conversely, voting by troops in war zones is fundamentally
suspect. (There are only 4 States who do not allow felons to vote.)
Make federal election days maximal national holidays, in the sense
that it shall be unlawful for any adult to not have 4 hours of time
off from work on an election day during local polling hours, with
severe fines for employers violating this. Employers are Republicans,
and employees are Democrats. That's fine. What's not fine is one
Republican being capable of denying a dozen Democrats access to the
polls with a work schedule. Bill Bradley makes the interesting
suggestion of making "election day" an entire weekend. Something in
this direction needs to occur.
Require any election polling place, provisional or mail-in voting
option to accept a plain piece of paper with handwritten votes as the
required Constitutional default ballot, in addition to whatever other
conveniences thay may provide, q.v.
Teach evolution as legally factual and the Bible, Talmud, Koran,
the Analects, the Tao Te Ching, Aristotle's Ethics, Machiavelli and
so on as ethics studies. Foster an Ethics Channel on cable TV.
Foster a newswire broadcast TV channel featuring AP and Reuter's
text and video feeds. Possibly require such a channel to operate a
satellite or cable TV company, and maybe an ethics channel as well.
Newswires involved may include AP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, Pravda, the
BBC and so on.
Offer Al Jazeera a UHF airwave TV broadcast slot in greater DC.
I am opposed in principal to the forced conversion of broadcast TVs
to digital scheduled for 2009. This is government-sanctioned
churning. This change is rather far along already, however.
Establish a grade school diploma indicating that the holder can
perform such basic tasks of self-actualization as reading a reputable
newspaper, a roadmap, and the Constitution with some comprehension
and compute unit prices for groceries in their head.
Legalize insider trading. Insider trading laws are unenforceable,
are used as a political bludgeon as in the case of Martha Stewart,
and give a false sense of security to small investors. In general,
financial markets are too liquid anyway, in my opinion. Who owns what
is not accountable enough in America, and people aren't involved
enough in what they own.
Abolish leveraged buyouts if they haven't been already (Bobby).
(Jan '06) The Economist Jan 7-13 06 opines that the leveraged buyout
industry is currently forming a large unsustainable bubble.
Investigate Sun Myung Moon for illegal donations and information
transfers to North Korea and other suspicious activities.
Actively campaign for Taiwan to adopt an official name not
including the word "China". Taiwan is entitled to independance from
China, as "Taiwan". China is entitled to the name China.
Eliminate the "not for profit" designation for corporations,
churches, schools, trust funds and anything else. Charity is taxable
income. If the government wants to subsidize something it can do so
accountably, by direct subsidy. This is the only way to "close
loopholes"; all of them at once.
A radically simplified tax/welfare system will include eliminating
foodstamps. USDA infrastructure to distribute agricultural surpluses
may be overhauled to provide a subsidized USDA brand, or not. The
distribution of surpluses and so on may be further expedited by
government grocery stores in low-income areas, or not. The extremely
indigent will have federally provided debit cards via regular banks
to regulate the flow of funds on a daily or weekly basis so they
don't "sell their foodstamps" or put their SSI check in a slot
machine all at once and so on. Similar controls will be created
analagous to WIC. The total funds going to poor people will increase.
The Texas Lonestar Card or whatever it is is exemplary, but should
not carry the stigma of a special card. Also, the funds replacing
foodstamps will apply to anything sold in e.g. a 7-11. The
proscription of "restaurant food" runs to some rather ridiculous
distinctions, particularly if you are homeless. In Texas, for
example, a Big Gulp ceases to be groceries when you stick the straw
in the lid.
Require businesses selling gasoline retail to have an easily
accessible public restroom (a lovely bit of civility from Texas State
law). Some other type of business should be required to maintain
public restrooms so that urban areas are well-covered.
Ensure voting systems accountable to the electorate nationwide,
such as demo'ed by my own "votescript" (Internet search in 'groups'
[Usenet] for 'votescript').
Invite the Congress to take over the Anthrax and Chandra Levy
investigations using the U.S. Capitol Police and any Executive Branch
law enforcement capabilities they may wish to avail themselves of,
such as the Postal Inspector's forces. In other words, promote law
enforcement upon the Executive Branch by another branch, perhaps with
some improved latitude for the President to manage strictly executive
affairs, such as e.g. promotion issues in the military. The
underlying problem addressed here is that the balance of power does
not extend to police power, which is excessively concentrated in the
Executive Branch. Police power must be balanced for the overall
balance of power to remain standing.
Put all Electors voting for Bush in the Electoral College in 2004
on a corruption watch-list.
Eliminate economic status requirements, particularly college degree
requirements, from positions and licenses granted by the Federal
government. This will be enforced very promptly in the US military as
pertains to rank. No place needs to be a pure meritocracy any more
than the US armed forces. That is, graduating from a service academy
guarantees no rank. Such guarantees predate a literate general
population, and are thus absurd. Conversely, certain rank may be
provided via examination. Federally audit license testing, and allow
associations to make up their own tests, if re-testing the licensed
is periodic. Land grant universities will probably lose students, but
gain some license testing business, for a net loss of gross business.
This, however, is conjecture about what are basically market forces.
Plead to the Supreme Court to exclude Florida from the Electoral
College for the rest of JEB Bush's governorship (slated to end in
2006) plus 13 years, for systemic election fraud.
Investigate and probably prosecute Katherine Harris for election
fraud.
Investigate and probably prosecute the management of Diebold Corp.
and similar for treason. There is preponderant circumstantial
evidence of Diebold/Republican theft of the Congress in 2002, "The
Diebold Bounce", and of course the evidence suggests quite
compellingly that Kerry would have won a fair 2004 Presidential
election by some 5,000,000 votes.
Explain and confirm that there are no proprietary software
copyrights on election technologies.
Maintain a potent, progressive military with current uniformed
personnel levels for the forseeable future but sharply curtailed
systems aquisitions. Figure 50% of current aquisitions levels or
less. Maintain current basic research levels, i.e. DARPA-type stuff.
The mythology is that if you can imagine it, the US military has it.
That's a valuable mythology, and doesn't require the belief that they
have A LOT of it.
Explicitly allow articulating motor-tricycles that lean like a
2-wheeled motorcycle. Honda has made small vehicles with this
characteristic. Require that motorcycles have 2 headlights 3 feet
apart. These two items will save hundreds of lives a year at current
levels of motorcycle ridership, which figures to increase massively
for this and other more compelling reasons.
Task the National Endowment for the Arts with promulgating
cycluphonics, ratiolity, and the unwound cycle of fifths as a method
of subsetting tonal clusters. http://linux01.gwdg.de/~rhohen
Get some computer programmers at DARPA to finish Ha3sm, Hohensee's
Autonomous 3-stack machine, a computer operating system.
ftp://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/cLIeNUX/interim/Forreal.tgz, or it may be
archived at ibiblio.org, or email me.
Make it unlawful for entities other than individuals to contribute
funds to political campaigns. In particular, corporations shall have
no political funding rights. I thought of this myself, but the Tom
DeLay case illustrates that Texas saw the importance of this issue
some 100 years ago. I'm also very curious about how the whole board
of directors thing works, or rather fails to work. My suspicion is
that it would be beneficial to make boards of directors advisory only.
Conduct or review a variety of politically curious re-autopsies,
such as on Nicholas Berg, Lori Klausutis, Vince Foster, Ron Brown,
and the guy that was murdered and described as a suicide in Bush's
State Department right in headquarters in Foggy Bottom, John J.
Kokal, and many others. (Nov 05) There's also now a Colonel in Iraq
in the notably odd suicide category.
Survey all cases of persons who have died in police custody in the
last 10 years.
Establish a position of national participatory sports promoter and
invite Cal Ripkin and/or Carl Lewis to take their on-going work
Federal.
Establish a US Executive Organic Demonstration Farm within the
Beltsville national agricultural research center and get all food
consumed at the White House from that farm, or as close to that ideal
as possible, with all deliberate speed and as the maturation times of
various crops and livestock permits. The White House culinary staff
shall advise on the crops and varieties grown, and culinary
considerations of husbandry. Consultancy shall be sought from persons
such as Kent Whealey of the Seed Savers Exchange.
Abolish Daylight Savings Time. Put all White House clocks on non-
DST.
Convert the Executive Branch to use of open-source computer operating
systems, such as Linux, BSD, or Plan 9 From Bell Labs. The military
will be ordered to do so. I hope they aren't waiting for orders. Tip
to unixphobes: learn the ed editor and turn off all servers on your
local box. See also: my cLIeNUX Linux "distribution", particularly
the "seedocs". cLIeNUX is probably archived at ibiblio.
Make all publications of the government available by FTP download
from the Internet in effectively non-proprietary data formats. Make
all Executive Branch websites lucid when viewed with the Lynx
text-based web browser.
Implement checks and balances on law enforcement such that no
jurisdiction can monopolize the evidence pertaining to any suspicious
death. This item is also discussed under GENERALITIES q.v. The word
"police" does not occur in the Constitution, and the balance of power
needs to be extended to police entities policing each other,
federally and between the States. Inter-State this can be limited to
matters of wrongful death. Whereas the US is a nation of laws, the
Constitutional "sovereignty" of the several States means a State
right to lawfully execute, not to murder. I may require that all
copyable evidence of any ongoing wrongful death investigation be
submitted to the FBI for investigative and records redundancy. The
Federal Government has an obligation to guarantee a republican
government to the several States. That includes preventing a
particular State from implementing a Murder Incorporated. When I
leave office no State or branch of the Federal Government will have a
monopoly on the investigation of any suspicious death.
Manage the White House grounds and monumental DC landscaping
organically.
Increase personal financial accountability of members of Congress
and lobbyists and lobbying organizations.
Implement a graduated progressive debt-monetization schedule for
the Reagan/Bush/Bush National Debt to eventually eliminate the
regressive debt costs left by the Bush Treason Family.
Generalize the definitions of criminal anti-competitive behavior to
better protect small businesses and economic diversity. Lots of
things e.g. Microsoft does legally will become illegal, such as
kickbacks to system administrators. By the way, business owners need
to not allow their employees to take kickbacks from Microsoft, on
their own initiative. System admins like to keep people on their
networks dysfunctionalized, so they like WinDoS for end users. Don't
be such a sucker. Apple went to unix (MacOS X is a BSD unix with an
Apple GUI) for a reason. Be advised also that Windows is still MSDOS
and not suitable for connection to the Internet. (Jan '06) Bill Gates
said recently that security is easy. Bill Gates is a pathological
liar. The latest version of MSDOS (Windows 'Vista') was delayed for
years by bug-chasing.
