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VATI Vote Against The Incumbent!

Premises

Fix Congress

Nutshells

CORRUPTION

IS

NOT ALLOWING A VOTE
TRADING VOTES
VOTING ON BILLS NOT READ
OFF-TOPIC AMENDMENTS
PORK
VOTER SUPPRESSION
GERRYMANDERING
DROWNING OUT THE OPPOSITION WITH
CORPORATE AD MONEY
BUSINESS AS USUAL
more ...

Fix Congress

Political experience should lead to statesmanship, but instead generally leads to more adept corruption. Replace career politicians with Mr. Smiths via a Constitutional amendment prohibiting consecutive terms.

Representatives need to do the people's work, not base every decision on getting corporate money to bamboozle the voters and get re-elected. If the people see good results from their work, they can always run again after a one term hiatus, during which they would have the opportunity to stay in touch with the actual needs and wishes of their constituents.

No anonymous contributions over $100. No corporate contributions.

LEGISLATION BASED ON HOW YOU THINK PEOPLE SHOULD BEHAVE INSTEAD OF HOW YOU DAMNED WELL KNOW THEY WILL IS A CRIME!

NO TOLERANCE FOR LEGISLATION THAT IGNORES THE REALITIES OF SCIENCE OR HUMAN NATURE!

THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO BUSINESS DECIDING WHO "QUALIFIES" FOR "RELIGIOUS" EXEMPTIONS.

NO EXEMPTIONS!

NO MENTION OF RELIGION IN ANY LAW, LEGISLATION, REGULATION, OR ORDINANCE!

THE PARASITES THAT RUN THE WORLD ...

WAR PROFITEERS

POLLUTION PROFITEERS

POISON PROFITEERS

WILL SAY ANYTHING AND DO ANYTHING TO KEEP YOU EXPLOITABLE.

ANY CORPORTATE POLICYMAKER WHO FAILS TO SAY ANYTHING AND DO ANYTHING TO KEEP PROFITS AND STOCK PRICES UP AND BONUSES FLOWING IS IMMEDIATELY REPLACED BY SOMEONE WHO WILL.

ALL CORPORATE SPOKESPERSONS ARE PROFESSIONAL LIARS.

ALL REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS ARE CORPORATE SPOKESPERSONS.

NO BUSINESS EVER CREATED A JOB THAT THEY DID NOT INTEND TO MAKE A PROFIT ON BY PAYING THE LOWEST WAGES AND BENEFITS THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH.

NO BUSINESS
CAN EVER BE
COUNTED ON
TO PUT THE
GREATER GOOD
AHEAD OF PROFIT.

EVER.

EVERY BUSINESS WILL SUPPRESS AND SABOTAGE ANY INNOVATION THAT MIGHT INTERFERE WITH AN EXISTING OR POTENTIAL PROFIT STREAM.

THIS IS WHY GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED RESEARCH IS OUR ONLY HOPE FOR THE FUTURE.

THE FREE MARKET'S INTERNAL CONTROLS ON GREED AND INCOMPETENCE ONLY WORK IN THE LONG TERM AND ON GLOBAL SCALES, NOT IN THE SHORT TERM OR LOCAL SCALES WHERE DEVASTATION HAPPENS.

INTENSE REGULATION AND COMPETENT OVERSIGHT ARE NECESSARY.

THE RICH HAVE IT ALL SET UP TO PROFIT FROM WAR, POLLUTION, & POISON, NOT INFRASTRUCTURE.

THIS IS WHY VOTING REPUBLICAN IS AGAINST YOUR OWN INTERESTS.

The rich have things set up to profit from an economy based not just on oil but on wasting as much oil as possible. That makes public transportation and mileage improvements anathema to them.

Profit has three components -

deserved, undeserved, and

obscene.

This is America, so both deserved and undeserved profit are OK. The rich will always say the obscene component is zero.

It's up to the people to define the real dividing line, and tax obscene profits at 100%.

MAKE THE RICH PAY FOR BUSH'S UNFUNDED WARS.

NO ONE NEEDS MORE THAN $50 MILLION.

EQUAL PROTECTION
UNDER THE LAW
FOR EVERYONE!

NOTHING INSIDE

A WOMAN'S BODY

IS ANYONE'S BUSINESS

BUT HER OWN!

Turning American labor into just another third-world workforce continues.

It began in earnest with DINO Clinton's NAFTA.

REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS
ARE IDIOTS.

THEY COMPLAIN ABOUT
MINORITY GROWTH
THEN SABOTAGE
FAMILY PLANNING

Seen the '06 movie Idiocracy?

It would have to be dumbed down for teabaggers - everyone in it just seems normal to them.

The Koch brothers are always looking for another sucker.

Don't be a
Koch sucker.

It is incumbent on advocates for illegal immigrants to find solutions that do not encourage more illegal immigration, such as helping them fight corruption in their own countries, often the fault of American businesses and their legacies.

The term "undocumented" fails to recognize the fact that such status resulted from an illegal act.

