You've just been elected President of the United States...

You now have four years to get your most important programs passed. You can omly do one a year. What are the top 4 programs you would go to the mat for to get through Congress? What are the highlights? Oh, and if they're spending programs, how would you pay for them?

Mine:

Tax Package. A 10% flat tax would be imposed on all American's. There will be no write offs, loopholes, or deductions. Whatever income you have coming in, you will be taxed 10% on that amount. This includes business and personal income. If your business takes in 10 million but loses 12 million, you will still owe 100K in taxes. If you keep losing money, time to get a new business. Kids, houses, etc. are all options. Single folks who rent shouldn't be penalized, folks who get married, have kids and buy houses shouldn't be rewarded. Effective immediatly, IRS would be on a mandatory hiring freeze, as well as reduction in employees through attrition. Savings from corporate and high income write offs will partially pay for this program, as well as a reduction in the workforce, since 10% is easier to figure out than 400 pages of tax forms. Also, tied into this program and others is a massive reduction in wasteful spending.

Massive reduction in wasteful spending. No new fleet vehicles. No new limos. Cost tracking on all supplies, and suppliers awarded by lowest bid only. Budgets for each department will begin with a minimum mandatory 15% reduction, with a 2 year freeze, except for Medicare/Medicaid. Medicare/Medicaid however will be scrutinized closely for wasteful spending areas and the correction of those areas. Budgets will be proposed on a zero cost basis, not on the previous years numbers. Immediate hiring freeze and a 15% reduction in federal work force through attrition, starting from the top working down. All of the surplus if any, will be used to pay down the debt. Line Item Veto will be available to POTUS on all budgetary matters. Immediate 4 year pay freeze on all congressional members. New union contracts maxiumum of 3%, less if negotiable, increase per year in salary.

Elimination of the Departments of Education and Welfare. Mandatory federal levels of educational requirements will be implemented, but states will have soverienty over their own educational funding. States will decide thier own formulas for welfare and be responsible for funding programs. Food stamps and Medicare/Medicaid will remain under federal control under the Department of Health. The funds that are used to fund this department are not under the mandatory reduction becasue of Medicare/Medicaid. *There will be less taxes coming into the Federal Budget from the working class, which will give them more on hand funds in their own states. Should the states decided to raise their taxes to fund these two programs then the folks that live in those states can either agree or vote their state reps out. It will give people more control over how and where their money is spent, closer to home*

Community Health Program. Federal funds will be used to offset costs of education for health related fields, with agreement that graduates work for 5 years in federally funded community health centers at a median income range for that community. Health Care Centers will be able to deal with all forms of general wellness and emergency treatments but no hospitalization. Feds agree in partnership with insurance companies to offset any liability incase of malpractice. General health care and medications will be provided on an as can pay basis. Mandatory generic drugs, including imports to be supplied by lowest bid. At the end of the 5 years, low interest loans will be made available for upstart of private practice in needy areas. Funding will be expensive, but the offset of uninsured patients seeking care at emergency rooms will be high also. Funding will come from the Health Department which is responsible for Medicare/Medicaid which isn't effected by budgetary cuts.

So, that's my plan for the first 4 years... Just wait till I get re-elected, and see what happens...

The mortgage interest deduction is about the only thing keeping some people in the game.

#1 tax hike for the top 1 % if your makeing over a billion dollars a year you can spare a few extra million

#2 cutting the fat from the education department by getting rid of upper level management who do nothing but collect paychecks, and redistribute the excess money tothe teachers

#3 stop the genocide in syria and take out the terrorist who opperate all the diamond mines

#4 DOOMSDAY DEVICE BABY, YAHOO!!!!!!!!, kidding, number 4 would be putting more money into cleaning public drinking water

also i would severely limit the powers of the fcc, no more "television and radio arent free speach" bullcrap, the FCC will be nothing more than a record department who only really go after shows if they have child porn, reality shows where people loose limbs/die/ect.