Provide two copies of every required schoolbook to every public
student in America; a hardback that stays in the classroom and is not
to be defaced and remains school property, and a Federally provided
paperback that becomes the property of the student.
Task the dairy industry with deciding upon a variety of real
natural fermented cheese to bear the legal designation "American
cheese", and without compensation, remove the designation "American"
from artificial imitations of cheese. Let fake cheese be "Amercun
cheeth". For example, make burger chains call their "cheeseburgers"
"cheethburgers", or use real cheese. "Cheeze" might be OK. This item
is not to be taken lightly. "American Cheese" is the perfect example
of what's wrong with America.
Uphold the contractual obligations of the USA while allowing
certain bad investments to lose their value abruptly, such as
companies constituting an excessive capacity to manufacture weapons,
Halliburton, and so on.
Ensure that transportation policy emphasize pedestrians and other
human-power transport first, then mass transit, then roads. I will
encourage buses, in particular, publicly and privately operated.
Running a bus line will become a right of a business entity wishing
to do so, assuming reasonable safety regulation compliance. A useful
counterexample to this is bus service around the University of
Maryland, which is designed to subsidize the middle class at the
expense of those most in need of public transportation, and thus most
beneficial to society as a whole to recieve such services. The 86
Metrobus route in particular is not allowed to visit the College Park
subway station, which is a strikingly arrogant perversion of the
politics of public thoroughfares. In a similar vein, certain posh
residential streets in DC will lose their "NO THRU TRUCKS" signs
during my administration.
Establish a cabinet-level auditing office, with a general permanent
mandate and authorization to eliminate corruption and improve
efficiency throughout the Executive Branch via creative random audits
of anything of interest for such audits.
Reduce the implementation costs of the tax system and the welfare
system by simplifying the income tax code to a single simple formula
with a positive component, formerly mis-named as the proposed
"negative income tax". Thus there will be no brackets. The top tax
rate should be about 50% and the top positive tax rate should provide
a homeless man with about $10-- a day in 2004 dollars. Since I
suggested this Bush has noted that Americans spend 6 billion hours, I
believe it was, a year figuring their taxes. That's about $60B worth
of wasted time.
(Another thing I'm looking at is a flat top rate of 50% so that a
large segment of low income people pay no income tax, but that's just
an item of curiosity so far. It depends where the level is that will
produce revenue comparable to Clinton-era tax levels. Another idea
here is to consider all gross revenue as income, rather than
considering profit as income. At a much lower nominal tax rate on a
much larger tax base, this can inately eliminate the distinctions
between not-for-profits, businesses, and private parties. The
distinction between business and consumer is abused in America.
Regardless, any changes I make to tax codes will be huge net
simplifications. Complexity itself is a reduceable cost.)
Assuming the same basic tax system as we have now, in terms of
bracketed income taxes being the bulk of federal revenue, the top tax
rate should be in the range of 40%, PLUS the percentage of debt
service in the federal budget. The top tax rate is thus currently
60%, since debt service is roughly 20% of the federal budget. This
allows Republicans to pay for their debt. A gradual debt monetization
program may also be necessary.
(July 05) the above tax ruminations are vague, but rest assured,
current Bush tax policy is a reactionary joke, and his mumblings
about tax simplification since I proposed a tax simplification are to
be feared like a tropical virus, and do seem to be recieving the
appropriate reception, a horrified public recoil.
Eliminate parasitic "protectionist" tariffs, farm and other
subsidies to the advantaged. Do what Reagan said, not what he did,
and strictly limit subsidies to benefit the truly needy, i.e. put
money where it is cost-effective for the populace, such as
immunization programs and so on. Welfare is for poor people.
Require all products bodily ingested by humans, such as cigarettes,
have their ingredients listed as is now the case for most foods. This
will include products with long-standing exemptions from such
requirements, such as COCA Cola. The regulation to list ingredients
on medicines wiped out narcotics-based "patent medicines", and should
have a positive overall effect on cigarettes and what is in them.
Eliminate the current parasitic relationship between the government
and tobacco company fines. By the way, the way I quit smoking for a
year now is to chew tobacco. I chew Red Man, and chew small
quantities I can swallow rather than spitting, thus avoiding horrors
like spit cups. This is still poison, but I suspect it's much less
harmful than smoking. It undoubtably is less harmful to me given the
condition my lungs were in a year ago. They are far from healed a
year later.
Outlaw kickbacks to doctors on prescriptions, with draconian
penalties.
Re-outlaw consumer advertising of prescription (and proposed
self-prescription) drugs. Rather, outlaw such advertisements on cable
TV.
Closely investigate a legal doctrine of reduced liability
proportional to pre-existing risk. That is, childbirth and old age,
for example, are risky. That risk in negligence cases pertaining to
people at high pre-existing risk is to be taken into account somehow.
Wrongful loss of life is to be pro-rated to 80 years, or ten years
older than the decedent, which ever is greater. Or something like
that.
Improve employability and general functionalization services to the
homeless, literacy programs generally, and many other areas currently
exhibiting barbaric and outrageously costly neglect. Another area
that I personally find emblematic of the neglect the USA bestows upon
it's helpless, my pet peeve if you will, is the condition of the
average public basketball backboard. A decent outdoor basketball goal
is a very cost-effective thing. Expect to see full
regulation-dimensions rectangular backboards with straight rims
appearing when I am President, starting around the White House. Maybe
even nets.
Solicit involvement of professional athletes in adult literacy
outreach programs. My personal experience with illiterate homeless
men is they need a Ray Lewis or similar to help them with their
phonics. The NBA read to Achieve program for example, should target
adults.
Institute a sentencing premium on illiteracy for jail and prison
terms, which can be overcome by learning to read while incarcerated.
Make the premium greater for shorter incarcerations, up to 2 to 1 for
sentences of less than 6 months.
Reduce disaster funding for semi-normal occurances like hurricanes
along the Gulf of Mexico. (Oct '05) For example, FEMA flood insurance
in the storm surge range should be capped at about $20,000--. For
example, Trent Lott can rebuild his $3 mil mansion on the water on
FEMA money if he had insurance, but if it gets blown away again he
can only get $20k for it. You could call this "The Cabana Way".
Closely review the remedy ruling in the Microsoft anti-trust case
decided by Judge Collen Kollar-Kotelly. My current thinking is that
she failed her mandate to provide a remedy.
Emphasize North American and Western Hemisphere resources in US
energy policy. That is, reduce or de-emphasize dependance on oil and
LNG tankers.
Emphasize the Internet and other non-traditional channels in
education. Formal education is a contradiction of terms. Also
emphasize sports, gardening, and the arts. The teachers' unions
and/or public schools are certified failures, and were of very little
use to me after 3rd grade. That is theirs to correct. I have
education to worry about.
The validity of the Patent Office is to be subjected to fundamental
review. In the mean time, certain areas of technology are grossly and
absolutely inappropriate for patent protection. Genetics and computer
software should not be patentable at all. There is an Amendment to
this effect suggested below. This may not require an Amendment,
however.
Foster a weekly blues jam and bar-b-q at the White House in the
summer.
Manage my legislative agenda like an open source software project,
with input from the general population via an FTP site and/or web
wiki.
Make public spaces in DC available to the National Arboretum and
Beltville research farm for planting and long term observation of
ornamental, fruit and shade tree and shrub varieties developed at
those facilities. Promote such plantings in low-income DC in
particular. The program to develop a blight-proof American Chestnut
tree should find fertile ground in DC, for example.
I am a personal fan of the National Zoo. I was quoted in the cover
story "Gorilla Groupies" in the Washington City Paper years ago.
Problems at the NZP will be attended to. The Zoo is in part a victim
of it's own fabulous historical successes. The first white tiger in
the US, Mohini Rewa, was a gift to the US from India. Now you can be
killed by one in your own mansion in Vegas, or in it's cage in a
Florida zoo, or at a petting zoo in the Midwest. A new mission may be
in order. For example, the national zoo of the USA could be more
North American in focus. Elk, moose, turkeys, dugong, manatee,
coyote, paw-paw, chestnut, indigenous azaleas.... such things are as
bizarre to most zoo-goers as a white tiger, and yet are indigenous to
North America. The current plan for demonstration elephant breeding
in downtown DC is a textbook lack of vision and sense of mission.
Smithsonian people are quite full of themselves. Nothing a zoo does
in terms of artistic display and clever signage compares to, for
example, a prairie dog. Meanwhile, it is an absolute scandal that
there isn't a bus or something up the length of the zoo. Rock Creek
to Connecticut Avenue is over 200 feet of elevation change, quite the
tough hike for fat Americans. (Jan '06) The Zoo has progressed. They
have a Przywalski's Horse, for example. And a petting zoo. Nigerian
Dwarf Goats. This is the former USA, politically, but it's still a
wonderland.
I support statutes and regulations that result in a decrease in the
gross bulk of statutes and regulations for the sake thereof, such as
more use of parametric "schedules" such as the well-known "GS-16"
schedule of government salaries. A quick glance at the US Code
suggests that it could easily be smaller by a factor of 4 or more.
Obfuscation is parasitic.
Gun control is a population density issue. A moose gun is insane in
Manhatten. Being without one is insane in most of Alaska. A simple
tax can be developed based on how many people are in range of a
weapon. Let's say the tax is 5 cents a year for each human within
range of a weapon. That's 20 cents for a moose gun in the outskirts
of Nome, and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a moose gun in
Manhatten. The details need some work, but therein lies the solution.
There are a number of possible side-effects, like gun shops become
inately rural businesses, which is a good thing. A gun collector may
be forced to move to the country to retain his collection. There's
also the issue of a one-second factor, like 5 cents for each round
the thing can fire in one second, times population density. Thus
automatic and semi-automatic weapons cost more in proportion to their
fire rate. There would also be an exemption if the tax on a weapon is
below a certain threshhold, such as $10--.
Reassess the health risks of cyclamates and other sugar
alternatives versus aspartame. Note that Donald Rumsfeld was a key
lobbyist for aspartame.
Abolish diplomatic immunity outside embassies, and transit to the
borders from embassies. The US doesn't have royals, and doesn't
acknowledge them before the law on our soil to any extent, except
heads of state and other modern civil officers.
Change the names of Blair Mansion, the Ronald Reagan White Elephant
and Internationalist Boondoggle Center, Reagan National Airport, the
J. Edgar Hoover Building, and the Herbert Hoover Building. The Reagan
Building might be a nice thing to name after Rosa Parks, for example.
Destroy the LBJ Memorial. LBJ has JFK's limo scrubbed. It's time to
scrub LBJ.
Increase compensation to Federal elected officials. Congresspersons
should make at least $500,000 per year. The current situation is like
the elitist "amateurism" scam prevalent in track and field before
Carl Lewis, and the myriad 'volunteerism' scams throughout DC and
elsewhere. The fastest way to do this may be to encourage the States
to pay their representatives, who work FOR the States, by the way,
large honoraria.
