Necessary Reforms
Money System and Financial Reforms
The money and banking system which was set up in 1913, along with the income tax and IRS which was set up to pay interest on debt while using debt as a primary basis for money, has reached the end of its useful lifespan. Glass-Steagal should be implemented immediately, the so-called "Super Priority" of derivative counterparties hould be abolished immediately, and a major effort should be made to devise a rational system of money for the United States. The Federal Reserve, the IRS, and the income tax should be abolished, and the power to coin money itself should be reclaimed by congress. No rational government should ever borrow money into existence.
Political Reforms
The first item of meaningful political reform HAS TO BE runoff elections or instant runoff elections for all public offices. Nobody should ever fear to vote his first choice, at least on a first ballot, and nobody should ever hold any public office with less than 50% of the vote.
There should be a None-Of-Above choice on all ballots for public office and if that choice ever wins, then the other candidates should be barred for life from holding ANY public office and the parties sponsoring them should be barred for at least ten years from sponsoring candidates for that particular office. The penalty for running dead wood for public offices should be severe.
There should also be some mechanism to prevent utterly unqualified people from holding high offices. Certainly a candidate for president or vice president, or for US Senator or member of the House of Representatives should need to obtain the same basic and simple secret level security clearance which anybody would need to be a guard at the gate of any military base in our land. That isn't asking for much but it would have spared us from the last two democrat presidents.
Another item on such a list would be a provision that when a president is impeached and removed, his VP goes out the door with him and the office is either vacant until the next election or an emergency election is held to fill the office for the remainder of the current term. Granted removing a president should be difficult but it should not be impossible and if we couldn't remove Slick, we'd not have been able to remove Hitler or Nero either.
Another item on such a voters' bill of rights should be something which would eliminate voting fraud for all time.
Our entire voting system is fubar and needs to be replaced and a fraud-proof system would not be that hard to devise; it would involve biometrics and p2p networking and the idea that ANYBODY could do his own vote tally and that all tallies should match. It also should involve the idea that a person could have total assurance that his vote did not disappear or get counted for the other guy. What I'd envision would be keeping my vote on MY computer with a fingerprint reader like you see on all govt computers i.e. a record of my contact info and a biometric reading and a national database to check biometrics for me and everybody else, and a p2p network to allow ANYBODY to do his own tally by calling for votes the same way you'd ask or a copy of "you aint nothing but a hound dog" on Kazaa, and all tallies should produce the same number within statistical limits.
We should consider the possibility that, when an election is within one percentage point, we send both people to congress with half of a vote each.
There is also a question as to the extent the people should be voting on some issues directly since we now have the technology to allow that, while the founding fathers did not. You could get some of these social issues settled once and for all and out of politics, and you could limit the scope for corruption and bribery by letting the people themselves settle at least some kinds of issues.
Fixing Outmoded Institutions
Ever wonder how states like Florida whose legislatures are overwhelmingly Republican still vote for bad dem candidates for president, or how you get a dem senator in a place like Louisiana? What you're seeing is that manufacturing votes cannot buy a state house. In other words, dems can manufacture all the votes they want in places like Dade County or Philly, and the GOP will still win its own territories, it's only in a national or atatewide race that vote manufacturing can decide a race for a public office.
That says that the very first thing we need to do is rescind the 17'th amendment and return the election of US senators to the state houses.
The office of the president should probably be abolished. In industry when a job goes for 30 - 50 years and only attracts villains and jerks, the usual solution is to abolish the job. The only legitimate function of a US president is to preside over uses of the US military which do not rise to the level of a declaration of war and, for that, some other solution such as a council of house and senate leaders and the joint chiefs could be found. Or, alternately, with the 17'th rescinded, presidents could be selected by the US senate.
