What solutions will you try and why?

How will you get them enacted?

Political Debates; here’s what I’m hoping to hear:

Reduce Federal spending by actual spending cuts, not just slightly slower growth.   

Reduce the size and scope of Federal government, cutting some

Departments and consolidating others, and eliminate many Agencies, Offices, Commissions, Bureaus, Institutes and Endowments.  Significantly reduce Federal employment.

Lower lavish entitlements, like welfare, Medicaid, etc.

Fully insure benefits, like Medicare, Social Security and Unemployment with secure, set-aside funding.

Spend less than the incoming revenue, cut everything until you are.

Secure the borders, all of them.  Make illegal immigration very difficult.

Reduce military spending and overseas deployments.

Streamline the legal immigration process.  Weed-out fraud and corruption.

Expel non-citizen law breakers, systematically and urgently.  No special exemptions for long-time violators.  Those born to non-citizens while here can stay here with citizen relatives; or return with their parents to their homeland until they are 18 years old, then choose to return as a legal citizen.

No new taxes, no tax increases, and no fee increases.

Eliminate all exemptions, deductions, credits, subsidizes, and tariffs.

Eliminate the progressive idea in income taxes; one rate, the same percentage for everyone.

Increase the volume and availability of medical care, abundance will lower all its costs.

Substantially lower or eliminate business taxes.

Eliminate life-style regulations, encourage education, and let people suffer for their mistakes.

Significantly cut Federal Regulations.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard much mention of these ideas as solutions to our economic problems; and heard practically nothing of how they might be accomplished. 

C’mon candidates, try bold meaningful solutions for once!  Or do you lack the courage to do what’s right?

Don’t Raise Taxes

On Millionaires and Billionaires

Lower everyone’s taxes to 15%.  No progressive rates, just a straight 15% for everyone.

No one should have to pay a higher rate than Millionaires and Billionaires.  No one, rich or poor, should pay a higher rate than anyone else.  Everyone should be taxed exactly alike, no exceptions.

15% for Senators, Presidents, for Warren Buffet, for Warren’s secretary, for Mitt Romney, for Bill Gates, for all businesses, for all non-profits, for all churches, for all schools, for all unions, for all political parties, for low income, for high income , for middle income, 15%  for all individuals, companies, and organizations.  

Only someone or some activity with no income or no revenue would pay no tax.

Everyone pays the same revenue (income) tax rate, no exemptions, no exceptions, no credits, no low income credit, no high income surcharge, no subsidizes, and no deductions. 

How much value did you receive? 

Send the Federal government 15%

It would be plenty of revenue for the government’s annual costs, future benefit, pension, and entitlement costs, and paying down the debt.

It would be much less than they are used to getting.

And that’s what I want; much smaller Federal government, much less spending, much lower taxes, much less regulation, much safer human and constitutional rights, much more prosperity and opportunity, fewer and smaller entitlements, less lavish benefits, no mandatory participation, no means test, much less bigotry and prejudice, much less envy and jealously, much more happiness with liberty and justice for all.

The only way the beast that is Federal government will lose weight, is to starve it by cutting off its revenue.  It will just keep eating away at our carcass, if we let it.

They won’t cut spending on their own.  No tax increases, no new kinds of taxes; just less, much less revenue for Federal Government.

Equal taxation, equal liberty and equal justice for ALL citizens

Stop Saturday Mail

It’s Ridiculous, Nobody Needs It

The United States Post Office (USPS) is several billion dollars in debt, plus or minus a billion. 

I’ve heard that USPS must make an annual payment of 6 billion dollars to the previous benefits fund because the government failed to fund it fully before the quasi-private Post Office began.

It was part of the deal, I guess, but cost cutting measures should have begun several years ago.

Stopping Saturday deliveries should have taken place five years ago.

Rate increases need to be made now.  What used to be called Second class, Third, Fourth and Fifth classes all need to be raised to more profitable rates, like doubled.  It’s mostly junk-mail that we just recycle for them anyway.  The current rate schedules are virtually incomprehensible.

Summary of some rates:

Letters 1st Class 44¢ and 45¢ on 22Jan2012    

1 oz         $0.44            Bad envelope penalty 20¢
2 ounces $0.64
3 ounces $0.84   

“Flats” (Large 1st Class Envelopes)

1 oz           $0.88            add 20 cents each added ounce 17April2011
2 ounces   $1.08
3 ounces   $1.28            (fold it in half in a business envelope 84 cents)
4 ounces   $1.48
5 ounces   $1.68
6 ounces   $1.88

Postcard 29¢ up to 32¢ on 22Jan2012 

Thanks to J. I. Nelson, Ph.D.  http://www.nerdylorrin.net/jerry/postages/index.html

I suggest the commercial businesses should be paying near first class rates instead of half or less.  It would increase revenue, lessen handling costs, and have the added benefit of limiting junk-mail.

