Presidential platform

of Rick Hohensee, originated early 04,
last revised Dec. 2016. Almost nothing deleted since 2004. Nothing much has changed.

INTRODUCTION

My Presidential ambitions are secondary to the desire to see a Constitutional convention, and to see real change, like in the Amendment proposed in the top page of this site. Changing about 1/4 of the Constitution is not a bad days work, even if I don't become President. There's no way to guarantee my Presidency even if I can instigate a Con-con. One must provide alternatives, however. But as KKarl Rove says, "In politics, you don't beat something with nothing." This then, is what I would do if, after a Con-con, I became President. To all my fellow travelers in the protest-industrial-complex, if you don't think I'd be better than Obushma, you have no business in Lafayette Park. The Founding Fathers would be horrified that we haven't had a Con-con since Congress failed to impeach Bush. George Washington would have the dry heaves. 2016 I am now running for a self-designed role of executive and sole legislator, term limited. Congress is useless. So replace them.

One must look at my platform in totality, and as an adjunct to the omnibus Amendment "USA, Take 3". Parts of it will impinge on a particular individual negatively. One must make an assessment of the overall effect. This is especially true, for example, as pertains to something like "labor policy". I have no explicit labor policy, but have several proposals that dramatically favor people typically categorized as "labor". This is how problems are solved; by breaking them into smaller and smaller problems, solving the smaller problems, and letting the little things take care of the big things. Most politicians, however, have no interest in solutions at all. Most are lawyers, and make their money perpetuating problems. 3/4 of Congress, for example, voted to invade Iraq.

JOBS JOBS JOBS is a similar example. It is not one problem. My solutions, listed as specific items, include securing our borders; legalizing herbs, and thus releasing thousands of entrepreneurial types from jail and reducing our dependance on imports; reducing the income tax codes to about 10 pages of statute favoring the sole proprietor; similarly massively simplifying import-export laws, and so on.

A few quick principles and guidelines: The government is broken. I'm pretty handy. 2016 Democrats favor unions. Republicans favor big business. I favor the sole proprietor, which is the growth engine of the USA. Be civil. Do not be insipid. In a free country adults can grow and smoke any herb they want. The two facts to remember about 9-11 are; the USA was already a police state, and 9-11 should have been prevented by said police state. Law enforcement that doesn't start with the likes of GW Bush is a fraud. Imperialism is not conservative; in this day and age it is criminal. Exceptionalism is imperialism. The Second Amendment defines a State right, and e.g. Scalia knows that. Bernanke-style "too big to fail" is un-American. Socialism is for poor folks, not Wall Street gamblers. We are not in a recession, we are in the Reagan/Bush depression. The Obama administration is not the change you voted for. Be billions-wise and millions-foolish. The US has plenty of quality-of-life issues to deal with that aren't related to the GDP. The supply of a nation's currency should be public property. New fiat money should originate as the property of the US Treasury. As the only person in DC calling for a realistic (i.e. revenue-side) frontal assault on the national debt (April 2010, Mar 2011), I am the only fiscal conservative in DC. The Reagan Revolution has proven that Ayn Rand was wrong about John Galt, but the fact remains that concentration of wealth should only be tolerated to the extent that it contributes to the general welfare, and I don't mean the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. No bills of new statutes should ever be over 49 pages long. Obfuscation is parasitism. The US Code should be about 4 volumes. A tax exemption for churches is not a separate church and state. I am a social capitalist. Capitalism is to be tolerated like government, and for the same reason, because and as long as it benefits the whole, it is tolerable. For the last ten years, it has not. This is why the USA needs much higher marginal taxes. Not because of Ayn Rand's pitifully twisted beliefs about rich people, but because of her tacit assumption about the justification for wealth in America. Wealth needs to serve the whole.

The USA, even if it collapses, is still vastly more wealthy than e.g. China. For this to be preserved, we must become as efficient as the Chinese, and must stabilize our borders. 2016 The world becomes more competetive every day. So must the US.

Mar 2011 The USA has been incessantly normalized to greater and greater perversity by a mob of war-mongering perverts. Bush has admitted to authorizing torture. That's illegal because it is perverted. 10,000 years from now, when certain forms of canabalism are normal, torture will still be perverted. A nation that can't arrest a pervert like GW Bush deserves to collapse, and there's probably a cause-and-effect relationship with that. Perverts and warmongers don't fix anything, and the government hasn't fixed anything major in ten years. I don't know if its too late to prevent the US from turning into Pakistan or not, but I WILL arrest Bush. Yo, America, do you deserve to collapse?

SPECIFICS

(in very roughly top-down priority)

Most of this is legislative intent, but some few items are purely executive, and can therefor be guaranteed. 2016 As president-legisator, I can guarantee all of this, or things similar that reflect learning as we go.

Based on what I know from an adult Internet account, basic cable, modest but extremely varied everyday experience, and various print and broadcast media, I want to be President so that I can try to... in short, give the USA a much-needed overhaul.

1. Ask former President Obomber why he spent over a million dollars to fight legal efforts to make him produce his hospital birth certificate. Ask Obomber his SS#. Mine is 219-64-7434. They say the one Obama uses now belongs to a Harrison J. Bunuel that died in 1981.
2. Real regime change. See the example cabinet in presidentbyamendment.com/blog.html . Barbara Lee, State; Kucinich, DOJ; etc. 2016 Do NOT fill all 3800 appointee positions with appointees. Half that or less.
3. Get out of Iraqi cities immediately, including vacating the Green Zone, and retire to funcions of state and federal governments, until the cities form regional alliances analagous to, and perhaps with external, nations, as they, the representatives of the Iraqi cities, see fit. This may involve a turf trade between Shi'a and Kurd areas of Iran, for example. If Iraq chooses to reform as Iraq, make it as easy as possible for the new Iraq to be a secular democratic republic at the federal level. (feb 09 Well, they got the get out of the cities part.)
4. (Jan '06) Jack Murtha's epochal 6-month withdrawal proposal is basically a military expression of the above political framework. His "quick-strike force" and an "over-the-horizon presence of Marines" is my 'functions of state and federal governments'. My withdrawl is within Iraq, however. Murtha wants completely out ASAP. I'm one step less abrupt. Murtha's plan came out after mine, and they are using parts of mine, and as of July 23 2009 it seems to be going OK. See the more detailed plan in this directory.
5. The next phase of the withdrawal from Iraq will be to get all National Guards and reservists home.

   (Mar 2011)
   Basically, put the Crusades on a one-year funding half-life. Cut Obomber's war funding in half in year one, cut THAT in half in year two, for at least four years. Obomber's engagement in Libya was premature, but I'm not an absolute isolationist/pacifist. I might engage a bit in places like the Congo and Somalia. For example, I might provide Somalia with fishing waters protection. 2016 I'd ask India to, actually.

   2016 The MIC is still trying to hang on to the $600,000,000-- "embassy" in Iraq. This is the headquarters building that will oversee stealing all the oil in that part of the world. This is the underlying perversity of the whole atrocity. I will give that facility to al Sadr.

6. The Muslim world needs a new Constitution. What a coincidence. So does the USA. Please see presidentbyamendment.com . 2016 I keep trying to givre e.g. Egypt my new constitution, but people don't get the superiority of the US document.
7. Dec. 28 2009
   I just read the wikipaedia entry for Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He had been waterboarded for 2.5 minutes when he confessed to everything from being the prime mover of 9-11 to the murder of Jon-Benet Ramsey. As President, I will grant him a full pardon and build him and all other GITMO victims a condo out of CIA HQ. I'll also jail Bush and Cheney there so the GITMO victims like KSM can throw peanuts to our Nazi ringleaders.
8. I also now seem to be writing US monetary policy. The bill I propose as money.html in this directory has a direct mirror in language in the bank regulation bill now (Nov. 13 2009) in the Financial Services Committee, according to my reading of an article in Politico. The distinction between capital and liquidity is a quantum of fiscal sanity that should help the dollar quite a bit. (April 2010) Unfortunately, my bill is not in any pending bill I'm aware of, including the one I got the false lead on from Politico. That's a shame. Our health insurance industry is now public property, and the supply of "US dollars" is still the private property of for-profit banks.

