Thoughts and Policies

A person's thoughts are private. If that person is an elected official, then his official thoughts are private too. This means anyone employed or appointed by the elected official has a duty to keep their internal discussions private and not to leak any information. This provides the official room to think and to discuss issues with other smart people in the room without fear of being judged prematurely. Elected officials are people and it is unreasonable to expect them to think and speak perfectly all the time.

An elected official therefore needs a means to express thoughts to the public in a way that invites discussion and criticism. That means should be the written word, in the form of speeches, policies, and policy drafts. Speeches are usually a public reading of a written essay. Policies should be the product of a lot of thought, reason, discussion, criticism, and editing to clarify, mitigate, explain, emphasize, and revise. Policy drafts should be the product of some initial thought and discussion with some problems remaining for which the elected official is soliciting debate and criticism from the public in order to identify points or issues that need clarification, mitigation, explanation, emphasis, or revision.

Policy drafts are requests for comments. However, to be helpful those comments must be constructive. For example, a comment like "this is the dumbest idea I've ever seen" should be immediately discarded by a clerk and replaced with a single tick in a count of opposing viewpoints. Similar constructive comments should be grouped together, rephrased if necessary to capture the point clearly, and tallied.

Keeping the legislative branch accountable

Does the executive branch need to participate in keeping track of who voted for or against specific bills in the legislature?

If you're paranoid you may say that such record keeping could lead to harassment of legislators.

On the other hand, a president who needs to persuade legislators to take his cause seriously needs to be able to embarrass them if they have voted for nonsense in the past, or publicly acknowledge contributions to rational lawmaking by others.

Can the president rely on the legislative branch to keep those records? I think so. Also the legislative branch is the authority on those records so it makes sense for them to be provided by the legislative branch for all public and private use.

Those records should be easily accessible to any American.

Democracy can be unfair

Democracy is not inherently fair.

Take hypothetical candidates for some office. The people will vote for the candidate of their choice, but how do the people know which candidate is the best choice for the office? Their perception of each candidate depends on what they know about that candidate. Because there are so many people and they are spread across a large amount of land, it's not possible for the candidates to speak to each person directly. What each candidate tells the people about themselves is limited by how that candidate can reach the people. Television, radio, billboards, pamphlets, internet sites, and word of mouth are some common ways to reach people and they all incur costs for the candidate. So how much each candidate can tell people about him or her self depends on money. Not all candidates have the same amount of money so candidates with more money are more likely to reach more people and be able to tell them more about themselves (or tell them negative things about other candidates). Because people are more comfortable with people with whom they are more familiar, even if the messages from two identical candidates are essentially the same, the candidate with more public exposure is likely to receive more votes. This may be unfair. Furthermore, people don't necessarily vote for what is best for the county, state, or country. Some people may conscientiously vote for what is best for everyone but most people just vote for what they think is best for themselves first and then for everyone else. So the votes are naturally subjective and playing to people's selfish subjectivity is an old play for politicians running for an office. Once in office, politicians are under no obligation to fulfill their campaign promises. There is no law requiring any effort towards fulfilling campaign promises. There is no penalty for not fulfilling them and even though theoretically the punishment for not fulfilling them is to be voted out of office the next election, historically politicians continue to be re-elected even after failing to fulfill their most important promises.

In a state with millions of people, not all people drive the same roads. But is the road improvement budget apportioned according to the number of people in each area and the taxes they paid towards the road improvement budget? Or do people in rural areas pay the same amount towards road improvement but see a fraction of the benefit relative to tax payers in other areas because the money from all over the state tends to be spent in more highly populated areas?  Do people in some areas wait an unreasonable amount of time for improvements to occur because the state published the entire work as one offer and the winning company can't do it all at once, so it focuses on highly monitored areas first? Maybe work should be published as multiple offers according to geographical areas and the work contracted to multiple companies who will execute simultaneously.

Education Standards

In recent years there has been a push to standardize the public school curriculum across the nation. Standardized tests have been implemented to test such a large array of topics that there are reports of teachers focusing their time solely on material that is on the test and discarding their former lesson plans.

There's a huge benefit to a uniform education for our nation's youths and that is, assuming it's a good quality education, all the youths will have an approximately equal opportunity to succeed in adulthood.

There's also a huge drawback to a nationally uniform education: if it's not a good quality education, the number of people who are able to improve it is drastically reduced due to centralized control.

And there's a second huge drawback as well: we lose the ability to compare approaches. If everyone is doing the same thing, we have to trust that the centralized management is evaluating potential changes rationally - maybe carrying out experiments and studies - but the process is sure to be slow in order to allow ample time for discussion, evaluation, and planning. These activities are necessary before making a change to a national standard because every change will affect educators and students across the nation.

There are people out there who believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, that science was invented by the devil to trap humanity, and that the theory of evolution is a religious stance.  It's clear to me that these people should not be involved in the education system. Yet, they might say the same about me. So who should be allowed to set the standard of a good education?

One way to do it is that whoever pays the most money in "political contributions" to the recent campaign winners should get appointed as head of education and set the agenda for everyone. I think this way leads to poverty.

A better way to guide our national education program is to have a council of twelve wise people determine the educational standard. Each year, a list of the most successful companies in each industry and prominent researchers in every science will be compiled. Council members would be selected at random from this list, with the restriction that any person who has been drafted for the council in the past must be excluded at least five years before being drafted again. They would be notified six months in advance and brought together for two full days and two nights and have access to all available information and reports from our government departments - education, commerce, agriculture, defense, and so on. Each one would write his or her recommendations for changes to our educational program, and then a secretary assigned to support the council would combine all the recommendations into a report. The report would be circulated to all council members and each one would write comments on any section - encouragement or criticism. The secretary would combine all the comments into a single volume to accompany the report. Then the council would discuss each proposal and its associated comments, amending the proposal in accordance with the discussion, and voting to approved or reject it as amended. A two-thirds majority vote would be required to approve any proposal. The complete report, divided into two sections, would be published so that all educators will know the guidance. The first section is approved proposals, as amended, with any remaining criticism. The second section is rejected proposals with their criticism. It will be up to each school, county, and state to implement the guidance. Implementing the guidance would not be mandatory but prudent educators will pursue it. Reports on which communities implement approved guidance from the council and statistics on how their graduates fare in life should be collected by the government and made available to the public.  This way is democratic and meritocratic. In fact, such councils can be used at every level of government so that in addition to the national council, states may run their own councils, and counties may run their own councils. Schools implementing guidance from any council must track their efforts and results and report on them. In this way, a really good proposal from a local council can be shared nationally when the next council meets and sees its results.

Yet another way is to apply a free market to the problem - education companies will offer programs and parents will choose the education for their children based on cost and quality. National uniform tests would be administered by the government to rate how well children are learning in each company and these ratings would be made available to the public. This method does not set standards for education - the national uniform tests would not have a minimum passing score, only a rating of how well a student knows the facts of each subject. The range of subjects need not be limited arbitrarily. Interpretation of the results would be up to the public. Special interest groups such as churches, engineering associations, etc. can organize committees to interpret the results with their implications for the group and publish it so their members can more easily make decisions regarding where to send their children to school. So, for example, in the subject of science there might be a question such as "Which of these is true? Earth revolves around the Sun;  Sun revolves around the Earth; Neither; Both."  People who believe that the Earth is fixed and the sun revolves around the Earth might be attracted to areas where kids tend to answer that question incorrectly, but in general people might be attracted to areas where kids tend to answer questions correctly.