Closely scrutinize zoning laws. New Orleans is a nice place to try
abolishing zoning laws, for example. One idea here is to make it
illegal for any area to be precluded from use as a residence. This
idea is to make it more problematic to pollute, create hazards, and
to help reduce dependance on transportation. This may also have
side-benefits for the homeless. Rather than making factories and so
on uninhabitable, an officer of the operating company should be
required to reside with his/her family at such locations, such as
Union Carbide's facility in Bhopal.
Closely scrutinize the concept of personal trust funds.
Set up a history ftp/website in the Education department
Keep America's shipyards open at a low level with ships with
potential civilian or humanitarian roles. The US doesn't currently
need submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers and so on. Freighters,
troop ships and so on can continue to be built. They might be nuclear
powered, but will be lightly armed, if at all. An oil-spill response
ship might be worth consideration. Another possibility is a floating
marine biology college. An oceanic debris cleaner of some kind
perhaps. Suggestions welcome.
Provide a low-cost clinic option besides a hospital to every county
in the USA (one rare good idea in the Republicon platform).
One immigration rule for all countries (per Al Sharpton). This is
part of the complete breakfast of simplifying the US Code and the
Code of Federal Regulations, as well as being a matter of fundamental
racial fairness. This does not preclude special control of
Mideasterners, who are currently worthy of special treatment for
security reasons.
Promise exhibition MLB baseball games in Cuba if Castro adopts a
constitution with real elections and so on. Invite Castro to the
White House and smoke Phillies cognac-flavored Blunts to annoy him.
Heavily tax mineral resources extracted from Federal land.
Distribute said monies to the regions said resources were extracted
from. Oil money, for example, should remain in the Gulf region to a
much larger extent than it does.
AMENDMENTS
I suggest several Constitutional amendments. The language in this
listing is not necessarily exact, but is close. Actual experts should
be consulted on the details.
.........................................................................
Employees or compensated agents of the Executive Branch at the
time of an offense are excluded from the pardon power of the
President for said offense. The Senate may pardon such persons in
such cases if the pardonee and offense are explicitly named and
the pardon approved by simple majory of a quorum of the Senate.
.........................................................................
Citizens may grow any species of photosynthetic plant in any
quantity.
.........................................................................
The Judiciary shall have the power to declare periods of up to
twenty years of Federal disenfranchisement over States or
municipalities found to have harbored Federal election fraud.
.........................................................................
Letters patent shall not issue, and such letters patent
issued prior to this Amendment shall be void, for any living thing
and for any instruction sequence for computing automata, i.e.
computer software.
.........................................................................
The Electoral College is dissolved. Voting for Federal officers
shall be by direct nationwide tally. Failure of any single
candidate to achieve a majority for a particular office shall be
handled as prior to this Amendment.
.........................................................................
A voter in a Federal election may make one vote of approval for
each of possibly several persons the voter approves of for each
office contested. That is, one vote per voter per candidate.
.........................................................................
A State may secede from the United States of America by
written notification of the President from the executive of the
State in question. The President shall then withdraw the mobile
military assets and munitions from the moribund region and
release former citizens from that region from military service.
Persons fleeing to the USA from the moribund region within a year
who were citizens of the USA reclaim their citizenship immediately
and inately.
.........................................................................
Children and genetic half and full siblings of a President are
disqualified from becoming President or Vice President.
Grandchildren are not disqualified.
.........................................................................
Handwritten paper ballots shall be accepted in any Federal
election, in addition to whatever other means of documenting votes
are provided.
.........................................................................
The offices of a national at-large Representive and three
at-large Senators are hereby created. Every Federal 2-year
election shall involve the nationwide election of the at-large
Representive and one of the at-large Senators, in the usual
Senatorial 6-year cycle. The first three at-large Senator's terms
will be established one at a time in echelon over the three
elections following the adoption of this Amendment. The
qualifications, powers and terms for at-large offices shall be as
per a regular seat in each body. Plurality shall be the
sufficient margin to elect an at-large Legislator.
.........................................................................
One office of at-large at-random Representative is hereby
created. The Congress shall by law formulate a random drawing or
lottery to select a Representative to the House from among
nationwide applicants for the office, such that each applicant
has the same chance. It shall be possible to apply by post card,
possibly in addition to other means. The qualifications, powers
and term for this office shall be as per any other Representative.
.........................................................................
At noon on the day after this Amendment is ratified the occupants of
the offices of President and Vice President shall be removed, and
shall be replaced for the remainder of the 2005-2009 term by Richard
Allen Hohensee, President, and Senator Russell Feingold, Vice
President. This replacement and term shall be supported by a special
chain of succession composed of all those Senators and
Representatives who voted against the joint resolution allowing the
invasion of Iraq.
.........................................................................
The above herb amendment to allow growing any herb could be
constructed so as to foster small exurban family farms and serve as a
permanent seedbed for small businesses.
States are history. Maryland, for example, has a ridiculous
boundary. Rhode Island, originally "Rhode Island Plantation", having
the same representation in the Senate as e.g. California is
ridiculous. A third house of Congress might be in order based on
cities, which House of Cities might reduce the role of the Senate
over time. The Senate is real good at singing "God Bless America" on
the Capitol steps while the Pentagon burns.
GENERALITIES
Solve half the world's problems.
Welfare is for poor folks.
Government is for people, not corporations.
The USA will be getting out of the warmongering business. The US will
not defend corporate "strategic interests" offshore except by purely
trade diplomacy means, which should and would be sufficient if such
"strategic interest" claims had any validity.
Make my life as President extremely public, to the greatest extent
possible consistant with national security. The adult public will be
able to monitor most of my personal activity via live motion
pictures. A Presidential webcam, so to speak, with a general and an
adult outlet. Big Brother is already here. I give the people of the
USA the option of keeping an unblinking eye on Big Brother if they
are so inclined. (Nov '05) I think about this a lot. I don't know to
what extent this is actually practical, but I think I can guarantee a
24/7 video feed from the Oval Office and main Cabinet meeting room,
for example.
Marriage is not a federal concern. (The country seems to have
already adopted this idea since I proposed it.) The proposed tax
formula will provide positive taxes (back to the person) to
dependants, not married couples per se. Children and the homeless
will get the same subsidy per each. The homeless are societies
children. The homeless will recieve a direct subsidy, while
childrens' subsidies will go to their guardians, in the normal case.
Personal social and philisophical issues are a huge area the federal
government can beneficially recuse itself from, and it bears mention
that such issues are not mentioned in the Constitution. Monogamous
marriage may or may not be the backbone of American society, but it
is not the backbone of government, and certainly not the Federal
government.
The legal tradition of the USA has some fundamental quirks going
back to English Common Law that need fixing. Malice, intent,
custodial relationships, sanity and other subtleties are sentencing
issues, not corpus delecti. That is, intent is not part of the
crucial body of a crime. In the jargon of computer programming, and
Charles Moore (the Forth programming language) in particular, the
criminal legal system is 'mis-factored'. "What" and "why" are
beneficially separable, and this is a fundamental and systemic
departure from English legal tradition. This tectonic problem can
realistically be addressed within the confines of the Federal
criminal code, or possibly the military code, and let the States
observe the effects derived.
The US military will be exercised in the third world to project
sustenance. That is, when the global situation allows, the US
military will be used as a variant or branch of the Peace Corps. The
courage of the military will be required to sustain losses to disease
and to operate substantially unarmed in theaters where the US
military is a semi-welcome guest and the mosquito, tse-tse fly and
AIDS virus are the brutal de-facto overlords. Sustenance-projection
exercises in Africa may also be an important return stop for abused
troops, such as those now in Iraq. (Oct '05) This item would have set
a useful precedent and advisor cadre for the response to hurricane
Katrina. (Nov 05) Jack Murtha alleges that a huge proportion of the
force in Iraq is emotionally damaged. This is undoubtable. A buffer
tour, possibly shorter than a normal tour, in some place like Sudan
and/or Alaska is to be closely considered for troops returning from
Iraq.
There is no specific labor policy as such at this time. In theory I
do not support the distinction between labor and management, nor the
distinction between business and consumer. Both distinctions are
elitist. Labor interests should note my positions which are not
explicitly labor initiatives such as the elimination of degree
requirements from all positions licensed by the Federal government,
the elimination of various subsidies to various sectors other than
the working man/woman, the possible huge increase in manpower and
facilities to the INS via the de-commissioning of the CIA, the
improved immigration enforcement possible in the absence of a corrupt
and bizarre drug war, the biometric identification of all immigrants,
the reduction in impetus of Latin Americans to emigrate to the US in
the absence of a corrupt drug war in their home regions, substantive
measures to reduce health costs, the top tax rate of 40%+, and other
policies that help the working man, woman or family substantively,
but not necessarily directly or explicitly.
Guarantee a veto on any and every bill submitted to me longer than
50 pages in length, thus fostering clarity, modularity, efficiency
and atomicity in legislation, and autonomy between the Executive and
Legislative branches. The reader may note that this entire platform
is in sync with such a policy.
The right-wing talking point of 'activist judges' is a good clue to
something America needs; a more activist Judiciary. The ACLU is the
former USA's de-facto federal public defender. They need collegial
competition from a branch of the Federal government, probably in the
Judiciary. There is a dysfunctional power slush-fund between the
Executive and Legislative Branches, particularly as relates to the
ludicrously misnamed intelligence community. The President needs more
latitude to coordinate the Executive Branch, while having less
ability to warp extra-Executive functions such as special
prosecutors. Special prosecutors should be a normal function of the
Judiciary, i.e. not so special. Clarifying the balance of power
between the three main Branches of government would benefit from a
more active Judiciary, and greater police powers for the Legislative
and Judicial Branches. Executive law enforcement agencies should have
a rock-paper-scissors relationship with Judicial and Legislative
police, perhaps expanded from the US Capitol Police (Legislative) and
US Marshalls (Judicial?).
I oppose capital punishment. It's not cost-effective, and is
distracting to Governors and Presidents, particularly those such as
George Walker Bush who so richly deserve it. An execution, however,
cannot remotely repair the damage caused by a George Dubya Bush, a
John Wayne Gacy, or even a perpetrator of a single deliberate
vehicular homicide such as Laura Welch Bush.
Enforce the law with emphasis on the most privileged facing the
closest scrutiny. This is my affirmative action policy. I am quite
fatigued with rich white men like Skull and Bones (WH Taft, Bush 41,
Bush, Kerry) giving me a bad name. I do not hope to abolish wealth. I
hope to require it to exhibit some class or be abruptly impoverished.