Reinstitue the fairness doctrine in the media (and punish those who don't comply)...after that, everything else is possible.

each candidate gets equil time, so if you run a shrub AD you HAVE to run a kerry AD ect, i'd step it up a notch by cuting some defense spending and useing it to fund the 2 political campaigns, no more donations, no more crooked money on edit: it was regan who killed the fairness doctrine, suprise suprise

on ordinary wage earners.

For someone making $30K, that three grand is a serious chunk of change. The Halliburton (mid-level) exec making $300K can much more easily spare thirty grand, while the true richie clearing ten million can quite easily throw a million into the pot and hardly miss it.

Worse still, the $30K wage earner would have spent that three grand on something tangible, like a washer-dryer, while the richies take their flat-tax savings and travel abroad (well, not to France :-) ) or invest in bonds or whatever, giving no multiplier effect to our economy.

VERY VERY bad idea.

Unless of course you make alot of money, then its a great idea.

Sorry I couldn't vote for you :).



TWL

I am not going to comment on any other posts on here yet.

So, here are mine.
1) Roll back the Bush tax cuts for everybody in the top 25%. (That would mean my family, but we need it for the long term) and then subsequently push for still higher income rates on the top 10% because the richest of us most benefit from America’s infrastructure and should be the most to keep it going.
2) Spend a good part of that money from the top 25% rollback to upgrade & modernize our power grid/electrical infrastructure for the 21st century. In the long run, it will be pennies on the dollar as Ross Perot used to say and will also put thousands of Americans to work.
3) Do my best to implement a universal health care plan for Americans. Not having to pay health care costs will make American businesses more competitive in the global economy in the long run.
4) Invest heavily in our research universities and other science centers and see if they can focus on ‘Green’ technology to get rid of our dependence on oil, as well as focusing on invention & creativity & innovation.

and return the money those thieves stole from the American people to the U.S Treasury.

2. Abolish the Electoral College and make sure Presidential Elections are done by direct Democracy.

3. Get rid of the Committee structure in Congress. It gives too much power to certain members of Congress.

4. Push for a Constitutional Amendment that allows for the direct election of U.S. Justices to the SCOTUS.

#1. Universal health care. Private, single-payer, don't care. So long as it works for everyone and it's cheap. So, I'm thinking single-payer, but less "socialist."
#2. Energy independence. Drastically increase fuel efficiency standards (minimum 45 mpg over five years), and encourage hybrid technology and alternative fuel sources.
#3. Educational reform. Increase funding, reduce standardized testing,transfer more power to state and county governments. Decrease class size and promote safe, open learning environment.
#4. Military reform. Cut funding 5-10%, look to be more efficient in spending. Focus on defensive rather than offensive military, and new "smart" technology. Brains rather than brawn; focus on "special ops" tactical teams rather than air raids.

Oh, yeah, and I'd work Campaign Finance Reform in there somewhere.

Will President D******** be re-elected?

that set of proposals would make grover norquist wet with glee.

that need to be done and handled.

I think I would leave education alone for the moment, only because there are other concerns which are far more crucial. The first would be to reign in ALL corporate pollution and other environmental terrorism. Clean up the air, clean up the lakes, rivers, and more, and impose extremely stiff penalties for fucking with any of them. I would appoint a trial lawyer like Edwards to oversee the entire job of prosecuting evildoers.

I would make certain that Roe v. Wade was made safe and other women's issues were preserved. I don't know how, perhaps by appointing more liberal judges at the level immediately under the Supreme Court level, so that abortion and other women's issues would never reach the bunch of conservative degenerates that currently are in SCOTUS. And the minute that ANY of those conservatives got out of line, they would get the equivalent of an impeachment, and a liberal judge put in their place.