In a free market system, there must be schools to educate children whose parents choose not to pay the cost or cannot pay the cost. The burden of uneducated adults living on society is too heavy, and the injustice to children of poor parents is too great, so children must be given an opportunity.  But also there are issues of fairness to people who do pay for their children's education - because by providing free education to the children of their unable or unwilling peers, the government is forcing everyone else to pay the cost.  Maybe that's acceptable as long as there are strict rules enforced regarding the removal of children who are disruptive in the classroom or harass other kids.  It's perverse for them to stay in school.  I think that people will feel a lot better about paying for public education through taxes when the system is set up to provide a safe environment for their children.  So all children would have an opportunity to be educated, but children who aren't fit for it will not be allowed to attend public schools.

Some people may rightly say that children who misbehave are victims of bad parents, but society must draw the line there.  Disruptive or dangerous children shouldn't be allowed to interfere with the education and growth of other kids. If we see them as victims of bad parents we need to remove them from their broken homes. The state and charity organizations should work together to provide foster homes from which the children attend a separate school that has a much longer school day and where besides academics there is a combination of paid and volunteer staff who devote a lot of time to teaching proper behavior.  The point is in such a system the bad parents don't have any influence on their victim children, thus saving the children. When children in foster homes improve their behavior they would be allowed to return to regular public schools while living in the foster homes.

Corporations

No person shall be held personally responsible for the actions of another person. Every person shall be held personally responsible for his or her own actions and inactions. A business shall be held responsible for the actions and inactions of any owner or employee. When a wrongdoing is not criminal, it's acceptable for the responsible party to receive assistance in paying the damages. When the wrongdoing is criminal, it's acceptable for the responsible party to receive assistance in paying the damages but the members of that party may still be imprisoned as a punishment for their crimes. Together, these principles lead to the common-sense outcomes that in a business with two or more partners, if one partner commits a crime or tort without the knowledge of the others, that the other partners will not be liable for the actions of the individual alone; if the other partners knew of the activity and failed to report it or stop it or leave the partnership, then they are responsible for their inaction and become "guilty by association"; for any crime or tort the judge must determine if the activity was a one-time occurrence or if it was regular, and to what extent was the activity a joint responsibility of the business or a responsibility of the individuals involved. This shall not be an automatic determination based on the "type" of business - it must be made separately for each case.

Starting a business is very risky but it has great rewards for the community. Successful businesses create jobs and productive industries bring wealth to their communities. Entrepreneurs and investors need some protection if things don't end well - but that protection must be limited. First, if there is a crime involved there shall be no protections for those persons who were involved with the crime. Second, if the business simply did not work, with no evidence of wrong-doing, then the protection should be only that which was agreed to by the entrepreneur and his or her investors and customers. This is what should be referred to as "limited liability" - it's only by agreement, not a protection from the state.

The concept of the corporation has failed in the following four ways:

One. It has become standard practice for judges who convict corporate executives of wrongdoing to fine them either a tiny fraction of the damages they caused and to allow the corporation to continue operating, often under the continued management of more senior executives who were principally responsible for the wrongdoing, or to fine the corporation an amount disproportionally big to the actual damage in order to "make a point" and not hold individual decision makers liable for their actions. In both cases, the notion that a corporation is a legal entity separate from any of the citizens who operate it leads to grave injustices.

Two. The limited liability corporation stands in contrast to partnerships as a mode of doing business which is more expensive to create and maintain both in terms of money and the owner's time. For a small business, forming a corporation is unreasonably taxing and is often skipped for that reason, with potentially disastrous consequences for the business owner. Those disastrous consequences usually come about because a judge holds the business owner personally responsible for the actions of his employees or the misfortunes of his customers. Even if the business owner was personally responsible for the problem, unless its criminal it should be possible to tax that business until the actual damages are repaid.

Three. The term "limited liability corporation" should be a label for an agreement that has been executed by entrepreneurs and their investors, not something that is at all related to crimes or taxes or torts. If a family owns a business and a customer has a misfortune, they should be no more or less liable for the damages than a corporation would be.  But what often happens is that bigger businesses, by virtue of doing more business, if they have wronged their customers in some way when all the customers band together to sue the business is usually able to reach a settlement and pay less damages, and therefore it is less liable for a wrongdoing than a small business would be to a smaller group of wronged customers. This is unjust. A bigger business should not be made less responsible just because it is bigger.

Four. Large corporations have stolen from the public or from their customers astronomical amounts, acted fraudulently, bribed government officials, and were left unscathed or even allowed to continue doing business with the government and with the people they defrauded. It's absolutely disgusting. America is still suffering from echos of "too big to fail", of settlements of millions of dollars that represented only a small fraction of what was robbed, of corporations receiving bail-outs from the government while their executives continue to receive enormous salaries or benefit packages. The concept of the corporation has caused a great deal of harm to the public. Large corporations that are known to be harmful continue to exist.  If the persons responsible for the largest crimes in the history of the world were truly held responsible for their actions, and if the corporations that they managed were sentenced to repay the entirety of the damages they caused, then not only would we have justice, but we would also have a useful deterrent against future crimes. Currently we have neither.

So what I propose is to do away with the concept that a corporation is a legal entity separate from the people who own it. The government should treat all businesses equally in this regard: The structure of a business should not determine its protections and liabilities. Sole proprietorships and partnerships should have the same legal protections as corporations and corporations should have the same legal liabilities as sole proprietorships and partnerships. The liability of an entrepreneur to his or her investors should be determined by their agreement. If a large business commits a crime so large that it cannot repay the damages - then it must be disbanded; the assets seized by the state for sale and the proceeds distributed to repay damages; and all the responsible executives held personally responsible and imprisoned for some time.   In other words, all businesses are corporations, and all people are personally liable for their own crimes regardless of their involvement in a business.

2nd Amendment Purpose and Limits

I think the purpose of the 2nd amendment is to guarantee that the people have a right to defend themselves, even against a corrupt government if necessary. It's important for this to stay in the constitution so that people easily recognize any attempts to prohibiting them from owning weapons.

The 2nd amendment was written at a time when the weapons a man used to hunt or defend his territory were not much different than the weapons infantrymen carried into battle. Armies had cannons and grenades, but these were not used for police action against citizens.

Today, the weapons available to our military and police are far superior to those we use for self defense and for hunting, their training is excellent, and they have an operational and logistical capability unrivaled anywhere on the planet. What kinds of weapons should civilians have in order to defend against a (hypothetically) corrupt government and military forces with such strengths?

Clearly, it doesn't make sense for citizens to buy and store grenades, machine guns, tanks, cannons, and missiles. The safety and maintenance procedures alone can be a full time job (this is just one reason we have an active duty military force even during times of peace). Even if training on using this equipment were offered to any interested citizen, I would hesitate to be a neighbor to someone who stores bombs in their basement or back yard.

On the other hand, we should not arbitrarily limit the kind of weapons that individuals are allowed to possess. Our rights should not be subject to whims, knee-jerk reactions, or fashion. If we need to limit weapon ownership, it must be in a very deliberate, thoughtful way.

I think the distinction should be made between weapons that are useful against specific individuals and weapons that are "area weapons" or cause an amount of damage that is enough to destroy structures or injure bystanders and not just targeted individuals. So, using this guideline: clubs, knives, swords, pistols, and rifles are all weapons that are easy to target to specific individuals and in the hands of a reasonable operator are unlikely to cause harm to someone other than the intended target or to cause great collateral damage. So I'm intentionally discounting any occurrence of someone flailing a sword wildly in a crowd or shooting wildly into a crowd. However, grenades, rocket launchers, machine guns, and tanks are all area weapons and have a potential to cause great collateral damage and should be restricted to military use.

The police should be restricted to individual weapons the same as are authorized for individual citizens. If a criminal is using area weapons or explosives then the police must call the national guard for assistance. In this event, the national guard should not hesitate to kill the criminal if necessary to stop the violence. As soon as the violence as ended the national guard mission is over and the police resume their investigation.