Wealth is a valuable incentive. A static stratification is not. If
the big trees never die, you are not in a living forest. The US
economy needs some lightning strikes, particularly to clear out areas
that are natural business seedbeds like software and small farms, but
not a huge forest fire. I don't have any major beef I'm aware of with
IBM, UPS and numerous other large companies. The former USA needs an
overhaul, but the engine block is more than salvageable.
I will conduct my personal relationship with the District of
Columbia as an example of America's relationship with the world. The
current federal relationship with DC is neglectful, arrogant and
parasitic. Quite telling. The continued operation of Reagan National
Airport is lethal arrogance, and strikingly well-named as such. With
a smaller Air Force One, National and Andrews could switch roles. I
will work to make every corner of the District of Columbia burst into
bloom in every way. For example, DC has a worse-than-scandalous adult
illiteracy rate, and a wealth of influential religious, sports and
entertainment figures to become involved in correcting that national
disgrace, among others. I am opposed to a new baseball stadium in DC,
however. DC needs a triple-A club in RFK, which is what I've said all
along, and is basically what they have as of this writing with the
Expos. You don't create a beloved pro sports tradition by fiat. (July
05) The Nats are in first place in the NL East. They are drawing
well, and an argument can be made that the magic of RFK Stadium
contributes positively to the Nats' success. I have proposed a
low-cost soccer stadium so that DC United has its own field. They
draw well, but less than the Nats. Switching the field at RFK from
soccer to baseball is a temporary measure. Arguments for a new
stadium for the Nats are, as best I can see, rooted entirely in
corrupt motives. (Jan '06) My original position on this issue
continues to be validated by the bad waltz between MLB and The
District. A new stadium is going to cost twice the original estimate.
The city should pledge a new college-grade soccer stadium for DC
United (the soccer franchise) and $100M for improvements to RFK, and
tell MLB to take it or leave it.
I don't like the idea of homosexual couples adopting children, but
I'd be hesitant to second-guess local social workers from the federal
level.
I will try to do things in a way that displacements of workforces
have a gains to go with the losses. The term for this would be
assisted workforce migration; Allowing CIA employees to migrate to
the INS, for example. Another example is the reduction of need for
police that should accrue from civilization of the country's barbaric
drug laws. The currrent prohibition means America has too many cops
and corrections officers. Other initiatives in this platform indicate
that the USA also has a severe dearth of border control personnel,
and a huge dearth of bus drivers and other surface public transport
personnel, so there is an assisted workforce migration possible. Cops
will be offered free training for a CDL to drive buses, for example.
The Federal bipartisan "Republicrat" establishment is largely held
together by a mortal desperation to keep a large volume of hideous
secrets from the American people. As a fanciful example, the whole
JFK/Bay of Pigs story falls together quite nicely if you place George
"Poppy" HW Bush, our 41st President, in the sniper's nest in the
Texas Schoolbook Depository. That is, if you make him the primary
shooter in the JFK assassination. The history of secrets is that the
reality tends to be many times worse than a private individual can
imagine. Many such stories lie unexposed in classified materials.
This is the most important thing the establishment loses if I become
President; all those fabulously dirty secrets. This is how I will
make my Presidency an outrageous smash success in a matter of weeks,
if not hours. I'm not in the club. Many prominent Democrats are. My
guess is that the last President with no shared skeletons in his
closet was Carter, and perhaps Eisenhower before that. The government
club's relationship with the populace is parasitic. Secrets are what
you keep from your enemies, and the current establishment, we see in
the news, is to a huge extent the people's enemy. I'm not.
The President is the central strinfo agent of the country. I will
have a national security triumvirate to advise me on urgent security
matters, who will take reports from the 14 strinfo agencies besides
the CIA existing in the Executive Branch. Said triumvirate will all
have interrupt-capable access to the President and Vice President.
The various main departments of the Executive Branch will be
represented by a cabinet of some nine primary officials, representing
the following topics of governance, and recieving reports from the
pertinent existing departments; Audits, Commerce, Culture, Defense,
Diplomacy, Health, Justice, Resources, Funding. Diplomacy will
basically be the State Department as is, so the Diplomacy advisor
will be the Secretary of State, but other primary advisors may
represent an agglomeration of existing departments. Culture will be
education, the arts, science, the FCC, and so on. A routine periodic
"cabinet meeting" will be those 9 primary officials, the President,
and perhaps the Vice President.
Wealth is like government in that it exists at the behest of and for
the general benefit of the people. Under the Bush crime family, the
US is going deeply into debt and the majority is getting poorer.
Progressive tax rates can be justified by the fact that the wealthy
can endure them while all members of society enjoy increased
prosperity. Thus there will be tax increases, particularly in the
higher brackets, in my agenda. The marginal rate could be loosely
indexed to the debt service component of the budget. The well-to-do
can look forward to marginal rates in the 30s and 40s again when they
have paid off the Republican National Debt they have saddled us all
with.
The better tone of American foreign policy was set by the Monroe
Doctrine the better part of two centuries ago. The Monroe Doctrine
has some very prominent misinterpretations, however. I believe the
correct interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine is that the USA must
consider free nations its allies, and less than free countries less
than nations. In a sentence, a nation is a secular democracy, and
other areas are primitive countries and regions needing help to
become or join the community of real nations. This latter category
currently includes Israel, and to my knowledge, the entire Arabian
Peninsula, as examples. My policy is to attempt to side with nature
in all things, as best one can interpret nature, and to favor such
regions evolving into nations, as is clearly the long-term trend of
human history.
07
One must look at my platform in totality. Parts of it will impinge on
a particular individual negatively. One must make an assessment of
the overall effect. This is especially true, for example, as pertains
to something like "labor policy". I have no explicit labor policy,
but have several proposals that dramatically favor people typically
categorized as "labor". This is how problems are solved; by breaking
them into smaller and smaller problems, solving the smaller problems,
and letting the little things take care of the big things. Most
politicians, however, have no interest in solutions at all. Most are
lawyers, and make their money perpetuating problems. 3/4 of Congress,
for example, voted to invade Iraq.
Based on what I know from an adult Internet account, basic cable,
modest but extremely varied everyday experience, and various print
and broadcast media, I want to be President so that I can try to...
In short, give the USA a much-needed overhaul.
In the contemplated short emergency term replacing a profligate
President for a period of less than two years, my emphasis will be
diplomacy and law enforcement, and this platform expresses
legislative positions that may not get their deserved emphasis. This
is particularly true of financial policies. A tax code
simplification may be feasible as preparation to something more
fundamental, like a federal sales tax.
SPECIFICS (in very roughly top-down priority) (my basic Iraq
plan is the next few paragraphs)
Get out of Iraqi cities immediately, including vacating the Green
Zone, and retire to functions of a regional interim federal
government, until the cities form regional alliances analagous to,
and perhaps with external, nations, as they, the representatives of
the Iraqi cities and sub-regions, see fit. This may involve a turf
trade between Shi'a and Kurd areas of Iran, for example. If Iraq
chooses to reform as Iraq, make it as easy as possible for the new
Iraq to be a secular democratic republic at the federal level.
(Jan '06) Jack Murtha's epochal 6-month withdrawal proposal is
basically a military _expression of the above political framework.
His "quick-strike force" and an "over-the-horizon presence of
Marines" is my 'functions of state and federal governments'. My
withdrawal is within Iraq, however. Murtha wants completely out ASAP.
I'm one step less abrupt.
Reaffirm that the "war on terror" is mostly diplomacy and police
work when prosecuted by the competent, and only becomes all-out war
when prosecuted by the incompetent and/or corrupt. (Jan '06)
Desperate right-wingers are now in the habit of justifying any and
everything by noting that we are at war. We need to call it off.
Claiming that some group declared war on the former USA on 9-11 gives
said groups far too much credence as an opponent.
Hand over Halliburton functions in Iraq to the US military and
mideastern engineering firms. Let Iraqis rebuild Iraq. Reduce US
funding for the purpose of rebuilding Iraq by a factor of 4, paid
directly to locals. I expect this to get 10 times as much
accomplished at 1/10 the cost.
Similarly localize the flow of FEMA money into the gulf region.
Guarantee jobs to soldiers injured in Iraq, with preference for
aquisitions roles in the Pentagon, such as making sure Halliburton
recieves funds due to them.
Arrest and prosecute George Walker Bush for crimes against humanity
under US law, most notably the violation of the UN Charter, which is
US law, in the failure to get Security Council approval of a violent
invasion. Note also that creating a 'doctrine of preemptive war" is
plain thuggery and has no effect on the inate and inarguable
criminality of an unprovoked invasion.
Signal the end of anglophone imperialist belligerence by isolating
and peacefully dismantling the Zionist proxy political establishment
in Palestine. Isolate Israel, in other words.
Pressure Israel to relinquish its nuclear weapons. We can't disallow
nukes to Iran et cetera if Israel has them.
Fire all Bush/Reagan appointees in the Executive Branch. Work
diligently to destroy every legislator that voted for the invasion of
Iraq, and are thus complicitous with a major war crime and disgrace
of the USA. (Nov '05) There is one class of Bush appointee that is of
particular interest for retention. Those who have quit or been fired.
I am of course speaking of the Gunns, the refugees from a corrupted
CIA, and so on, not the Michael "It's Not My Job" Brownies.
Unilaterally or otherwise liberate Darfur from the "Sudan"
"government" in Khartoum. (I had suggested a no-fly-zone over Darfur.
This has since been agreed to.) (July 05) There has been some
semblance of a change of regime in Khartoum, I believe. I will
revisit this issue as President with better information, and the
understanding that the epochal cultural seam between East and West
currently runs through Sudan. (Nov. 05) The situation in Sudan is
deteriorating once again. Remind the Khartoum government that there
are certain standards even in the Sahel that must be met to be
considered the government of a people. Provide Darfuris with
defensive weapons such as low-cost .22 caliber rimfire pistols and
..22 caliber rimfire manual action rifles.
Un-offshore America's corporate tax base. I've heard sheltered
offshore income is on the order of 10 trillion dollars. If that's
even remotely true, fixing that problem can basically solve all the
former USA's fiscal problems.
Visit New Orleans for about a continuous week, and render its
recovery sustainable. Address the subsidence issue of all similar
regions. For New Orleans in particular, my current thinking is that
it should be in-filled to sea-level using fill provided by barge
and/or rail, beginning along levees and proceeding over the long term
until the entire city drains by gravity. That is an earthwork in the
few billions of dollars. The drainage canals also strike me as a
severe mis-design, such they they should be dry canals with pumping
stations at their outfall ends. When I get to New Orleans, Senators
Landrieu and Vitter will want to avoid me, which they are welcome to
do.