I would impose higher taxes on anyone making over $100,000 a year--it would be a sliding scale, with NO room for loopholes--from $100,000 to $499,999 paying 40%, from $500,000 to $999,999 paying 45%, and anyone making over $1 million paying 50% of their income. Anyone making under $20,000 will pay NO income tax, and $20,000 would be established as the NEW poverty level income. Middle class income would therefore be approximately $30,000 to $99,999 which is where it should be.

And last but not least, I would have the entire judicial system across the country reassessed for sentencing and appropriate punishments, so that there would be equitable sentencing for crimes of the same level, and race would no longer be a factor in sentencing and assigning punishment. Cases would also be reviewed by outside observers in cases where impropriety is suspected and no one would be given the death penalty unless there is incontrovertible proof that they were guilty.

that's a tax increase for our family, and with paying college tuition costs, and About $16K in property and education taxes (sing it with me now: "I love New York!"), you'd really be stressing my family.

My income this year is 0. I'm not only below poverty level, I'm at NO level.

and wish you well. I have three family members and two good friend who've been without a job for one to two and a half years. At least one of them is a Republican whom I'm sure will vote for Bush. I don't get it.

It's tough in this Bush economy to struggle, and if it weren't for some friends, I would be out on the street right now.

take oil from Iraq to pay for the war..work on getting Osama...and have a CIA operative assasinate Saddam before they let him loose.


Then I would go with a flat tax and open up 3 more Disney lands. I would quit giving free food to countries that do not support us and tell the UN to go fuck themselves. How bout it. Who's with me?

3 more Disneylands? It sounds like you're living in a RW Disneyland...

:eyes:

Disneyland is a fun and happy place. It is a perfect world.

Enjoy your second visit today.

um lots of right wing types - why should Iraqi resources pay for a war they didn't start and an occupation they don't want?

fight a real war on terror and get bin Laden.
Second thing is to look for ways to gradually reduce Saudi investment in our country's economy.
Third is fund research into clean and renewable energy sources.
Fourth is to generate new revenue sources, i.e. legalize and tax marijuana and prostitution. Put part of that money into paying off Bush's debt and the rest into health care, public education and helping to fund the research into energy sources.

Other long-term plans:

Give tax incentives to the auto companies for developing safe, reliable hydrogen-fueled cars. Give similar incentives to energy companies for working with the auto companies. Offer a huge cash reward to the engineer(s) who first develops one, and some other reward to the company that she works for (tax break or no-bid contract for a certain number years for government vehicles).

Sponsor an "Education Summit". Get educators of all types, private and public, together to discuss methods, materials and all problems in our educational system and come up with viable solutions. Also have special education addressed, as many people don't understand the needs of the kids who participate in these programs, the different labels used and the cost of providing these services to children who have needs ranging from behavior problems to dyslexia, and more severe educational needs like mentally impaired, physically impaired and autistic kids.

Of course, by this point, the oil companies will have me assassinated and Vice President Bartcop will have to put my agenda in motion and will likely have to take out the assassins himself with his gun, since I'm not a gun person.

if they can't find the money they have lost, their budget will be cut by that amount because it apparently isn't important in their current budget.

10% is WAY too low for it to work. There are fewer loopholes pulling money out of the system than you imply. The ONLY workable flat tax would be to raise the untaxed portion to around $30k, plus about $2k per dependent.

You could(!) leave the deduction on mortgage interest in place, but i would cap it at about $12k. (If you can't afford $1k per month in interest without relying on the deduction, buy a smaller house.)

Then make all income above $30k taxed at about 30% and eliminate ALL other federal consumer taxes. (Excise taxes, air travel taxes, etc.) That would just about be revenue neutral.

The problem is that universal flat taxes reduce the incentive to save before taxes (which increases the velocity of money) and compresses the spendable income of those who spend the highest fraction of their money in the short term (also increasing velocity and enhancing the consumption of replaceable goods). Reducing the velocity of money and the instantaneous consumption of low cost goods and services are both bad for the economy, reducing the demand, and therefore negatively impacting jobs.