If the deceased criminals had any possessions these may be used to repay some damages but unfortunately it's common for violent criminals not to own much. In this case the community should band together to support its victims, and be comforted by the fact that taxpayers are not paying any money to clothe, feed, and house (in prison) criminals who used advanced weapons to hurt others.

Government Should Use Open Source Software

A law in New Hampshire was passed that requires state agencies to consider open source software when purchasing.

Full details: http://www.nhliberty.org/bills/view/2012/HB418

I think it's a good idea that can reduce costs for the government, especially when it's time to switch vendors, because when using open standards it's easier for other companies to estimate how much it will cost to integrate or modify, which means reduced risks for companies who bid for a contract, which means more competition and lower price for the government.

It's the cookie, stupid!

I bought a cookie at a convenience store today and a man noticed me and said that he saw me buy a cookie yesterday too and asked if I can afford it. I said, yesterday I bought the chocolate chunk flavor and today I bought the peanut butter flavor. He asked if one was healthier than the other and I said, no, they are different toppings but the cookie is the same, and both are equally unhealthy for me - I just wanted to see how they tasted.

Now that I think about it, it's a lot like America's two-party system. We have two different flavors of the same cookie - they both like to spend more than America can afford, and they both have a vision of America that is far different from what our founding fathers envisioned.  This may be an oversimplification, but during the recent budget crisis where the Republicans and Democrats agreed to form a "super-commitee" to decide on budget cuts to total $1.4 trillion over the next ten years, they couldn't agree on what to cut and this was big news. What this big news and all the talk about a balanced budget was hiding was the fact that $1.4 trillion over the next ten years is meaningless. What we need is to create a budget surplus of $1.4 trillion in the next 12 months and then maintain it for the subsequent 10 years in order to eliminate the country's $15 trillion national debt, without accounting for inflation.

The Republicans and Democrats are just fat cookies. Each one tastes good to different people but they are both bad for our health.

The Libertarian party is the ideological descendant of the founding fathers. Only the Libertarian party recognizes that both Republican-run and Democrat-run governments have had the same deleterious effects on our nation - money being forcibly taken from all citizens in some way to pay for special interests, rampant fraud and corruption endorsed by the government (both Republican president Bush and Democrat president Obama endorsed bailouts of companies) and handouts to either rich or poor citizens (just another flavor).

Net Neutrality to Protect the Commons

Americans for Tax Reform has taken the ISP side of this issue in the name of less government regulation. This issue has nothing to do with tax reform and if handled properly has no regulatory burden any more than we have to regulate who gets to use America's roads.

The Internet is a commons and it's the government's proper role to make sure that it remains available for the benefit of everyone.  I, for one, subscribe to Internet service at home and via my phone so that my ISP will deliver the world to me - and I'm already paying for the access so I reject any idea where the ISP will further restrict what I can access by charging the other side for it as well.  This is highway robbery - everyone has already paid for their access and now the man in the middle wants a bigger cut.  

The Internet has grown because the free market works but ALSO because all sites are on an equal playing field:  business owners control how well their site is accessible by investing in better servers and more bandwidth, and customers control how well they access the internet by choosing their devices and bandwidth. Now some ISP's see a new profit venue by charging businesses more money to ensure their data flows well to customers accessing it through that ISP - even though both businesses and customers have already paid for their bandwidth separately. This is going to lead to the OPPOSITE of a free market because as ISP's consolidate, more and more customers are forced to access the internet through less and less ISP's. So this means that just A FEW entities will have a large amount of control over what people see by simply adjusting how much it costs.  Only large well-funded businesses will be able to afford having great performance and customers will gravitate towards those sites, some which will inevitably become mere portals like AOL.  Because this model will work well for ISP's, they'll exploit it as much as possible, which means for smaller businesses, the barrier of entry into the internet marketplace will be raised again and again until eventually starting an online business will become very prohibitive.  It turns the Internet from a free market to a very controlled market - but controlled by a few really large monopolies.

Sprint, Verizon, and the like didn't invent the Internet and the prospect that they will reduce their individual investments in their  network infrastructure doesn't scare me at all. They'll cut jobs? Fine, you can't terrorize me.  If they don't think it's profitable they can quit the business and someone else will happily take over their customers.  It was tax money that led to the creation and many subsequent innovations of the internet, and the livelihoods of a lot more people can suffer as a result of letting ISP's dictate what we see online.

Election Rules

Running for public office costs money. The more important the office, the more is spent on the campaign.

Should there be a limit on how long the "campaign season" is? No. A person who is running for office is using reputation built over his or her entire lifetime, and the right to free speech prevents the government from restricting precisely this kind of (usually positive) political speech. Putting an arbitrary limit on the "campaign season" won't do much to curb the spending, it will just concentrate most of it during that period when all the advertising and traveling is done.

Should private funding of campaigns be prohibited? No. Having the government pay for campaigns is a terrible idea. First, there would have to be a system to determine who is eligible to receive money. Since we have two long-standing major parties, any public funding system would probably end up being very biased towards those two parties the way that the rest of the election system is biased towards them now. Second, there would have to be a limit on how much money is spent on each candidate or in total over all the candidates, and each year lawmakers will waste time debating about raising the limit. Third, I reject the idea of using my tax money to pay for the opposition's advertising.

Should there be a limit to private donations? No. It would be very hard to enforce, anyway, because a person with a lot of money to donate can get around any arbitrary limit by distributing the donation among a large number of supportive people.

Should disclosure of donations be mandatory? Yes. People have a right to know who are major donors of campaigns (for any definition of major) because it may affect what the candidate will do once in office (sadly) and also casts light on some of the candidate's statements. Right now there is a law that campaigns must disclose the names of all persons who donate over $250, but they get around it with "bundlers" who collect thousands of dollars from people and then don't have to disclose where they got it. I don't know how the justice department allows that to go on when it's a clear violation of the spirit of the $250 law.  I think $250 is a fine arbitrary maximum anonymous donation.

Is there any adjustment we can make to get better accountability over the election funding process? Yes. Even though the money should not come from the government and we shouldn't limit the period of time that candidates are allowed to make statements, if we want to be certain that we know who is contributing to a campaign we need to make the accounting transparent. The way to accomplish that is to require candidates to use an independent accountancy firm that has a license from the government to manage campaign funds. Anyone should be able to get a license to do that job by reading a book with all the campaign finance laws and signing an agreement to report faithfully what is going on with the campaigns it manages.  Every candidate would hire their own "treasury firm" to manage income and expenses for the campaign - actually the licensed accountancies should be allowed to manage the finances of only one candidate running for any one office. So for example the same firm could manage the campaign of a person running for mayor and another running for congress but not the campaign of a third person who is running for the same mayoral or congressional office. The firm would accept all donations and issue checks and debit cards for all expenses. It would publish (publicly) a list of all people and corporations who donated more than $250 to the campaign (or whatever the maximum anonymous donation is) and the government would access the same published data that everyone else can access. People would still be able to get together, form an organization, and donate through that organization to the campaign - but that would still allow investigators to find out the identities of the people behind that facade.

Also, campaign income and expenses would have to be defined as being specifically about the candidate. That is separate from income and expenses of the candidate's party to promote its platform without naming a specific person who is running for office.  Any trip that the candidate makes in which the candidate performs even one speech about election is considered a campaign expense. If it's paid for by some other person instead of coming out of the campaign fund, then the accountancy firm must simply list something like "trip to (wherever) and meals paid for by (who) estimated at $xxx" so the public knows about the donation. This allows people to contribute equipment, food, parties, or whatever with assets they have instead of having to convert that to a monetary donation while still being accountable to the public for their support.