Likewise the US capital should be made into a museum. Why should anybody living in Nebraska for instance, want their US senators living and working full time in Maryland or Virginia or D.C. with lobbyists working full-time to bribe and/or influence them, and largely out of reach to their constituents in Nebraska? Nothing in private industry works that way any more other than factories; every other sort of business is now conducted via Live-Meeting, Go-2-Meeting, and airplanes. The ONLY reason the US congress should ever need to be together in one place any more would be to declare war and, for that, they could rent out some football stadium for two days.
Drugs:
The "War on Drugs" and the Prison/Industrial Complex should be ended immediately, along with "No-Knock Raids".
The "war on drugs" leads to
It is that final item which some would use as a pretext to eviscerate the second amendment, which is the link pin of the entire bill of rights. Consider the following from the former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection under the Bush administration no less:
The problem here clearly is not guns and it is clearly a problem of economics. The drugs one of these idiots would use in a day under rational circumstances would cost a dollar; that would simply present no scope for crime or criminals. Under present circumstances that dollar's worth of drugs is costing the user $300 a day and since that guy is dealing with a 10% fence, he's having to commit $3000 worth of crime to buy that dollar's worth of drugs. In other words, a dollar's worth of chemicals has been converted into $3000 worth of crime, times the number of those idiots out there, times 365 days per year, all through the magic of stupid laws. No nation on Earth could afford that forever.
A rational set of drug laws would:
Do all of that, and the drug problem and 70% of all urban crime will vanish within two years. That would be an optimal solution; but you could simply legalize it all and still be vastly better off than we are now. 150 Years ago, there were no drug laws in America and there were no overwhelming drug problems. How bright do you really need to be to figure that one out?
Money System and Financial Reforms
The money and banking system which was set up in 1913, along with the income tax and IRS which was set up to pay interest on debt while using debt as a primary basis for money, has reached the end of its useful lifespan. Glass-Steagal should be implemented immediately, the so-called "Super Priority" of derivative counterparties hould be abolished immediately, and a major effort should be made to devise a rational system of money for the United States. The Federal Reserve, the IRS, and the income tax should be abolished, and the power to coin money itself should be reclaimed by congress. No rational government should ever borrow money into existence.
Political Reforms
The first item of meaningful political reform HAS TO BE runoff elections or instant runoff elections for all public offices. Nobody should ever fear to vote his first choice, at least on a first ballot, and nobody should ever hold any public office with less than 50% of the vote.
There should be a None-Of-Above choice on all ballots for public office and if that choice ever wins, then the other candidates should be barred for life from holding ANY public office and the parties sponsoring them should be barred for at least ten years from sponsoring candidates for that particular office. The penalty for running dead wood for public offices should be severe.
There should also be some mechanism to prevent utterly unqualified people from holding high offices. Certainly a candidate for president or vice president, or for US Senator or member of the House of Representatives should need to obtain the same basic and simple secret level security clearance which anybody would need to be a guard at the gate of any military base in our land. That isn't asking for much but it would have spared us from the last two democrat presidents.
Another item on such a list would be a provision that when a president is impeached and removed, his VP goes out the door with him and the office is either vacant until the next election or an emergency election is held to fill the office for the remainder of the current term. Granted removing a president should be difficult but it should not be impossible and if we couldn't remove Slick, we'd not have been able to remove Hitler or Nero either.
Another item on such a voters' bill of rights should be something which would eliminate voting fraud for all time.
Our entire voting system is fubar and needs to be replaced and a fraud-proof system would not be that hard to devise; it would involve biometrics and p2p networking and the idea that ANYBODY could do his own vote tally and that all tallies should match. It also should involve the idea that a person could have total assurance that his vote did not disappear or get counted for the other guy. What I'd envision would be keeping my vote on MY computer with a fingerprint reader like you see on all govt computers i.e. a record of my contact info and a biometric reading and a national database to check biometrics for me and everybody else, and a p2p network to allow ANYBODY to do his own tally by calling for votes the same way you'd ask or a copy of "you aint nothing but a hound dog" on Kazaa, and all tallies should produce the same number within statistical limits.
We should consider the possibility that, when an election is within one percentage point, we send both people to congress with half of a vote each.