Investigate allegations of bombings of the New Orleans levees.
FEMA's role in the early phases of an emergency is to be one of
passive auditor and passive money provider, with the utter inability
to prevent anything. FEMA must be prevented from preventing anything
when hours are lives. FEMA must be enabled to smile sweetly and cut
billions of dollars in checks to the likes of Gov. Blanco and Mayor
Nagin without question, but with full expectation of reportage of
where the money went when the dust clears. Think Federal Emergency
Money Auditors.
The Coast Guard will be tasked with creating a hurricane follower
fleet to provide most time-critical relief, communications and
surveillance at the trailing edge of all hurricanes making landfall.
Said fleet may be offered to neighbor nations in severe cases. Said
fleet should contemplate a 'Katrita' scenario, and should contemplate
high-wind aerial surveillance, water and other
hour-timescale-critical supply, emergency ship-generated electricity,
hospital capability, and a general expectation of the unexpectable.
Replace the Pledge of Alliegance with daily recitals of varying
paragraphs of the Constitution. People that like oaths of subjugation
can pledge their allegiance to the students every day. If you can't
live without the Pledge of Allegiance, join the Marine Corps.
Provide every public school student in grades 5 and up a copy of
the Constitution every year. Include dissemination of explanations of
phrases like "writ of mandamus" and "letters of marque and reprisal"
(which latter I personally don't currently understand, by the way)
which occur in the Constitution. There is an effort under way to put
a synopsis of the constitution on paper currency. This also might
better be a matter of varying excerpts.
Overhaul the White House press corps to exclude the major war
infomercial networks; Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS and so on. I'll probably
limit that access to newswire services, Mother Jones, The Nation, Al
Jazeera and so on. That is, credible outlets.
Reduce legacy government secrets as closely as possible to nothing.
That is, I will massively reduce "classified information",
particularly older documents, probably everything over 5 years old
except for nuclear technologies and similar. Set up a periodic
challenge and review system for classified information to remain
classified on about a 5-year periodicity, with increasingly difficult
tests and decreasing periodicity to remain classified as time passes.
A jury-like mechanism may well also be useful for this purpose. This
could be a Judicial Branch matter.
Semi-legalize drugs. Implement a closely controlled
self-prescription program for adults to use such drugs as cocaine,
heroin (and/or opium), marijuana and penicillin. That is, I will call
off the corrupt counter-democratic drug war and de-glamorize
narcotics. Drugs are for sick people. Sick people can obtain drugs
cost-effectively in a healthy society. This will reduce the US black
market economy, reduce the outflow of capital from the country,
improve the image of small business, improve patient information
recieved by doctors from their patients, vastly reduce the area of
the world hostile to the US, reduce medical costs, reduce the use of
needles, wipe out several rogue militaries in Latin America, and many
other unimaginable benefits one would expect from choosing to
discontinue losing a war. PCP and similarly destructive toxins will
not be legalized, nor will truly sophisticated drugs actually
requiring a doctor to even understand the accepted purpose of. I
don't think any amphetamines such as meth and ecstasy will be legal
(self-prescribeable) at this point. The LEAP group, Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition, leap.cc on the Internet, has useful information
and contacts on this issue.
Remove the degenerate military term "intelligence" from what the
CIA claims to do. Replace it with the degenerate military-style term
"strinfo", a contraction of "strategic information".
De-commission the CIA entirely, and un-authorize them totally,
immediately. Out them all in about 6 months. Re-deploy them if they
choose to hang on under INS. The counter-proliferation forces may
reconstitute under the Nuclear Regulatory Agency or similar.
Otherwise, if a CIA agent or analyst wants to go to work for another
strinfo agency, of which there are some 14 in the Executive Branch,
they will have to get personal approval from me, and I'll be very
busy with other things. The Legislature is currently (Sept. 04)
fiddling with the CIA organizational chart. That's not going to make
me listen to their garbage reports. (Nov 04) The CIA is basically
fired anyway by their own total lack of credibility. With the
internal shenanigans going on there now firing them all will probably
be the most humane option. The current US intelligence problem would
largely be solved by a President that can use a web browser and
search engine. There will be some premium placed on
counter-proliferation agents seeking re-assignment. (Nov '05) The
CIA's concentration camp network is in fact not surprising, and
doesn't effect this platform item. This item was based on such
assumptions.
In particular, eliminate covert operations outside actual war zones
immediately. Such behavior is well beneath the greatest and most
powerful nation ever, and if you are so patriotic that you want to
commit psychopathic acts for your country, you should be willing and
expectant to die or spend the rest of your life in a small cage in
Asia to do so. The US will only remain the world's sole superpower if
it does so with some sense of fair play, and the CIA has no such
sense.
Naturalization of undocumented immigrants becomes an issue of
documentation. Biometrically identify every non-citizen on US soil I
can get my hands on. Emphasize undocumented aliens in lieu of the
dehumanizing term "illegal". Aliens are entitled to basic human
rights, but security and other concerns greatly compromise further
rights of aliens. Naturalization thus becomes a matter of good
behavior for a significant period of time, i.e. a matter of
very-long-term personal accountability.
Promote the vote for ex-criminals. There are too many election
abuses now and abuses of the term "felon" to disenfranchise
ex-felons. Conversely, soldiers can not be presumed to have any
freedom from political pressure, and thus should not be allowed to
vote. Conversely, voting by troops in war zones is fundamentally
suspect. (There are only 4 States who do not allow felons to vote.)
Make federal election days maximal national holidays, in the sense
that it shall be unlawful for any adult to not have 4 hours of time
off from work on an election day during local polling hours, with
severe fines for employers violating this. Employers are Republicans,
and employees are Democrats. That's fine. What's not fine is one
Republican being capable of denying a dozen Democrats access to the
polls with a work schedule. Bill Bradley makes the interesting
suggestion of making "election day" an entire weekend. Something in
this direction needs to occur.
Require any election polling place, provisional or mail-in voting
option to accept a plain piece of paper with handwritten votes as the
required Constitutional default ballot, in addition to whatever other
conveniences thay may provide, q.v.
Teach evolution as legally factual and the Bible, Talmud, Koran,
the Analects, the Tao Te Ching, Aristotle's Ethics, Machiavelli and
so on as ethics studies. Foster an Ethics Channel on cable TV.
Foster a newswire broadcast TV channel featuring AP and Reuter's
text and video feeds. Possibly require such a channel to operate a
satellite or cable TV company, and maybe an ethics channel as well.
Newswires involved may include AP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, Pravda, the
BBC and so on.
Offer Al Jazeera a UHF airwave TV broadcast slot in greater DC.
I am opposed in principal to the forced conversion of broadcast TVs
to digital scheduled for 2009. This is government-sanctioned
churning. This change is rather far along already, however.
Establish a grade school diploma indicating that the holder can
perform such basic tasks of self-actualization as reading a reputable
newspaper, a roadmap, and the Constitution with some comprehension
and compute unit prices for groceries in their head.
Legalize insider trading. Insider trading laws are unenforceable,
are used as a political bludgeon as in the case of Martha Stewart,
and give a false sense of security to small investors. In general,
financial markets are too liquid anyway, in my opinion. Who owns what
is not accountable enough in America, and people aren't involved
enough in what they own.
Abolish leveraged buyouts if they haven't been already (Bobby).
(Jan '06) The Economist Jan 7-13 06 opines that the leveraged buyout
industry is currently forming a large unsustainable bubble.
Investigate Sun Myung Moon for illegal donations and information
transfers to North Korea and other suspicious activities.
Actively campaign for Taiwan to adopt an official name not
including the word "China". Taiwan is entitled to independance from
China, as "Taiwan". China is entitled to the name China.
Eliminate the "not for profit" designation for corporations,
churches, schools, trust funds and anything else. Charity is taxable
income. If the government wants to subsidize something it can do so
accountably, by direct subsidy. This is the only way to "close
loopholes"; all of them at once.
A radically simplified tax/welfare system will include eliminating
foodstamps. USDA infrastructure to distribute agricultural surpluses
may be overhauled to provide a subsidized USDA brand, or not. The
distribution of surpluses and so on may be further expedited by
government grocery stores in low-income areas, or not. The extremely
indigent will have federally provided debit cards via regular banks
to regulate the flow of funds on a daily or weekly basis so they
don't "sell their foodstamps" or put their SSI check in a slot
machine all at once and so on. Similar controls will be created
analagous to WIC. The total funds going to poor people will increase.
The Texas Lonestar Card or whatever it is is exemplary, but should
not carry the stigma of a special card. Also, the funds replacing
foodstamps will apply to anything sold in e.g. a 7-11. The
proscription of "restaurant food" runs to some rather ridiculous
distinctions, particularly if you are homeless. In Texas, for
example, a Big Gulp ceases to be groceries when you stick the straw
in the lid.
Require businesses selling gasoline retail to have an easily
accessible public restroom (a lovely bit of civility from Texas State
law). Some other type of business should be required to maintain
public restrooms so that urban areas are well-covered.
Ensure voting systems accountable to the electorate nationwide,
such as demo'ed by my own "votescript" (Internet search in 'groups'
[Usenet] for 'votescript').
Invite the Congress to take over the Anthrax and Chandra Levy
investigations using the U.S. Capitol Police and any Executive Branch
law enforcement capabilities they may wish to avail themselves of,
such as the Postal Inspector's forces. In other words, promote law
enforcement upon the Executive Branch by another branch, perhaps with
some improved latitude for the President to manage strictly executive
affairs, such as e.g. promotion issues in the military. The
underlying problem addressed here is that the balance of power does
not extend to police power, which is excessively concentrated in the
Executive Branch. Police power must be balanced for the overall
balance of power to remain standing.
Put all Electors voting for Bush in the Electoral College in 2004
on a corruption watch-list.
Eliminate economic status requirements, particularly college degree
requirements, from positions and licenses granted by the Federal
government. This will be enforced very promptly in the US military as
pertains to rank. No place needs to be a pure meritocracy any more
than the US armed forces. That is, graduating from a service academy
guarantees no rank. Such guarantees predate a literate general
population, and are thus absurd. Conversely, certain rank may be
provided via examination. Federally audit license testing, and allow
associations to make up their own tests, if re-testing the licensed
is periodic. Land grant universities will probably lose students, but
gain some license testing business, for a net loss of gross business.
This, however, is conjecture about what are basically market forces.
Plead to the Supreme Court to exclude Florida from the Electoral
College for the rest of JEB Bush's governorship (slated to end in
2006) plus 13 years, for systemic election fraud.
Investigate and probably prosecute Katherine Harris for election
fraud.
