Making Believe; Or, What if You Suddenly Became President?

That interesting thought occurred to me this weekend as I sat on my back patio watching my English Setter make the rounds in the yard. What if an ordinary person suddenly became Presdident of the United States? What would ordinary folks want to do policy wise if they had the power?

So I thought I would ask on this blog: what policies would you pursue if you had the power? So, post yours here in the comments if you wish. I will share this on FB, so one can post in the comments there as well. Please be serious; if there is a demand for a similar, unserious, exercise, I will do a blog on that later.

In that spirit, I will post my first thoughts on policies to pursue below:

1. The first thing I would do is propose to Congress a Constitutional Amendment requiring that the Federal budget be balanced except in times of national emergency declared by the President, and approved by two thirds of the House and Senate. Such an amendment would need to include:

a. A time limit to bring the budget into balance upon passage of no more than 5 years;
b. A requirement that the budget and accounting therefore be according to generally accepted accounting priciples required of taxpaying businesses;
c. A requiremnt that entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare be budgeted separately from the general budget, and require that they be maintained in a solvent situation according to actuarial standards required of the private sector;
d. Some reasonable method of enforcement.....I would deprive any Congressman or Senator who voted for an unbalanced budget of their right to hold Federal office, and cancel their retirements and benefits (LOL).

Getting this through the absolutely corrupt Congress would be a problem, I recognize.

2. I would propose legislation, including a Constitutional Amendment if necessary, to require full disclosure on a publicly available website within 3 days of all political contributions from whatever source and in any amount. Such legislation should also include:
a. A requirement that any organization that substantially engages in efforts to influence elections or legislation be included. That would include the large organizations that are tax exempt and free from any reporting now.
b. The legislation should also require prompt disclosure by elected officials and staff of contacts by lobbyists or campaign donors or their agents made with intent to affect legislation or actions by the executive.
c. Presence of lobbyists when legislation is being marked up, or rulings of the executive are being written, should be prohibited. Let the dang folks we elected write it all up. Keep the big money out of it.

Repeat comment about corruption in Congress (which also extends to the executive branch as well. Please note that aside from prohibiting lobbyists from writing their own bills or rulings as they do now, this only requires disclosure of there the money comes from.

3. I would order, or request legislation to require that before any Federal rule or regulation is adopted, that a thorough cost/benefit study be done, and that nothing can be adopted unless the benefits outweigh the costs.

4. Abolish, or drastically reorganze the following federal departments and agencies:
a. The Department of Homeland Security. This has become an abomination. The few useful functions that it serves can be put under other departments;
b. The Department of Energy. This organization hinders energy development, and has never been useful for much of anything. What it does that needs to be done can be done with a much smaller agency;
c. The Department of Education. This department has done irreparable harm to education. Matters of education, including the financing thereof should be left to the states and local governments. Most of them are hooked on the federal money, so that should be made to the states in block grants without strings, and phased out over 7 to 10 years.
d. The Federal Reserve should be abolished. It is a privately owned organization that was given total power over our money in 1913. It has used that power solely for the benefit of its owners. Functions of the Federal Reserve, including the Federal Open Market Committee should be moved to the Treasury, with strict prohibitions against the "revolving door" we see now between the big banks, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. It is time to bring control over our money back to the people and to their elected government.

Repeat comment about corruption. It is endless.

5. It has to go somewhere: bring the boys and girls (ground troops) home from overseas. Now. We should only have ground troops out of the country where they are required by treaty obligations, or are necessary to protect our diplomatic missions or existing air and naval bases. We need a strong Navy to protect our maritime interests and a strong Air Force to protect the homeland. We also need a good and mobile Army just in case, but they should not be deployed constantly like they have been.