It is incumbent on advocates of disparate impact to avoid trading one evil for another. For example, it is not some rich white kid who misses out on college or job assistance because of reverse discrimination; it is the poorest white kid who otherwise would have qualified.

"State's rights" is Republican code.

It ostensibly refers to local control based on local preferences, but in fact is intended to invoke nostalgia for state-sponsored racism, promotion of local corruption, and violation of the principle of separation of church and state.

"Smaller government" is Republican code. It ostensibly refers to reducing government bloat, interference in personal liberty, and unnecessary restrictions on business, but in fact is intended to promote deregulation of businesses, let the corporations run wild, the future be damned. Republicans "want smaller government" so they can pollute, sell unsafe products, and profit from bribery. It has nothing to do with saving money for middle-class taxpayers, it's just plain greed. Look at the trillions in debt, death, waste, and pork they racked up when they were in power. Their only agenda is to protect profit streams for big oil, big auto, big pharma, Wall Street, and all of the other soulless corporate parasites that see everything around them only as resources to exploit. Destroying public transit systems in the 1900s, starting wars, dismantling safety and fiscal controls, manipulating the Tea Party rabble, buying Senators and Congressmen and state politicians and appointees with bribes and unlimited political ads, Republican politicians give lip service to ethics while wallowing in corruption.

10th Amendment: "or to the people", people. That means actions by federal elected officials trump "States Rights".

When Republicans say they want smaller government, what they mean is their corporate masters want to own the government.

THE FUNDAMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY OF EVERY THINKING BEING IS TO THINK FOR ONE'S SELF!

NEVER ASK FOR ANSWERS.

ASK FOR IDEAS

AND TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ANSWERS!

SANITY REQUIRES INDULGENCE IN THE COMFORT OF THE IDEA THAT THERE IS SOMETHING ETERNAL ABOUT THE ONES YOU LOVE, BUT COUNTING ON IT IS HOW THE PARASITES GET YOU TO SEND YOUR CHILDREN OFF TO WAR TO KILL AND BE KILLED BY OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN.


Vultures and Parasites

The world is run by powerful people whose only motivation is to maintain their power - religious leaders, the rich, and the mindless, soulless corporations - parasites all. The importance of democracy is that it gives the common man at least a modicum of control over the worst excesses the parasites crave to perpetrate.

The parasites have no interest in anyone's welfare. They exploit anyone and anything they can, including each other. They have been raised to adopt a lifestyle of self-interest, and taught to shun the natural sense of a greater good. They don't care whether the rest of us live or die, as long as there are enough of us to serve them. They don't care how educated we are, as long as we are educated enough to serve them. They don't care how healthy we are, as long as we are healthy enough to serve them, but not so healthy that we fail to spend much of our income, and particularly most of our retirement savings, on the drugs, for-profit health facilities, and insurance investments from which they profit. Now that they have discovered that they can get reliable high-tech labor from foreign sources, they are using unfair free trade agreements to turn the American middle class into a third-world workforce, by forcing us to compete head-to-head with workers in countries with no wage protections, no child labor laws or other workers' rights, and no environmental restrictions, and by fostering illegal immigration instead of paying a living wage for unskilled labor. The politicians who signed, voted for, or otherwise supported these agreements either were too incompetent to understand their impact on American workers, or understood and intentionally betrayed their constituents. In either case, none of them have any business holding an elected or appointed office, then, now, or at any time in the future.

The Chamber is just a front for vulture capitalists. A carbon tax would be just the tip of the iceberg. Every product and service should be subject to a liability tax to cover the cost of mitigating the damage they can be expected to cause to our health and to the environment that future generations will have to deal with. The vulture capitalists figure they won't be around to pay for the damage they cause, so someone else will have to pay for it. After all, you can never have too many yachts and villas, and you and yours will always be able to find somewhere unaffected by your crimes.

Vultures will always be vultures. Equity firms will always destroy a company if bigger profits can be made than by saving it, always, unless closely regulated and heavily taxed on their profits from vulture practices. Health insurance companies will always limit themselves to the healthiest population they can, provide the least coverage possible, and stonewall patients to death, always, unless they are closely regulated and fined for such practices and are forced to compete with a public option or only offer coverage not included in the public option.

Politicians

There are five kinds of politician: The rich, those trying to get rich, those that love to toady for the rich, and two kinds trying to do the right thing: those that are too fouled up with religious or other personal agendas to be effective, and those who are actually competent but too few in number to be effective except in extremely rare instances.

The solution? VATI. Vote Against The Incumbent in all primaries. Let them all know that they need to spend their term doing their job instead of working on reelection. Let them know that they need to impress us not only with what they did in office but also with how what they did turned out during the next term. Let them know that they need to run on the basis of the actual impact of their actions, after a one-term hiatus to see what that impact is. Make them represent the common man instead of the special interests.

GOP

Time for the death knell of the entire GOP platform: The same old "trickle-down" Big Lie, theocracy over democracy, "war is good".

