If you were president... by canttakesky

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

If you were president...

POSTED BY: CANTTAKESKY
UPDATED: Monday, November 15, 2010 13:34
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VIEWED: 827
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Sunday, November 14, 2010 6:49 PM

This gets thrown around every presidential election. But let's imagine you got into office suddenly for Jan 1, 2011. You get to change 10 things in your country for the next 2 years before the 2012 election. Ten things don't seem like much, but let's say you try to do 200 things and only 10 are sure to succeed. What would you want those 10 things to be?

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Sunday, November 14, 2010 8:47 PM

OPPYH

I would fight tooth and nail to eliminate at least 50% of foreign imports. It would create about 5 million jobs or so in our country, and we could actually have big industry as an alternative to service based or professional jobs. The return of the blue collar worker.

That alone could fix America.

----------------------------------------------------------------

70's TV FOREVER

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Sunday, November 14, 2010 10:08 PM

DREAMTROVE

Dissolve the country and its political legal and financial systems.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 12:45 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Ten, eh ?

1. Foreign Aid: Cut it, cut it HARD, end it if possible.

2. Our "Intel" agencies, defund them, disband them if possible - and replace them with an Observation-ONLY group forbidden to act directly on penalty of death, answering and reporting to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

3. Miltary spending, cut hard, cut deep - no more welfare for warfare.

4. Legalisation of drugs as far as I can push it.

5. Copryright/Trademark reform, specifically removing the ability of anyone other than a single individual to hold either one.

6. Corporate Personhood: Gotta go, period, no retreat on that whatever.

7. Reform Public Schooling to a Free-School or Sudbury Model instead of using the Penal System for one.

8. Push for restorative justice instead of retributary - you wrong someone, you make it right, clean slate.

9. Prune the goddamn law, we got too many and they contradict each other.

10. Remove the FOREVER MARK OF DOOM that is a Felony conviction - once they'd paid the debt, served their time, make it over.

Mind, that's just the quick ones off the top of my head.

-F

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Monday, November 15, 2010 2:30 AM

KANEMAN

1) Bring home almost all troops
2) Close 100+ military bases around the world
3) Push to have much of the Patriot Act ended
4) Secure our borders (Really secure)
5) Raise retirement age for SS to 75(I see no reason for old people to be walking around for 40+ years not working)
6) Push to can Obamacare
7) End the FED
8) End the department of Education
9) End all Foreign Aid
10)End any department or program that: has money taken from the states and sent to Washington only to be sent back to the states minus Washington's cut.
11) use saved money to hire more ICE agents.
12) deport, deport, deport, deport.
13) Across the board federal employee layoffs and pay cuts( to 80% of public sector pay...lets call it public service again and not a shakedown)
14) Exile all Kwicko's and olbermann.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 2:33 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Dissolve the country and its political legal and financial systems.

What do you mean by dissolving the country? Just shut down all govt and stock exchanges and banks? What would happen to people's savings and such? Wouldn't that hurt folks?

Do you have a plan to slowly transition the dissolution?

----
Arrogant and proud of it.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 2:50 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by kaneman:
1) Bring home almost all troops
2) Close 100+ military bases around the world
3) Push to have much of the Patriot Act ended
6) Push to can Obamacare
7) End the FED
8) End the department of Education
9) End all Foreign Aid
10)End any department or program that: has money taken from the states and sent to Washington only to be sent back to the states minus Washington's cut.

I counted 8 things I agree with--pretty much everything except for the border security points. I am an open border person myself, a la Ellis Island, but it's not a big priority considering all the other problems with have.

I don't know if I would put all 8 in the top 10, but I would like to see them done eventually.

Quote:
13) Across the board federal employee layoffs and pay cuts( to 80% of public sector pay...lets call it public service again and not a shakedown)

Since my husband is a govt employee, I've gotten a different perspective on this. NOT that I don't want him to lose his job--I agree it would be a fine goal to get rid of a good portion of govt employment. He can find another job. That's no problem.