6. The Drug War. This has to be discussed. I have been in the law business for 49 years. Have been a judge and before that a prosecutor. The one conclusion that I have come to is that what we are doing about drugs does not work. I have come to believe that it is counter productive is some ways. I would propose that a thorough study be done of very aspect of the drug situation, from enforcement to treatment. A thorough cost/benefit analysis has to be done. Drugs are a scourge upon our society, but so is the "war." Our policies on drugs, like before with alcohol, have created massive criminal organizations that are beyond our control. We have to reconsider what we are doing. If I had an answer, I would post it, but I do not. As a partial solution we might consider with marijuana what we finally, and sensibly, did with alcohol....legalize it, regulate its sale, tax the hell out of it, and prohibit driving and similar activities while using it. This is a terribly difficult area to deal with but we must find some answers somehow. We will need a lot of luck.

OK. I am going to stop. Criticism and comments are welcome. Feel free to disagree....I may end up disagreeing with myself. Just no personal attacks. That will not be tolerated.

Big Bankers Legally Steal Public Funds

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, doing a job that apparently nobody else wants, has blown the whistle on the Treasury and the large financial institutions that the Treasury has been bailing out.

Nine big banks which received $175 Billion in TARP funds from the Treasury paid a total of $32.6 Billion in bonuses to their employees.

Anyone that is not outraged at this must be living in a cave in Afghanistan.

These people steered their companies into the greatest bust since the Great Depression, and they get bonuses like that for their performance? With our tax money?

Something is very rotten here.

And why are not the politicians that supposedly are representing the people not doing something?

Follow the money.

Lots of campaign contributions, and lots of lobbyist money.

Stories on this are here, and here.

"The World Turned Upside Down"

That is the title of the song played by the English band as the troops under Lord Cornwallis marched out to lay down their arms outside Yorktown on October 19, 1781. Indeed, the world was upside down in English eyes that day. After over six years of bloody rebellion and very hard times for the people of America, victory was at hand, although it took another two years before the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

It was amazing how Americans undertook every hardship, risked their lives and fortunes, to throw off the yoke of repressive government and bring freedom and liberty to their country.

Of course, it was not a country, yet. It was not until eight years after Yorktown that a new Constitution was hammered out and adopted, creating the United States of America.

It was not easy to get there, of course. Then, like now, there were factions in the body politic, and they fought fiercely for their points of view.

One faction wanted a very strong central government, perhaps even a monarchy; another did not trust government at all, and wanted a very weak central government.

The result came down on the side of a central government that was strong enough to regulate commerce between the states and with foreigners, and to provide for national defense, but with very detailed limitations on the exercise of other powers. The real story is that the Constitution would not have been adopted without the first ten amendments that were added. All of those placed very specific restrictions upon the government, and reserved all those powers not specified in the Constitution to the states and to the People.

Through the years, disputes have continued, with some wanting to expand the powers of the central government far beyond the limitations of the Constitution, and others fighting to maintain appropriate limitations as provided by the Constitution. In spite of the tendencies of the courts to tinker with the limitations over the years, we still have had limited government to a large extent.

Until now.

Now we see the Treasury of the United States, in league with the Federal Reserve, engaged in distributing trillions of dollars to private institutions, mostly financial, without a shred of legal basis either in the Constitution or laws of the United States. Worse, they won't even tell the people or the Congress the specifics of how much and to whom.

George W. Bush, the lame duck President of the United States, who was elected supposedly supporting limited government, is now authorizing acts that go far beyond what is allowed by the Constitution. The Congress seems to be acquiescing, although it has certainly not passed any legislation permitting what they are doing.

It seems like the President and the Congress cannot just say "No" when the expenditure of large sums of money is concerned. Mr. Bush never has. The Congress gets its campaign funds with the ability to pass out taxpayers' money, so there is no hope there.

If one looks at where the money is going, one can immediately see that it is going to the big contributors to our politicians. Just check out the contributions by all those institutions to our politicians. Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into political campaigns the last few years from those companies and their employees. Now we see what they have bought.

The most outrageous part of all of this bailout business is that the people who did everything wrong, who created this economic mess, who profited from it, who ought to be the big losers, are the ones getting all of this Federal money.

Who pays you might ask?

Everyone who did the right thing, that's who will pay.

"The World Turned Upside Down," indeed.