   April 2011
   Sam Farr (D-Ca) almost introduced my money supply bill. And he may yet.

9. Reaffirm that the "war on terror" is mostly diplomacy and police work when prosecuted by the competent, and only becomes all-out war when prosecuted by the incompetent and/or corrupt. (Jan '06) Desperate right-wingers are now in the habit of justifying any and everything by noting that we are at war. We need to call it off. Claiming that some group declared war on the the former USA on 9-11 gives said groups far to much credence as an opponent.
10. Hand over Halliburton functions in Iraq to the US military and mideastern engineering firms. Let Iraqis rebuild Iraq. Reduce US funding for the purpose of rebuilding Iraq by a factor of 4, paid directly to locals. I expect this to get 10 times as much accomplished at 1/10 the cost.
11. Guarantee jobs to soldiers injured in Iraq, with preference for aquisitions roles in the Pentagon, such as making sure Halliburton recieves funds due to them. That is, if Cindy Sheehan doesn't want to be Halliburton's account manager in the government.
12. Guarantee jobs to all Jersey Girls and similar in the DOJ and similar.
13. Arrest and prosecute George Walker Bush for crimes against humanity under US law, most notably the violation of the UN Charter, which is US law, in the failure to get Security Council approval of a violent invasion. This is an executive action, which I can therefor guarantee. Efforts to rearrange the regulatory structure of the US to fix the crimes of the last nine years is failure to address the real problem, which starts with GW Bush. Real problems are a lot easier if you address them, and the USA as a whole doesn't any more, up through Obama. See also, Rep. Kucinich's articles of impeachment for Baby Bush. This particular Bush crime is article 7 or so.
14. Signal the end of anglophone imperialist belligerence by isolating and peacefully dismantling the Zionist proxy political establishment in Palestine. Isolate Israel, in other words.
15. Want to see what fiscal conservative looks like? presidentbyamendment.com/issues/taxes2.html and budget.html . Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) says the tax bill is "plenty meaty".
16. Let frackers pump anything into the ground that their CEO will drink.
17. Task the Commerce Dept. with an annual State of Imports report, with an eye to imports to urge business to eliminate.
18. July 09::: Health care. Obama's big thing. Not the biggest issue facing the country. And not something you want to do in one giant 1000-page bill. Excuse me, 2000 page bill. The USA's worst health problem at the moment is that GW Bush and RB Cheney are still on the loose. That's some sick salsa. Menawhile, as Obama builds a new healthcare system, the bridges to the clinic will collapse. And how about the two trillion dollars the Fed is printing itself? That's so that your pension will be inflationed to worthlessness. Not very healthy either. Bust healthcare into bills less than 50 pages each, and solve the country's really urgent problems first. The country's overall health could do without Obama's new heroin war in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, too, and so on. (The 50 page limit thing is a distinct promise below.)
19. Pressure Israel to relinquish it's nuclear weapons. We can't disallow nukes to Iran et cetera if Israel has them.
20. Mar 2011 A US nuclear gravity-delivered bomb is about 750 pounds, and is a hydrogen bomb. Megatons. I'd take a look at de-rating them to simple atomic explosives, and reducing or eliminating those to be delivered by manned aircraft. Pro-actively, perhaps. Those things are dangerous.
21. Fire all Bush/Reagan appointees in the Executive Branch. Work diligently to destroy every legislator that voted for the invasion of Iraq, and are thus complicitous with a major war crime and disgrace of the USA. (Nov '05) There is one class of Bush appointee that is of particular interest for retention or reaquisition. Those who have quit or been fired. I am of course speaking of the Gunns, the refugees from a corrupted CIA, and so on, not the Michael "It's Not My Job" Brownies.
22. (Aug 09) Many Bush appointees are gone now due to the "change" of 08. Not nearly enough, however. One problem that remains is the partisan hiring at DOJ. This will require an act of Congress to correct, since these people are not campaign apointees, who serve at the pleasure of the current President. I will seek legal authority from Congress to terminate a certain number of persons who otherwise would enjoy civil service protection, for firing GW Bush DOJ lawyers and some select other suspicious hires. The other problem is new Bushistas like Geitner, Larry Summers, and so on. That will also be fixed by a real regime change.
23. Unilaterally or otherwise liberate Darfur from the "Sudan" "government" in Khartoum. (I had suggested a no-fly-zone over Darfur. This has since been agreed to.) (July 05) There has been some semblance of a change of regime in Khartoum, I believe. I will revisit this issue as President with better information, and the understanding that the epochal cultural seam between East and West currently runs through Sudan. (Nov. 05) The situation in Sudan is deteriorating once again. Remind the Khartoum government that there are certain standards even in the Sahel that must be met to be considered the government of a people. Provide Darfuris with defensive weapons such as low-cost .22 caliber rimfire pistols and .22 caliber rimfire manual action rifles.
24. Help people with mortgage problems find housing they can afford. Prosecute mortgage shysters. Et cetera. Note that I'm not about keeping people in properties they can't afford.
25. Mar 2011 Retire Fanny and Freddy. Subsidizing home ownership never made sense.
26. April 2011
    While I'm excoriating the MIC and so on, I should mention that cops and soldiers are not the problem, but they sure aren't the solution either. Except for VFP, LEAP and so on.
27. Reinstate Glass-Steagall. Financial firms are glad they won't be broken up by new regulations being contemplated as of Aug. 09. I'll break them up. We need to return to banks, insurance companies, speculators, and stock brokers being different things. Paul Volker has recently (Nov. 09) said reinstate Glass-Steagall. The commercial-investment bank distinction may not be the way to go, but something like Glass-Steagall needs to happen. Financial firms don't have the infrastructure issues of industrial concerns that advise against splitting them up. And I would have split up GM. (April 2011) There's only two things wrong with Dodd-Frank; Dodd and Frank. Repeal and replace. Somebody should write a book on Sen. Carter Glass, by the way.
28. Look very closely at how Goldman Sachs suddenly became a bank holding company, and suddenly became amenable to that regulatory regime, when its very reason for existing prior to that was to avoid such regulation.
29. Un-offshore America's corporate tax base. I've heard sheltered offshore income is on the order of 10 trillion dollars. If that's even remotely true, fixing that problem can basically solve all the former USA's fiscal problems in short order.
30. INFRASATRUCTURE is one of the essentials of national prosperity, it is a proper role of the federal government, and ours is crumbling. My blog post of May 20 lays out specs for stone bridge archstones. I dig stone. Dirt. Hydroseeding. Asphalt. Municipal composting. Arches. Et cetera. I'm good at that stuff.
31. Visit New Orleans for about a continuous week, and render it's recovery sustainable. Address the subsidence issue of all similar regions. For New Orleans in particular, my current thinking is that it should be in-filled to sea-level using quality engineering fill provided by barge and/or rail, beginning along levees and proceeding over the long term until the entire city drains by gravity. That is an earthwork in the few billions of dollars. Just the dirtwork, not counting the utilities problems that creates. The drainage canals also strike me as a severe mis-design, such they they should be dry canals with pumping stations at their outfall ends. When I get to New Orleans, Senators Landrieu and Vitter will want to avoid me, which they are welcome to do. Actually, if I'm President, they'll be out of the Senate.

    Mar 2011
    In general, it might be best if e.g. the Mississippi River was allowed to inundate it's delta like it was designed to do by a far greater intelligence than mine.