The different perspective is this: We lose a lot more money in govt contracts and grants to the private sector. They are, in essence, govt employees too, except they don't answer to the govt as their boss. They get billions and billions of dollars of govt money and they use a portion of it to meet their contract to the letter, then keep the rest for themselves. The public gets a lot less bang for the buck in private contracting than if the govt did it.

If something is worth doing with tax money, it should be done with govt ownership and control.

So if it were me, I would end all govt contracts and grants to private entities FIRST. Then lay off 80% of govt positions.

----
Arrogant and proud of it.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 4:18 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Frem:

Can I vote for you for President? I mean, seriously, write your name in in the next election? What should I put, "Fremdfirma"?

Here's my list, culled from yours (and Kaneman's).

----

1. End the Federal Reserve. Return to a gold standard. If I do NOTHING else in office, I would be happy with doing this.

2. End ALL income taxes. Cut down excise taxes to 2% of the GNP. I'm thinking a fed budget of about 300 billion or so. Nada mas.

If the govt doesn't have money, it can't give foreign aid, have inflated military spending, give corporate welfare, buy useless TSA scanners, continue the war on drugs, detain prisoners in Guantanamo. etc. In one fell swoop, I save myself a bunch of wishes.

3. Using the deliberative democracy model, regular randomly chosen citizens will form a panel every year to making spending decisions for the entire federal budget.

They can pick the most stupid people in our country and still do better than our reps and senators. They are going to spend it on roads and schools and things that actually help Americans, not corporations or the military.

4. De-legislate Corporate Personhood. Now. This should take care of "Copyright/Trademark for individuals only" as well.

5. Reform the justice system to Restorative Justice. I love this Frem.

6. Fully informed juries to know they have to right to pass down whatever verdict they wish, no matter what the laws say.

7. De-legislate the loss of rights for felonies.

8. Support an Amendment to the Constitution: Congress shall make no law prohibiting drug use and method of health care.

9. Support an Amendment to the Constitution: Congress shall make no law prohibiting marriage.

10. Support an Amendment to the Constitution: Congress shall make no law to mandate citizens to purchase products or services. This goes hand in hand with repealing income taxes, mandatory purchase of Social Security insurance policies, Obamacare health insurance policies, etc.

----

Of course, the power to do a lot of this resides in the States and not in the President's office, and the President could never actually do any of this anyway--but this is a fantasy presidency. :)

----
Arrogant and proud of it.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 5:03 AM

DREAMTROVE

Frem

1) This ain't where they're getting most of their money, they'll just take it from any channel they can.

2) This is to blunt. Russia tried it, and created the Russian Mafia. It would have to be phased out carefully.

3) That would be more effective. They also get their money from everywhere, but they would resort to more robots, foreign mercenaries, insurgency and contract mercenaries. It would at least end this stupid Molech practice of our military.

5) on IP, Trademark is necessary for corporations. It's not a threat of intellectual freedom like copyright. If it weren't so, the Apple iPad competitors would be called Apple iPad. Knowing the real from fakes would be hard, and people would sell cheap copy products to consumers as the real thing, as they did with clothes in the 80s. The result of that trick was the takeover of the world fashion industry by one guy, simply because he was more crooked. The result in something like the iPad would be that what you would buy would still be made in China, but it would contain less memory than it said on the box, etc, and the unit would fail.

Trademark is something which actually helps keep companies in line, because it makes them responsible for their own name. This means that if it's a Ford, it's safer than if it's a Fnord. Without it, all Fnords would be Fords, so some Fords would be Fnords and the influence of these guys would increase:

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Monday, November 15, 2010 5:29 AM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Dissolve the country and its political legal and financial systems.
What do you mean by dissolving the country? Just shut down all govt and stock exchanges and banks? What would happen to people's savings and such? Wouldn't that hurt folks?

Do you have a plan to slowly transition the dissolution?

----
Arrogant and proud of it.

Consider my frame of mind at the time.

Also, deleting people's savings would be a good idea. It doesn't record wealth nearly so much as it does gross inequity.