A flat tax will lead to this. Modelas show it to be true (including my own). On top of that, it's just unfair to the working poor. That's not a technoeconomic point. It's one of justice. I can't model that. I just know what's wrong when i see it.
The Professor

Regulate the hell out of corporations. Airlines, power companies, phone companies, etc. End corporate welfare, and the notion that "corporations are people too." Stem the hemmoraging of jobs. Force stricter environmental regulations.

Tax the people who have the money and close every loophole possible. Possibly bring back luxury tax.

My administration is very simple in the next four years. We are
entering a period of massive modernization of our democracy to
face the coming times. The next four years:

1. Ending the wars abroad, and breaking up the military complex
so that it never again subverts the very fabric of decent society
by its war making and dereliction of duty in the former administration. This would include dissolving the entire intelligence services and firing all the management responsible
in any way for COMMAND OF THE SHIP. Incompetence in military command
must be dealt with expediently. I would see a massive voluntary
rettirement of military command, the cutting of overseas occupation
forces and a strengthening of alliances, business market integration
and financial ties. The state department would have a big public
database on the web, with each nation state rated 1-100 on each
human right in the universal declaration of human rights. All public
international relations would be formulated on the basis of this
public unbias neutral policy. In the bill package as well, would
be the ratification of the full universal declaration of human
rights and the recognition of the international criminal court,
including the turning over of bush, rumsfeld, cheney and rice to
the war crimes tribunal for conspiracy to wage aggressive war.

2. Reform of the system of money. I would reform the federal reserve
system to have an elected chamber in the open markets committee.
(www.wizardsofmoney.org)
This committee, would "print money" per social need, by its democratic composition. The federal reserve computers would be
totally integrated with all computers in the whole economy by 1 year, that the entire digital government treated all citizens on a single instance basis. Public finance computational networks would
be radically empowered, so that business would get the diverse financial empowerment they need, stimulating the economy racially,
providing a lightweight backbone....blah blah, IBM's fat pipe whisbang new real-time zer0-latency digital treasury and a big
fat eminent domain clause breaking business oligopolies in tax
filing and business formation and administration, with a federal
business system replaacng all state systems.. All americans would
be contractually employed by the government, and use the social
security website to book vacations, and to have guaranteed pensions
and living wages. All corporations would have to rent the employees
from the government, and would be subject to the HR department of
the federal government. All payroll for the whole country going
through the same sosec website, all taxes deducted, no paper, all
real time, labour laws enforced, yes.

3. Shift the whole whomeland security department in to a national health service. Fire everyone, and give every person in the nation
basic public healthcare to prevent the spread of bio-warfare, plagues
and new germ diseases, prepare to innoculate everyone for everything, overnight in case of bio-attack, and turn the whole
"terrorism thing" in to a war against bio-terror, erasing aids,
malaria. All drugs would be subsidized at 6.50 per perscription,
and all current illegal drugs available on the government website
for public medicine. This will effectively end the drugs war, as
the quality of government-shit is awesome, and bankrupts illegal
suppliers and the entire black drugs economy and all its criminal
elements go down overnight poof!

4. Push through 3 constitutional amendments
A. Every resident of the USA has the right to healthcare.

B. No corporation or collection of agencies has any personal rights
under the law.

3. The Universal Delcaration of Human rights shall thenceforth
guide the lawmaking institutions of this land.

You'll be assassinated, ala JFK.
Duckie

1. Universal health care. Single-payer.

2. Raise taxes on the top 2%. Keep the estate tax, close all corporate loopholes, and penalize outsourcing.

3. Increased education funding. All schools to have maximum 20 students per class, with well-trained teachers and sufficient books, music and art classes, and unstructured time for students to pursue whatever interests they want to, as well as mentorship programs that will encourage kids to keep learning outside the classroom.

4. Energy self-sufficiency. Mandate better gas mileage on all new cars sold. Rewards for conservation and subsidies for clean, safe, cheap public transportation.

