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.

Bits and Pieces for January 12, 2012

Haley Barbour? Tell me it is not true! Apparently the conservative, law and order  Republican governor of Mississippi has pardoned a bunch of criminals, including 14 murderers. Even the Democrats are appalled. Ths story can be found here.

Marin County, California is going to outlaw smoking tobacco, but the county supervisors are going out of their way to make sure marijuana is not included in the ban. I suppose it shows a lot about the culture out there.

Marin’s war on smoking was blunted Tuesday as a measure cracking down on tobacco and other “weed” was sent back for revision to make clear the crackdown does not include marijuana.

Although supervisors were in agreement with the policy when county staff last month asserted an ordinance outlawing smoking in unincorporated-area apartments included marijuana and other herbs as well as tobacco, the county board Tuesday abruptly called for revisions making clear tobacco was the only weed at issue.

 This is not a joke. Coverage from the Marin Independent Journal is here.

Law and Order. Steven Hayward over at Power Line Blog has a good short story on the Obama recess appointments. It is a discussion with Tom Campbell. Read it here. Obama is pretty clearly making new precendent with them. What will be the end result?

Defense spending is shovel ready. So says Victor Davis Hanson. Pointing out that defense spending is not the real problem he concludes:

The decline of civilizations of the past -- fourth-century-B.C. Athens, fifth-century-A.D. Rome, 15th-century Byzantium, or 1930s Western Europe -- was not caused by their spending too much money on defense or not spending enough on public entitlements. Rather, their expanding governments redistributed more borrowed money, while a dependent citizenry wanted even fewer soldiers to guarantee ever more handouts.

History's bleak lesson is that those societies with self-reliant citizens who protect themselves and their interests prosper; those who grow dependent cut back their defenses -- and waste away.

Some people never learn.

Orangutans using iPads at zoos - soon to use Skype. For all of you iPad owners that think you are smart, just read this article from Gizmag.com.

"They like many of the free apps that I think children would like - they like the free apps where you can fingerpaint, they like the apps where you can use the drums," says Trish Khan, Milwaukee County Zoo's orangutan keeper.

Maybe we humans aren't as much smarter than the apes as we thought. lol

Climate change from CO2 may not be as bad as predicted. Also from Gizmag is a story about the new report from the National Science Foundation's Paleoclimate Program that says that climate change may be far less sensitive to CO2 than previously thought.

"Many previous climate sensitivity studies have looked at the past only from 1850 through today, and not fully integrated paleoclimate date, especially on a global scale," said Schmittner. "When you reconstruct sea and land surface temperatures from the peak of the last Ice Age 21,000 years ago - which is referred to as the Last Glacial Maximum - and compare it with climate model simulations of that period, you get a much different picture.

"If these paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future, as predicted by our model, the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought," Schmittner added.

The sciece of anthropogenic global warming is still not settled, in spite of what the scaremongers who wish to profit from government programs would have you believe.

Masters of the World. That is what the Muslims Brotherhood's goal is. And good old Jimmy Carter says about their election in Egypt:

"I don't have any problem with that,and the U.S. government doesn't have any problem with that either. We want the will of the Egyptian people to be expressed."

I knew Carter when he was President, personally. He became the reason why I left the Democratic Party, along with the policies he and they espoused.

Like Obama, he has no use for the national interest of the United States. He would turn the whole world over to the radicals.