Is it proper to make a candidate's election finances public? I think so. Candidates who are elected for public office will be managing public funds and there is no privacy there - so why should there be privacy for people who want to attain such positions? The people have a right to know who they are voting for, and a person's finances have a lot to tell.

What else can we do? If we're concerned about minority party access to the public during a campaign there should be non-profit associations who set up debates and donate radio, television, or newspaper ads to campaigns by minority parties (anyone not a Democrat or a Republican).

I also think that how political parties choose their candidates is not government business. All sorts of "primaries" and other nonsense should not be funded by nor regulated by the government.

Value-based politics

Here are some of my political positions and the values they are based on.

Selfless service is a military and government value but I don't think it can be an individual intrinsic value.  It's really a combination of integrity, loyalty, duty, and courage. I mean it's a value that is necessary for the accomplishment of a military mission or for ethical public service by a politician but its not an end in itself. I think that a government official needs to put the country and its people above his or her own needs, but I also think that this is part of the job description of being a government official - therefore it's part of the duties of an official to willingly forego personal gain at the expense of others through the use of the public office. It's not an inversion of values. Even though it might seem that selfless service places duty above life or property, it does not, because the oath of office explicitly declares a willingness to assume the duties of the office and therefore a personal choice to forego personal gain when it conflicts with the duties of the office.

Openness (as in transparent government). I value openness because it's a means to ensuring that the government functions with honesty, integrity, loyalty, responsibility, and respect, which are concepts I value. 

Worker protection. I value worker protection as it relates to preserving life, liberty, justice, right to property, opportunity, and treating people with respect. That means I advocate for practicing safety controls in work environments, prevention of sexual harassment, and a minimum wage. But I do not value government laws related to unions that force employers to negotiate with unions or force employers to keep unprofitable businesses open just so they can employ union workers, because to me these are huge violations of an employer's liberty and right to property. Also, I think that in some situations a minimum wage does not apply, such as when a person volunteers to do work for free or in exchange for something other than money (such as experience, like student internships), or when the work is done as a punishment (prisoners should not receive payment because their work is paying a debt to society). 

Consumer protection. I value consumer protection as it relates to preserving life. That means I advocate for laws requiring manufacturers or merchants to disclose harmful effects of their products, especially related to health or risk of injury or damages. I also advocate laws that require truthfulness in advertising, including identification of unfounded claims.

Insurance. I value insurance because it's a good way for a community of people to organize and help each other in times of need.

Universal healthcare. I advocate universal healthcare that is provided through charity, volunteerism, or non-profit organization. I reject universal healthcare if everyone is forced to pay for it while the people involved in providing it make profits, because that is essentially forcing everyone to buy something they may not need and is a form of enslaving everyone (even if it's for a limited annual amount) for the benefit of the relatively few in the healthcare field. I think that non-charity healthcare should be community-based (insurance) and not slavery-based. 

Retirement guarantee. I reject the "Social Security" system because it's a form of slavery. Everyone who works has to pay for the retirement benefits of the previous generation, benefits promised to them by people who don't have the right to make that promise, and also subject to change at the whim of any generation of lawmakers. 

Gay Marriage

If marriage licenses are intended to guard against underage, familial and bigamous unions; to serve as proof of the couple's legal obligations to each other; to control who receives government benefits such as social security, insurance, and medical care; and to determine survivor benefits; then marriage licenses are unnecessary.

All those functions can be handled without the use of marriage licenses. Most of them can be handled using private contracts. The rest can be handled by laws that govern behavior, not status.

I think if anyone writes their congressman about this, it shouldn't be to defend the merit of a gay marriage. The merits that should be questioned are the state's.


The "Defense of Marriage Act", signed into law by Bill Clinton while he was cheating on his wife with Monica Lewinsky (but before he got caught) claimed to give states the right to not recognize gay marriage licenses issued by other states, but was really a federal stand against homosexuality - which is why it was named "Defense of Marriage Act (Against Homosexuals)" and not "Defense of State Right to Recognize Gay Marriage (Against the Federal Government)"

Newt Gingrich, a sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act and very critical of Bill Clinton's affair, had cheated on his first wife, and was cheating on his second wife during Clinton's impeachment. Just throwing that out there - our lawmakers are out of their depth when they talk about things like marriage and morals. Better to repeal all the related laws and affirm everyone's right to pursue happiness by letting them handle this important aspect of their lives without government interference.


Presumably any law that restricts a citizen's private actions must intend to bring about some greater social good. So how does society benefit from the inability of gays or lesbians to get a marriage license? They don't receive any undeserved benefit nor do they impose any burden on others. Any benefit or tax or crime related to sexuality or marriage can be easily rewritten more objectively as being related to procreation, child-raising, household economic efficiency, consent, age, health, etc. and applied to citizens based on their actions instead of their sexuality or marital status. Because laws and court decisions banning gay marriage don't have any proven social value, we need to ask why they persist.

Land Charters

Here is one way that people can solve disputes regarding how society should work:

Draw a line in the sand. Everyone who thinks abortion should be allowed (in some or all cases), move to this side. Everyone who thinks abortion should never be allowed, move to that side. Nobody has to move, but they do have to respect the law of the land and if they don't like it they can move to another land.

Repeat this for every social issue about which there is strong disagreement and no resolution in sight.

The end result would be a land divided into so many pieces that everyone would be immobilized... you can't just put all the pro-life people in one spot because they will disagree about other issues and will be further divided. You can't prioritize the divisions because people will disagree about the priorities as well.

It would be wholly impractical.

Here's a twist on the line in the sand: land charters. The idea is that moral choices are organized into sets that people can identify and choose as a group - yes, religion and philosophy. Within our country, grant each group a swath of land in which they can act in accordance with their religious or philosophical values. Grant a charter to the group for the use of that land - it must be in accordance with the stated religious or philosophical values.  The charter does not need to specify all the values or all the rules of the group, only the invariant ones, the ones the group itself deems most important. Since it would still be within our country, anyone is free to move in and out of such swaths of land. However, citizens must obey the law of the land on which they stand and be held responsible for their actions.

The rule of the line in the sand prevails: if you don't like it where you are, move somewhere else. And at the same time, if enough people don't like it where they are, they can change it through democratic government processes - as long as its not one of the invariants of the charter.

To amend a charter should require a strong majority vote by its denizens - maybe 80% or 90% in favor - and a federal judicial review to ensure that the amendment is being proposed by legitimate denizens of the charter (and not by a flood of impostors), that the amendment is consistent with the rest of the beliefs of its denizens, and that it is not an invariant.

For example, a charter for a Christian swath would probably include an invariant like "Jesus is the Lord Savior" and could never be amended to remove that line. Similarly, a Jewish swath would probably include an invariant like "Our God is One" (statement of monotheism) and could never be changed to anything atheist or polytheist or Christian (since in most sects of Christianity God is Three - the Trinity).

A charter cannot be revoked by its denizens. This is to ensure that changes in population don't affect the opportunity of anyone to live under the laws of the charter. So for example, a swath of land chartered to Wiccans could not be flooded by a horde of marauding foreigners who move in, vote to revoke the charter, and then leave or try to instate a different charter.

It is not necessary to divide the entire country into swaths, although I think that under a system of land charters this would be inevitable.

Before granting any charters to groups of citizens who assemble and petition for them, prior planning should identify groups who are likely to request charters and reserve land for them.

The act of granting charters can be destructive to people who live in swaths but do not agree with the charter. However, it's comparable to the passing of local act with which some citizens disagree, because they can simply move to another state, and it's better than the passing of any national act with which citizens disagree because under a land charter system the citizens can simply move to another part of the same country, whereas with the passing of a national law they essentially have no choice at all unless they give up their citizenship and move to another country.

Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews should petition for separate charters because their values are actually widely different due to a different interpretation of their religion.

Similarly, certain sects of Christianity may need to petition for separate charters, although I think most sects could coexist peacefully within the same charter. I'm sure that pro-life and pro-choice types would need to be in separate charters, and the root beliefs that cause this difference in values should be identified and made an invariant of each of those charters in a form appropriate to that sect.

Federal laws would have to be pared down to a set that can apply to all land charters equally without inhibiting the exercise of their declared values. For example, the question of the death penalty would have be delegated to land charters. Also, separation of church and state would still apply to land charters but the contents of any one charter may be wholly inspired by a specific religion or sect without sponsoring a specific church of that religion or sect.

Members of political parties like Libertarians, Republicans, and Democrats, as well as many smaller parties, could petition for swaths of land where people can live according to that party's values. The essence of the party platform would become the invariants for their land charter.

For example, in a Democratic Party land charter, it might say that everyone is guaranteed a retirement, that rich people should get taxed more than poor people, that every worker must belong to a union.

In a Republican Party land charter, it might say that people are allowed to own guns, that abortion is illegal, that marriage is between one man and one woman, that slavery is illegal, that all people should be taxed the same, and that unions are allowed but works should be allowed to decide not to join.

In a Libertarian Party land charter, the invariants would be the right to life, liberty, and property as well as a mention about non-initiation of force; it may even include some of the platform positions such as workers would be free to form unions and employers would be free not to bargain with them, the income tax would be wholly replaced by sales taxes, and retirement planning is the responsibility of individuals.

Even communists may apply for a swath of land in which to practice their ideals.  Their charter might include as invariants all that communists hold dear, and this might include unity of the working class, freedom from all kinds of racism and discrimination, minimum wage for all workers, health care for all its denizens, retirement for all its denizens, and freedom from unemployment.

The area of land granted to a land charter should be proportional to the number of people who signed the petition or who are expected to move there, with some room to grow (when word spreads) based on the total number of people expected to be interested in living in such a place. For example, if a group of post-Modernists petitioned for a land charter, they should be able to obtain a swath of land, even if it's a small one.

Land charters, of course, don't solve the problem of managing the federal government. They would only provide a limited freedom to live life a certain way within some bounds set by the federal government. I think the bounds should be as minimal as possible.

The federal government might require land charters to participate in environmental protection by keeping the waters within their swath clean and limiting pollution. It might also place a ban on weapons development, requiring that all advanced weapons programs be approved by federal government. These mandates would be included in the land charters.

The charters may also include federally mandated provisions that their denizens must accomplish certain goals, such as increase the number of trees in their swath by 25%, or create a protected habitat for some endangered animal, or provide an amount of adults proportional to the denizen population size for the federal military reserve system to be called up for national defense in the event of a war (but never for the invasion of foreign countries).

The charters may also include a provision to guarantee the political education of their denizens. Even though all other facets of their education are in their hands, denizens of land charters and their children must never lose the knowledge that they are American citizens, that they owe their autonomy to a benevolent system of land charters organized by a federal government,  that any denizen is free to leave the chartered land and live anywhere else in the country according to the laws of that place, and all the other rules of the land charter system. To ensure that these basic political facts of their life are not lost, the charter may state that all denizens ages 12 to 32 will complete a survey (quiz) every 5 years. The surveys would be administered by the federal agents

I think the most significant contribution of a land charter system is the ability of people holding different perspectives to experiment with the mostly uninhibited practice of their religion or philosophy. If it's working well they may have additional denizens clamoring to immigrate and live in the chartered swath of land. If it's not working well they may experience an exodus of denizens. The rest of the world can observe this and, over time, make conclusions about the value of certain ideas based on their real effects.

In order to make uniform surveys of the conditions of denizens possible, a land charter must include a provision to allow federal agents access to observe and record any aspect of life such as employment rates, spread of disease, etc.

I think that a big problem with land charters could be that the more autonomy they receive from the federal government, the more likely they are to act as separate little countries. If their denizens then decide in a fit of irrationality that they want to secede from the very country that made their land charter possible, they might begin acting in ways which violate the supervisory provisions of the federal government in their charter. They might deny entry to federal agents or they might even send militants on raids of surrounding territories. Such acts should rightly be seen as an initiation of civil war and the federal government should rightly respond very violently in order to protect the rights of all Americans to continued use of that swath of land.

I think such a sad conclusion is more likely for some charters than others due to the nature of the ideas in their chartered religion or philosophy, but it would be so interesting if communists were able to achieve their dream without murder and coercion, or if anarchists could demonstrate that no government is good government while maintaining a quality of life appealing to "mainstream" Americans, or if capitalists could show that less controls over their business lead to more prosperity and how they can still take good care of their little swath of the planet.

Despite the possibility of such a conclusion for any particular land charter, I think the key to a successful experiment is to give it the most autonomy possible. This is because religions and philosophies must be studied as complete systems (whether or not they are or pretend to be complete). If a system calls for a weak central government and strong local courts that mete corporal punishments even for minor crimes, it should be allowed. Don't worry about the corporal punishment - all the denizens subject themselves to it voluntarily!

That brings up the question of children. When children are born in a land charter, they are raised in accordance with its laws. While they are children, any consequences of living in the land charter have to be accepted as consequences of their parent's choices. Each woman who gives birth to children must be assumed to have their best interests at heart. Each man or woman who works to provide for his or her  children must also be assumed to have their best interests at heart. So if something bad happens to the children in the land charter, it has to be accepted because the point of the land charters is to allow people to live their lives a certain way that they prefer (within the minimal limits provided by the federal government) and for other people who disagree to leave them alone. This means accepting the consequences of life in that land. There cannot be any form of federal child protection service that interferes with life in chartered land. The denizens, of course, are free to form their own child protection services.

The federal government might choose to designate only land-locked swaths of land for land charters in order to ensure that the federal government retains complete control over all of the country's borders. Land charters would be a more formal and voluntary version of the Indian Reservation system.  I don't know if the Native Americans would be happier with a land charter than in their reservations, but they could also petition for a land charter if they think that would be better. I think they might like their reservations better because anyone can enter a land charter.

Land charters should be represented in the federal government, but not the same way as the States because they don't have equal status to the States. They might be treated as territories, sending a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives, or they might form a separate Land Charter Assembly to discuss and vote on issues, with the entire Assembly being granted a single vote in the Senate equal to one Senator. The Assembly could designate one of its members to be its Representative Senator in the Senate with the requirement to vote according to the resolutions of the Assembly.

It's interesting that land charters imply that different people's beliefs and opinions should be tolerated as long as they do not harm others, but in a macro sense - a group's beliefs and opinions may harm itself and that's ok as long as they don't harm other groups. I wonder if people who are militant in the enforcement of their views on others would be satisfied by moving to a swath of chartered land with like-minded neighbors or if they would still assault the rest of the world with their opinions, refusing to rest until all of humanity conforms to what they think is right.

The Occupation that Time Forgot

I read a stupid article today about the West Bank by Sandy Tolan that was endorsed by Tom Engelhardt,  who runs a blog that normally has better articles. Here's what I think about it:


Maybe you forgot that the Jews were tormented and slaughtered not just in Germany but in surrounding countries too as crazy Nazis and Soviets unfairly blamed them for their own problems, gained more territory, and continued their campaigns of hate in all their new territories. Has anyone done that to the Arabs? No.

Maybe you forgot that Arabs initiated wars against Israel in which Israel defeated them and captured a lot of land - and then gave it back in hopes of achieving peace. Have Arabs given any land to Israel in hopes of achieving peace? No.