There is also a question as to the extent the people should be voting on some issues directly since we now have the technology to allow that, while the founding fathers did not. You could get some of these social issues settled once and for all and out of politics, and you could limit the scope for corruption and bribery by letting the people themselves settle at least some kinds of issues.
Fixing Outmoded Institutions
Ever wonder how states like Florida whose legislatures are overwhelmingly Republican still vote for bad dem candidates for president, or how you get a dem senator in a place like Louisiana? What you're seeing is that manufacturing votes cannot buy a state house. In other words, dems can manufacture all the votes they want in places like Dade County or Philly, and the GOP will still win its own territories, it's only in a national or atatewide race that vote manufacturing can decide a race for a public office.
That says that the very first thing we need to do is rescind the 17'th amendment and return the election of US senators to the state houses.
The office of the president should probably be abolished. In industry when a job goes for 30 - 50 years and only attracts villains and jerks, the usual solution is to abolish the job. The only legitimate function of a US president is to preside over uses of the US military which do not rise to the level of a declaration of war and, for that, some other solution such as a council of house and senate leaders and the joint chiefs could be found. Or, alternately, with the 17'th rescinded, presidents could be selected by the US senate.
Likewise the US capital should be made into a museum. Why should anybody living in Nebraska for instance, want their US senators living and working full time in Maryland or Virginia or D.C. with lobbyists working full-time to bribe and/or influence them, and largely out of reach to their constituents in Nebraska? Nothing in private industry works that way any more other than factories; every other sort of business is now conducted via Live-Meeting, Go-2-Meeting, and airplanes. The ONLY reason the US congress should ever need to be together in one place any more would be to declare war and, for that, they could rent out some football stadium for two days.
Drugs:
The "War on Drugs" and the Prison/Industrial Complex should be ended immediately, along with "No-Knock Raids".
The "war on drugs" leads to
- "No-knock" raids, which are a clear violation of the fourth amendment and of the common law principle of a man's home being his "castle". In fact technically a homeowner who were to shoot and kill one or more government agents in the process of conducting a "no knock" raid would be entirely within his or her rights.
- The incarceration of large numbers of people who would otherwise never have had contact with prison systems. For many this amounts to a career training program for serious crime.
- Gang wars, drive-by shootings and the like.
- Corruption, the rise of drug cartels, and outright civil wars in other nations which supply drugs to the illegal drug enterprises here.
It is that final item which some would use as a pretext to eviscerate the second amendment, which is the link pin of the entire bill of rights. Consider the following from the former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection under the Bush administration no less:
The problem here clearly is not guns and it is clearly a problem of economics. The drugs one of these idiots would use in a day under rational circumstances would cost a dollar; that would simply present no scope for crime or criminals. Under present circumstances that dollar's worth of drugs is costing the user $300 a day and since that guy is dealing with a 10% fence, he's having to commit $3000 worth of crime to buy that dollar's worth of drugs. In other words, a dollar's worth of chemicals has been converted into $3000 worth of crime, times the number of those idiots out there, times 365 days per year, all through the magic of stupid laws. No nation on Earth could afford that forever.
A rational set of drug laws would:
- Legalize marijuana and all its derivatives and anything else demonstrably no more harmful than booze on the same basis as booze.
- Declare that heroine, crack cocaine, and other highly addictive substances would never be legally sold on the streets, but that those addicted could shoot up at government centers for the fifty-cent cost of producing the stuff, i.e. take every dime out of that business for criminals.
- Provide a lifetime in prison for selling LSD, PCP, and/or other Jeckyl/Hyde formulas.
- Same for anybody selling any kind of drugs to kids.
Do all of that, and the drug problem and 70% of all urban crime will vanish within two years. That would be an optimal solution; but you could simply legalize it all and still be vastly better off than we are now. 150 Years ago, there were no drug laws in America and there were no overwhelming drug problems. How bright do you really need to be to figure that one out?