Mine in no particular order.

1) Close all tax loopholes on unearned income. If your total unearned income is greater than 50% of your earned income, that unearned income will be taxed at a higher rate.

Unearned income will be defined as being money that you don't work for. Inheritance, stock dividends, lottery winnings are examples. I believe that currently windfalls of less than a certain amount isn't taxed. I'd keep that in place.

This should bring in a lot of money currently not being paid. Corporate taxes especially. I'd also require that inheritances that are primarily liquid assets (stock counts, but a business or farm does not) over a set amount (I think 200-300K would be fair)would be heavily taxed. Earned income can take a tax cut and we'd still be ahead. Due to a Federal law, communities trying to attract businesses would not be blackmailed by these businesses into conning the state government into footing their operating costs and letting them not pay any taxes at all for a set period.

2) Set up a plan to get universal single payer health insurance that will cover each and every American. If you're a temp or a part timer working two or three jobs, you're covered. Right now under the current system, you wouldn't be. If you are working, you should be able to go to the doctor for a yearly checkup. It's a lot cheaper in the long run than waiting until you get seriously ill and go straight to the emergency room.

3) Take a world tour to gain back America's good name in the world community after Bush besmirched it.

4) Institute a federal level consistant means of voting that ensures no funny business. All polls will operate the same way no matter where you are voting. If electronic, the company to provide this service will be thoroughly vetted by multipartisan experts so that the company in question has no conflicts of interest. Any company that gets the contract to produce voting machines must build into the software a paper and electronic trail to reduce the potential for tampering. The company, executive-level employees, owners, major stockholders will be banned from donating any money to any political party as long as the contract lasts. Paper balloting will be used until the results of several test runs have been conducted on electronic voting machines.

Some of the other issues I want to tackle is to clean up the environment, give the 10 worst school districts in terms of test scores some extra help in boosting achievement, raise the minimum wage to one that a frugal person could live on, require newly manufactured motor vehicles to get at least 35 miles to the gallon, reclassify SUVs so that they don't fall into the same category as farm equipment and thus people buying them for company cars get huge tax breaks and the SUVs don't have to meet the same standards as a car or truck, ban the use of road salt on roads in northern states-it corrodes cars and destroys roads and bridges and the runoff is not good for vegetation (and yes I do live in a state with over excessive road salt usage), legalize same sex marriages, institute a Good Corporate Citizen award that rewards companies that do more than the barest minimums.

President Nobody is going to be a very busy President.

* and his thugs and fix the enviroment that * has destroyed and is destroying.

This is for starters.

Dissolve Congress. Hand out various titles to people I like. Construct a huge, extravagant palace with a throne of gold for myself. Hire a cook from Outback to make me Outback Cheese Fries whenever I demand it.

1. Taxation.

Reinstate inheritance tax on estates with assets of $400K or more.

Eliminate taxation on income below $25K, tax $25-45K at 15%, $45-100K at 25%, $100K-400K at 35%, and $400K and up at 50-60%, with taxation to apply to all sources of income (no separate taxation on investments).

2. Massive spending on alternative and sustainable energy sources, and on viable public transit infrastructure. (Success of these programmes would lead to generation of revenue which would recoup the expenditure involved.)

3. Implementation of nationalised healthcare. (Increased federal revenues from #s 1 and 2 should provide sufficient funding.)

4. Elimination of most major forms of corporate welfare, which are a much greater drain on the Federal treasury than social programmes. Propping up failing and non-competitive industries does not save them, in the long run...it only results in massive waste at great cost to the taxpayers.

...that's why they call it a progressive income tax. ;)

and that I can get my legislation passed, I'm going to pretend that I can do more than one a year. Every issue is affected by other issues. Working on them in isolation isn't effective, in my opinion as comandress in chief.