Investigate and probably prosecute the management of Diebold Corp.
and similar for treason. There is preponderant circumstantial
evidence of Diebold/Republican theft of the Congress in 2002, "The
Diebold Bounce", and of course the evidence suggests quite
compellingly that Kerry would have won a fair 2004 Presidential
election by some 5,000,000 votes.
Explain and confirm that there are no proprietary software
copyrights on election technologies.
Maintain a potent, progressive military with current uniformed
personnel levels for the forseeable future but sharply curtailed
systems aquisitions. Figure 50% of current aquisitions levels or
less. Maintain current basic research levels, i.e. DARPA-type stuff.
The mythology is that if you can imagine it, the US military has it.
That's a valuable mythology, and doesn't require the belief that they
have A LOT of it.
Explicitly allow articulating motor-tricycles that lean like a
2-wheeled motorcycle. Honda has made small vehicles with this
characteristic. Require that motorcycles have 2 headlights 3 feet
apart. These two items will save hundreds of lives a year at current
levels of motorcycle ridership, which figures to increase massively
for this and other more compelling reasons.
Task the National Endowment for the Arts with promulgating
cycluphonics, ratiolity, and the unwound cycle of fifths as a method
of subsetting tonal clusters. http://linux01.gwdg.de/~rhohen
Get some computer programmers at DARPA to finish Ha3sm, Hohensee's
Autonomous 3-stack machine, a computer operating system.
ftp://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/cLIeNUX/interim/Forreal.tgz, or it may be
archived at ibiblio.org, or email me.
Make it unlawful for entities other than individuals to contribute
funds to political campaigns. In particular, corporations shall have
no political funding rights. I thought of this myself, but the Tom
DeLay case illustrates that Texas saw the importance of this issue
some 100 years ago. I'm also very curious about how the whole board
of directors thing works, or rather fails to work. My suspicion is
that it would be beneficial to make boards of directors advisory only.
Conduct or review a variety of politically curious re-autopsies,
such as on Nicholas Berg, Lori Klausutis, Vince Foster, Ron Brown,
and the guy that was murdered and described as a suicide in Bush's
State Department right in headquarters in Foggy Bottom, John J.
Kokal, and many others. (Nov 05) There's also now a Colonel in Iraq
in the notably odd suicide category.
Survey all cases of persons who have died in police custody in the
last 10 years.
Establish a position of national participatory sports promoter and
invite Cal Ripkin and/or Carl Lewis to take their on-going work
Federal.
Establish a US Executive Organic Demonstration Farm within the
Beltsville national agricultural research center and get all food
consumed at the White House from that farm, or as close to that ideal
as possible, with all deliberate speed and as the maturation times of
various crops and livestock permits. The White House culinary staff
shall advise on the crops and varieties grown, and culinary
considerations of husbandry. Consultancy shall be sought from persons
such as Kent Whealey of the Seed Savers Exchange.
Abolish Daylight Savings Time. Put all White House clocks on non-
DST.
Convert the Executive Branch to use of open-source computer operating
systems, such as Linux, BSD, or Plan 9 From Bell Labs. The military
will be ordered to do so. I hope they aren't waiting for orders. Tip
to unixphobes: learn the ed editor and turn off all servers on your
local box. See also: my cLIeNUX Linux "distribution", particularly
the "seedocs". cLIeNUX is probably archived at ibiblio.
Make all publications of the government available by FTP download
from the Internet in effectively non-proprietary data formats. Make
all Executive Branch websites lucid when viewed with the Lynx
text-based web browser.
Implement checks and balances on law enforcement such that no
jurisdiction can monopolize the evidence pertaining to any suspicious
death. This item is also discussed under GENERALITIES q.v. The word
"police" does not occur in the Constitution, and the balance of power
needs to be extended to police entities policing each other,
federally and between the States. Inter-State this can be limited to
matters of wrongful death. Whereas the US is a nation of laws, the
Constitutional "sovereignty" of the several States means a State
right to lawfully execute, not to murder. I may require that all
copyable evidence of any ongoing wrongful death investigation be
submitted to the FBI for investigative and records redundancy. The
Federal Government has an obligation to guarantee a republican
government to the several States. That includes preventing a
particular State from implementing a Murder Incorporated. When I
leave office no State or branch of the Federal Government will have a
monopoly on the investigation of any suspicious death.
Manage the White House grounds and monumental DC landscaping
organically.
Increase personal financial accountability of members of Congress
and lobbyists and lobbying organizations.
Implement a graduated progressive debt-monetization schedule for
the Reagan/Bush/Bush National Debt to eventually eliminate the
regressive debt costs left by the Bush Treason Family.
Generalize the definitions of criminal anti-competitive behavior to
better protect small businesses and economic diversity. Lots of
things e.g. Microsoft does legally will become illegal, such as
kickbacks to system administrators. By the way, business owners need
to not allow their employees to take kickbacks from Microsoft, on
their own initiative. System admins like to keep people on their
networks dysfunctionalized, so they like WinDoS for end users. Don't
be such a sucker. Apple went to unix (MacOS X is a BSD unix with an
Apple GUI) for a reason. Be advised also that Windows is still MSDOS
and not suitable for connection to the Internet. (Jan '06) Bill Gates
said recently that security is easy. Bill Gates is a pathological
liar. The latest version of MSDOS (Windows 'Vista') was delayed for
years by bug-chasing.
Provide two copies of every required schoolbook to every public
student in America; a hardback that stays in the classroom and is not
to be defaced and remains school property, and a Federally provided
paperback that becomes the property of the student.
Task the dairy industry with deciding upon a variety of real
natural fermented cheese to bear the legal designation "American
cheese", and without compensation, remove the designation "American"
from artificial imitations of cheese. Let fake cheese be "Amercun
cheeth". For example, make burger chains call their "cheeseburgers"
"cheethburgers", or use real cheese. "Cheeze" might be OK. This item
is not to be taken lightly. "American Cheese" is the perfect example
of what's wrong with America.
Uphold the contractual obligations of the USA while allowing
certain bad investments to lose their value abruptly, such as
companies constituting an excessive capacity to manufacture weapons,
Halliburton, and so on.
Ensure that transportation policy emphasize pedestrians and other
human-power transport first, then mass transit, then roads. I will
encourage buses, in particular, publicly and privately operated.
Running a bus line will become a right of a business entity wishing
to do so, assuming reasonable safety regulation compliance. A useful
counterexample to this is bus service around the University of
Maryland, which is designed to subsidize the middle class at the
expense of those most in need of public transportation, and thus most
beneficial to society as a whole to recieve such services. The 86
Metrobus route in particular is not allowed to visit the College Park
subway station, which is a strikingly arrogant perversion of the
politics of public thoroughfares. In a similar vein, certain posh
residential streets in DC will lose their "NO THRU TRUCKS" signs
during my administration.
Establish a cabinet-level auditing office, with a general permanent
mandate and authorization to eliminate corruption and improve
efficiency throughout the Executive Branch via creative random audits
of anything of interest for such audits.
Reduce the implementation costs of the tax system and the welfare
system by simplifying the income tax code to a single simple formula
with a positive component, formerly mis-named as the proposed
"negative income tax". Thus there will be no brackets. The top tax
rate should be about 50% and the top positive tax rate should provide
a homeless man with about $10-- a day in 2004 dollars. Since I
suggested this Bush has noted that Americans spend 6 billion hours, I
believe it was, a year figuring their taxes. That's about $60B worth
of wasted time.
(Another thing I'm looking at is a flat top rate of 50% so that a
large segment of low income people pay no income tax, but that's just
an item of curiosity so far. It depends where the level is that will
produce revenue comparable to Clinton-era tax levels. Another idea
here is to consider all gross revenue as income, rather than
considering profit as income. At a much lower nominal tax rate on a
much larger tax base, this can inately eliminate the distinctions
between not-for-profits, businesses, and private parties. The
distinction between business and consumer is abused in America.
Regardless, any changes I make to tax codes will be huge net
simplifications. Complexity itself is a reduceable cost.)
Assuming the same basic tax system as we have now, in terms of
bracketed income taxes being the bulk of federal revenue, the top tax
rate should be in the range of 40%, PLUS the percentage of debt
service in the federal budget. The top tax rate is thus currently
60%, since debt service is roughly 20% of the federal budget. This
allows Republicans to pay for their debt. A gradual debt monetization
program may also be necessary.
(July 05) the above tax ruminations are vague, but rest assured,
current Bush tax policy is a reactionary joke, and his mumblings
about tax simplification since I proposed a tax simplification are to
be feared like a tropical virus, and do seem to be recieving the
appropriate reception, a horrified public recoil.
Eliminate parasitic "protectionist" tariffs, farm and other
subsidies to the advantaged. Do what Reagan said, not what he did,
and strictly limit subsidies to benefit the truly needy, i.e. put
money where it is cost-effective for the populace, such as
immunization programs and so on. Welfare is for poor people.
Require all products bodily ingested by humans, such as cigarettes,
have their ingredients listed as is now the case for most foods. This
will include products with long-standing exemptions from such
requirements, such as COCA Cola. The regulation to list ingredients
on medicines wiped out narcotics-based "patent medicines", and should
have a positive overall effect on cigarettes and what is in them.
Eliminate the current parasitic relationship between the government
and tobacco company fines. By the way, the way I quit smoking for a
year now is to chew tobacco. I chew Red Man, and chew small
quantities I can swallow rather than spitting, thus avoiding horrors
like spit cups. This is still poison, but I suspect it's much less
harmful than smoking. It undoubtably is less harmful to me given the
condition my lungs were in a year ago. They are far from healed a
year later.
Outlaw kickbacks to doctors on prescriptions, with draconian
penalties.
Re-outlaw consumer advertising of prescription (and proposed
self-prescription) drugs. Rather, outlaw such advertisements on cable
TV.
Closely investigate a legal doctrine of reduced liability
proportional to pre-existing risk. That is, childbirth and old age,
for example, are risky. That risk in negligence cases pertaining to
people at high pre-existing risk is to be taken into account somehow.
Wrongful loss of life is to be pro-rated to 80 years, or ten years
older than the decedent, which ever is greater. Or something like
that.
Improve employability and general functionalization services to the
homeless, literacy programs generally, and many other areas currently
exhibiting barbaric and outrageously costly neglect. Another area
that I personally find emblematic of the neglect the USA bestows upon
it's helpless, my pet peeve if you will, is the condition of the
average public basketball backboard. A decent outdoor basketball goal
is a very cost-effective thing. Expect to see full
regulation-dimensions rectangular backboards with straight rims
appearing when I am President, starting around the White House. Maybe
even nets.
Solicit involvement of professional athletes in adult literacy
outreach programs. My personal experience with illiterate homeless
men is they need a Ray Lewis or similar to help them with their
phonics. The NBA read to Achieve program for example, should target
adults.