The @GOP created the out-of-control anarchist Tea Party to kill regulations, and the rest of the GOP (all toadies for the rich) will never govern again. The GOP needs to be rebuilt from scratch, starting with the principles of freedom, self-sufficiency, and opportunity, with the addition of the principle of taking control away from those who perceive everything and everyone as resources to be exploited.

Republicans need to decide whether they will continue to lose by pandering to a handful of unethical billionaires, zealots, and racists who have admitted their only interst is to pursue global free market profits no matter who gets hurt, or promote ethical business and political practices, and honor the principal of separation of church and state instead of promoting their shades-of-Sharia theocracy as their only issue to fire up the lunatic fringe of their base.

The GOP and their US Chamber of Commerce have no credibility, because they are controlled by and pander to corporations who are primarily interested in global markets, not the American economy, let alone American workers. They even resist the idea of accepting assistance from the government. To level the competitive playing field we should apply reciprocal protectionism against foreign companies that receive subsidies from their own government as well as against global corporations that receive public subsidies or that benefit from other unfair trade practices and exploitative labor practices. GOP/COC/GlobalCorp policymakers resist such assistance because global profits can be higher without protecting America businesses and their American suppliers.

The US government needs to stand up and level the playing field whether GlobalCorp likes it or not, and punish corporations for putting global profiteering ahead of the American economy and the interests of the American people. Reciprocal protectionism should also level the playing field between American workers and their foreign competitors who are expected to accept a standard of living below that which Americans consider necessary and fair. The rich like globalization and are happy seeing the American middle-class turning into a third-world workforce. Our government exists for the purpose of standing up to them. Let's hold our representatives responsible.

When I joined the Republican Party 52 years ago, I admired the idea of building the future using self-reliance, a free market, and capitalism. Since then, the Party has been taken over by people who have replaced the ideal of building for the future with a philosophy of "take the money and run". I haven't found a Republican candidate to vote for in 46 years (except Gerald Ford when Jimmy Carter began spouting his "born again" nonsense). Like I said, we need to start over from scratch.

The GOP needs to clean itself up from the inside out and become the "anti-corruption party"

Free Market

The free market's internal controls on greed and incompetence do not work in the short term or on local scales, only in the long term and on global scales, too late to protect against market turmoil, destruction of companies that could have been saved, and loss of jobs. To reinvent the American economy as an example for the world, we need to regulate companies to direct their focus on the American economy and jobs over global profits. We need to tax the wealthy, including the job outsourcers, the wealth hoarders, and also those job creators who are destroying our children's future, with protection for responsible job creators. We need to provide reciprocal (as opposed to predatory) protectionism for American companies, as well as punish them for putting global profits ahead of the interests of the American people. We also need to make supporting Americans who refuse to pull their own weight a task for the charities, not for the taxpayers, and take the money out of drugs by treating addiction as a medical condition rather than criminal issue.

Profit is comprised of two components, deserved and exploitative. The GOP's position is that the exploitative component is always zero. Much more intense regulation is needed to control the short-term and local-scale effects of free market greed and incompetence, including vulture capitalism. Private equity firms need to be closely regulated to prevent destructive practices.

Predatory Captialism

Romney is right that the job losses he created were the product of the free market - a poorly regulated free market. He blurs the distinction between deserved profit and exploitative profit - it's all the same to him. Predatory capitalism needs to be closely regulated in the same manner as anti-trust actions.

Oil Profits

The oil profits minimum tax is long past due. Our economy is based on wasting oil - the more waste, the bigger the profits. Big Oil, Big Auto, and the military-industrial complex, owned or controlled by the same obscenely rich families, have conspired for decades to sabotage and delay efficient engines and public transportation, and have had their stooges in Washington start wars just to protect oil profit streams. These same people deal in arms and no-bid contract support for the military; they have promoted wars to waste as much military material as possible so they can get richer resupplying the military, as they did in Iraq. They have a huge backlog of dues to pay; we can use the minimum oil profit tax revenue to mitigate some of the damage they have inflicted on us and on future generations.
Energy Policy

Obama made a good effort in reducing our dependence on foreign oil, but spectacular results will only be achieved by government investment in "fringe" science - cold fusion, better batteries, more efficient solar cells, biomass fuels that don't displace food crops, etc. The only thing that has ever made lasting improvement to the human condition is Science. We can't wait for corporations to see a way to profit from new science, let alone count on them to support developments that could compete with their existing profit streams. We also can't wait for universities to take long shots on research that might be perceived to have the potential to damage their image. Just as only government can be counted on to invest in infrastructure, only government can fund projects like the space program that create the technologies that change the world forever. Pure research is the answer to the problems of the world; always has been, always will be.

Kochs Rove She-Pac

AFP, the Kochs, and Rove are just spending money preaching to their choir. They have no credibility with independents, let alone with Dems. Everyone will assume AFP and the Kochs and Rove are the sources for any attack ads against President Obama, ignore them, and think even less of the Republican candidates, if that's possible.