32. repeal most of George W. Bush's executive orders, concerning such degeneracy as faith-based initiatives, election assistance, and other deformities.
33. FEMA's role in the early phases of an emergency is to be one of passive auditor and passive money provider, with the utter inabilty to prevent anything. FEMA must be prevented from preventing anything when hours are lives. FEMA must be enabled to smile sweetly and cut billions of dollars in checks to the likes of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin without question, but with full expectation of reportage of where the money went when the dust clears. Think Federal Emergency Money Allocators.
34. The Coast Guard will be tasked with creating a hurricane follower fleet to provide most time-critical relief, communications and surveillance at the trailing edge of all hurricanes making landfall. Said fleet may be offered to neighbor nations in severe cases. Said fleet should contemplate a 'Katrita' scenario, and should contemplate high-wind aerial surveillance, water and other hour-timescale-critical supply, emergency ship-generated electricity, hospital capability, and a general expectation of the unexpectable. (Feb. 2009 The Bush admin. has taken this idea to the fascist heights since I proposed it, with a Navy, not Coast Guard fleet, menacing, not assisting, the Carribean.)
35. Replace the Pledge of Alliegance with daily recitals of varying paragraphs of the Constitution. People that like oaths of subjugation can pledge their allegiance to the students every day. If you can't live without the Pledge of Allegiance, join the Marine Corps. Hoo Rah.
36. In the May 2011 timeframe or later, take a close look at the idea of foreign companies like BP being allowed to extract finite US mineral resources.
37. Provide every public school student in grades 5 and up a copy of the Constitution every year. Include dissemination of explanations of phrases like "writ of mandamus" and "letters of marque and reprisal" which occur in the Constitution. There is an effort under way to put a synopsis of the constitution on paper currency. This also might better be a matter of varying excerpts.
38. Overhaul the White House press corps to exclude the major war infomercial networks; Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS and so on. I'll probably limit that access to newswire services, Mother Jones, The Nation, Al Jazeera and so on. That is, credible outlets. This is an executive action.
39. When the Fed commits an act of buying T-bills, a loan to the USA is created, the Treasury bond, payable to the Fed. The Fed typically creates the funds for such a purchase out of thin air. This is how the USA increases the money supply. There is no reason that that new money belongs to the Fed. The money banks have is their money. Money created out of thin air, as is occuring massively on a daily basis as of Aug. 09, will be established as money belonging to the people of the USA, to be held by the federal Treasury, and created by "Inflation Actions". Thus when a Treasury bond auction occurs and some bonds don't sell, the balance will be created as capital funds in the Treasury via Inflation Action. Fiat, in other words. Bank money is bank property. The money SUPPLY is the property of the people. The Fed will not be allowed to simply create funds for itself any more. The Treasury will. As mentioned above, this is in money.html in this directory, and appears to be in a bill in the Financial Services Committee as of Nov 09.
40. Reduce legacy government secrets as closely as possible to nothing. That is, I will massively reduce "classified information", particularly older documents, probably everything over 5 years old except for nuclear technologies and similar. Set up a periodic challenge and review system for classified information to remain classified on about a 5-year periodicity, with increasingly difficult tests and decreasing periodicity to remain classified as time passes. A jury-like mechanism may well also be useful for this purpose. This could be a Judicial Branch matter. The basic reduction of current gratuitous secrets, however, is I believe an executive action. This could be the biggest gain from a real regime change, rather than a made-for-TV complexion change as in '08.
41. Legalize herbs. All herbs. This is a missing article in the Bill of Rights, and is in my proposed Amendment.
42. April 2011
    Hate is not a noun. HATRED is not a family value. If you deny something completely, you deny it UN categorically. Dear President Obomber, please carefully count the N's in pundit.
43. Reduce all import duties to a single duty of tonnage schedule, about $300/ton for water freight, less for pipelines and trucks, plus penalties for human rights issues and so on. This is simpler than 1798. It could be in the Constitution that there be no commodity-specific tarriffs, which are almost all cronyism. This eliminates an entire large volume of federal trade regulations.
44. Implement a closely controlled self-prescription program for adults to use such drugs as cocaine, heroin, marijuana and penicillin. That is, I will call off the corrupt counter-democratic drug war and de-glamourize narcotics. Drugs are for sick people. Sick people can obtain drugs cost-effectively in a healthy society. This will reduce the US black market economy, reduce the outflow of capital from the country, improve the image of small business, improve patient information recieved by doctors from their patients, vastly reduce the area of the world hostile to the US, reduce medical costs, reduce the use of needles, wipe out several rogue militaries in Latin America, and many other unimaginable benefits one would expect from choosing to discontinue losing a war. PCP and similarly destructive toxins will not be legalized, nor will truly sophisticated drugs actually requiring a doctor to even understand the accepted purpose of. I don't think any amphetamines such as meth and ecstasy will be legal (self-prescribeable) at this point. The LEAP group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, leap.cc on the Internet, has useful information and contacts on this issue.
45. Remove the archaic military term "intelligence" from what the CIA claims to do. Replace it with the term "(strategic) awareness".
46. De-commission the CIA entirely, and un-authorize them totally, immediately. Dec. 1 2009 I find with my great delight in 50 USC ss401... that the CIA does not have civil service protection. Out them all in about 6 months. Re-deploy them if they choose to hang on under INS. The counter-proliferation forces may reconstitute under the Nuclear Regulatory Agency or similar. Otherwise, if a CIA agent or analyst wants to go to work for another awareness agency, of which there are some 14 in the Executive Branch, they will have to get personal approval from me, and I'll be very busy with other things. The Legislature is currently (Sept. 04) fiddling with the CIA organizational chart. That's not going to make me listen to their garbage reports. (Nov 04) The CIA is basically fired anyway by their own total lack of credibility. With the internal shenanigans going on there now firing them all will probably be the most humane option. The current US awareness problem would largely be solved by a President that can use a web browser and search engine. There will be some premium placed on counter-proliferation agents seeking re-assignment. (Nov '05) The CIA's concentration camp network is in fact not surprising, and doesn't effect this platform item. This item was based on such assumptions. In particular, eliminate covert operations outside actual war zones immediately. Such behavior is well beneath the greatest and most powerful nation ever, and if you are so patriotic that you want to commit psychopathic acts for your country, you should be willing and expectant to die or spend the rest of your life in a small cage in Asia to do so. The US will only remain the world's sole superpower if it does so with some sense of fair play, and the CIA has no such sense.
47. Congress may have a problem with the above. Regardless, no CIA personnel will be visiting the Hohensee White House, and I will get my current awareness briefings from other agencies. See also; the foreign policy file in this directory.
48. As Newt Gingrich says, "Meet the Uigers". Commute the sentence of every detainee at GITMO to time served, due to the inate torture of their captivity, and build them condos in (the soon-to-be-former) CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia. This should tick off the far right. That's the point.
49. Adult Americans have the rights of citizenship of a sovereign people. Uninvited immigrants have basic human rights. They need to go home before applying for citizenship, however. Consider those poor DREAM Act folks. Who subjected them to being aliens in the land of their youth? Thier uninvited parents. They should maybe get some special consideration for citizenship, after returning home for a while.
50. Promote the vote for ex-criminals. There are too many election abuses now and abuses of the term "felon" to disenfranchise ex-felons. (This is not as big an issue as I thought. 4 States I think.) This IS an area where it is proper fro the federal government to override the States, as far as federal elections are concerned.
51. Make federal election days maximal national holidays, in the sense that it shall be unlawful for any adult to not have 4 hours of time off from work on an election day during local polling hours, with severe fines for employers violating this. Employers are Republicans, and employees are Democrats. That's fine. What's not fine is one Republican being capable of denying a dozen Democrats access to the polls with a work schedule. Bill Bradley suggested making election day a whole weekend. Good idea.
52. Require any election polling place, provisional or mail-in voting option to accept a plain piece of paper with handwritten votes as the required Constitutional default ballot, in addition to whatever other conveniences thay may provide, q.v. (this is in the Amendment. And the current Constitution, the way I read it. But I belabor it in my Amendment.) See also, http://www.youtube.com/presidentbyamendment and http://presidentbyamendment.com/issues/votescript (or ../validvote)
53. Mar 2011 The engine size of a moped, i.e. a vehicle you don't need a license for, should be raised to 150cc, thus allowing use of e.g. a Briggs and Stratton 4-stroke 3.5 hp motor, your basic lawnmower engine. Maybe for 4-strokes only. And it should be allowed to have 4 wheels. In which case you can probably get it up to about 200mpg, and vastly safer than a moped.

    Drivers licenses are State entities, other than CDLs. Safety regulations for vehicles are federal. The federal government needs to allow small, cheap, somewhat less safe vehicles than they do now, because they compete with bikes, and 3 or 4 wheels is always way safer than 2, as far as I know. Actually, 3 can be worse than 2, but 4 is always safer. Lots. And I know how unsafe two are. Peak oil was in 2006. The US auto dinosaurs have been refusing to downsize for 50 years. The federal government's job is to allow the market, the US market, to go around the dinosaurs.

54. Teach evolution as legally factual and the Bible, Talmud, Koran, the Analects, the Tao Te Ching, Aristotle's Ethics, Machiavelli and so on as ethics studies.
55. Foster an Ethics Channel on cable TV. Foster a newswire broadcast TV channel featuring AP and Reuter's text and video feeds. Possibly require such a channel to operate a satellite or cable TV company, and maybe an ethics channel as well. Newswires involved may include AP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, Pravda, the BBC and so on.
56. Establish a grade school diploma indicating that the holder can perform such basic tasks of self-actualization as reading a reputable newspaper, (if one can be found in the English language), a roadmap, and the Constitution with some comprehension, and compute unit prices for groceries in their head. Unlike most US college grads.
57. Legalize insider trading. Insider trading laws are unenforceable, are used as a political bludgeon as in the case of Martha Stewart, and give a false sense of security to small investors. In general, financial markets are too liquid anyway, in my opinion. Who owns what is not accountable enough in America, and people aren't involved enough in what they own. (July 09: See also:credit default swaps). They don't have insider trading laws in Japan.
58. Abolish leveraged buyouts if they haven't been already (Bobby). (Jan '06) The Economist Jan 7-13 06 opines that the leveraged buyout industry is currently forming a large unsustainable bubble.
59. Investigate Sun Myung Moon for illegal donations and information transfers to North Korea.
60. Actively campaign for Taiwan to adopt an official name not including the word "China". Taiwan is entitled to independance from China, as "Taiwan". (Feb. '09 I may have influenced this. This seems to be the trend.)
61. Veto all bills of new law (i.e. not appropriations and budgets) submitted to me longer than 49 pages in length. This is an executive action, so I can therefor guarantee it.
62. Eliminate the "not for profit" designation for corporations, churches, schools, trust funds and anything else. Charity is taxable income. If the government wants to subsidize something it can do so accountably, by direct subsidy. This is the only way to "close loopholes"; all of them at once. See also: taxes.html in this directory.
63. A radically simplified tax/welfare system will include eliminating foodstamps. USDA infrastructure to distribute agricultural surpluses may be overhauled to provide a subsidized USDA brand, or not. The distribution of surpluses and so on may be further expedited by government grocery stores in low-income areas, or not. The extremely indigent will have federally provided debit cards via regular banks to regulate the flow of funds on a daily or weekly basis so they don't "sell their foodstamps" or put their SSI check in a slot machine all at once and so on. Similar controls will be created analagous to WIC. The total funds going to poor people will increase. The Texas Lonestar Card or whatever it is is exemplary, but should not carry the stigma of a special card. Also, foodstamps will apply to anything sold in e.g. a 7-11. The proscription of "restaurant food" runs to some rather ridiculous distinctions, particularly if you are homeless. In Texas, for example, a Big Gulp ceases to be groceries when you stick the straw in the lid. The restaurant food distinction is absurd, given than most homeless people don't have kitchens.
64. Require businesses selling gasoline retail to have an easily accessible public restroom. (a lovely bit of civility from Texas State law). Some other type of business should be required to maintain public restrooms so that urban areas are well-covered.
65. This promise is in the hopes that Eric Sheptock shares it with his 4,000 facebook friends, and because it's an existing promise. As President, I will set aside a couple hours every Friday to go panhandling. It's not possible to be a homeless US President, since the gig comes with a crib, but I can still panhandle.
66. April 2011
    The solution to the net neutrality flap is name neutrality. Let carriers throttle packets, as long as the throttling is based on nothing other than the recipient's consumption rate. Throttling software must not be cognizant of whom the customer is getting their packets from.
67. Ensure voting systems accountable to the electorate nationwide, such as demo'ed by my own "votescript" (Internet search in 'groups' [Usenet] for 'votescript'). Invite the Congress to take over the Anthrax and Chandra Levy investigations using the U.S. Capitol Police and any Executive Branch law enforcement capabilities they may wish to avail themselves of, such as the Postal Inspector's forces. In other words, promote law enforcement upon the Executive Branch by another branch, perhaps with some improved latitude for the President to manage strictly executive affairs, such as e.g. promotion issues in the military. The underlying problem addressed here is that the balance of power does not extend to police power, which is excessively concentrated in the Executive Branch. Police power must be balanced for the overall balance of power to remain standing.
68. Eliminate economic status requirements, particularly college degree requirements, from positions and licenses granted by the Federal government. This will be enforced very promptly in the US military as pertains to rank. No place needs to be a pure meritocracy any more than the US Armed Forces. That is, graduating from a service academy guarantees no rank. Such guarantees predate a literate general population, and are thus absurd. Conversely, certain rank may be provided via examination. Federally audit license testing, and allow associations to make up their own tests, if re-testing the licensed is periodic. Land grant universities will probably lose students, but gain some license testing business, for a net loss of gross business. This, however, is conjecture about what are basically market forces. The service academy nominations thing needs a close look to. It should probably be a test and/or a lottery.
69. Plead to the Supreme Court to exclude Florida from the Electoral College for the rest of JEB Bush's governorship (slated to end in 2006) plus 13 years, for systemic election fraud.
70. Investigate and probably prosecute Katherine Harris for election fraud.
71. Investigate and probably prosecute the management of Diebold Corp. and similar for massive election fraud. There is preponderant circumstantial evidence of Diebold/Republican theft of the Congress in 2002, "The Diebold Bounce", and of course the evidence suggests quite compellingly that Kerry would have won a fair 2004 Presidential election by some 5,000,000 votes. Saxby Chambliss, for example, got into the House on the Diebold bounce, but his second election didn't smell quite as bad.
72. Explain and confirm that there are no proprietary software copyrights on election technologies. (Feb 09 See the Omnibus Amendment.)
73. April 2011
    Jim DeMint's main opponent for his current Senate seat was wiped out by election fraud using paperless ES&S voting machines in the SC Dem primary. Noted unlikely candidate Alvin Green got about 10% (ballpark) of the non-ES&S vote, i.e. write-ins and so on, and somewhow won the unaccountable electronic vote, and the primary. How he won is obvious. Fraud. This does not implicate Alvin Green, it implicates Jim DeMint.
74. Maintain a potent, progressive military with current uniformed personnel levels for the forseeable future but sharply curtailed systems aquisitions. Figure 50% of current aquisitions levels or less. Maintain current basic research levels, i.e. DARPA-type stuff. The mythology is that if you can imagine it, the US military has it. That's a valuable mythology, and doesn't require the belief that they have A LOT of it.
75. Another area to look at the military for savings is in the half a million US service personnel stationed overseas. That looks expensive and excessive. Not to mention the over 1000 foreign military bases.
76. Aerial refuel tankers are a good example of a military system the USA can do without replacing for a while. The mission is inately non-defensive, and old planes can still perform the mission. No new air tankers.
77. April 2011
    The real solution to the prior issue is to end line-item appropriations by the legislature. Allow the legislature to budget by agency, and no more detailed than that, and let e.g. the Air Force figure out if they want new tankers, or cruise missiles, or helicopters with the X amount of dollars they are appropriated for their entire agency budget. Earmarks aren't the problem, the problem is everything is an earmark. Rules on Congress are hard to implement. The way to do that is what they did for earmarks, with a pledge, except they need to do the same thing for the actual problem, and perhaps provide a per-legislator un-voted earmarks budget. Congress work like dogs and get nothing useful done. They need to work smarter. Give up line-item appropriating. And stop passing 2700 page bills that are doomed in the courts.

    The budget/appropriations process then becomes, hearing with agency heads on what they did with their money last year. This may detach lobbyists somewhat from the actual line-item appropriators, who are no longer in Congress.

78. Explicitly allow articulating motor-tricycles that lean like a 2-wheeled motorcycle. Honda has made small vehicles with this characteristic. Require that motorcycles have 2 headlights 3 feet apart. These two items will save hundreds of lives a year at current levels of motorcycle ridership, which figures to increase massively. Mar 2011 The headlight thing is easier to implement mechanically than an articulating trike. Peak oil was 2006. More people will be riding bikes.
79. Outlaw the massive campaign funds transfers within political parties. Republicans even gave $300,000 to the independant when Dede Scozzofava dropped out. Icky. Political parties are far more problem than solution.

    The previous item is mere statute, but stuff like that is why it will take a Constitutional convention to rein in the DC power duopoly. The above won't be done by Congress.

80. Conduct or review a variety of politically curious re-autopsies, such as on Nicholas Berg, Lori Klausutis, Vince Foster, Ron Brown, and the guy that was murdered and described as a suicide in Bush's State Department right in headquarters in Foggy Bottom, John J. Kokal, and many others. (Nov 05) There's also now a Colonel in Iraq in the notably odd suicide category. Survey all cases of persons who have died in police custody in the last 10 years.
81. Establish a position of national participatory sports promoter and invite Cal Ripkin and/or Carl Lewis to take their on-going work Federal.
82. Promote human-powered use of existing rail infrastructure, where feasible.
83. Establish a US Executive Organic Demonstration Farm within the Beltsville national agricultural research center and get all food consumed at the White House from that farm, or as close to that ideal as possible, with all deliberate speed and as the maturation times of various crops and livestock permits. The White House culinary staff shall advise on the crops and varieties grown, and culinary considerations of husbandry. Consultancy shall be sought from parties such as the Seed Savers Exchange.
84. Mar 2011 import an assortment of Busa cattle from the Balkans.
85. Abolish Daylight Savings Time. (09) The Hohensee White House will keep 12-month Eastern Standard Time regardless.
86. Convert the Executive Branch to use of open-source computer operating systems, such as Linux, BSD, or Plan 9 From Bell Labs. The military will be ordered to do so. I hope they aren't waiting for orders. Tip to unixphobes: learn the ed editor and turn off all servers on your local box. See also: my cLIeNUX Linux "distribution", particularly the "seedocs".
87. Decree that there shall be no padlocks on any portable toilet in the City of Washington, D.C. I wilol keep a sledgehammer in the Presidential limo in case I see any padlocks on portable toilets.
88. Make all publications of the government available by FTP download from the Internet in effectively non-proprietary data formats. Make all Executive Branch websites lucid when viewed with the Lynx text-based web browser. (Feb 09 Things have improved on this front, and figure to continue to do so.)
89. Implement checks and balances on law enforcement such that no jurisdiction can monopolize the evidence pertaining to any suspicious death. This item is also discussed under GENERALITIES q.v. The word "police" does not occur in the Constitution, and the balance of power needs to be extended to police entities policing each other, federally and between the States. Inter-State this can be limited to matters of wrongful death. Whereas the US is a nation of laws, the Constitutional "sovereignty" of the several States means a State right to lawfully execute, not to murder. I may require that all copyable evidence of any ongoing wrongful death investigation be submitted to the FBI for investigative and records redundancy. The Federal Government has an obligation to guarantee a republican government to the several States. That includes preventing a particular State from implementing a Murder Incorporated. When I leave office no State or branch of the Federal Government will have a monopoly on the investigation of any suspicious death.
90. Manage the White House grounds and monumental DC landscaping organically. (I don't know that they aren't already. When they manure the White House yard it is quite pungent in quite a low-tech way.)
91. Increase personal financial accountability of members of Congress and lobbyists and lobbying organizations. (Feb 09 see the Omnibus Amendment.)
92. FRIT is the Fiscal Responsibility Incentive Tax. Take the percentage of debt service in the federal budget, currently about 20%, multiply by 2, and tack that onto the marginal income tax rate, with a cap of 75%. As the debt is paid off, the marginal income tax rate will drop accordingly. FRIT is Pay-go with teeth that bite the people with the time and resources to care about such things. See also, taxes.html .
93. Generalize the definitions of criminal anti-competitive behavior to better protect small businesses and economic diversity. Lots of things e.g. Microsoft does legally will become illegal, such as kickbacks to system administrators. By the way, business owners need to not allow their employees to take kickbacks from Microsoft, on their own initiative. System admins like to keep people on their networks dysfunctionalized, so they like WinDoS for end users. Don't be such a sucker. Apple went to unix (MacOS X is a BSD unix with an Apple GUI) for a reason. Be advised also that Windows is still MSDOS and not suitable for connection to the Internet. (Jan '06) Bill Gates said recently that security is easy. Bill Gates is a pathological liar. The latest version of MSDOS (Windows 'Vista') was delayed for years by bug-chasing. Here's an example of Gates' vision. Bill Gates says people will some day have a much deeper keyboard and mouse based computer experience. He knows this because he has used a unix shell himself, which is exactly that deeper experience Gates "envisions" with his usual nul poseur "originality", and dates to about 1985 for it's current form. In unix you can cut-paste text between text terminal windows, without a windowing system.
94. Establish a facility, or several, for agricultural experiments with species indiginous to North America, such as moose, cattail, milkweed, and so on. For example, milkweed seed down is lighter and warmer than goose down, and the sap contains about 2% latex. Thomas Edison has a fertilizing regime for goldenrod that got a 12% latex content, and made rubber from goldenrod. Et cetera.
95. Establish a facility, or several, to investigate agricultural husbandry of wetlands. Moose, for example, are a big swamp deer that I personally suspect used to range far further south than currently. The short-horned form of water buffalo are hardy in most of the US. Willows grow in coppice, i.e. grow back from thier trunk when topped, and I suspect, in standing water, and are of interest as a source of biomass. Not to mention stuff coppices were used for for centuries, such as firewood, wickerwork, etc. Et cetera.
96. The US has a sophisticated seedbank program, but I'm not aware of any genetic diversity protections for livestock. A program of this nature would coordinate well with the proposed White House Organic Farm and Barbeque Pit.
97. "No Child Lugging Books" will be a matching books program. For every public school student up through grade 9, the federal government will provide a cheaply made (paperback, newsprint) copy of each school textbook the particular student will require, and the cheap federal copy will become the property of the student. The books will still be selected by the States or whoever, but the publisher must also place all matched books online in their entirety to qualify for the purchase of the student-owned copies. School children will therefor have a sense of tangibly owning their own education, and won't have to lug a backpack full of books around. There will be one hardback copy of each book so replicated in each desk in each classroom. The hardbacks should last longer, but the given copies will be more numerous, being given one each year per class slot.
98. Promote gutenberg.org. They need more engineering stuff, y'all.
99. Uphold the contractual obligations of the USA while allowing certain bad investments to lose their value abruptly, such as companies constituting an excessive capacity to manufacture weapons, Halliburton, and so on.
100. Ensure that transportation policy emphasize pedestrians and other human-power transport first, then mass transit, then roads. I will encourage buses, in particular, publicly and privately operated. The most important public transportation system in the world is in Bogota, Columbia. It is all buses, and people raise hell if they have to wait 3 minutes on some routes.

     Running a bus line will become a right of a business entity wishing to do so, assuming reasonable safety regulation compliance. A useful counterexample to this is bus service around the University of Maryland, which is designed to subsidize the middle class at the expense of those most in need of public transportation, and thus most beneficial to society as a whole to recieve such services. The 86 Metrobus route in particular is not allowed to visit the College Park subway station, which is a strikingly arrogant perversion of the politics of public thoroughfares.

101. Establish a cabinet-level auditing office, with a general permanent mandate and authorization to eliminate corruption and improve efficiency throughout the Executive Branch via creative random audits of anything of interest for such audits.
102. Eliminate parasitic "protectionist" tariffs, farm and other subsidies to the advantaged. Do what Reagan said, not what he did, and strictly limit subsidies to benefit the truly needy, i.e. put money where it is cost-effective for the populace, such as immunization programs and so on. Welfare is for poor people. Agricultural subsidies, for example, should be capped at levels at which they will help family farms only.
103. There is a very healthy move in the US to boutique agriculture. I believe this is the future of the family farm. Farming commodity crops is probably for agribusiness. The thing then is to protect, patronize, and promote boutique farms.
104. Require all products bodily ingested by humans, such as cigarettes, have their ingredients listed as is now the case for most foods. This will include products with long-standing exemptions from such requirements, such as COCA Cola. The regulation to list ingredients on medicines wiped out narcotics-based "patent medicines", and should have a positive overall effect on cigarettes and what is in them. Eliminate the current parasitic relationship between the government and tobacco company fines. By the way, the way I quit smoking for a year now is to chew tobacco. I chew Red Man, and chew small quantities I can swallow rather than spitting, thus avoiding horrors like spit cups. This is still poison, but I suspect it's much less harmful than smoking. It undoubtably is less harmful to me given the condition my lungs were in a year ago. They are far from healed a year later. The move to put cigarettes under the FDA is a plus, but it seems they're over-complicating it. Just make them list their ingredients.
105. Outlaw kickbacks to doctors on prescriptions, with draconian penalties. Re-outlaw consumer advertising of prescription (and proposed self-prescription) drugs. Actually, extend the laws against advertising prescription drugs to cable TV.
106. Closely investigate a legal doctrine of reduced liability proportional to pre-existing risk. That is, childbirth and old age, for example, are risky. That risk in negligence cases pertaining to people at high pre-existing risk is to be taken into account somehow. Wrongful loss of life is to be pro-rated to 80 years, or ten years older than the decedent, which ever is greater. Or something like that. This may be an element of reducing the cost of healthcare in the USA.
107. Improve employability and general functionalization services to the homeless, literacy programs generally, and many other areas currently exhibiting barbaric and outrageously costly neglect. Another area that I personally find emblematic of the neglect the USA bestows upon it's helpless, my pet peeve if you will, is the condition of the average public basketball backboard. A decent outdoor basketball goal is a very cost-effective thing. Expect to see full regulation-dimensions rectangular backboards with straight rims appearing when I am President, starting around the White House. Maybe even nets.
108. Solicit involvement of professional athletes in adult literacy outreach programs. My personal experience with illiterate homeless men is they need a Ray Lewis or similar to help them with their phonics. The NBA read to Achieve program for example, should target adults.
109. Institute a sentencing premium on illiteracy for jail and prison terms, which can be overcome by learning to read while incarcerated. Make the premium greater for shorter incarcerations, up to 2 to 1 for sentences of less than 6 months.
110. Reduce disaster funding for semi-normal occurances like hurricanes along the Gulf of Mexico. (Oct '05) For example, FEMA flood insurance in the storm surge range should be capped at about $20,000--. For example, Trent Lott can rebuild his $3 mil mansion on the water on FEMA money if he had insurance, but if it gets blown away again he can only get $20k for it. You could call this "The Cabana Way".
111. Closely review the remedy ruling in the Microsoft anti-trust case decided by Judge Collen Kollar-Kotelly. My current thinking is that she failed her mandate to provide a remedy. I had suggested reducing Microsoft's copyright protections to 5 years.
112. Emphasize North American and Western Hemisphere resources in US energy policy. That is, reduce or de-emphasize dependance on oil and LNG tankers. Natural gas looks like a big help with this lately. THere seems to be a lot more of it in the US than previously thought. This can be via the duty of tonnage mentioned herein, giving a lower rate to land freight including pipelines.
113. Emphasize the Internet and other non-traditional channels in education. Formal education is a contradiction of terms. Also emphasize sports, gardening, and the arts. The teachers' unions and/or public schools are certified failures, and were of very little use to me after 3rd grade. That's is theirs to correct. I have education to worry about. gutenberg.org is wonderful. A bit weak in physics, but wonderful. I DL a bunch of stuff from there, and I read it.
114. The validity of the Patent Office is to be subjected to fundamental review. In the mean time, certain areas of technology are grossly and absolutely inappropriate for patent protection. Genetics and computer software should not be patentable at all. There is an Amendment to this effect suggested below. (See USA, Take 3) "business practice" patents don't thrill me either. They seem like a sign of an atrophied industrial base.
115. Foster a weekly blues jam and bar-b-que at the White House in the summer. The Office of the President will provide the duct tape. Eat Duct Tape; 200,000 Roadies Can't Be Wrong.
116. Manage my legislative agenda like an open source software project, with input from the general population via an FTP site and/or web wiki.
117. Make public spaces in DC available to the National Arboretum and Beltville research farm for planting and long term observation of ornamental, fruit and shade tree and shrub varieties developed or preserved at those facilities. Promote such plantings in low-income DC in particular. The program to develop a blight-proof American Chestnut tree should find fertile ground in DC, for example. (July 09 There are blight resistant elms around the White House. Kudos to whoever.)

     Mar 2011 Look at DC on Google Maps, sattelite view. Northest needs to be as green as Northwest.

     May 2011
     DC needs a local city bus complex at the old convention center site. When I'm President there will be federal money for such a thing. Buses are green. Buses are efficient. Note my other remark q.v. about Bogota. Almost every bus in the city proper should meet at one site, and the convention center site is screaming to be that site.

118. I am a personal fan of the National Zoo. I was quoted in the cover story "Gorilla Groupies" in the Washington City Paper years ago. Problems at the NZP will be attended to. The Zoo is in part a victim of it's own fabulous historical successes. The first white tiger in the US, Mohini Rewa, was a gift to the US from India. Now you can be killed by one of Moe's offspring in your own mansion in Vegas, or in it's cage in a Florida zoo, or at a petting zoo in the Midwest. A new mission may be in order. For example, the national zoo of the USA could be more North American in focus. Elk, moose, turkeys, dugong, manatee, coyote, paw-paw, chestnut, indigenous azaleas.... such things are as bizarre to most zoo-goers as a white tiger, and yet are indigenous to North America, and even to DC. The current plan for demonstration elephant breeding in downtown DC is a textbook lack of vision and sense of mission. Smithsonian people are quite full of themselves. Nothing a zoo does in terms of artistic display and clever signage compares to, for example, a prairie dog. Meanwhile, it is an absolute scandal that there isn't a bus or something up the length of the zoo. Rock Creek to Connecticut Avenue is over 200 feet of elevation change, quite the tough hike for fat Americans. (Jan '06) The Zoo has progressed. They have a Przywalski's Horse, for example. And a petting zoo. Nigerian Dwarf Goats. This is the former USA, politically, but it's still a wonderland.
119. I support statutes and regulations that result in a decrease in the gross bulk of statutes and regulations for the sake thereof, such as more use of parametric "schedules" such as the well-known "GS-16" schedule of government salaries. A quick glance at the US Code suggests that it could easily be smaller by a factor of 4 or more. Obfuscation is parasitic. (mar 09) Just in terms of all the backreferences in the UCS, it could be about 1/3 smaller. That stuff goes in the USCA. But then the law itself could be much more compact. taxes.html, by the way, is 3 pages that replace about 3,500.
120. The Supreme Court decision in Heller v. D.C. is the camel's nose under the tent wall of federal control of State gun rights. "USA, Take 3" fixes that. I call Topic 2.B in USA, Take 3 "The Antonin Scalia LARGE-PRINT Second Amendment". See Topic 12 also.
121. Reassess the health risks of cyclamates and other sugar alternatives versus aspartame. Note that Donald Rumsfeld was a key lobbyist for aspartame.
122. Abolish diplomatic immunity outside embassies, and transit to the borders from embassies. The US doesn't have royals, and doesn't acknowledge them before the law on our soil to any extent, except heads of state and other modern civil officers. (mar 09) The Constitution itself says that foreign embassadors who get in trouble with the law go straight to the Supreme Court. Fine. Just so long as we understand that they are still subject to the same laws as you and me.
123. Change the names of the Ronald Reagan White Elephant and Internationalist Boondoggle Center, Reagan National Airport, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, and the Herbert Hoover Building. The Reagan Building might be a nice thing to name after Jimmy Carter, for example.
124. Destroy the LBJ Memorial. LBJ has JFK's limo scrubbed. It's time to scrub LBJ. (mar 09) The book "The Texas Connection" is a good reference on this matter.
125. Increase compensation to Federal elected officials. Congresspersons should make at least $300,000 per year. The current situation is like the elitist "amateurism" scam prevalent in track and field before Carl Lewis, and the myriad 'volunteerism' scams throughout DC and elsewhere. The fastest way to do this may be to encourage the States to pay their representatives, who work FOR the States, by the way, large honoraria.
126. Closely scrutinize zoning laws. New Orleans is a nice place to try abolishing zoning laws, for example. So is DC. Particularly Anacostia, which is the insular section of DC on the east side of the Anacostia River. A new zoning law is an uncompensated taking. One idea here is to make it illegal for any area to be precluded from use as a residence. This idea is to make it more problematic to pollute, create hazards, and to help reduce dependance on transportation. This may also have side-benefits for the homeless. Rather than making factories and so on uninhabitable, an officer of the operating company should be required to reside with his/her family at such locations, such as Union Carbide's facility in Bhopal, but that is a bridge too far. Allowing any human to live in a factory might have some preventative value, though, and is efficient.
127. In view of the previous, separate Anacostia from the City of Washington, while leaving it in the District of Columbia, at least as far as zoning laws are concerned. In particular, as an experiment, make any class of zoning in Anacostia a legal residence for up to 3 people per toilet at any particular real property, and void all existing City of Washington zoning ordinances in Anacostia.
128. Set up a history ftp/website in the Education department
129. Keep America's shipyards open at a low level with ships with potential civilian or humanitarian roles. The US doesn't currently need new submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers and so on. Freighters, troop ships and so on can continue to be built. They might be nuclear powered, but will be lightly armed, if at all. An oil-spill response ship might be worth consideration. Another possibility is a floating marine biology college. An oceanic debris cleaner of some kind perhaps. Suggestions welcome. (july 09) There are 43000 pieces of floating plastic junk in every square mile of the world's oceans. Is it becoming economical to fish for that?
130. Provide a low-cost clinic option besides a hospital to every county in the USA (one rare good idea in the Republicon (2004) platform).
131. One immigration rule for all countries (per Al Sharpton). This is part of the complete breakfast of simplifying the US Code and the Code of Federal Regulations, as well as being a matter of fundamental racial fairness. This does not preclude special control of Mideasterners, who are currently worthy of special treatment for security reasons.
132. Promise exhibition MLB baseball games in Cuba if they adopt a constitution with real elections and so on.
133. Heavily tax mineral resources extracted from Federal land. Distribute said monies to the regions said resources were extracted from. Oil money, for example, should remain in the Gulf region to a much larger extent than it does. Make taxes on mineral resources indexed to current market prices of those resources.

     GENERALITIES

1. Be billions wise and millions foolish. Do the things the McCain campaign made fun of, like studies of ticks on grizzly bears for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but also watch the Fed and so on like a hawk, where trillions go awry, which the John McCains of the world like to look the other way from. This relates to earmarks. Earmarks are small, and are therefor not a big problem. One Congressman said he never requested an earmark he wouldn't want enscribed on his tombstone. Small, even if it is weird, is often beautiful.
2. Make my life as President extremely public, to the greatest extent possible consistant with national security. The adult public will be able to monitor most of my personal activity via live motion pictures. A Presidential webcam, so to speak, with a general and an adult outlet. Big Brother is already here. I give the people of the USA the option of keeping an unblinking eye on Big Brother if they are so inclined. (Nov '05) I think about this a lot. I don't know to what extent this is actually practical, but I think I can guarantee a 24/7 video feed from the Oval Office and main Cabinet meeting room, for example.
3. Marriage is not a federal concern. (The country seems to have already adopted this idea since I proposed it.) The proposed tax formula will provide positive taxes (back to the person) to dependants, not married couples per se. Children and the homeless will get the same subsidy per each. The homeless are society's children. The homeless will recieve a direct subsidy, while childrens' subsidies will go to their guardians, in the normal case. Personal social and philisophical issues are a huge area the federal government can beneficially recuse itself from, and it bears mention that such issues are not mentioned in the Constitution. Monogamous marriage may or may not be the backbone of American society, but it is not the backbone of government, and certainly not the Federal government.
4. The legal tradition of the USA has some fundamental quirks going back to English Common Law that need fixing. Malice, intent, custodial relationships, sanity and other subtleties are sentencing issues, not corpus delecti. That is, intent is not part of the crucial body of a crime. In the jargon of computer programming, and Charles Moore (the Forth programming language) in particular, the criminal legal system is 'mis-factored'. "What" and "why" are beneficially separable, and this is a fundamental and systemic departure from English legal tradition. This tectonic problem can realistically be addressed within the confines of the Federal criminal code, or possibly the military code, and let the States observe the effects derived.
5. The US military will be excercized in the third world to project sustenance. That is, when the global situation allows, the US military will be used as a variant or branch of the Peace Corps. The courage of the military will be required to sustain losses to disease and to operate substantially unarmed in theaters where the US military is a semi-welcome guest and the mosquito, tse-tse fly and AIDS virus are the brutal de-facto overlords. Sustenance-projection exercizes in Africa may also be an important return stop for abused troops, such as those now in Iraq. (Oct '05) This item would have set a useful precedent and advisor cadre for the response to hurricane Katrina. (Nov 05) Jack Murtha alleges that a huge proportion of the force in Iraq is emotionally damaged. This is undoubtable. A buffer tour, possibly shorter than a normal tour, in some place like Sudan and/or Alaska is to be closely considered for troops returning from Iraq.
6. There is no specific labor policy as such at this time. In theory I do not support the distinction between labor and management, nor the distinction between business and consumer. Both distinctions are elitist. Labor interests should note my positions which are not explicitly labor initiatives such as the elimination of degree requirements from all positions licensed by the Federal government, the elimination of various subsidies to various sectors other than the working man/woman, the possible huge increase in manpower and facilities to the INS via the de-commissioning of the CIA, the improved immigration enforcement possible in the absence of a corrupt and bizarre drug war, the biometric identification of all immigrants, the reduction in impetus of Latin Americans to emigrate to the US in the absense of a corrupt drug war in their home regions, substantive measures to reduce health costs, the top tax rate of 40%+, and other policies that help the working man, woman or family substantively, but not necessarily directly or explicitly.
7. Guarantee a veto on any and every bill submitted to me longer than 49 pages in length, thus fostering clarity, modularity, efficiency and atomicity in legislation, and autonomy between the Executive and Legislative branches. The reader may note that this entire platform is in sync with such a policy.
8. The right-wing talking point of 'activist judges' is a good clue to something America needs; a more activist Judiciary. The ACLU is the former USA's de-facto federal public defender. They need collegial competition from a branch of the Federal government, probably in the Judiciary. There is a dysfunctional power slush-fund between the Executive and Legislative Branches, particularly as relates to the ludicrously misnamed intelligence community. The President needs more lattitude to coordinate the Executive Branch, while having less ability to warp extra-Executive functions such as special prosecutors. Special prosecuters should be a normal function of the Judiciary, i.e. not so special. Clarifying the balance of power between the three main Branches of government would benefit from a more active Judiciary, and greater police powers for the Legislative and Judicial Branches. Executive law enforcement agencies should have a rock-paper-scissors relationship with Judicial and Legislative police, perhaps expanded from the US Capitol Police (Legislative) and US Marshalls (Judicial?). (July 09: this item led to the Advocary College in my proposed Amendment.)
9. I oppose capital punishment. It's not cost-effective, and is distracting to Governors and Presidents, particularly those such as George Walker Bush who so richly deserve it. An execution, however, cannot remotely repair the damage caused by a George Dubya Bush, a John Wayne Gacy, or even a perpetrator of a single deliberate vehicular homicide such as Laura Welch Bush.
10. Enforce the law with emphasis on the most priviledged facing the closest scrutiny. This is my affirmative action policy. I am quite fatigued with rich white men like Skull and Bones (WH Taft, Bush 41, Bush, Kerry) giving me a bad name. I do not hope to abolish wealth. I hope to require it to exhibit some class or be abruptly impoverished. Wealth is a valuable incentive. A static stratification is not. If the big trees never die, you are not in a living forest. The US economy needs some lightning strikes, particularly to clear out areas that are natural business seedbeds like software and small farms, but not a huge forest fire. I don't have any major beef I'm aware of with IBM, UPS and numerous other large companies. The former USA needs an overhaul, but the engine block is more than salvageable. (Feb 09) As of this writing, it DOES look like the US economy is due for a forest fire. So be it. I WILL do what Ronald Reagan SAID he would do. Welfare is for poor people, not banks and GM.