1st year: International relations. Renew and repair relationships around the globe. Call in the UN to help with securing and rebuilding Iraq, and truly give them their country back. Bring our troops home. Refocus our priorities at home. Repeal the Patriot Act. Repeal the tax cuts. Repeal the standards/accountability/testing portions of NCLB. Restore the environmental protections gutted by *. Protect Social Security from privatization. Pass an amendment to revoke corporate personhood.

2nd year: Universal, single-payer health care for all, to include mental health and alternative therapies. FDR-like work program to get people working and rebuild infrastructure across the nation.

Reform the federal role in public education to include:

*National teacher certification so that credentials are transferrable from state to state. All current credentials grandfathered in.
*National academic goals; few and broad, with the official recognition that there are many paths to success and that no one philosophy, methodology, or program can be mandated for all. Goals to guide state curriculum; not standards to measure them by.
*All federal ed legislation to be funded 100% or repealed. No unfunded or partially funded mandates.
*Reform of Title I to include resources to help all students who are having trouble for any reason, not just those who can be formally diagnosed as learning disabled at an arbitrary cut-off level.
*As part of the above work program, a school building program, building schools for any district that will keep elementary school populations to 500 or less, middle and high school to 1000 or less, and districts to 15 schools or less.
*Universal preschool focused on child development, not early drill and kill academics.
*Before and after school programs for tutoring and enrichment, staffed by teachers as their primary job.
*A school library and library media teacher in every school.
*Post-high school education for all; public trade school or college.

Big investments in and incentives given to development and implementation of sustainable, clean energy sources. Work program to help build any necessary infrastructure.

3rd year: Return to fair trade agreements based on worker's rights and environmental standards. Use work program to help address the need for affordable housing for all; a massive rebuilding and restructuring of city space to provide enough affordable housing units to meet current and future needs. Incentives to family farms and sustainable farming practices. Make GMO food crops illegal. Requirements for foods used in public programs (school lunches, etc.) to be fresh and nutritionally sound. Reform the FCC; re-regulate multiple ownership. Make public radio and tv 100% publically funded. Campaign reform: campaigns to be publicly funded, each candidate to receive the same $$ amount, no contributions from anyone, and equal air time on public media.

4th year: Institute IRV and proportional representation.

There it is; a four-year plan. Implementation to be flexible, but all done in 4 years.

Year 1 will be tax reform. First, I'll jigger rates.

If you make between $500,000 and $1,500,000, there is a flat 30% tax on your income. No deductions except for charitable contributions, but you may only deduct enough of those to get you down to $500,000. Between $1,500,001 and $3,000,000 is taxed at a flat 35% (charitable contributions can take you down to $1,500,001) and above $3,000,001 there is a flat 40% tax, with charity allowed to take you down to $3,000,001. I will also allow rich people to deduct state income tax, but only down to the bottom of their bracket. We will use the revenue from this tax increase to abolish taxes on everyone else's first $25,000 of income. Then we can use a progressive scale to determine your tax liability from there.

I'm also going to fiddle with corporate tax. All corporations doing business in the United States will pay taxes on their sales in the United States. Any corporation whose headquarters is outside of the United States will have to prove that it conducts non-financial operations in the country that it is chartered in to be considered "properly chartered." Any corporation that engages in the practice of manufacturing will be required to show that it conducts manufacturing operations in the country it is chartered in to be considered "properly chartered."

Three examples follow: Hyundai is a corporation chartered in Korea. Its headquarters are in Seoul, the national capital of the Republic of Korea. It is a manufacturing conglomerate engaged in the production of consumer and industrial goods. Its manufacturing operations are all based in Korea; its United States operations are limited to receiving, distribution and sales. Hyundai is properly chartered.

The Stanley Works is a corporation chartered in a Caribbean nation. Its headquarters are in the United States. It is a manufacturing conglomerate engaged in the production of building materials, millwork, construction hardware and hand tools. Its manufacturing operations are based in a number of countries, to include the United States, Great Britain, Israel and China. It produces nothing in the Caribbean. Stanley is not properly chartered.

