Ten ways to fix America…

…but the current crop of presidential hopefuls lack the testicular fortitude to do*.

1. “Retire” Social Insecurity – It started out sounding like a really good idea; you paid an extra “tax” that was invested in your Social Security “Fund”, and when you got old, the fund would be used to look after you.There’s only one problem. Somewhere along the way, the Government “borrowed” the money.

   Now they are depending on contributions from current workers to pay the retired generation – and with a falling birth rate, the ratio of workers to retirees is falling. So what started out as a “Trust Fund” has become, to all intents and purposes, a Ponzi Scheme of gargantuan proportions.

   Left unchecked, this one is going to bite the next generation in the rear big-time. Time to bite the bullet: Give young people the ability to opt-out of this comedy of errors.

2. End Foreign Aid – Billions of our tax dollars are given away to foreign nations every year. Quit that! Also cut back the funding on supra-governmental organizations (such as the UN) that like to tell us what to do while expecting us to fund their operations.
3. Don’t “fix” Health care, rewind it – we don’t need more Government interference in the health care industry – remember that they created HMOs to “control the costs of health care”. The way to fix health care is to restore the free market and restore the doctor-patient relationship.
4. Take a stand on immigration. One of the few areas where the Federal Government has a clear constitutional mandate is also one of the areas that neither party wishes to tackle – illegal aliens. This is because one side of the aisle wants cheap labor, the other wants immigrant votes.

   Grammar lesson: If someone has not been through the Immigration process, you cannot describe him or her as an immigrant – the correct word is Alien.

   A thousand Mexicans crossing the Rio Grande every day is not a “cultural revolution”, it is an invasion; an act of war that is, incidentally, aided and abetted by the Mexican Government; let’s call it what it is and get with the program.

   Forget spending ridiculous amounts of money trying to totally secure a thousand-mile border; they couldn’t “secure” the Berlin wall – and that was just a few miles in length.

   The only solution that will work solution is a simple one; just make it too hot for illegal aliens. You do this by giving the INS the funding and powers necessary to do their job and strike fear into the hearts of those who would invade this country – whatever the reason.

5. Just say “No” to corporate welfare – end government bailouts, price controls and subsidies – particularly in the agricultural industry. The idea that my tax money can be used to keep down the cost of corn is, on its face, ridiculous.
6. Simplify Copyright and Patent laws so that they are returned to their original intent; “to further the progress of the useful arts”. Copyright was originally “a limited exclusive right to profit from inventions and discoveries”, instead of the “it’s-ours-it’s-ours-forever-and-a-day” approach currently championed by the content industries in their quest for money-fer-nuthin-and-yer-checks-fer-free.
7. Shut down the Department of Education – it costs us over a Billion dollars a year and educates nobody. While you’re at it, also close down the EPA, the FDA and other departments whose operations fall outside the Federal Government’s job description. While we certainly need these controls in place, they fall outside Washington’s job description. Let the states do this stuff if they want.
8. Bring back the Jury! The concept of the jury was a stroke of genius; a mechanism to filter the facts, the circumstances, the law and the intent of its application using their intuition and common sense.

   In one case – the Peter Zenger Trial, a jury who refused to convict a printer under an unfair and unjust libel law (which made it libel to say anything bad about Government representatives, even if it was true) were themselves jailed. They won out in the end.

   Nowadays, the jury has become a “Just-the-facts-Ma’am” rubber stamp committee for the passage and prosecution of bad laws. Why? Because that’s how the politicians, the courts and the legal profession want it – none of them like the idea of “twelve good men and true” second-guessing them.

9. Bring our soldiers home. No, I’m not talking about Iraq – that’s a whole different discussion. The fact is that the US has permanent military bases in more than half of the world’s nations. Bases that are built and maintained by taxpayer dollars. Curiously we are not at war with any of them, and none of them has any military bases here in the US. It’s time that we returned to the Founding Fathers’ Credo: “Free trade with all, entangling alliances with none.”
10. Abolish the Income Tax. The income tax was introduced as a temporary 1% tax when your salary was not “income” – at the time the word meant what we now call “Capital Gains”. Time to replace this – with a sales tax, such as the Fair Tax, which includes a provision that means that the poor pay little or nothing, like they do today. Such a tax would currently run at about 22%, but after implementing all of the above cost savings it should drop to 15% or less. Imaging the cost savings for people and business from not having to do Federal taxes!

* With one notable exception, and his name is Ron Paul

Now Reading: “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas