How I would reboot the USA

[H2O boy]

should childless couples, elderly citizens, married queers clearly incapable of reproducing, and others who do not have children have to pay for a new school?

should the exorberant taxes i pay for a deck of smokes go to provide street lamps in a subdivision across town?

is that where we want to be?

i didnt think so

so. where do we draw that line separating public good from extortion of public monies? i am forced to pay taxes that help keep up a public park i have never visited and will not visit because i dont want to buy any drugs today. to me, thats a waste of my tax money. i would prefer to see it spent on roads, or emergency services, but its not. they just built another skateboard park recently. i will never use it, nor will anyone in my family, but i helped pay for it. our local voice in government voted against it, but as usual the fiscally responsible are outshouted by the gimme gimme crowd, so now i dodge potholes as i drive by a graffitti laden concrete patch of bumps populated by adolescents i would not allow within fifty feet of my kids. public good?

 

[paul_valaru]

After watching fox news, I would remove the freedom of speach.

 

[catocom]

hmmm. maybe we can have a separate tax for every single thing on the planet, and a separate government agency to handle it.

road use tax?
sidewalk use tax?
police "services" tax?
baby delivery tax? (hey i ain't having no baby, let them girlies pay for that shit!)
dumb redneck that needs intervention from social services tax?
bulbous-nosed drunk tax?
wart removal tax?
ugly cousin tax?

wow. so much for small government. imagine the administration costs tracking all them different taxes!

nope.
States need to handle some things, and the fed others, same as it was setup.

The disagreement comes in on What things need be where, and what don't need to be.

 

[Frodo]

should childless couples, elderly citizens, married queers clearly incapable of reproducing, and others who do not have children have to pay for a new school?

Yes, they should. Just because you have no children of your own, doesn't mean that the next generation is not a concern to you. We all will be relying on them to run our society when we are older. Life would not be very pleasent if they all became useless human debris. Case in point:

populated by adolescents i would not allow within fifty feet of my kids. public good?

 

[Frodo]

After watching fox news, I would remove the freedom of speach.

Coming soon to an administration near you! The plans are in the works. It will be called something harmless like the fairness doctrine.

 

[Frodo]

Since we are on the King for a day fantasy, I would repeal every single law in existance. Then I would tell congress to start over. Every new law would have to pass three simple tests before being signed into law:

1) It must be necessary. I don't need a whole bunch of redundant laws for acts that are already illegal or laws against problems that don't exist.

2) It must be reasonably compliable. I don't need a law that is overly complicated or an unneccesary burden on my life.

3) It must be reasonably enforcable. If you can't enforce it, then it is useless.

 

[JJR512]

should childless couples, elderly citizens, married queers clearly incapable of reproducing, and others who do not have children have to pay for a new school?

Yes, for exactly the same reason that Frodo mentioned in reply, and which I already mentioned in my original post. A well-educated workforce is in the best interest of the entire nation (excepting, perhaps, the aforementioned wilderness man). People without children still need things like health care, and, just like me (a person with a child), childless people probably want smart, intelligent healthcare providers. That's just one example to illustrate the point that whether a person has a child or not does not change the fact that the person will have many interactions with or be affected in some way by the actions of other people.

Let me put it like this: Do you ever think another person is stupid? Do the words "that person is STUPID" (or something to that effect) ever go through your mind after seeing or hearing another person do or say something? Although stupidity in others does occasionally have some entertainment value, don't you think the country might be a better place all around in general if there were fewer "stupid" people in it, if the people you've called or thought of as stupid were instead smart? Now, does whether or not you have children have anything to do with this?

should the exorberant taxes i pay for a deck of smokes go to provide street lamps in a subdivision across town?

No, absolutely not. Cigarette taxes shouldn't go to provide street lamps anywhere. Nor roads, nor make up part of the budget of the FCC.

Since we are on the King for a day fantasy, I would repeal every single law in existance. Then I would tell congress to start over. Every new law would have to pass three simple tests before being signed into law:

1) It must be necessary. I don't need a whole bunch of redundant laws for acts that are already illegal or laws against problems that don't exist.

2) It must be reasonably compliable. I don't need a law that is overly complicated or an unneccesary burden on my life.

3) It must be reasonably enforcable. If you can't enforce it, then it is useless.

I completely agree. Except that for the sake of practicality and avoiding a period of lawlessness, it would have to be done in reverse order: First Congress creates the new code of laws, then the old one gets thrown out. Kind of like swearing in a new President.

At the time that this happens could be a great time for a more radical restructuring of the Federal government, perhaps to scale back the Federal government and put it more in line with what the Constitution says it's supposed to be, if that's what actually needs to be done. You know, so we can please the people that feel life would be so much better if the bloat, corruption, inefficiency, and other problems existed at the state level instead of the federal level, because apparently it would be better for the American people to be screwed by fifty separate medium-sized governments rather than by one large one.