11. I will conduct my personal relationship with the District of Columbia as an example of America's relationship with the world. The current federal relationship with DC is neglectful, arrogant and parasitic. DC Statehood people are kooks, but DC should benefit much more from the federal presence than it does. Quite telling. The continued operation of Reagan National Airport is lethal arrogance, and strikingly well-named as such. With a smaller Air Force One, National and Andrews could switch roles. I will work to make every corner of the District of Columbia burst into bloom in every way. For example, DC has a worse-than-scandalous adult illiteracy rate, and a wealth of influential religious, sports and entertainment figures to become involved in correcting that national disgrace, among others. I am opposed to a new baseball statium in DC, however. DC needs a triple-A club in RFK, which is what I've said all along, and is basically what they have as of this writing with the Expos. You don't create a beloved pro sports tradition by fiat. (July 05) The Nats are in first place in the NL East. They are drawing well, and an argument can be made that the magic of RFK Stadium contributes positively to the Nats' success. I have proposed a low-cost soccer stadium so that DC United has it's own field. They draw well, but less than the Nats. Switching the field at RFK from soccer to baseball is a temporary measure. Arguments for a new stadium for the Nats are, as best I can see, rooted entirely in corrupt motives. (Jan '06) My original position on this issue continues to be validated by the bad waltz between MLB and The District. A new stadium is going to cost twice the original estimate. The city should pledge a new college-grade soccer stadium for DC United (the soccer franchise) and $100M for improvements to RFK, and tell MLB to take it or leave it. July 09 We now see why old man Lerner has so much money. He's a mizer. What an abomination the Nats are. If we had a AAA club in RFK, they'd out-draw the Nats. Want to see what happens when people ignore me? Go to a Nats game. Also see the bus terminal item q.v.
12. I will try to do things in a way that displacements of workforces have a gains to go with the losses. The term for this would be assisted workforce migration. Allowing CIA employees to migrate to the INS, for example. Another example is the reduction of need for police that should accrue from civilization of the country's barbaric drug laws. The currrent prohibition means America has too many cops and corrections officers. Other initiatives in this platform indicate that the USA also has a severe dearth of border control personnel, and a huge dearth of bus drivers and other surface public transport personnel, so there is an assisted workforce migration possible. Cops will be offered free training for a CDL to drive buses, for example.
13. The Federal bipartisan "Republicrat" establishment is largely held together by a mortal desperation to keep a large volume of hideous secrets from the American people. As a fanciful example, the whole JFK/Bay of Pigs story falls together quite nicely if you place George "Poppy" HW Bush, our 41st President, in the sniper's nest in the Texas Schoolbook Depository. That is, if you make him the primary shooter in the JFK assassination. The history of secrets is that the reality tends to be many times worse than a private individual can imagine. Many such stories lie unexposed in classified materials. This is the most important thing the establishment loses if I become President. All those fabulously dirty secrets. This is how I will make my Presidency an outrageous smash success in a matter of weeks, if not hours. I'm not in the club. Many prominent Democrats are. My guess is that the last President with no shared skeletons in his closet was Carter, and perhaps Eisenhower before that. The government club's relationship with the populace is parasitic. Secrets are what you keep from your enemies, and the current establishment, we see in the news, is to a huge extent the people's enemy. I'm not.
14. (Feb 09) But, It's WORSE than that. Not only are they keeping secrets from the population they are supposed to serve, they now TOTALLY ignore the will of the people. Obama is just Bush in blackface. May 2011 Did I say Obama is just Bush in blackface in 2009? Yes, I did. And the Emperor's New Birth Certificate is laughable. PDF. Case closed. I ain't much, but the date on my birth certificate is only in one color of "ink".
15. The President is the central strategic awareness agent of the country. I will have a national security triumvirate to advise me on urgent security matters, who will take reports from the 14 strinfo agencies besides the CIA existing in the Executive Branch. Said triumvirate will all have interrupt-capable access to the President and Vice President. The USA is overcentralized in a lot of ways, none worse than the CIA.
16. Overcentralization bears it's own item here. The Senate is a funky bunch of old coots that can form a majority from Senators representing about 17% of the US population. Joe Biden for example, is from Delaware, which has only one Representative in the House. And now he's VP. I think it's worse than the Founding Fathers envisioned, since I don't think they envisioned California, but I think they expected it to be somewhat the way it is as a deterent to overcentralization. The best way to defend one's self from Senate cranks and plants is to keep the central government small. I believe the Senate needs some minor tweaks, which are in my Amendment, but the real solution is to keep the federal government modest. It isn't. My first instinct is to just abolish the Senate, but the Founding Fathers weren't fools. They wanted to instill a permanent distaste for a large central government. California would amaze them. GW Bush would not.
17. The various main departments of the Executive Branch will be represented by a cabinet of some nine primary officials, representing the following topics of governance, and recieving reports from the pertinent existing departments; Audits, Commerce, Culture, Defense, Diplomacy, Health, Justice, Resources, Funding. Diplomacy will basically be the State Department as is, so the Diplomacy advisor will be the Secretary of State, but other primary advisors may represent an agglomeration of existing departments. Culture will be education, the arts, science, the FCC, and so on. A routine periodic "cabinet meeting" will be those 9 primary officials, the President, and perhaps the Vice President.
18. The better tone of American foreign policy was set by the Monroe Doctrine the better part of two centuries ago. The Monroe Doctrine has some very prominent misinterpretations, however. I believe the correct interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine is that the USA must consider free nations it's allies, and less than free countries less than nations. In a sentence, A nation is a secular democracy, and other areas are primitive countries and regions needing help to become or join the community of real nations. This latter category currently includes Israel, and to my knowledge, the entire Arabian Peninsula, as examples. My policy is to attempt to side with nature in all things, as best one can interpret nature, and to favor such regions evolving into nations, as is clearly the long-term trend of human history.
19. In political economic terms I'm a social capitalist. The US had it right prior to Reagan. Don't meddle in business, and soak the rich. High marginal tax rates are not socialism, they're not as meddlesome. As far as regulation, it should be clear, effective, and succinct. See my 3 page tax code as an example. You want that. You want me to do that to the entire US Code. Obama IS a socialist. Annoying, ain't it? I favor repeal of Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank, and restoring the essence of Glass Steagall.

    My tax proposal makes me the only conservative in DC. I have the only plan to get the USA out of debt. Everybody else claiming to be a conservative, and opposing higher taxes, is a Reagan Robot, and they all need to be marched off a cliff.

20. On healthcare, I could go public option, but single-payer is unAmerican socialism. As a public option, maybe a capped Medicaid for all or something. There is a death panel somewhere in any health care system. That's why it's such a charged issue. I'd look into caps on public coverage.
21. AUg 09, and Democrats are in power. Republicans are therefor in high fiscal restraint dudgeon. They are eloquent, well researched, and utterly devoid of credibility. There are about 3 people in DC that can say "small government" with any credibility. Me, Ron Paul, and I don't know who else.
22. (Feb 09) This platform is ancillary to "USA, Take 3", but together they form the change America voted for from both sides of the red/blue duopoly. This is change. Obama is not. Spread this around, READ this and the Amendment. The revision will NOT be televised.
23. Neither major party represents the center. I do. Arrest Bush. Deport Obama. I don't know who would be better than me at always doing what is best for the American people as a whole. So I'm available.

    Rick Hohensee
    presidentbyamendment.com