I see where Republicans are proposing a to help the GOP win women voters. I just don't think there are enough racist misogynist homophobic anti-jobs anti-education home-schooled women who have the power to put global profiteering ahead of the American economy and the American people and lead us to Sharia-style theocracy

Iraq

The parasites feared a civil war in Iraq would interfere with the oil profits they need to maintain their obscene lifestyles, so they have used America in an attempt to install a stable government. The parasites have no interest in the welfare of the Iraqi people or anyone else.

W's legacy will be his role as toady for the parasites in his destruction of Iraq, his waste of at least a half-trillion dollars on the war, his no-bid contracts for his friends and his successful effort to deplete our military resources to a dangerous level so that his rich friends can get richer selling replacement weapons and equipment to the taxpayers.

Our Recent Non-President

George W. Bush will go down in history as the greatest criminal to hold the office. We did not have a President from the time W was sworn in until he was finally gone; we had an unelected Acting President, put in place by a Republican-packed Supreme Court on the "basis" of rigged elections, especially in the Banana Republic of Florida run by W's brother Governor Jeb, and in Ohio where the statistical impossibility of the variance between the official election results and the exit poles has never been refuted.

This was just the beginning of W's criminality. His legacy will be his destruction of Iraq, his waste of at least a half-trillion dollars on the war, his no-bid contracts for his friends and his successful effort to deplete our military resources to a dangerous level so that his rich friends can get richer selling replacement weapons and equipment to the taxpayers, his betrayal of democracy and his replacement of our democracy with his own personal idiotic theocracy, the needless suffering and death millions of Americans and others throughout the world as a direct result of his evil interference with embryonic stem cell research and family planning charities, and his Ludditism that has set American science back at least 50 years, an moral outrage from which we may never recover, scientifically, medically, environmentally, or economically. Only an evil moron would create such immense suffering for the people of the world just to get his thirty pieces of silver from the christian right.

Besides making his friends rich, W's other motivation for invading Iraq was the potential loss of oil profits from the impending civil war being brought on by his predecessor's installment of the monster Hussein. Ending Hussein's vile, cruel rule had little chance of avoiding the civil war, but W saw American lives as a cheap price to pay in his attempt to protect oil profits.

NAFTA

We waited to no avail for President Bush and Senator Kerry to answer "The Question". This could well have been essentially a single-issue election:

"When NAFTA came to a vote, what was your plan for the Americans who you knew would lose their jobs?"

The single honest answer appears to be: "There was no plan, and we all knew it."

On Lou Dobbs an economist (Glassman) tried to support the President's agenda, but when asked directly what jobs should a laid-off 55-year old steel worker be re-trained for, his response was to look like a deer caught in headlights, then weakly respond with something about a projected shortfall of software engineers in the year 2025. 2025!? What about today?! Software engineers!? Hasn't he heard how India and China are already leapfrogging us in software engineering!?

In passing NAFTA Congress betrayed the American workers. The general consensus among voters is that the vast majority of the members of Congress do not choose to represent the American people; they choose to represent the rich families and mindless corporations who have been drooling over cheap, exploitable foreign labor for decades, and who want to transform the American labor force into a third world, low paid, and benefit-deprived resource, through:

  • "Free trade" agreements, such as the ones Congress enacted with no wage or environmental standards, or other protections for American workers.

  • No effective control of illegal immigration.

  • No effort to transform "third world" jobs in America into first world jobs, by raising the minimum wage above the poverty level, and requiring health coverage for all employees.

  • Giving tax cuts to the rich, while taxing the middle class beyond reason, and denying medical and educational assistance to even lower middle class taxpayers because they make slightly more than those who "qualify".

  • Blocking technical innovations until the last dollar of profit has been squeezed out of costly, polluting products and practices.

Candidates continue to spend much of their campaigns trying to put spin on their betrayals, most especially NAFTA.

We are all still waiting for them to answer "The Question", and tuning out their attempts to divert us from this foremost issue.

Katrina

Simple question for every candidate for national office: Considering that a "flood" is commonly considered to be the result of excessive rain, do you consider damage from wind-driven water to be uncovered flood damage or covered wind damage? In other words, do you represent your constituents or are you just another toady for the criminal insurance companies?

The Other Choir

Goal: Reduce the number of extremist politicians in office by reaching out to right-wing audiences.

Method: Buy commercial air time on right-wing TV and radio talk shows to provide real-time responses.

Details: Hire quick-minded commentators with broad knowledge of history and current affairs, and hire specialists to feed response information to the commentator.

Pros: Better results than just preaching to the Progressive choir.

Long term: Eliminating right-wing extremists from broadcasting.

Con: Short term funding of right-wing media (but worth it).

Progressive Taxes

There are volumes of philosophical arguments as to what level of progressive tax is "fair", but they generally overlook the most important reason: proportionate taxation results in some recovery from the rich of their exploitation of the rest of us. The bottom line is that flat taxes cannot provide necessary revenue without overburdening not only the poor but also the middle class.