Construct more Post Office boxes and encourage their use so more people will pick up there own mail.  Reduce rural deliveries and their contractors in many places making rural recipients pick up their mail.  Close novelty and low use Post offices where alternates are available nearby, ignore the politics.

I’ve traveled all over the world and we have the best postal service in the world outside the Vatican, and one of the least expensive.

Raise first class mail rates by double, it will still be much cheaper and better than it was in 1860.  People that can’t afford it should not be sending 1^st Class mail anyway.

They could contract the whole thing out to a parcel delivery service.  Most of the important documents and merchandise are sent that way anyway.

Re-simplify your rate schedules; complex and undecipherable is not better for USPS clerks or customers.

Get busy or get out of this business; if you can’t learn to compete effectively or efficiently, why would we want or need your organization’s service.

I know you’ve barely noticed, but those of us that can, stopped using USPS many years ago.  If you charged businesses and non-profit organizations enough to cover your costs, they would quit using USPS overnight.

Cut costs, make it simpler; price your service to cover your costs, or give it up. 

You’re hopeless, and we don’t need you.

Famine

Starving to Death

The ignorant and weak are starving in the lawless parts of Africa and elsewhere again.  It has happened on a large scale several times in my life time.  The correct solution has been offered each time, but never embarked upon.  So again today, millions of poor souls, mostly the children, the old and the sick are starving to death. 

There are a few simple facts that maybe relevant: 

Nutritious foods can be grown nearly anywhere that irrigation water can be available during the growing season, which is nearly everywhere even in deserts.  Water can be collected, stored, or hauled, or piped from rivers and lakes, or pumped from underground.   

Agriculture requires land, water, seed, equipment, transportation, security, labor, ownership rights, storage, trade, fair markets, rule of law, little corruption, much forethought, dedication, knowledge and hard work; not just hunger.

Investments are essential; time, energy, attention, dedication, education, private property, and some money for tools, equipment and supplies.  All investments require safeguards and protections; like guards, guns, ammunition, pesticides, and fences.  You must be able to prevent looters, thieves, and marauders from stealing your crop from the field or next seasons seed from storage.

So what is missing that is starving people to death? 

Ignorance (corruption and poverty), beliefs (culture, philosophy, religion), bigotry, prejudice and discrimination, lack of private and personal property rights, storage and  transport, security, fertilizer and pest control, forethought and discipline, free and fair markets, less government (subsidizes, tariffs and embargoes) and much less taxation and regulation.

The answer:

Keep government out of food production and sale.

Provide agricultural education.

Ensure personal and real property ownership rights.

Get rid of government and military corruption.

Arrange for low cost agricultural water system financing.

Assist transport, storage, seed, fertilizer and pest control financing for all.

Ensure open market access for all.

Make genocide, slavery, and religious persecution a national crime.

Encourage sustainable methods and productivity beyond subsistence.

Food for free is not a human right.  It needs to be earned.  Starvation is caused by mistakes of ignorance and malice.  Make people buy or work for food and stop begging for it; and stop giving it away or withholding it as though it’s a right or a favor for political patronage.

See, it’s easy, and it will eliminate so much unnecessary suffering and death.

The knowledge and resources are available; behavior changes are required.

People will quickly learn to provide for themselves and their families.

          

Equal Tax Justice for All

Get Rid of Progressive Taxes

All taxpayers must be treated equally under tax law.  Whatever the tax burden is must be equal for all payers.  The mistaken idea that anyone, rich or poor, wealthy or not, should pay a different percentage of their income as tax, flies in the face of justice and liberty for all.  Any taxes that are not an equal percentage for any taxpayer are clearly unjust and discriminatory.

The idea espoused for the “Fair Tax” is if you buy something your pay the same percentage tax as anyone else.  I’ve not read the language of any proposed “Fair Tax” but if they contain exemptions and exceptions, then I oppose them as well.

Tax fairness means to me that all those who pay are damaged an equal percentage.  If you make one million dollars, one hundred thousand, or ten thousand dollars, your tax percentage should be just exactly the same as everyone else who has income and owes tax.