Institute a sentencing premium on illiteracy for jail and prison
terms, which can be overcome by learning to read while incarcerated.
Make the premium greater for shorter incarcerations, up to 2 to 1 for
sentences of less than 6 months.
Reduce disaster funding for semi-normal occurances like hurricanes
along the Gulf of Mexico. (Oct '05) For example, FEMA flood insurance
in the storm surge range should be capped at about $20,000--. For
example, Trent Lott can rebuild his $3 mil mansion on the water on
FEMA money if he had insurance, but if it gets blown away again he
can only get $20k for it. You could call this "The Cabana Way".
Closely review the remedy ruling in the Microsoft anti-trust case
decided by Judge Collen Kollar-Kotelly. My current thinking is that
she failed her mandate to provide a remedy.
Emphasize North American and Western Hemisphere resources in US
energy policy. That is, reduce or de-emphasize dependance on oil and
LNG tankers.
Emphasize the Internet and other non-traditional channels in
education. Formal education is a contradiction of terms. Also
emphasize sports, gardening, and the arts. The teachers' unions
and/or public schools are certified failures, and were of very little
use to me after 3rd grade. That is theirs to correct. I have
education to worry about.
The validity of the Patent Office is to be subjected to fundamental
review. In the mean time, certain areas of technology are grossly and
absolutely inappropriate for patent protection. Genetics and computer
software should not be patentable at all. There is an Amendment to
this effect suggested below. This may not require an Amendment,
however.
Foster a weekly blues jam and bar-b-q at the White House in the
summer.
Manage my legislative agenda like an open source software project,
with input from the general population via an FTP site and/or web
wiki.
Make public spaces in DC available to the National Arboretum and
Beltville research farm for planting and long term observation of
ornamental, fruit and shade tree and shrub varieties developed at
those facilities. Promote such plantings in low-income DC in
particular. The program to develop a blight-proof American Chestnut
tree should find fertile ground in DC, for example.
I am a personal fan of the National Zoo. I was quoted in the cover
story "Gorilla Groupies" in the Washington City Paper years ago.
Problems at the NZP will be attended to. The Zoo is in part a victim
of it's own fabulous historical successes. The first white tiger in
the US, Mohini Rewa, was a gift to the US from India. Now you can be
killed by one in your own mansion in Vegas, or in it's cage in a
Florida zoo, or at a petting zoo in the Midwest. A new mission may be
in order. For example, the national zoo of the USA could be more
North American in focus. Elk, moose, turkeys, dugong, manatee,
coyote, paw-paw, chestnut, indigenous azaleas.... such things are as
bizarre to most zoo-goers as a white tiger, and yet are indigenous to
North America. The current plan for demonstration elephant breeding
in downtown DC is a textbook lack of vision and sense of mission.
Smithsonian people are quite full of themselves. Nothing a zoo does
in terms of artistic display and clever signage compares to, for
example, a prairie dog. Meanwhile, it is an absolute scandal that
there isn't a bus or something up the length of the zoo. Rock Creek
to Connecticut Avenue is over 200 feet of elevation change, quite the
tough hike for fat Americans. (Jan '06) The Zoo has progressed. They
have a Przywalski's Horse, for example. And a petting zoo. Nigerian
Dwarf Goats. This is the former USA, politically, but it's still a
wonderland.
I support statutes and regulations that result in a decrease in the
gross bulk of statutes and regulations for the sake thereof, such as
more use of parametric "schedules" such as the well-known "GS-16"
schedule of government salaries. A quick glance at the US Code
suggests that it could easily be smaller by a factor of 4 or more.
Obfuscation is parasitic.
Gun control is a population density issue. A moose gun is insane in
Manhatten. Being without one is insane in most of Alaska. A simple
tax can be developed based on how many people are in range of a
weapon. Let's say the tax is 5 cents a year for each human within
range of a weapon. That's 20 cents for a moose gun in the outskirts
of Nome, and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a moose gun in
Manhatten. The details need some work, but therein lies the solution.
There are a number of possible side-effects, like gun shops become
inately rural businesses, which is a good thing. A gun collector may
be forced to move to the country to retain his collection. There's
also the issue of a one-second factor, like 5 cents for each round
the thing can fire in one second, times population density. Thus
automatic and semi-automatic weapons cost more in proportion to their
fire rate. There would also be an exemption if the tax on a weapon is
below a certain threshhold, such as $10--.
Reassess the health risks of cyclamates and other sugar
alternatives versus aspartame. Note that Donald Rumsfeld was a key
lobbyist for aspartame.
Abolish diplomatic immunity outside embassies, and transit to the
borders from embassies. The US doesn't have royals, and doesn't
acknowledge them before the law on our soil to any extent, except
heads of state and other modern civil officers.
Change the names of Blair Mansion, the Ronald Reagan White Elephant
and Internationalist Boondoggle Center, Reagan National Airport, the
J. Edgar Hoover Building, and the Herbert Hoover Building. The Reagan
Building might be a nice thing to name after Rosa Parks, for example.
Destroy the LBJ Memorial. LBJ has JFK's limo scrubbed. It's time to
scrub LBJ.
Increase compensation to Federal elected officials. Congresspersons
should make at least $500,000 per year. The current situation is like
the elitist "amateurism" scam prevalent in track and field before
Carl Lewis, and the myriad 'volunteerism' scams throughout DC and
elsewhere. The fastest way to do this may be to encourage the States
to pay their representatives, who work FOR the States, by the way,
large honoraria.
Closely scrutinize zoning laws. New Orleans is a nice place to try
abolishing zoning laws, for example. One idea here is to make it
illegal for any area to be precluded from use as a residence. This
idea is to make it more problematic to pollute, create hazards, and
to help reduce dependance on transportation. This may also have
side-benefits for the homeless. Rather than making factories and so
on uninhabitable, an officer of the operating company should be
required to reside with his/her family at such locations, such as
Union Carbide's facility in Bhopal.
Closely scrutinize the concept of personal trust funds.
Set up a history ftp/website in the Education department
Keep America's shipyards open at a low level with ships with
potential civilian or humanitarian roles. The US doesn't currently
need submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers and so on. Freighters,
troop ships and so on can continue to be built. They might be nuclear
powered, but will be lightly armed, if at all. An oil-spill response
ship might be worth consideration. Another possibility is a floating
marine biology college. An oceanic debris cleaner of some kind
perhaps. Suggestions welcome.
Provide a low-cost clinic option besides a hospital to every county
in the USA (one rare good idea in the Republicon platform).
One immigration rule for all countries (per Al Sharpton). This is
part of the complete breakfast of simplifying the US Code and the
Code of Federal Regulations, as well as being a matter of fundamental
racial fairness. This does not preclude special control of
Mideasterners, who are currently worthy of special treatment for
security reasons.
Promise exhibition MLB baseball games in Cuba if Castro adopts a
constitution with real elections and so on. Invite Castro to the
White House and smoke Phillies cognac-flavored Blunts to annoy him.
Heavily tax mineral resources extracted from Federal land.
Distribute said monies to the regions said resources were extracted
from. Oil money, for example, should remain in the Gulf region to a
much larger extent than it does.
AMENDMENTS
I suggest several Constitutional amendments. The language in this
listing is not necessarily exact, but is close. Actual experts should
be consulted on the details.
.........................................................................
Employees or compensated agents of the Executive Branch at the
time of an offense are excluded from the pardon power of the
President for said offense. The Senate may pardon such persons in
such cases if the pardonee and offense are explicitly named and
the pardon approved by simple majory of a quorum of the Senate.
.........................................................................
Citizens may grow any species of photosynthetic plant in any
quantity.
.........................................................................
The Judiciary shall have the power to declare periods of up to
twenty years of Federal disenfranchisement over States or
municipalities found to have harbored Federal election fraud.
.........................................................................
Letters patent shall not issue, and such letters patent
issued prior to this Amendment shall be void, for any living thing
and for any instruction sequence for computing automata, i.e.
computer software.
.........................................................................
The Electoral College is dissolved. Voting for Federal officers
shall be by direct nationwide tally. Failure of any single
candidate to achieve a majority for a particular office shall be
handled as prior to this Amendment.
.........................................................................
A voter in a Federal election may make one vote of approval for
each of possibly several persons the voter approves of for each
office contested. That is, one vote per voter per candidate.
.........................................................................
A State may secede from the United States of America by
written notification of the President from the executive of the
State in question. The President shall then withdraw the mobile
military assets and munitions from the moribund region and
release former citizens from that region from military service.
Persons fleeing to the USA from the moribund region within a year
who were citizens of the USA reclaim their citizenship immediately
and inately.
.........................................................................
Children and genetic half and full siblings of a President are
disqualified from becoming President or Vice President.
Grandchildren are not disqualified.
.........................................................................
Handwritten paper ballots shall be accepted in any Federal
election, in addition to whatever other means of documenting votes
are provided.
.........................................................................
The offices of a national at-large Representive and three
at-large Senators are hereby created. Every Federal 2-year
election shall involve the nationwide election of the at-large
Representive and one of the at-large Senators, in the usual
Senatorial 6-year cycle. The first three at-large Senator's terms
will be established one at a time in echelon over the three
elections following the adoption of this Amendment. The
qualifications, powers and terms for at-large offices shall be as
per a regular seat in each body. Plurality shall be the
sufficient margin to elect an at-large Legislator.
.........................................................................
One office of at-large at-random Representative is hereby
created. The Congress shall by law formulate a random drawing or
lottery to select a Representative to the House from among
nationwide applicants for the office, such that each applicant
has the same chance. It shall be possible to apply by post card,
possibly in addition to other means. The qualifications, powers
and term for this office shall be as per any other Representative.
.........................................................................
At noon on the day after this Amendment is ratified the occupants of
the offices of President and Vice President shall be removed, and
shall be replaced for the remainder of the 2005-2009 term by Richard
Allen Hohensee, President, and Senator Russell Feingold, Vice
President. This replacement and term shall be supported by a special
chain of succession composed of all those Senators and
Representatives who voted against the joint resolution allowing the
invasion of Iraq.
.........................................................................
The above herb amendment to allow growing any herb could be
constructed so as to foster small exurban family farms and serve as a
permanent seedbed for small businesses.
States are history. Maryland, for example, has a ridiculous
boundary. Rhode Island, originally "Rhode Island Plantation", having
the same representation in the Senate as e.g. California is
ridiculous. A third house of Congress might be in order based on
cities, which House of Cities might reduce the role of the Senate
over time. The Senate is real good at singing "God Bless America" on
the Capitol steps while the Pentagon burns.
GENERALITIES
Solve half the world's problems.
Welfare is for poor folks.
Government is for people, not corporations.