The nation is useless, utterly, it's a detriment to the planet. I does nothing of use to anyone outside or inside the united states. It's just an infection on the planet.

When I say this, many people who aren't Frem act shocked and give me a long list of responsible things govt does and how necessary they are. While these things are one by one debatable, to a one, the things that people hand me are done by state govts.

States are much better than the USA. The USA is as bad as the CSA. We don't have slavery anymore? Really?

That said States are only bound into unions by forms of coercion, but anything good that govt does is done by state govt.

Most of the world gets along fine without unions. Sure, in the past there were serious problem states, but now we have problem unions, and unions are no better than empires because they are empires.

Two things people will add if I say this

What about social security and medicare?

well,

1) soc sec is a fraud. 2/3 of all dollars that have been put into the system have been transferred to military spending.
2) While the money must collect interest, that interest does not go into anyone's individual account
3) No inflation adjustments are made, so the money evaporates for up to 40 years or more.
4) 2/3 of all moneys going out go to households with assets over a million dollars.
5) The actual value that the average worker recieves adjusted for inflation is just pennies on the dollar.

They could have invested it in 30 year tax free municipal govt. bonds and collected interest, and gotten all their money back. I'm sure doing so would exempt you from the system, so the system is theft, plain and simple.

Medicare could easily be handed to the states. Like social security, it is entirely paid for by its own separate tax system outside of the federal system anyway, neither of these programs are actually technically part of the federal system which is why they're not in the budget, and are separate on you tax forms.

The IRS needs to be abolished. It had no legal justification for it's existence. Its legal status is actually "a charitable organization supported solely by voluntary contributions" Really? Try not volunteering and see what they do to you. Notice that this is the only debt you can go to jail for, and yet it's a "voluntary contribution"?

95% of all federal spending goes to defense, aka offense, in one way or another.

Lately that general ballpark figure has been shaken by bailouts to large banks. Gee, there's an improvement.

The FED also needs to go. One last use for the US military, if need be.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 5:38 AM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
Originally posted by kaneman:
1) Bring home almost all troops
2) Close 100+ military bases around the world
3) Push to have much of the Patriot Act ended
4) Secure our borders (Really secure)
5) Raise retirement age for SS to 75(I see no reason for old people to be walking around for 40+ years not working)
6) Push to can Obamacare
7) End the FED
8) End the department of Education
9) End all Foreign Aid
10)End any department or program that: has money taken from the states and sent to Washington only to be sent back to the states minus Washington's cut.
11) use saved money to hire more ICE agents.
12) deport, deport, deport, deport.
13) Across the board federal employee layoffs and pay cuts( to 80% of public sector pay...lets call it public service again and not a shakedown)
14) Exile all Kwicko's and olbermann.

Thanks for 1) and 2) I forgot about those, I'll add them

Nearly everything here is conservative limited govt. libertarian except you border/immigrant positions which are big govt. authoritarian.

Of course you don't recognize this, you were programmed to accept this as a conservative position through the use of manipulative subliminal psychology by the system.

I think if you think about it, you'll realize that you have indeed been tricked, and what your plan would really do would be recreate a totalitarian dictatorship with immigration agents as the new enforcement agency to replace homeland security, and borders as the new lamo excuse.

Next, the part of the controlling elite that pretends to be liberal would tell the part that pretends to be conservative that they would never accept such a racist policy.

The faux right would then say "Oh, we'll make it so that it's non discriminatory, everyone will be equally policed. Then the faux left will say "oh good, that's okay then." (Notice it's the racial profiling that the dems object to in AZ, not the infringement on the civil liberties of the citizens of AZ)

So, now you have it perfectly in place, a new unaccountable national police SS with a brand new rationalization for existence and no reason to ever stick to its original purpose at all, even if that were something worth doing.

IMHO, it's not, it's like terrorism, a bugbear talking point that was created and circulated by fearmonger psychologists working for the feds.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 6:03 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
When I say this, many people who aren't Frem act shocked and give me a long list of responsible things govt does and how necessary they are.

You won't get that from me either.