Why progressive income tax was not challenged as un-Constitutional all these years is a mystery to me.  Where in the Constitution does it say that successful, thrifty, conservative, educated, smart decision-makers using forethought to provide for themselves and their families should be penalized; and ignorant, foolish, thoughtless, lazy, wasteful spending, bad decision-makers unable to provide for their families should be rewarded for their non-productive bad behavior.

I want tax justice.  I want equal tax treatment under the law for all.  No rewards bad or poor behaviors.  No penalties for good behavior.  No deductions, no exemptions, no subsidizes, no tariffs, no credits, no adjustments for anything.

What was your income last year?  Send the Federal government, let’s say, ten (10%) percent.  No home interest deduction, no Earned (unearned) Income tax credit, no medical expense deduction, no charitable deductions, tax preparations costs, education or job hunting expense deduction; nothing.   

Simply, what was your income, including the value of non-cash benefits; send in your Federal Income tax of 10%.

Other benefits will immediately flow from a more sensible tax policy.  First; get the IRS out of all activity other than collection of revenue, and cut 50,000 unnecessary employees.

Second; tax attorneys and tax accounts can now refocus on constructive meaningful business or change careers. 

Third; the process of refunds could be virtually eliminated, except for people who made mistakes and over or under paid when they sent their check, money order, or electronic deposit; the people currently running this process and entitlement transfer payments to no or low wage earners, could focus on collecting revenue only and most of the others could find work elsewhere, hopefully out of government employment.

Fourth; housing lenders, charities, churches, schools, hospitals, etc. could flourish on their own merit instead of being encouraged by tax policy to subsidize things individuals can support or not from their own money. 

Allowing church donations to be deducted, for instance, probably amounts to a violation of the First Amendment establishment of religion clause and should have never been permitted.  Using money that should have been tax revenue to subsidize private lenders, undeserving charities, private hospitals, poorly performing schools or any non-governmental activity should be illegal, and I think it once was.

Many things are wrong with tax law and tax policy, but the unequal tax rate burden on those who bothered to educate themselves, worked hard, sacrificed, saved, invested, thought ahead and have become successful is a horrid progressive socialist and communist idea that needs to be eliminated from our culture, law, society and philosophy.

Equal taxation for everyone!  No exemption, no exception.

  

A Solemn Oath,

“…that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;…”

Words means things, and the words of this oath, which I took as a Government official, and all military officers take, means a great deal to me.

This oath and several similar ones since our Constitutional government began have been taken by military servicemen and women, officers, and government officials, including a similar Oath of Office by the President.

It doesn’t say, just while I’m in office, while things go well, only when awake, or during official duties. 

I believe it is intended for all time, while alive, in everything thing I do with every fiber of my being for my entire life, at all costs, no matter what.

It does not say; defend the President, the Office of the President, the Government, Senators, elected officials, appointed officials, government property, government programs, citizens or non-citizens, criminals or the otherwise law-abiding, the poor or the rich, or any persons.

It says, “….support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic….” 

And that says just what it means.

The rule of law was paramount when this nation was founded, always has been, and in fact remains paramount today.  Those who deliberately or ignorantly disobey the Constitution are and should be correctly identified as enemies.

And those who take this oath must defend against them regardless of who they are, what their title is, where they are, or where they come from, or why or when they committed violations of the Constitution.  And if your have taken this oath and do not act accordingly, you are an enemy.  

Yes, it’s that simple.  If you violate our Constitution or your oath to it, you are its enemy and ours.

Government Bait and Switch

Just Say No to “Means Testing”

I want the benefits I paid for when the Government forced me to participate in Social Security and Medicare.

I paid in for fifty (50) years to Social Security.  I paid in thirty seven (37) years to Medicare.

I want what I was promised or my money back; plus inflation and US bond interest (10 yr rate) per year for all those years.

There was no “Means Testing” when I was conscripted.  There was no “Means Testing” when they took my money and my employer’s money.  It’s not my fault they mismanaged our money.

There should be no “Means Testing” now that its time for Government to pay up.

Now they want us to switch to a reduced benefit because we and our families sacrificed to save enough money to take care of ourselves when they failed; like simple observation and forethought showed us they would.

We knew you were dishonest, corrupt, arrogant and ignorant, but we were forced without option to participate.  As usual you’ve betrayed and cheated us.  I think some of you will live to regret that.  I know many of us are. 

Everyone who paid in is owed what they were promised, regardless how much they saved, earned or are earning; including Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or any other successful citizen.