 

[BlurOfSerenity]

many of my idealistic-yeah-i-know-it-will-never-happen plans are edits to the so-called "justice" system.

none of this man-with-7-DWI's-is-still-a-free-man shit, and able to get his 8th. *

none of this break-the-bones-of-your-INFANT-and-be-out-of-jail-in-18-mos shit. *

and why is having weed felonious?

i court reported for two years and became disgusted by a lot of what i saw.

and if you're not safe to be out on the streets among other people, you will be put away or executed. no sex offender registry. if you're thought to be a danger, you don't get to be around people you may hurt. if you've done your time and had your pennance and are changed, go, put it past you, be a free person. but if you do end up doing it again -- which being on the sex offender registry doesn't really stop you from doing, anyway -- it's curtains.

if this were to happen, there's a lot of kinks that would need to be worked out. but the bottom line is that i feel that far too much is overpunished, and a grotesque number of crimes are underpunished.

 

[Gonz]

A well-educated workforce is in the best interest of the entire nation (excepting, perhaps, the aforementioned wilderness man). People without children still need things like health care, and, just like me (a person with a child), childless people probably want smart, intelligent healthcare providers.

Seeing the last 50 years of the federally run education system, it's a good thing our healthcare providers can tie their own shoes.

 

[Gonz]

Since we are on the King for a day fantasy, I would repeal every single law in existance.

One law, various degrees....

Theft.

Stealing somones twinkies to stealing someones life. Everything can be summed up to theivery.

 

[JJR512]

Seeing the last 50 years of the federally run education system, it's a good thing our healthcare providers can tie their own shoes.

How to tie shoes is a life skill that should be taught by parents, not educators.

The 2007 budget for the Department of Defense was $439.3 billion. The same year, the budget for the Department of Education, the smallest Cabinet-level Department, was $13.4 billion mandatory plus $56 billion discretionary. This reminds me of a bumper sticker I once saw that said, "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

I don't know a whole lot about what the ED (the official acronym for the Department of Education, because DOE was already taken) actually does. They could be more effective. The ED does not actually need to be a large department (and as mentioned they are in fact the smallest already). All they really need to do is determine what the minimum standards should be and then set them, and let the states figure out how to meet them. Off the top of my head I can't think of anything else this department should do.

Which is just like the national EMS oversight agency I already discussed (which of course I am not implying needs to be a Cabinet-level Department, just an agency of some other department, probably Health and Human Services). They don't actually need to run anything, and it doesn't need to be a large agency. They just need to define, refine, maintain, and enforce standards.

In this sense, these two bodies would be advisory in nature to the systems they oversee. It is quite possible that many federal bodies could be more effective if they were reduced to just being advisory in nature, setting standards and letting the states figure out how to meet them. Thus these bodies could be smaller and cheaper to run. Perhaps you, Gonz, would see this as a step in the right direction, as it involves shrinking the federal government. Then again, so did my original post.

 

[Gonz]

The 2007 budget for the Department of Defense was $439.3 billion. The same year, the budget for the Department of Education, the smallest Cabinet-level Department, was $13.4 billion mandatory plus $56 billion discretionary. This reminds me of a bumper sticker I once saw that said, "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

Can you show me where, in the Constitution, that public education (or HHS) is a federal expenditure? I can show you where military spending is.

Thus these bodies could be smaller and cheaper to run. Perhaps you, Gonz, would see this as a step in the right direction, as it involves shrinking the federal government. Then again, so did my original post.

Any time a new department is added, the federal government grows. With that growth comes unnecessary spending, a new level of beauracrats who will fightt expand their department (what better way to keep their job safe) and a lessening of the importance of the state, or local, department that you actually have some say in.

 

[JJR512]

Can you show me where, in the Constitution, that public education (or HHS) is a federal expenditure? I can show you where military spending is.

Nope, and I don't need to. Can you show me where in the Constitution spending money on education is explicitly forbidden? Furthermore, education is the single most important system that needs to have money spent on it. A better-educated population would lead to so many other problems lessening or going away altogether. This in turn would lead to less money being spent trying to solve those problems with stopgap fixes.

Any time a new department is added, the federal government grows. With that growth comes unnecessary spending, a new level of beauracrats who will fightt expand their department (what better way to keep their job safe) and a lessening of the importance of the state, or local, department that you actually have some say in.

Whether or not the new spending is "unnecessary" is a matter of personal opinion that is not shared by all. I very much doubt the new department would have been created in the first place if nobody thought it was necessary.

In any event, I have not advocated in this thread for the creation of any new departments. In fact--and I'm getting quite tired of repeating this fact now--in my ideas, the overall size of the government would shrink.

 

[Gonz]

Nope, and I don't need to. Can you show me where in the Constitution spending money on education is explicitly forbidden?

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." - Thomas Jefferson, 1798

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

 

[valkyrie]

Can you show me where, in the Constitution, that public education (or HHS) is a federal expenditure? I can show you where military spending is.

Dude... everyone knows that public education was created to keep the little bastards off the streets.

 

[valkyrie]

Noticed the phrase: "the less government the better".
Gotta comment: that goes for both parties! Stay out of my uterus and stay away from my guns!

 

[Gonz]

Dude... everyone knows that public education was created to keep the little bastards off the streets.

then buying a textile mill is out?

 

[valkyrie]

then buying a textile mill is out?

If you can get that pesky child labor law thing repealed then you are in like Flinn! Those tiny little hands are perfect for cleaning machinery!

 

[BlurOfSerenity]

Stay out of my uterus and stay away from my guns!

amen sistah!