Maybe you forgot that Israel allows Arabs (and other Muslims) to live within its borders. Do Arabs allow Israelis or any Jews to even visit their countries? No.

Maybe you forgot that before Israel declared independence, the "Palestinians" were the same people as the Syrians and Jordanians, all under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and then the British. In fact, King Faisal of Syria later was also king of Iraq, and the Ba'ath Party controlled both Syria and Iraq for some time. And when Israel declared independence, it was its Arab neighbors who refused to let their Arab brothers immigrate to their countries, forcing them to stay in Israel.  They purposefully closed their borders to force a continued Arab presence in Israel - to be a thorn in its side.

Maybe you forgot that for a long time Arabs have been conducting suicide bombings, shootings, and kidnappings in Israel against Jews, and also launching rockets into Israel towns in order to kill civilians. Do Israelis do that against the Arabs? No.

The Arabs are waging war against Israel in any way that they can. They tried to do it militarily and they failed. So they had to resort to planting bombs and launching rockets to do any damage they can. The peace "process" is just what Arabs have to pretend to be doing since they can't win by force. It's a farce because they aren't interested in peaceful co-existence, they are interested in a victory for them and for there to be no Jews in Israel.

Why? Why the hatred? Why do Arabs in Arab countries blame Israel for their problems, when clearly their problems have been the same for hundreds of years before Israel was created?  When clearly their problems are a direct consequence of their culture and not anyone else's?

Anyone who understands Arabs and looks at a map can see why Israel can't give up the West Bank. To have a fully Arab-controlled West Bank means a serious military disadvantage to Israel when the Arabs initiate the next war, because it gives them an easy way to divide the country in half.  Only people who don't understand the Arab intentions fail to see the significance of that territory. "Oh, just give them their country" you say.

This is very much a one-sided conflict. The Arab side is the one that always initiates force.  Israel has nothing to gain by fighting the Arabs. It can never have peace as long as there are Arabs who are convinced that they need to destroy it.   If you were to miraculously stop the Arab attacks for a month or even a year you would observe that Israel would not conduct even one offensive military operation against them. It would have no reason for that.  As Ghandi said, there is no way to peace - peace is the way.

You want to talk about an occupation that time forgot?  How about Europeans (now called Americans) occupying nearly all of North America? We fooled everyone into thinking this is our land. It isn't, we robbed the natives.  How lucky are we that Native Americans don't teach their kids to hate us in their reservations and conduct suicide bombings in our neighborhoods?  We could have a similar conversation about Australia and their natives too.

Americans are such hypocrites. We INVADED TWO COUNTRIES in hopes of deterring attacks on our "homeland", and yet we sympathize with people who routinely conduct terrorist attacks on Israel and we think it's a good idea for Israel to give them land??? In proportion to the rest of Israel, that would be like giving 13 states of the United States to Al Qaeda!!   It's unthinkable!  

We DROPPED TWO ATOMIC BOMBS on Japan to end a war yet we criticize Israel when it uses conventional military weapons against military targets. We hold Israel accountable to GENEVA CONVENTION standards yet look the other way when the Arabs bomb Israeli civilians and  hide their military operations behind women, children, and mosques to guarantee collateral damage they can cry about when Israel retaliates.   We METHODICALLY DISPLACED NATIVE AMERICANS TO GAIN NEW LAND yet we criticize Israel for developing settlements in its own territory.

How about this?  Give Jews 9,000 square miles in Alaska to create a Jewish state and move all the Jews from Israel there. They won't have any "natural enemies" in the region and the Arabs can have all the land that is now Israel to themselves.  You STILL won't have peace in the Middle East, because the Arabs will still be there, but at least the Jews would have peace in a place they can call home, even if it isn't the home they were promised.

What If Everyone Does It?

I think that one of the ways to judge whether an activity is good or bad is to consider what would happen if everyone did it.  It's easy to imagine the trouble that we would have if everyone routinely lies, steals, and murders. What about more private things, like engage in unprotected sex?

Well, "unprotected sex" is not enough information to evaluate this activity. The reason it's not enough is that it can be consensual or not, between monogamous partners or not, between two people who are known to each other not to have any diseases and not to have other partners since being checked - or not. We know from social experience that a lot of people having unprotected sex can spread disease - but there are implied behaviors in that statement. It's implied that there is a lot of switching partners, that not everyone is checked for disease, and that even if a person is checked for disease they don't insist their partner is checked and that they don't have sex with anyone else since being checked.

Two consensual monogamous people with no diseases and no other partners could have unprotected sex with each other every day for the rest of their life and not spread any diseases.  So where's the evil? The evil is in the nonconsensual. The evil is in the laziness of people who don't want to get checked. The evil is in the carelessness of people who don't insist that their partners get checked. The evil is in the cheating where one partner gets checked and advertises he or she is clean but has unprotected sex before a secure sexual relationship starts - thereby compromising the screening results.

I think it's wrong to condemn an activity just because some people don't do it properly. Another example? A lot of people lose their money when they invest but does that mean that investing should be illegal? Of course not. Not everyone does it right, and even if they do the activity involves risk and some failure is to be expected.

So I think any debate about whether an activity is moral and should be outlawed needs to be mature enough to consider the details, so that when we imagine "everyone doing it" we imagine doing it different ways. Only this way can we arrive at nuanced distinctions that we take for granted such as murder versus self-defense, or investing versus gambling.

When I think about murder versus self-defense, the distinctions are the initiation of force, or "who started it", and for what reason, or "taking versus protecting".

When I think about investing versus gambling, the distinctions are, do you know what you are doing or are you relying on luck, and are you willing to accept the risk, and are you using your money or someone else's, and are you investing or gambling with all your money or just money that you are willing to lose, and do you have an obligation to protect that money to take care of someone else or is it acceptable to lose it.

When I think about unprotected sex, the distinctions are consensual or not, careless or safe, by cheating or with integrity.

I think that if an activity done a certain way is not harmful to other people (or it's harmful in a morally acceptable way like self-defense) then if we imagine everyone doing it that way and under the right conditions the imaginary world would be fine. For some activities the negative consequences alone should be enough to dissuade people from doing it. That might require some education since not everyone knows what the negative consequences of their actions are. And for some activities the only people who could be hurt are the ones engaged in the activity. In these cases I think it's wrong to make it illegal.

For example, riding a motorcycle without a helmet is dangerous to the rider. See how I added "without a helmet" and "to the rider"? Yet I'm still assuming that the helmet to be worn is an appropriate one for the task. A rider could easily be killed in an accident if the rider is thrown off the motorcycle and is not wearing a helmet. Because of that, some people got together and decided that they would protect other people from themselves and passed laws that make it illegal to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Recently there was a rally to repeal this law, and one rider in the rally who was riding without his helmet had an accident and died. His death would have been prevented had he been wearing a helmet. It's ironic but it doesn't make the law alright. You see? Even with the law in place someone rode a motorcycle without a helmet and died. He broke the law! Now how is he going to be punished? Where will we get justice? The point is that the damage he did to himself is punishment enough and there is no justice to be served here because that law against riding motorcycle without a helmet is an unnecessary law. The difference in chances of survival between wearing a helmet and not wearing a helmet should be enough to convince riders to wear a helmet. But since the choice affects them only and not anyone else, they should be free to make it.

If the rider has a family that depends on him or her, does that mean there are now other victims besides the rider and that riding a motorcycle without a helmet should be illegal because the rider could have a family? No and no. The rider's family may be sad about the death of the rider but they are not hurt. If they don't want to lose the rider to an accident then they should pressure the rider to wear a helmet. If they don't try, or the rider doesn't care, the consequences will be their own.