A strict flat tax will not provide necessary revenue without overburdening not only the poor but also the middle class. Proportionate taxation is necessary, and also fair considering the history of exploitation by the rich. The rich sell arms to all sides. They sell to anyone any product whose hazards are not obvious or for which they can shield themselves from liability. They blithely tell big lie after big lie. They suppress innovations that might prevent them from squeezing the last dollar of profit out of existing products, no matter how polluting or costly to consumers. They crow about finally producing a hybrid car that "you never have to plug in", misdirecting the public from the fact that the whole point is to plug it in so that the power plants can run at higher efficiency at night and reduce the net pollution. They put in place "social programs" like minority quotas for higher education, that take away opportunity from kids whose hard-working parents make just enough not to qualify for assistance. Democracy manages to take some of the edge off the exploitation, but it is still a very real part of our lives.

As far as entitlement to freedom from taxation, the various philosophies are interesting, but as a practical matter, the rich will tax us to the maximum extent they can get away with. Our only recourse is to vote for whoever promises to tax the rich the most and the rest of us the least.

There are plenty of ways for the government to encourage job creation and stability; they just need to do it with rich people's money, instead of ours.

Payroll-Tax-Cut

"Payroll Tax Cut" is an intentional misnomer. It is not an "income tax" cut, it is a theft from Social Security.

Welfare

There will always be welfare cheats. Taxpayers have the perception that they are paying for handouts to people who refuse to pull their own weight.

The racist GOP base is further enflamed by their perception that welfare recipients are almost exclusively minorities. As usual, GOP candidates seek to exploit such racist ideas to gain votes. A simple Google search for welfare breakdown by race shows these perceptions to be false.

Food stamps and food giveaways will be sold for drugs and encourage more illegal immigration. Considering the overall impact, providing children with 3 meals a day 7 days a week at school, along with free contraceptives and unbiased family-planning education, will have the best and least-expensive impact on stopping the poverty cycle.

We do need stronger work-for-welfare programs. We need child care programs for all working families whether they are receiving other welfare or not. We need ways to encourage people to delay having children until they can afford to support them. Instead, the GOP seeks to perpetuate racist perceptions to get votes, takes up idiotic battles against contraception, and wastes time and money on equally idiotic "abstinence only" "education".

There are more people on welfare because of GOP "abstinence only" "education" than there would be if unbiased sex education and family planning had been available to them or their parents.

There are many more people on welfare because of GOP's idiotic "trickle-down" Big Lie.

(I know I am using the term "idiotic" repeatedly; it just simply applies.)

Imposing drug-testing on welfare recipients would be un-American.

Throw the GOP bums out.

Uninsured

The taxpayers should not be held responsible for the medical costs of the uninsured. The only mandate should be enrollment of the uninsured in a public option funded as much as possible by a tax on those enrolled and on non-small business employers who do not provide employee insurance. Exceptions to taxes on the enrolled should be minimized. No exceptions for large businesses that do not provide employee insurance meeting specified basic standards.

Illegal Immigration

It would be wonderful if America could afford to take care of the whole world, but we cannot.

Even though illegal immigration has been encouraged by lax enforcement on the part of our corrupt government at the behest of greedy corporations and other wealthy donors, as long as children of American parents do not have enough food, shelter, medical care, or adequate education, that's where our tax dollars should go. The first thing to do after identifying someone eligible for the Dream Act is deport the parents. Anchor babies that commit crimes should be stripped of citizenship and deported to their parents' country of origin. Naturalized citizens who advocate religious law or other cultural traditions as being above the Constitution, and therefore took their oath falsely with "mental reservations", should also be stripped of their citizenship and deported. (It is unfortunate that home-grown nutjobs who think the Bible trumps the Constitution can't be deported as well.)

GlobalCorp has sabotaged immigration enforcement for decades because they want to pay less for labor than required for legal workers. States have stepped in to enforce laws that the corrupted federal government was paid off not to enforce. The new level of enforcement needs to be balanced with an expanded and accelerated work visa program, but remember, "comprehensive" = amnesty, and any plan that encourages more illegal immigration is the wrong plan.

American companies that suffer unfair competition from foreign government subsidies to their competitors should receive protection by our own government in the form of reciprocal (vs predatory) protectionism, rather than relying on low-paid illegals to make up the difference; they should also be punished for putting global profits ahead of the interests of the American middle class.

What to do about illegals that are otherwise solid citizens? I don't know, but it is up to them to come up with a plan that does not encourage more illegal immigration, does not take jobs away from Americans, and that does not set back people who have been waiting their turn to come to America legally.

It may be that the only plan that will work is to facilitate the return of illegals to their country of origin or their parents' country of origin in a way that will enable them to work effectively against the corruption that drove them here in the first place. They need to tell us how to do that. It is incumbent on advocates for illegal immigrants to find solutions that do not encourage more illegal immigration.

Legal Immigration

"My family has had nothing but trouble with immigrants ever since we came to this country."

