It’s sorta surreal – the tax disaster that will hit most of us shortly. But that’s 2013, and we can get non-partisan chaps up in the congress. Real change will have to be policy, and policy needs to be set by an energized voting force of people that fuck over the incumbent idiots running perpetually for office.
Take the emotion out of it and just look at the data, or everyone gets all emotional and stupid. I start most any conversation with the firm grasp that I am probably wrong, but:
I’ll run…… if we can change some of the rules.
and save my district $10,000’s by telecommuting to Congress instead of flying to DC, eating long lunches with people who aren’t my constituents, and are likely lobbyists….. and well… I will start there. Could you imagine if the public had more access to the political process and their “leaders”, and lobbysists, literally, had less access?
I would like to see private enterprise and charity take care of most social programs in ethical ways that lessens the burden on the state. I would love stats on real waste of social programs… like real waste of welfare, freeloaders, etc vs lives it saves, etc (if any)… get 3rd generation people off welfare, without denying people the help they need to get back on their feet. That would be very hard to do…. but Welfare is like 14% of the budget, where Defense is about 22% or so. Defense will get pulled apart, too… don’t you worry. We will finally know what protects our country (people), and take care of them, while whittling away at the waste and unnecessary investment in creepy jingoism..
The concept of separation of church and state has been bastardized, and we’re going to stop letting churches, which make billions, to hide behind tax exempt status.  The churches can start helping pay to bolster our communities, instead of wreaking havoc on them with mind control and pederasty.  The collective consciousness wants REAL freedom of church & state – loud, emotional, opinionated people arguing without data or facts have no part in the process of governing – and a mass delusion does not justify moral opinions as ethical fact. I am pro-science, and I will see that the decisions made by our government are solely based on fact & data, rather than emotion and manipulation.
But we need real freedom of corporate entities infiltrating or funding politics, as well. Â Corporations are not people, and can no longer use Wall Street or lobbyists to influence the course of politics. Less lobbying, less corporate access and donations to our political process, and more connection with constituency rather than obeying this oligarchic capitalistic style management… the biggest companies are the only ones with access to our leaders. HUGE donation and lobby reform. For sure. Â And how about this – if corporations want to be people, let’s tax and penalize and jail them like we do people. If you want privilege, that will be yoked to accountability – you will pay the same prices a person would for the same crime. Â Novel concept eh? Â Corruption? Extortion? Illegal practices, dodging taxes? You are treated like a person. Have fun with that. We aren’t treated as well as you.
Term limits will accompany this… even for the most cherished statesmen.  Groupthink destroys accountability, and the commitment to walk on eggshells while running for re-election, constantly, denies the politician their opportunity to govern & manage.  You can not solve problems when you are too scared to have an opinion.  Our politicians need to worry about doing what is right, whether a loud, ugly, bitter vocal political minority wants to control them or not.  Without term limits, and the constant campaigning…. you take strong men and put them in the position of being fettered, fetid, and decaying.  “When the last of a man’s dreams are dead, there is little else to do but bury him” –> Once a man has won a seat in Congress, there is little else to do but bury them – it’s the rare auteur that is accountable and driven to enact responsible change.
If capitalism is capitalism, let’s not play by Michael Lewis’ ironic comment, “Socialism for the Capitalists, Capitalism for Everyone Else”. Â No more too big to fail. Â When trauma exists in front of your eyes, time slows down, and the disaster is almost beautiful for a sheer second. I have seen this with fire, I have seen this with water. Â The next thing to fail, whether a country or business, will fail spectacularly. When time slows down and the panic sets in, let’s all hold hands and watch what happens. It will be hard, and challenging, but I promise it will be beautiful for a moment.
Part of that would be the entirety of our political system updating it’s archaic practices so it doesn’t fail… it’s an obvious trajectory with the chaos of our current political theatre – idiots debating one another for tv ad revenues, occupyers and tea partiers wanting dialogue but falling short of creating it. Â It’s time to update, and keep pace with tech… telecommuting would save millions. Â Use modern social communication technology to citizen source the right people, and create a gov 2.0 that updates all archaic, obsolete systems. Â I am all for less government, but there needs to be something that can help our systems keep pace with our technologies. Right now we are embarassingly archaic. Â It’s truly ridiculous.