So while I think that it's wrong to have laws that restrict personal freedoms for all just because some people act irresponsibly (imagine if swimming pools were outlawed because some people drown, or driving were outlawed because some people drive too fast) - I know that this is a minority opinion and that the majority of people in America jump at any chance to lose their personal freedoms in order to be  safe and secure.

Maybe a compromise could be that people who are caught riding without a helmet (and other unsafe only-to-themselves activities) could be "punished" by being forced to attend a safety class for that activity. At the end of the class they would get a small certificate that would fit in their wallet. Then next time they are caught doing the unsafe activity they can just show their safety certificate to the enforcer and be left alone. That way the majority would get a warm fuzzy feeling like someone is watching over them, yet still allow people to make their own educated choices.

If that works for riding motorcycles without a helmet, or investing, or having unprotected sex, then it could work for a wide range of personal choices that are currently legislated. If personal activities with risk only to oneself or group activities with risk only to the group cease to be illegal it would free up government justice departments to work only with real crimes.

We Need Rational Solutions

All of us who advocate freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are separated into two camps: Those who believe such freedom can only be achieved with government controls in every industry, a myriad of wealth redistribution schemes, and the religious opinions enacted as law; and those who believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can only be achieved only with perfect government - that is, a government in which there is nothing left to take away.

Most of the country is in the first camp, as evidenced by the election of both Democrats and Republicans into office at every level of government in every election. Both Democrats and Republicans are in the first camp, the only difference between them is they disagree on which controls are most important. So by electing one and then the other into office, we get the worst of both. I think very few people can look at our current situation and rationally say we got the best of both - that would mean happiness with nearly intractable and growing national debt, decade-long involvement in a "war" in two foreign countries where our politicians refuse to allow our military to actually fight an enemy, a disturbing trend happening now where citizens are being prosecuted for filming police actions due to past embarrassment this has caused, to name just a few.

I'm in the second camp. Those of us in the second camp need to continue pointing out contradictions and evils in the present state of things but we also need to present rational and comprehensive solutions to legitimate problems that may be caused by a freer society. I'm talking about offering more than just "the free market will naturally lead to best results" - I mean offering detailed, rational, solutions to such problems as how to protect our environment from irrational people who would dump waste products into lakes because it's cheaper than disposing of them safely, from irrational people who would cut down our forests to the last tree to make another dollar, from irrational people who would cruelly invade one military family's funeral service in order to get media coverage for their hate against homosexuals -- oops, that last one is allowed by our courts somehow basing their argument on free speech for the religious nut at the expense of the mourning military family.

In a free, capitalist system, how are we going to maintain our common areas? What principle is going to ensure that we don't ruin our little area of the planet for our grandchildren? What principle works when applied in any scale - town, county, state, country, world - so that others can copy it if they like our results?

Irrational, abusive, people are part of reality and any proposal that we make needs to account for their existence and their most likely and most dangerous courses of action. In essence these courses of action violate other people's individual rights [to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] in some way. We need to talk about prevention, deterrence, and punishment. We need to demonstrate how a rights-based solution can really work. Only then can we have a hope of turning the tide and restoring America to a path of individual freedoms and national prosperity.

Family Responsibilities

I just read an article on CNN that featured senior citizens complaining about what will happen if they stop receiving social security payments from the government.

Not every one is in the same situation so instead of generalizing, I'm going to comment on just one of the seniors who was interviewed:


"For some, a loss of Social Security income could mean a loss of independence.
Charles Tanner moved to an apartment near his daughter's home in Lexington, Ohio, after his wife died. It's important to the 81-year-old former welder to live on his own
But if he stops receiving his $1,400 Social Security check, he doesn't know how he'll be able to pay the rent in coming months. That means he'd have to move in with his daughter.
"It would be a sorry day if it happens," said Tanner."

Wel I disagree with Mr. Tanner. Maybe it would be a sorry day for him because he has a big ego and thinks that he should be able to take care of himself until his bitter end, but he's really just deluding himself. He's too old to work, and he depends on the government to pay his bills. Is that manly? He's an institutionalized freeloader. Does that show tough character?

Moving in with remaining family is EXACTLY what all seniors need to do when they cannot take care of themselves anymore. Their family is the first group with responsibility to take care of them.

I'm outraged that Mr. Tanner prefers to pay his bills with my tax money than to accept his daughter's help, and I'm outraged that we have a system that even gives him that choice.  I DON'T CONSENT TO PAYING MR. TANNER'S BILLS!!! Every day is a sorry day when the wealth of millions of Americans is redistributed to millions of others without consent.

I love my parents and I vow to take care of them when they are too old to do it themselves. When are they too old?  Well, in my case they are hard-working and responsible and they took care of me and my siblings so I'm going to let them decide when they are too old. When they decide they don't want to work anymore, they can move in with me, and use their savings to do fun things for themselves (and the grandchildren...) instead of pay bills.

At least Mr. Tanner HAS a daughter who can take care of him.  Not every senior citizen has remaining family, and that's sad.

I'm generally opposed to the government supporting poor people, old people, sick people, disabled people, mentally incompetent people, morally incompetent people (criminals)... I think that's a job for families, friends, and charities. And I'm generally opposed to the government supporting rich people. So really I'm generally opposed to the government supporting any subset of people because that's unfair to the people who are not in that subset. The government should be equally unsupportive of everyone so that it can expend it's resources effectively to uphold and enforce everyone's right to life, liberty, justice, own property, and equal opportunity. In order for this foundational charter of government to be executed well, we need to put aside special and discriminatory interests.

I do think about the consequences. If the government stops taking care of all these people, and their families and friends don't take care of them, and there aren't enough charities to take care of them, what will they do?  Roam the streets until killed by accident, starvation, or sickness?  Maybe. Or maybe we can provide easy work for seniors to give them choice. It can be clerical, supervisory, counseling, coaching, telling stories, anything that doesn't require hard labor or too many hours in a single day. Then anyone who has failed to develop a family or group of friends who will take care of them can still survive by doing light work. And everyone who chooses not to - well, we need to just let the consequences play out.  If individual people feel sorry for them then it is individuals who need to reach out and help. Cities and towns are not just collections of individuals - they are societies. So whenever we have the power to help each other, we should do it, because our time to need help is just around the corner.

I don't buy into the notion that ALL old people have benefited society so much that it's our duty to support them in old age. I say that most old people worked jobs and got compensated for the work they did. Maybe some of them volunteered in charities to help the needy. That's awesome, and I hope that younger people will do the same. But I don't owe them anything. If a senior person wants to retire but hasn't any family at all, hopefully that person has been a blessing to other people enough that they feel they should help to take care of him or her in old age. If not, well... insert your favorite adage about consequences here.

Some people have this notion that people shouldn't have to work until the day they die. Well, it's something that we wish for but it can't come true for everybody. Maybe we just have to accept the fact that not everyone is going to lead an ideal life. We have to accept personal tragedies and we have to develop a stomach for the real, and use that as a motivation to work to prevent ourselves from suffering the same misfortune as others, instead of rallying to unfair wealth-distribution schemes.

That $1400 that Mr. Tanner gets every month actually represents an even bigger loss to the rest of us, because there are overhead costs to administering such government programs and a lot of waste involved.  Yet if Mr. Tanner moved in with his daughter, she would be able to use her money to take care of him much more efficiently... the entirety of every dollar spent from her budget would be a dollar that benefits him.

I do think that we have a responsibility to take care of the elderly. But when I say that, I mean that each of us has responsibility to take care of our own elderly - our own family or acquaintances. Not of everyone else's elderly. And should any person refuse to take care of his own parents when they are too weak to work, that person cannot just dump the responsibility on the rest of us. That person must accept the consequences and the loss of the parent. And it's guaranteed to happen at some point ANYWAY.