Major Charles Emerson Winchester (played by David Ogden Stiers in the tv series M*A*S*H)

My paternal grandparents came from Germany, with Dutch, (probably) Jewish, and (slightly possibly) Moorish roots, and with (possibly) some Iroquois along the way. My maternal grandfather came from England (Wales and Scotland), with some Cherokee along the way. My maternal grandmother descended from Scots who became Calvinist Lutherans and were chased into Norway by non-Calvinist Scots, where they married into Norwegian families before coming to America.

These folks came over in the 1600s and 1700s. Coming to America meant learning to speak standard English (or starve), and embracing religious and cultural tolerance to a degree unknown in the Old World.

We benefit every day from people who come to America to become Americans, both from skills they bring which our educational system has failed to provide, and for their willingness to accept jobs that are hard to fill. The lives we live today were built by both common people and giants.

Our ancestor immigrants brought problems with them, which generally have been worked out. However, the majority of modern-day immigrants are not of mainstream (northern European) origin, and bring with them problems which are harder to work out.

Whether in 1607 or today, the decision to permanently emigrate is motivated by the belief that America offers relief from some aspect of origin culture or politics that the immigrant has recognized as being backward, primitive, ignorant, superstitious, macho, misogynous, corrupt, repressive, or oppressive. Problems arise when they bring along with them other cultural or political traditions that they have failed to recognize as being backward, primitive, ignorant, superstitious, macho, misogynous, corrupt, repressive, or oppressive.

Anyone who values self-sufficiency, thinking for oneself, and civil behavior, should be welcomed to America with open arms. I am less enthusiastic about groups who wish to create islands of foreign culture within our borders.

>We should reject any person who fails to support every person's right to separation of church and state, and freedom from traditions and ideologies that can only be sustained through ignorance, oppression, and violence. In particular, naturalized citizens who swore to uphold the Constitution but harbored and still harbor mental reservations regarding religious beliefs "trumping" the Constitution should be stripped of their citizenship and deported.

The real problem with immigration is that we can't deport home-grown undesirables, like rappers, preachers, survivalists, teabaggers, loud people, etc.

Racism

Just as it is incumbent on advocates for illegal immigrants to find solutions that do not encourage more illegal immigration, it is incumbent on advocates of disparate impact to avoid trading one evil for another. For example, it is not some rich white kid who misses out on college assistance because of reverse discrimination, it is the poorest white kid who otherwise would have just barely qualified.

Ike paraphrased Machiavelli when he said "If you can't solve a problem, make it bigger.". Instead of tilting at the results of endemic discrimination, such as racial bias in selective law enforcement, attack the problem at its source by ratcheting up the use of the power of the federal government to prosecute state and local agencies engaged in such practices for civil rights violations.

Drug Costs

Canada and others leave it to Americans to subsidize the costs of drug development, testing, and marketing. Advertising should be prohibited. Exports to Canada should have a 100% export tax, with the proceeds used to fund medicare prescription coverage and university medical research. Universities should receive federal funding to directly compete with big pharma for patentable drugs as well as orphan drugs and non-patentable drugs. Big pharma should be criminally liable for suppressing development of non-patentable drugs including those that compete with their patentable drugs, and for withholding negative test results.

Jury Trials

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land; all other laws are secondary. No person or law is perfect, not even the Constitution, let alone the secondary laws or any legislator, judge, attorney, or jurist.

Laws are not written by omniscient statesmen; they are written by politicians. Politicians write laws that reflect their personal level of knowledge and insight (such as may be); their need for support from uniformed, misinformed, unenlightened voters; their dependency on powerful self-serving special interests; and their personal delusions, prejudices, and egotistical needs. No law can be treated as the definitive product of perfect wisdom covering every possible set of circumstances.

The Constitution provides for a jury trial. Next only to putting oneself in danger to protect another or one's country, jury duty is the highest calling the average citizen can expect. The jury is the source of justice. It is the responsibility of every jurist to rise above all of his or her own personal imperfections, as well as those of the laws, the judge, the attorneys, law enforcement, and the other jurists. An extreme challenge, but also the right of every defendant.

Carrying out this responsibility is made all the more important, and all the more difficult, by the corrupted jury system that has evolved in this country. Fundamentally flawed ideas abound in our courtrooms every day, such as the idea that the source of justice is the law or the judge, and that jurors must be treated as mentally incompetent and emotionally irrational with "prejudicial" or "tainted" evidence withheld from them and directed to blindly follow the judge's instructions.

It is the responsibility of the defense to counter the prejudicial nature of any evidence. "Tainted" evidence is still evidence needed by the jury to provide justice. The trial should cover not only the charges against the defendant but also simultaneously cover any complaints by the defendant regarding alleged violations of due process or other civil rights or laws, as well as the guilt and punishment, if any, to be applied to the perpetrators of such violations. Egregious violations will be sufficiently constrained by the anticipation of such possible consequences.

Allowing a judge to unilaterally decide whether to withhold evidence of any kind from the jury leaves the integrity of the court system open to failure, and is an insult to the jurists.