In fact, tech has outpaced our legal system for some time, and current laws on the books do not address the entire 20 year history of the e-commerce boom. Â All aspects of internet related commerce are reviewed, and we update that early 90’s law that didn’t know what the internet would become. Â We will start getting appropriate city taxes from Expedia, or state taxes from Amazon. Do these things not exist in the United States? Do they not use people and facilities and an economy, while still getting away with not participating in the process of community building?
Union corruption and inefficiency needs clean up, and public pensions need to be logical… if the community they serve has it’s back broken by the fact that they exist, it will eventually destroy those people’s community. That’s not community.  Pensions for public employees have GOT to go… or end up balanced in some feasible way (prison union in california, I might be staring down your long dark hall.  Chuck Reed mused that, someday, cities will have one single employee, and that will be someone to pay pensions. Is it hyperbole?  Or is it a confrontation with a potential dystopia?  Pay an employee a fair wage, public or private, and let *THEM* be responsible for their future retirement. To be accountable with your finances, if you are a paid fairly, is a hallmark of being an intelligent adult.  I know it’s not this black and white, and we need to retrain consumers that are broken and have never learned personal responsibility… but we can do it!  Retirement is no one else’s business but their own, unless an external force (ponzi scheme anyone?) effects that.  But pension schemes are disgusting – If I can retire my last day into a promotion that allows me to bump into a new pension pay bracket, that is corruption. How about this: pensions based on average of total salary through career?  Go figure that the unions wouldn’t let something logical and fair happen…because once you end up so corrupt and in want of the spoils of having gotten to the top of the ladder.  We need fair, impartial leadership… that puts everyone first, and themselves last.
Being in the government isn’t a professional job, it’s meant to be public service. This is why we need to hold our politicians to a higher ethical and intellectual light than our populace.  Though an ignorant populace will be too cynical to trust an intelligent politician, completely…  the anti-intellectualism we are toying with is dangerous and absurd.  Self awareness means it’s okay to be at peace with what you don’t understand.  Ignorance leads to fear, and that fear leads to people lashing out at what they can’t comprehend.  We need to teach the populace that there is such thing as professionals, and experts, and they should be celebrated for their functional, and operational knowledge of systems, or the capacity to derive objective data from thoughtful hypothesis.  To continue down this path of racing to the bottom, and listening to the loudest, has already put our political system into a bind…. no one is able to negotiate or compromise in the best interests of our country because they are controlled by madness.
Then I will help redefine the entire US Economy as one that CANNOT be sustained with consumption, and even though there will be issues with taxing consumption, redefine the American aesthetic of saving and working hard to get ahead… and move the income tax to a consumption sales tax… and everyone pays their fair share – whether it’s a pack of smokes or a yacht… everyone pays their due. I know companies will just raise prices to compensate for the less consumption… but that’s when things will be healthy, and people will think about purchases, instead of mindless consuming.  Our economy needs to be built on the health and wellness of our work force and ability to create intellectual entrepreneurial types that.  Gross National Product needs to be updated to something more self aware and holistic – we need to use modern tools of technology to closely track the Gross National Happiness of our nation, and know our collective fitness.  If the markets were based off whether we were healthy or not, it would strengthen the dependability of our projections.  Our stock market would be, literally, healthier and more fit.
But that’s just me. Â I don’t know.
What are your suggestions?
P.S. – [Ed Note: updated 15th Nov 2012, 12:03am]
Personally, I don’t have a problem with guns. I have a huge problem with the NRA, the ancient Wild West blood lust that is ingrained in us, and the systems in place that keep letting the wrong people get guns in far too accessible ways. You can defend *YOUR* right to responsibly arm yourselves, because you are part of the dialogue, responsible, and would never ever use a gun inappropriately. I know this. But everyone else? They are off their rocker and shooting large groups of people with no provocation. That’s a problem. That’s not right. Anyone that disagrees with that needs to start being accountable to every single time that happens. Someone has to be responsible… might as well be the people promoting the accessibility to the weaponry.