I'm going to take care of my parents when they need it. I'll provide a place to sleep, food to eat, medicines, as much as I can afford. But the human body grows weaker in old age and the number of problems and complications just grows and grows. Even if I had all the money in the world there's a point after which I simply will not be able to keep my parents alive.  Dying is natural, and I hope that I will make my parents proud and happy before it's their time to go. But I will never expect anyone else (other than my siblings) to pitch to take care of them, because they are MY parents, and they are part of MY family responsibility. It would be unfair to burden anyone else with taking care of my stuff.

And if I am blessed to reach old age, I hope that through my actions between now and then my children and my community grow to love me and will want to take care of me when I cannot do it by myself anymore.

Well, that's why I'm so angry at people who let the government pay their bills. They are stealing from me.  I have the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and every dollar I pay in taxes that gets redistributed as welfare to some other person is a violation of my constitutional rights because the government is taking it from me by force - well, by threatening all the penalties for not paying taxes. It's wrong and perverse for the government, which exists to protect my rights, to violate them.

All I Want for Christmas... Is A 40% Smaller Federal Budget

I feel like a lot of my tax money is spent on programs that will never benefit me or my children, in any way at all.

Federal programs are supposed to benefit the entire country, not specific groups or places or businesses.

So I support spending on national infrastructure, transportation, communications, defense of our borders (not around the world), dominance in space, education (improving the quality and number of teachers, not adding more testing or bureaucracy), and regulation of harmful substances that businesses try to sneak into their products for costs savings or whatever without regard for the health and safety of their own customers.

I oppose spending on welfare, social security, any benefits at all for illegal immigrants, forced insurance, and most other services that should be provided by families, friends, and charities.

But most of all, I oppose spending that exceeds our national income, and I abhor the idea of ANYONE - rich, middle class, or poor - paying more taxes simply because lawmakers can't JUST SAY NO to the next "good idea",  so worried that people won't vote for them or pay their re-election campaign expenses if they don't support certain programs.

Being in Congress is more than just representing the loudest mouths in your district. It's about dedicating your time to studying the issues and making decisions that are best for our state and our nation, and sometimes that means saying "NO" to spending proposals that just don't belong in the federal budget.

Just as millions of households, including mine, had to cut their expenses the last few years in order to survive the recession without racking up junk debt,  so does the federal government need to cut a lot of expenses in order to get in shape.

Neither I nor millions of my fellow Americans had the luxury of simply voting for an increase in our household incomes, and so the federal government should not toy with the idea of simply taxing the problem away.

Our federal budget needs extreme cuts and this year, all I want for Christmas is a federal budget that's 40% to 50% smaller than what it was last year.

Any lawmaker who shows character by voting to cut non-essential programs from the federal budget, and to reduce the size of other programs that are too bloated and inefficient, as unpopular as this may be, is welcome to eat at my dinner table and sleep on my couch... even if I'm an advocate of some of the programs that are cut.

On Solving Our Problems

We have a big society with big problems.

But they are not too big -- our problems are not bigger than us. We can solve them.

Some problems we need to solve mainly through technological advances, others we need to solve through critical thinking and bold action, yet others through wise sacrifice.

Clearly, regardless of what anyone believes about global warming, the pollution caused by the sheer amount of waste we produce cannot be disputed. The damage to animal habitats directly resulting from our activities has been well documented. To stop everything we're doing in the name of saving the planet is just not realistic -- it will be too hard to convince everyone that it's worth it. We need technological advances to make it feasible to switch to Earth-friendly energy sources and to dispose of our waste better and to obviate the need to destroy more animal habitats to obtain natural resources. So we need to collectively invest more in the needed research and development.

Our national budget - and many state budgets - are not sustainable. There is nothing complicated about this. If we continue to spend more than we earn on such a colossal scale, our money will become worthless and this will cause many other problems. We only have to look at other countries around the world that cannot control their economies to see what might happen to us. This is not a complex financial or technical problem. This is a problem of will power.  Spending more than we earn means we want more than what we can have, and that means there will always be someone to oppose any proposed cut from the budget. So we need critical thinking to figure out what we ought to spend our money on - what is really necessary for the common good, in stark contrast to what we've long fooled ourselves is necessary but is really only for the benefit of specific groups. We need critical thinking and a keen eye to cut through the bullshit.  And then we need will power to overcome selfish objections from all the groups who lose their benefits. People really get up in arms when they are about to lose something they already have and enjoy or depend upon. But that's how we got into this mess - the accumulation of choices that favor short-sighted or selfish benefits over the national responsibility.

Some of our problems come from our shallow need to appear charitable, to take care of everyone. People who choose to smoke and get cancer from it are unfortunate, but they made a choice and the cost of their healthcare should be borne by themselves, possibly their family, and any insurance they purchased for that purpose. It must not be subsidized by any level of government. People who choose to use other drugs and develop problems from that are also unfortunate, but they also made a choice, and no level of government should subsidize their treatment either.  Let the true charitable people show themselves and show compassion to these victims of poor choices and help them with money and resources pooled together specifically for that purpose. Sending money and food to help starving people in other countries when we still haven't completely solved that problem here doesn't make any sense.  Sending help to a country that suffered a great natural disaster is a noble thing to do, but it's very different from prolonged, sustained aid for a chronic condition.

Those of us who are in the business of graphically violent entertainment - movies and video games - need to practice restraint and avoid selling those products to children. This doesn't relieve parents of their responsibility but is a kind of voluntary social cooperation because the graphic violence has been proven to have certain negative effects on impressionable children (and some adults too) who haven't yet a solid moral grounding. And it's not the fault of the video games or the movies - the effect can also happen from watching graphic violence on the news. News of terrorist attacks and suicides have been proven to spur certain kinds of people to also make threats and attacks and inflict harm on themselves because something hidden in their psyche has identified with the attacker or the victim and unconsciously compelled them to do something similar.

To prohibit the creation and sale of entertainment to everyone because some people can't handle it would not be the right path either. No, we must accept some risk with our liberty so we do not become a totalitarian society. But a little wise sacrifice for the sake of society should be encouraged by all in order to reduce that risk of damage.

Our news publishers should sacrifice some of whatever it is that causes them to behave so outrageously sometimes. Not every story is a national emergency. Not every story needs up-to-the-minute or live coverage. We don't need to know "ok the judge has sat down" and we don't need to see the police crouching outside a hostage-taker's window as it happens. A complete, accurate, and detailed coverage of the story after it happens is enough in most cases. In the absence of a very important story, less-important stories should not be hyped, but rather presented with a relief that there is nothing terrible going on at the moment. During the seconds between entertainment, instead of wasting them with a vague "hook" to get people to watch the "full story" later which turns out to be the same few facts repeated with endless variation, wouldn't it be great if the news producers would choose to provide a few seconds of actual information instead?  The sacrifice here is that they may have less viewers. Or maybe what is really needed is for someone to start a news station for busy productive people that has no bullshit - and charge fairly for not wasting people's time and not scaring people into depression thinking how there is never a pause from bad news.

Converting to the Metric System

Add this as a job possibility to the program I proposed for employing the involuntarily-unemployed:

Metric unit converter.  A person working this job would seek out all mention of the imperial units of measure and convert them to metric units.  For a certain number of years the old units would remain in parenthesis for reference but then we can do a second pass and remove all mention of imperial units in current products and services.

Add this as a potential revenue source for the government:

Imperial units of measure tax.  All products and services using imperial units should be subject to an additional tax in order to discourage their use and facilitate full adoption of the metric system.