I would just be concerned about people's current savings. If everyone who has savings gets a chance to withdraw them, to withdraw their 401k's, etc, I have no problems with dissolving banks either.

In terms of dissolving SS, I would stop requiring citizens paying into SS immediately. From the money we save in foreign aid and war, we can pay off the folks who have already purchased SS all their lives and have no other plans. For the ones who just started out working, we can refund the payments they have already made. In other words, a transition plan can be implemented.

If we can do it in a way that doesn't leave people hanging out to dry suddenly, but transition them into alternatives, I have no problems with making govt as small as possible.

I'll have to think about the implications of dissolving the stock exchange. Not that I have any love for it, but I am concerned about people losing everything they have.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 6:24 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Disclaimer: Granted this is biased, etc, etc.

But it is interesting and goes along with all the cutting proposed in this thread.

NYT's The Budget Puzzle
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-gr
aphic.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=ab1

It's an interactive "game" for solving the deficit, given their limited choices. You can see what you are willing to cut, and what kind of taxes you are willing to raise.

----
Arrogant and proud of it.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 7:23 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Actually for the write-in the correct designation would be DYNAMO, of the Evil Overlord Party.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PragmaticVillainy

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 7:43 AM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Why vote for the LESSER EVIL?

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

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Monday, November 15, 2010 8:47 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

I agree with Oppyh, Frem and #s 1-4 of Kane. CTTS. I agree with “I would end all govt contracts and grants to private entities FIRST”—starting with the Blackwater (whatever they call themselves today) and their ilk.

DT, I think you have a valid point about Frem’s #5. As to Social Security, I agree the interest doesn’t go to individual accounts, but that interest in part is supposed to pay for the next generation, if the government would just keep their damned hands off it. I think SSI and Medicare should be FIXED, not done away with, because I agree on all your points about what's wrong with SSI.

I agree that

Quote:
I think if you think about it, you'll realize that you have indeed been tricked, and what your plan would really do would be recreate a totalitarian dictatorship with immigration agents as the new enforcement agency to replace homeland security, and borders as the new lamo excuse.

The only thing I’d add is somehow (and I don’t know how) reduce pollution, factory farming (and all the other things that are wrong with our food system), salvage what’s left of the environment somehow. How, I don’t know. The whole thing is too complex for me.

Oh, and get rid of puppy and kitten farms, and make penalties for animal abuse MUCH harder...but that’s just my pet peeves, so I don’t know how to accomplish them.

I didn't watch Wulf's video, but I figure it's irrelevant anyway.

I’d be redundant if I tried to list my own priorities, so I’ll let that stand as my response. And I think we should elect Frem President, too.

The big question being ignored is how do you, as President, accomplish any of these things, given Congress?? Presidents can't do it alone.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Monday, November 15, 2010 12:37 PM

DREAMTROVE

CTS

I was not talking about clearing accounts of dollars. I was talking about deleting the concept of dollars from the culture.

I believe we need a free market economic system, but not this one. The idea that savings in the market are people's retirement is a tactic of fear that was put in society by those who really own the stock accounts. 97% or so are large international banks. well over 99% of bond ownership is.

That's who we are protecting when we protect the financial system. They would love the socialists to win, so they can directly tax the populous, and in Obamacare, they have the start of that.

But ultimately, you have to realize that people got old long before there was money, and yet people did not let them starve. Something in society was lost, and I think it was lost in the industrial revolution, most obvious in the holocaust, the elderly and children are of no value to this society because they are not part of the laborforce.

ETA:

Niki,

Nothing goes to the next generation, that's a myth. Payments are covered by incoming payroll FICA taxation. It is in fact what the far right calls it, a Ponzi scheme, in the purest sense: The first in are first out, and will collect, the last in are throwing money at the wind.

Wulf,

I concur.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 12:41 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
If I was president,
I'd get elected on Friday,
assassinated on Saturday,
and buried on Sunday.

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Monday, November 15, 2010 12:47 PM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Nice Wycleff reference

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

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Monday, November 15, 2010 1:34 PM

WHOZIT

Take a dump in the Rose Grarden

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