The jurist is left having to fill in the blanks, divine hidden political, social, and personal agendas, and decide on a "verdict" that provides the highest probability of an ultimate result having the closest possible resemblance to justice.

As a separate issue: Jury selection should begin with volunteers, such as retired persons who wish to serve their community in a meaningful way and whose service will not harm them financially or place other hardships on them or their families or employers. The final action every jury should take is to conduct a secret ballot regarding which other jurors each juror would want empaneled in a trial of their own; this information would be used to weed out problem volunteers from future selection.

Finally, "religious" laws have no place in our court system. It is not the business of the government to decide whether a person or organization "qualifies" for a "religious exemption" or is bound by any "law" not enacted by a public legal entity. There should be no mention of religion in any law (other than the Constitution which provides for freedom from religion), or, for that matter, in any political campaign.

No exemptions. No toleration for "enforcement" that conflicts with secular rights.

The Waste of "Tainted" Evidence

The US courts have established that tainted evidence is inadmissible, resulting in freedom for violent offenders and tragedy for their future victims.

While it is essential to protect everyone's right of due process, the courts' requirement that the truth be withheld because of evidentiary irregularities or even intentional lawbreaking on the part of investigators, does not serve us well.

The judiciary has focused on protecting us from violation of our civil rights by the authorities, but they erred monumentally by choosing to do so by instituting the complete suppression of "tainted" evidence, which regularly fails to protect us from a worse and more frequent fate, that of being the criminals' next victims.

I suggest legislation to correct the courts' zeal, establishing the principle that tainted evidence may be used in prescribed circumstances with the proviso that the defendant's recovery of damages for any violation of his or her right of due process be tried concurrently. The investigators' liability under such a law would be sufficient to motivate them to comply with due process, without tying their hands when practicality does not allow time to obtain a warrant for a search or other surveillance.

In the event that a defendant claims that evidence is "tainted", the judge would determine whether or not it is so, and the jury would stipulate the action, if any, to be taken against the party who improperly obtained or otherwise "tainted" the evidence, as well as the appropriate restitution to the defendant for any violation of his or her civil rights, as a part of the same trial action.

With guidelines for punishment for "tainting" evidence to fit the "crime", authorities would be sufficiently motivated to honor civil rights, particularly when their jobs are at stake. Instead of walking on eggshells when dealing with criminals, authorities would once again be allowed to do their job, and spend less time and resources protecting criminals.

Such evidence should always be admissible for cases involving investigation of suspected terrorists or other persons reasonably suspected of planning or committing crimes, particularly violent crimes.

Our civil rights can be maintained without such suppression of evidence.

Teacher Evaluations

I'd be interested in your ideas regarding teacher evaluations, particularly from current or former teachers.

I'm thinking that student tests used to evaluate teachers need to include a student profile in order to qualify the results.

Sample profile questions:

Do you enjoy this class?

Are you interested in the subject matter of this class?

Do you feel you are learning a lot from this class?

Do you think the teacher has high expectations for you?

Do you feel you have good support at home for your studies?

Do other students in the class contribute to learning the class's subject matter?

Do disruptive students interfere with the teacher's efforts in this class?

Do you think you would do better in this class if disruptive students were removed?

Do you think you would do better in this class with a different teacher?

Do you think you would do better in this class at another school?

Each question would provide for a standard range of answers, such as from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree, including a fill-in-the blank "Other" answer, which might be the most informative of all.

Each student's self-profile, reported anonymously with the student's test results, would be evaluated by an independent party that has interviewed the student where resources are available.

What do you think?

Bad Teachers

The question is - how to handle bad teachers. The teachers' unions don't support getting rid of them - their only "solution" is unlimited "retraining". Until the teachers' unions adopt a realistic method of dealing with bad teachers, they have nothing to contribute to the discussion. The problem is, even talking about getting rid of teachers is anathema to union employees wanting to keep or advance in their jobs.

On the other hand, teachers are being asked to do a lot more than teach these days. We've all seen moving stories about a teacher who helped a troubled student or even a large group of troubled students, but these teachers are highly exceptional people, and we can't count on having one in every classroom. A competent educator should not be penalized for not being able to solve or compensate for a student's problems at home, whether they get too little motivation, time, or help from their parents, or have much, much worse problems at home. Nor should they be penalized for the frustration of those who want to move more quickly.

I can remember when the educational system in my home town began its descent along with the other schools in America - the day in September 1971 that the school board instructed the teachers that henceforth no student was to be failed, that the worst student was to get a D, and everyone else was to be graded on the curve from that point. The politically "correct" idea that school is about making kids feel good about themselves, instead of educating them about how much they still need to learn, is what got education in America into the mess it is in.

>How to help problem students? Hard question, but not the first one we should try to answer. The more important question is how to keep problem students from disrupting the education of motivated, well-behaved students. This is the problem that is dragging down our entire society, along with the tolerance for coarse behavior and violence endemic in TV and other "entertainment".

Teacher evaluations need to take into account all of the problems imposed on them by problem students, incompetent administration, and inadequate funding for both salaries and school supplies.