Honor your contract with the American people, or resign, and consider tarring and feathering yourselves and being ridden out of town on a rail. 

Incidentally, Congress, the President, and appointed or elected Federal Officials, and Government employees should not be exempt from anything they tyrannically imposed without consent upon American citizens.

Cut everything else, but provide the insurance benefits you promised, that we have all ready paid for.

If you don’t, I think you will pay a price far more hideous than will responsible, taxpaying, American citizens.

Honor your promise, pay up, or prepare to lose everything.

My Foreign Policy

If I were elected President, here are a few things I would do differently:

Suspend all cash transfers to foreign governments and non-governmental agencies operating in or for all foreign governments.

Immediately reduce all financial foreign aid to zero.

Begin the systematic evaluation of all nations; ally, friend or foe, evaluating all  requests for aid, history of our relationship, security and national interests, and relative value and importance of a continuing relationship with them.

All Congressionally ratified formal agreements will be honored carefully and exactly, trusting but verifying and not lavishly over providing anything.

Formal agreements for transfer payments may be resumed after formal renegotiations are successfully concluded.

All other requests for cash or funds transfers are cancelled.

Requests for disaster aid, medicine, food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and emergency medical procedures, will be considered first and appropriate types and reasonable quantities given the severity of the disaster will be provided directly to the effected peoples, but not through intermediaries.  Any government or non-governmental interference will cause immediate suspension of aid and potential cancellation.  Security and transport will be provided exclusively by USA forces or US contractors.

The only other forms of aid to be considered will be economic, military, scientific, humanitarian, or cultural; and only people, products, services, technology, natural resources, or knowledge will be available for negotiated exchange. 

Only countries willing to trade without subsidy, tariff or embargo will be considered.  If there is no free trade for the things involved in exchange, by the US or foreign nation, there will be no trade agreement.

All military exchanges will include the cash purchase of US arms, munitions, technology, facilities, equipment or training according to ratified and signed treaty conditions only.  No others will be permitted.

All scientific and medical resources will be exchanged by reciprocity only; like volunteer for money, money for knowledge, medicine for work, natural resources for equipment, value for value, etc.

All humanitarian, cultural and educational exchanges will be engaged in only with specific measurable benefits that will be verified by observable analytical evidence.

No cash, no funds transfer, no elaborate compensation, or questionable expense reimbursements will be honored.

Treaties are an element of foreign policy.  Substantially reduce the volume and intensity of any treaties.  Seek the mutual discontinuance of lopsided military disarmaments, economic handicapping, and world law or world court initiatives or treaties.  Reaffirm US sovereignty and stop handicapping US economic power and silencing US human rights and constitutional advantages.

Those nations publicly maligning or privately thwarting US capitalism, private property rights, religious freedom, freedom of speech, merit based achievement or human rights will not be parties to any US agreements.

Trade agreements will relocate responsibility for economic policy to what little is left of the Department of Commerce where “fair trade” only agreement will be signed; no subsidies, no tariffs, no embargoes, no inducements.  All trade agreements will be specific straight up trades; this much of our commodity, good or service for this much of their other specific commodity, good or service based upon strenuously negotiated market values of goods and services, not artificially manipulated.

Participation in major regional and international organizations including the United Nations is important but, not a main or major theme.  Begin deconstruction of the US role in the United Nations, reduce funding, reduce participation, become just another participant.  Stop interfering in the business of other sovereign nations.

The deployment of Military forces is another major element of foreign policy.  Discontinue routine overseas deployments on any foreign soil, even allies; including routine deployments at sea.  Increase joint military exercises with allies deploying from the US or US territories and protectorates, not from any other nation simulating the build up to all out war.  No police actions, no actions less than all out war, like limited engagement or special limited combat rules; just destroy the enemy and their war making capability, annihilate their forces and return US forces to within the US and territories; leave them defeated and their country decimated and refuse to help their citizens recover as punishment for their malicious ignorance.

Humanitarian Aid will include routine participation in conventions, consortiums, World Fairs, and alliances for medicine, science, and technology transfer and to a much lesser extent than historically, research and development.  US R&D will be increasingly done by the US, in the US, for the US quickly reducing to near zero funding for joint efforts.  Joint participation will still be sought when full participation and contribution by foreigners includes equal funding and the security and economic interests of the US are assured.

In other words, much smaller, much less intrusive, very selective, basic diplomacy and much smaller less active State Department; and much smaller funding participation in international conventions; and fewer treaties and no automatic treaty renewals.

And no more cash payments, funds transfer or bribes for promises of friendship.