Levi Strauss is a corporation chartered in the United States. Its headquarters are in the United States. It is a manufacturing conglomerate engaged in the production of articles of clothing. Its production facilities are all based outside the United States; its current United States operation is focused strictly on warehousing and distribution. Levi Strauss is not properly chartered.

Only properly-chartered corporations may deduct business expenses from their taxes.

Year 2 will be used to reform the healthcare system. Malpractice suits are getting out of control. We will solve this problem by creating a Malpractice Review Board. Every medical school professor in the United States will sit on this board. Each malpractice case will be reviewed by three of these doctors, who will be chosen at random based on specialty--a thoracic surgeon will not be asked to review a neurological case. Further, no doctor who teaches at a school that the defendant attended, or has ever instructed the defendant, will be called to evaluate a defendant's case. If these three doctors agree by majority vote that the case is actionable it can go to trial. If a defendant loses three cases, he loses his medical license. This will stop the bullshit cases like "he cut off his penis with a sawzall then waited until the wound smelled really, really bad and his whole body had turned green before he presented for treatment, the doctor put him on antibiotics, the guy died anyway and now his wife is pissed that the doctor didn't save his life." It will not prevent good cases.

I will also institute some sort of basic healthcare package for everyone. I figure that if we can cut down the hospitals writing indigent care--which seems to always be conducted in the emergency room, which is the most expensive care you can possibly get--off their taxes, we can pay for it without raising taxes more than a percent--if we have to raise taxes at all.

Year 3 is for energy efficiency and construction, and I will focus on home energy use. As your president, I will ban the sale of "clear insulated glass" windows that have no heat-reflective coating or noble-gas filling between the panes. The minimum window that will be allowed to be sold will be a "Low E" window, and "Low E Argon" windows will be highly encouraged. I will do my utmost to encourage the installation of "triple glazed" windows--those with two argon pockets separated by a centered sheet of glass. I will ban 2x4 studs in outside walls on the grounds that you can put R-19 insulation in a 2x6 wall, and that will save huge amounts of energy. And finally, we will use all means, to include tax write-offs for conversion of mills, to eliminate formaldehyde from American-made building products and to encourage users to transition to these products.

Year 4 will be for education reform. The No Child Left Behind act will be abolished and replaced by standards of progress set by educators, not by the president's brother who just happens to sell educational software. I will also develop a three-track strategy for educating students for the real world. Right now, our whole educational system assumes everyone is going to go to a four-year university. We also need a system for people who are going to two-year institutions and one for people who intend to go right to work after they graduate from high school. Example: backhoe drivers. Backhoe drivers make a LOT of money. But to get a job as a backhoe driver, one needs a backhoe driver's license and one cannot get this without a stint at a community college. It wouldn't be hard to teach backhoe driving in high school.

I will also get rid of "abstinence only" sex education, because only teaching someone how to say no ignores the simple reality that, one of these days, you are going to say yes--and if experience is any guide, a guy who's never been taught how to apply a condom is going to unroll it and put it on like a sock.

1)take the money out of politics by mandating that tv providers make adequate time available for political campaigns. No good reason for all that graft after that.
2)start taking overpopulation seriously. Encourage the one child family both here and abroad by providing incentives.
3)declare independence from petrochemicals. If we could go to the moon we can do this. It won't be easy or painless but is utterly necessary. The sooner the better.
4)revamp taxation so that we have a progressive system that works. This would include sharp differentiation of earned and unearned income. Institute a one time wealth tax to clean up the mess bu$h has made and clean up the environment.
I'll go back to my room now, I can't stand the shrieking.

Why exactly do you hate the poor? A lot of your favorite programs are going to do horrible damage to low income people and their kids.

Oh wait, the ruling doesn't need to be reversed, it simply needs to be interpreted correctly!

from your 10% tax rate? How long before the government collapses?