Motivated, well-behaved students need to be segregated from disruptive students. That is the first step. As far as improving the American education system, how to help the disruptive students is a secondary problem.

Now, as to how to help problem students. Start with removing coverage for children in food stamp programs and giveaways. In the homes of some problem children (you never know which ones they may be) food stamps and giveaways will be sold for drugs and alcohol. Instead, provide children with 3 meals a day 7 days a week year-round at school. Considering the long-term (lifetime) cost of early malnutrition and associated antisocial behavior, this would be the best and least-expensive method to deal with child hunger in America. Provide child care for all working parents. Provide free contraceptives and unbiased family planning education to all students. Strictly enforce expulsion for any act of violence, including bullying, hazing, possession of a weapon, or incitement of violence or harassment, and let the authorities deal with the perpetrators. The failure to learn how to behave may not be the fault of the student, but the right of potential victims not to be victims comes first.
Drones

Drones take care of problems that would otherwise put US troops in danger. Their use must have adequate oversight, and they need to be much more precise, such as by using a large drone to drop small drones with real-time video flight and detonation control and face recognition capability so they go off in front of the right face, specifically, anyone who claims the right to impose religion or other cultural "traditions" on others.

Ten years from now drone delivery of pizza, groceries, mail, packages, etc. will be commonplace and we will wonder how we ever got along without it. Peer-to-peer communication devices on drones, smart phones, and other devices that treat every packet as a virus and accept no executables will be immune from hacking and government interference. Anyone who does not work in a factory or in one of the few remaining brick-and-mortar outlets will teleconference from home. Traffic will be a thing of the past. A trip to local markets to buy locally made products will be a treat instead of a hassle.

Technology is progress as long as it is not controlled by the rich.

War Profiteers vs Our Vets

The war-profiteering Republicans don't want the VA to get caught up with the outrageous backlog of benefit applications because that would create further proof of the true cost of their unfunded wars.

The VA could get caught up in weeks if they allowed online volunteers to input the data from the forms, using multiple inputs of the same data for error checking. Tens of thousands of volunteers would be glad to spend an hour or two a day inputting the data - we can never do enough for our vets!

Egypt

Charlatans of every stripe, both greedy exploiters and power-mongering self-proclaimed zealots, are seeking to use the current instability to further their own personal interests. The rule of law can only be reestablished and maintained by the underlings of the rich, since the zealots will never have the vision or courage to acknowledge that religious imposition is a crime. The zealots' insistence on establishing an Islamic state and imposing their beliefs makes them the enemy of everyone else.

Morsi's "democratically-elected" government was never even remotely representative, and just as corrupt as its predecessors. Religious imposition and corruption are the issues. The solution is for the Egyptian Army to recognize that religious imposition is a crime, and enforce its prohibition. Then when a new REPRESENTATIVE government is formed, it can focus on ending corruption. Those who prosper from corruption and the chaos of zealotry are the enemy.

Shutdown

No monkeywrench, no shutdown, no debt defaults. The Republicans own the "Defund ObamaCare (originally known as RomneyCare)" monkeywrench. It's all on them. All of it.

Most of the teabaggers are mindless manipulated anarchists who fail to understand that the purpose of government is to protect us from the exploiters and zealots, and the rest are just corrupt shills for the insurance industry, who want us to keep trusting our health and homes to people who are in the business of denying claims. Throw them all out in 2018!

We'd be a lot farther along if the administration had just used the correct sound bite from the beginning:

"We will negotiate anything but a ransom."

but we've got to stop kidding ourselves. The GOP has no intention of avoiding the next default or shutdown until they are ridden out of town on a rail.

The only safe investments now are in tar, feather, pitchfork, torch, and of course rail, futures.

Media Piracy

There is no cure for global piracy operations, certainly not by infringement on internet freedom in America. The entertainment industry will eventually move to a subscription system, where people pay in advance for a new release based on free prequels, ads, and history.

Syria

End game? Watch the mindless zealots and greedy, ambitious, ruthless warlords use their own people as fodder to slaughter each other's people indefinitely. Just like the GOP did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just like the British did when carving up pieces of the Empire to intentionally create perpetual conflict. Just like all of the West has in Africa, South America and elsewhere when oil and other forms of greed were not at stake for the world's rich, aka the parasites.

We're a long way from honoring the fundamental principle of separation of church and state, or electing statesmen instead of politicians, right here in the US, let alone in the Middle East.

War profiteers have a vested interest in keeping the world in chaos. They are pulling the strings. Governments, hawks, baggers, warlords, and zealots are just their puppets.

Premises

Premise: American corporations have gone global and are happy to see the American middle class turned into just another third-world workforce.

Question: Should we begin supporting American corporations by practicing reciprocal protectionism as well as punish them for putting global profits ahead of the interests of the American middle class?

Premise: We cannot afford to take care of the entire world.

Question: Do you believe in separation of church and state, or are you an idiot?

Question: If you believe in doing the right thing and promoting the greater good, why do you need religion?