Get rid of MSNBC too that and college professors like Chomsky who hysterially denounce America while earning their living by siphoining off tax payers’ money in public university.
Some of my personal “reform” ideas.
-Taxes (both income and corporate) shall be simplified into a few brackets with no loopholes, deductions, etc.
-Barring national disaster, a national debt goals are set up for every year to reduced by a certain amount of money. If Congress fails to act on this they will get voted out en masse both GOP and Democrat
-All pork barrel spending will be banned and infrastructure spending will focus on those that can benefit the most people as determined by professional statiscians.
-The current Obamacare bill will have its individual mandate clause struck off but otherwise kept as is for a few years to see if it will work
-Medicare and Social Security retirement ages shall be raised for jobs not involving physical labour
-Nuclear power plants shall be built at tremendously fast rates, by 2050 at least 80% of America’s electirc power will be non-fossil fuel.
-Abortion shall be banned for all reasons except to save the life of the mother and rape/incest by constitutional amendment if need be
-Marijuana shall be legalized and taxed by the federal government
-It shall be a crime to distribute, shall, grow, or produce but not to own hard drugs
-The drinking age will be lowered to 18
-America shall set target goals to return to the Moon and land men on Mars
-A foreign policy doctrine shall be adopted stating basically no acts of genocide or ethnic cleansing shall be tolerated anywehre in the globe and the United States shall act to stop it immediately unilaterally if necessary
I like some of the above, so won’t try to repeat them.
Punitive taxes on the rich including tax brackets for passive personal income at the same level as salaried income.
Scale way back all the rah rah America is the Best Ever jingoism, include all the mindless “Support our Troops” stuff that’s gotten to be almost a religion in this country. It’s a sacrifice and a tragedy, but dying in a war of aggression isn’t doing anything to make Americans more free in their own country. Similarly, rename the Department of Defense to “the Department of Offense” to more accurately reflect its purpose.
Reform elections in manners to encourage the formation of third, fourth, fifth, etc. parties, that aren’t beholden to evil rich people like the Koch Brothers.
Qin! I like the professional statisticians replacing pork idea, & the tiered retirement age is worth considering; but my inner environmental health major is leery of any politician pushing a hurried nuke plant buildup.
It’s kind of like the choice presented to the American people over health care reform; it’s either what we have now or British SOCIALIST medicine. Like the rest of the developed world disappeared.
All good ideas. Some of them would get more than 51% of citizen support; too bad our “majority rules democracy” isn’t letting the majority rule.
My thinking has evolved recently, and I’ll agree that mandatory voting and elimination of Electoral system are probably good ideas. As is often the case, for rationalists to identify solutions is easier than getting them adopted.
I hope our Ninja squad takes note that: Corporate money influencing elections is one of the biggest problems, and there the Supremes are more to blame than Congress.
I don’t know that we need to SAVE America in the sense that “if we don’t do thus-and-so, we won’t be here in a hundred years”. The only issues I know of that approach that level of seriousness are the deficit/debt, and the coming crash in entitlements spending. (They are essentially the same issue.)
It can be addressed in a number of ways, but my preferred approach would be [list=A][li]A freeze on all government spending until the economy grows out of the deficit []a balanced budget amendment when we do, and []means testing for Social Security. [/list][/li]
We may get a de facto freeze on spending if Congress goes Republican in November and Obama gets re-elected. If we don’t have responsibility at the top, at least we might get gridlock. But we won’t get a balanced budget amendment. The instant the current crisis fades into memory, we will get a new load of nitwits eager to spend their way to re-election.
If we’re gonna do it that way, might as well merge with Canada and become the Commonwealth, or Kingdom, of North America (member of the Commonwealth of Nations).
Hmm . . . Does that mean we can’t go to war without the Queen’s/Governor-General’s permission?
Service charges, account fees, cannot exceed actual costs. Any realized profit will be heavily taxed.
X prize solutions for intractable problems. Let junior high, high school, college, uni kids compete to find fair and equitable solutions. Vote on best 3. Free education for anyone involved in top three offerings.
No one who has been a lobbyist can ever hold public office.
Make every oath of office have enough bite that they tremble when they take it.
Zero tolerance for conflict of interest at any level, violation means immediate disqualification for ever holding public office again.
Criminalization of white collar crime, for true. Dodgy accounting, someone’s going to jail, everyone is losing their certification.
Extinction of ocean fisheries in the next 40 years,* versus* having to raise taxes so the General Fund can pay back Social Security, and cut Medicare entitlements? No contest.
Biology is physically real, money is just a social technology.
Much of it is the fault of the Chinese and other countries not just the USA. Not to mention overfishing does not mean the total destruction of fisheries in less than a half-century. One need only look at Paul Erlich to be sceptical of that of stuff
I find it amusing that people will dismiss our obvious fisheries problems because Paul R. Ehrlich was off in his calculations, but still expect the Second Coming, which has never come true, and after this many failed deadlines, presumably never will.