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My mindless vision of what I would do if I could. If we could do this and a few other things it would not only give us purpose and vision but I believe we could lead the world for at least another century.

It will never happen though without melt down, even then it is highly unlikely, because it would take at least two terms and nobody who offered any of this could be elected once let alone twice.

The three main planks (immigration is not included since we just need to enforce the law) are:
1. A real national energy plan for the next century with Thorium as the foundation for fixed power generation. Fossil fuels will remain for transportation and chemicals.
2. Tort reform, we live by or in fear of litigation. It clouds every decision we make.
3. Throw away the tax code and have a flat tax and no matter who he is or how much he works EVERYBODY pays tax at the same rate. Make our corporate tax structure competitive on a world-wide basis as well

The other drivel I wrote (in no particular order but just a brain dump while I was on a roll) in the fall of 2011 was:
1. NO lobbyists, you get a vote and one vote per person. Just wall off K Street.
2. Campaign reform, campaigns costs too much and there is too much room for mischief
3. Regulations overhaul, sunset and eliminate most of them, there are too many and too many overlaps. We live in a nation where we are all probably law breakers of some sort. It has become the land of “Show me the man and I’ll find the crime.”
4. Tort reform, loser pays and so does the loser’s attorney. Loser pays 40% and atty who talked them into suing pays 60%. Pay defendant costs plus a fixed damage amount for pain and suffering (e.g. $250,000 rising with inflation) plus 25% of last year’s taxable income. You can still sue but you better have a good reason to put yourself at risk. Oh, and require a bond to sue... the plaintiff’s atty can post it.
5. Cut spending, no new federal hires, none, make it hurt and make any “required” new hires be fully justified, eliminate whole agencies, you know the ones, Education, HUD, HHS, EPA, Homeland Security. Get back to the original agencies prior to WWII. No business or nation can survive with 25% non-productive overhead.
6. Phase out Social Security. People in, stay in. People not yet getting paid phase out on a linear scale from age 65 to 15, 2% reduction in benefits per year, pay similarly
7. Restructure 401K and allow more flexibility of product offerings, make pension provision competitive not the profiteering free-for-all that Wall Street and Financial Planners now enjoy where they make money if you win or lose.
8. A national energy plan with fossil fuels for the transition to nuclear for base load electricity (Thorium Reactors) and for future transportation fuels still being hydrocarbons. Sponsor reactor research to commercialize Thorium in 10 years with a transition to nearly 100% of base load electric power in 50 years.
9. Restructure medical insurance and Medicare / Medicade, this may be the toughest of them all. At least allow portability across state lines and a national based commercial provision of health care. Structure it so the commercial providers have incentives to save costs and save quality of life. Toughest of them all. People need to have a real stake in health care costs, not just to be users. They need to pay something substantial for going to the doctor as an elective event. Medical care can’t be done for nothing but there has to be a limit for what can be spent since we are all going to end up dead anyway one way or another.
10. Taxes, put the IRS out of business. Flat tax and EVERYBODY pays something and they have to do it by writing a check ever quarter. 18% of GDP sounds like about enough to run the government with a goal of 15% in 20 years. Everybody pays proportionately to their income.
11. S-can government guaranteed loans. Anybody stupid enough to loan or guarantee a loan for someone to pay $200k for a degree in just about any Liberal Arts degree or just about any other degree that can’t earn enough to pay it back. Anybody who promotes such a loan should be shot for being the PIMP that they are. Same goes for housing loans. Anybody stupid enough to take a loan like that and not know that Theater Arts majors don’t make that kind of money for the most part isn’t responsible to get a loan for that much money.
12. Military, get out of anyplace we don’t have a vital national interest. Get some new damn airplanes, ours are worn out! Lockheed is not a good place to get them. They don’t know what on time on budget mean. Best equipped, best trained military in the world but not in numbers. Not possible. Quantity has a quality all its own and with programs like the F-22 we are kidding ourselves. Oh, and spec ops are much more efficient than huge armies for local problems. Use them when you need them and keep your mouth shut. It has been done in the past and needs to be done now. If the lord’s liberation army (Central Africa) needs to be taken out hunt down the leaders, kill them, hang around long enough to find the successors, kill them and leave. If it happens again wash, rise and repeat at will.
13. Foreign aid, same as military. Kick the UN out of the US and cut off our money to them. The UN is nothing but trouble to U.S. from where I sit. Some argue that a place at the table is better than on the outside looking in but most of what gets done worth a damn is by bonafide State Department diplomacy.
14. Adopt the “Penny Plan”. It just makes too much sense not to try it. Get rid of Baseline Budgeting. It doesn’t make sense and it just encourages waste. We don’t need to be penalizing people for saving money and rewarding waste. The end of FY spending spree needs to end.
15. This is the United States we speak English here and that is all we need to print or conduct business or anything else in.
16. Illegals. Seal the border, dig them out, provide work visas, track them (the Feds sure have no trouble tracking us), enforce the laws we have and continue to have the same path to citizenship we have had for ever. Anchor babies.. NO, not anymore. Press the Supreme Court to rule or repeal the 14th Amendment. It is insane and so is United States vs. Wong Kim Ark of 1898. Just stupid, this is one Amendment that is surely now arcane.
17. Repeal the 17th Amendment and replace it with term limits. Being a politician is not meant to be a career.

There is a bunch of other stuff but it won’t ever be done either like things that should really be core curriculum for our kids. We can’t legislate morality, principles, honor, religion, character, integrity and so forth. I think our only hope there is by leaders with those qualities who will encourage them by example. Not everybody though will be perfect. We have lost the visions of self-reliance, hard work, ambition and the will to be a great nation again. We have become a polarized nation of takers and workers and the workers are losing, if they have not lost already. We now have at least three generations who are not much more than dangerous pets and they just aren’t that cute and loving or loyal anymore to their care takers. Other than that they are mostly just useless.

Oh yeah, bring back the Neutron Bomb and clean up ISIS and any other scourges of mankind. It is clean and efficient.