The USA will be getting out of the warmongering business. The US will
not defend corporate "strategic interests" offshore except by purely
trade diplomacy means, which should and would be sufficient if such
"strategic interest" claims had any validity.
Make my life as President extremely public, to the greatest extent
possible consistant with national security. The adult public will be
able to monitor most of my personal activity via live motion
pictures. A Presidential webcam, so to speak, with a general and an
adult outlet. Big Brother is already here. I give the people of the
USA the option of keeping an unblinking eye on Big Brother if they
are so inclined. (Nov '05) I think about this a lot. I don't know to
what extent this is actually practical, but I think I can guarantee a
24/7 video feed from the Oval Office and main Cabinet meeting room,
for example.
Marriage is not a federal concern. (The country seems to have
already adopted this idea since I proposed it.) The proposed tax
formula will provide positive taxes (back to the person) to
dependants, not married couples per se. Children and the homeless
will get the same subsidy per each. The homeless are societies
children. The homeless will recieve a direct subsidy, while
childrens' subsidies will go to their guardians, in the normal case.
Personal social and philisophical issues are a huge area the federal
government can beneficially recuse itself from, and it bears mention
that such issues are not mentioned in the Constitution. Monogamous
marriage may or may not be the backbone of American society, but it
is not the backbone of government, and certainly not the Federal
government.
The legal tradition of the USA has some fundamental quirks going
back to English Common Law that need fixing. Malice, intent,
custodial relationships, sanity and other subtleties are sentencing
issues, not corpus delecti. That is, intent is not part of the
crucial body of a crime. In the jargon of computer programming, and
Charles Moore (the Forth programming language) in particular, the
criminal legal system is 'mis-factored'. "What" and "why" are
beneficially separable, and this is a fundamental and systemic
departure from English legal tradition. This tectonic problem can
realistically be addressed within the confines of the Federal
criminal code, or possibly the military code, and let the States
observe the effects derived.
The US military will be exercised in the third world to project
sustenance. That is, when the global situation allows, the US
military will be used as a variant or branch of the Peace Corps. The
courage of the military will be required to sustain losses to disease
and to operate substantially unarmed in theaters where the US
military is a semi-welcome guest and the mosquito, tse-tse fly and
AIDS virus are the brutal de-facto overlords. Sustenance-projection
exercises in Africa may also be an important return stop for abused
troops, such as those now in Iraq. (Oct '05) This item would have set
a useful precedent and advisor cadre for the response to hurricane
Katrina. (Nov 05) Jack Murtha alleges that a huge proportion of the
force in Iraq is emotionally damaged. This is undoubtable. A buffer
tour, possibly shorter than a normal tour, in some place like Sudan
and/or Alaska is to be closely considered for troops returning from
Iraq.
There is no specific labor policy as such at this time. In theory I
do not support the distinction between labor and management, nor the
distinction between business and consumer. Both distinctions are
elitist. Labor interests should note my positions which are not
explicitly labor initiatives such as the elimination of degree
requirements from all positions licensed by the Federal government,
the elimination of various subsidies to various sectors other than
the working man/woman, the possible huge increase in manpower and
facilities to the INS via the de-commissioning of the CIA, the
improved immigration enforcement possible in the absence of a corrupt
and bizarre drug war, the biometric identification of all immigrants,
the reduction in impetus of Latin Americans to emigrate to the US in
the absence of a corrupt drug war in their home regions, substantive
measures to reduce health costs, the top tax rate of 40%+, and other
policies that help the working man, woman or family substantively,
but not necessarily directly or explicitly.
Guarantee a veto on any and every bill submitted to me longer than
50 pages in length, thus fostering clarity, modularity, efficiency
and atomicity in legislation, and autonomy between the Executive and
Legislative branches. The reader may note that this entire platform
is in sync with such a policy.
The right-wing talking point of 'activist judges' is a good clue to
something America needs; a more activist Judiciary. The ACLU is the
former USA's de-facto federal public defender. They need collegial
competition from a branch of the Federal government, probably in the
Judiciary. There is a dysfunctional power slush-fund between the
Executive and Legislative Branches, particularly as relates to the
ludicrously misnamed intelligence community. The President needs more
latitude to coordinate the Executive Branch, while having less
ability to warp extra-Executive functions such as special
prosecutors. Special prosecutors should be a normal function of the
Judiciary, i.e. not so special. Clarifying the balance of power
between the three main Branches of government would benefit from a
more active Judiciary, and greater police powers for the Legislative
and Judicial Branches. Executive law enforcement agencies should have
a rock-paper-scissors relationship with Judicial and Legislative
police, perhaps expanded from the US Capitol Police (Legislative) and
US Marshalls (Judicial?).
I oppose capital punishment. It's not cost-effective, and is
distracting to Governors and Presidents, particularly those such as
George Walker Bush who so richly deserve it. An execution, however,
cannot remotely repair the damage caused by a George Dubya Bush, a
John Wayne Gacy, or even a perpetrator of a single deliberate
vehicular homicide such as Laura Welch Bush.
Enforce the law with emphasis on the most privileged facing the
closest scrutiny. This is my affirmative action policy. I am quite
fatigued with rich white men like Skull and Bones (WH Taft, Bush 41,
Bush, Kerry) giving me a bad name. I do not hope to abolish wealth. I
hope to require it to exhibit some class or be abruptly impoverished.
Wealth is a valuable incentive. A static stratification is not. If
the big trees never die, you are not in a living forest. The US
economy needs some lightning strikes, particularly to clear out areas
that are natural business seedbeds like software and small farms, but
not a huge forest fire. I don't have any major beef I'm aware of with
IBM, UPS and numerous other large companies. The former USA needs an
overhaul, but the engine block is more than salvageable.
I will conduct my personal relationship with the District of
Columbia as an example of America's relationship with the world. The
current federal relationship with DC is neglectful, arrogant and
parasitic. Quite telling. The continued operation of Reagan National
Airport is lethal arrogance, and strikingly well-named as such. With
a smaller Air Force One, National and Andrews could switch roles. I
will work to make every corner of the District of Columbia burst into
bloom in every way. For example, DC has a worse-than-scandalous adult
illiteracy rate, and a wealth of influential religious, sports and
entertainment figures to become involved in correcting that national
disgrace, among others. I am opposed to a new baseball stadium in DC,
however. DC needs a triple-A club in RFK, which is what I've said all
along, and is basically what they have as of this writing with the
Expos. You don't create a beloved pro sports tradition by fiat. (July
05) The Nats are in first place in the NL East. They are drawing
well, and an argument can be made that the magic of RFK Stadium
contributes positively to the Nats' success. I have proposed a
low-cost soccer stadium so that DC United has its own field. They
draw well, but less than the Nats. Switching the field at RFK from
soccer to baseball is a temporary measure. Arguments for a new
stadium for the Nats are, as best I can see, rooted entirely in
corrupt motives. (Jan '06) My original position on this issue
continues to be validated by the bad waltz between MLB and The
District. A new stadium is going to cost twice the original estimate.
The city should pledge a new college-grade soccer stadium for DC
United (the soccer franchise) and $100M for improvements to RFK, and
tell MLB to take it or leave it.
I don't like the idea of homosexual couples adopting children, but
I'd be hesitant to second-guess local social workers from the federal
level.
I will try to do things in a way that displacements of workforces
have a gains to go with the losses. The term for this would be
assisted workforce migration; Allowing CIA employees to migrate to
the INS, for example. Another example is the reduction of need for
police that should accrue from civilization of the country's barbaric
drug laws. The currrent prohibition means America has too many cops
and corrections officers. Other initiatives in this platform indicate
that the USA also has a severe dearth of border control personnel,
and a huge dearth of bus drivers and other surface public transport
personnel, so there is an assisted workforce migration possible. Cops
will be offered free training for a CDL to drive buses, for example.
The Federal bipartisan "Republicrat" establishment is largely held
together by a mortal desperation to keep a large volume of hideous
secrets from the American people. As a fanciful example, the whole
JFK/Bay of Pigs story falls together quite nicely if you place George
"Poppy" HW Bush, our 41st President, in the sniper's nest in the
Texas Schoolbook Depository. That is, if you make him the primary
shooter in the JFK assassination. The history of secrets is that the
reality tends to be many times worse than a private individual can
imagine. Many such stories lie unexposed in classified materials.
This is the most important thing the establishment loses if I become
President; all those fabulously dirty secrets. This is how I will
make my Presidency an outrageous smash success in a matter of weeks,
if not hours. I'm not in the club. Many prominent Democrats are. My
guess is that the last President with no shared skeletons in his
closet was Carter, and perhaps Eisenhower before that. The government
club's relationship with the populace is parasitic. Secrets are what
you keep from your enemies, and the current establishment, we see in
the news, is to a huge extent the people's enemy. I'm not.
The President is the central strinfo agent of the country. I will
have a national security triumvirate to advise me on urgent security
matters, who will take reports from the 14 strinfo agencies besides
the CIA existing in the Executive Branch. Said triumvirate will all
have interrupt-capable access to the President and Vice President.
The various main departments of the Executive Branch will be
represented by a cabinet of some nine primary officials, representing
the following topics of governance, and recieving reports from the
pertinent existing departments; Audits, Commerce, Culture, Defense,
Diplomacy, Health, Justice, Resources, Funding. Diplomacy will
basically be the State Department as is, so the Diplomacy advisor
will be the Secretary of State, but other primary advisors may
represent an agglomeration of existing departments. Culture will be
education, the arts, science, the FCC, and so on. A routine periodic
"cabinet meeting" will be those 9 primary officials, the President,
and perhaps the Vice President.
Wealth is like government in that it exists at the behest of and for
the general benefit of the people. Under the Bush crime family, the
US is going deeply into debt and the majority is getting poorer.
Progressive tax rates can be justified by the fact that the wealthy
can endure them while all members of society enjoy increased
prosperity. Thus there will be tax increases, particularly in the
higher brackets, in my agenda. The marginal rate could be loosely
indexed to the debt service component of the budget. The well-to-do
can look forward to marginal rates in the 30s and 40s again when they
have paid off the Republican National Debt they have saddled us all
with.
The better tone of American foreign policy was set by the Monroe
Doctrine the better part of two centuries ago. The Monroe Doctrine
has some very prominent misinterpretations, however. I believe the
correct interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine is that the USA must
consider free nations its allies, and less than free countries less
than nations. In a sentence, a nation is a secular democracy, and
other areas are primitive countries and regions needing help to
become or join the community of real nations. This latter category
currently includes Israel, and to my knowledge, the entire Arabian
Peninsula, as examples. My policy is to attempt to side with nature
in all things, as best one can interpret nature, and to favor such
regions evolving into nations, as is clearly the long-term trend of
human history.