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Implement the Fair Tax and Repeal the 16th Amendment: You can kill this notion with one simple full-page ad in every newspaper in America: Put a huge, sinister-looking photo of Henry Kravis' face on it. Over the Kravis face put this text: "This is Henry Kravis. He buys companies and eliminates jobs. For this he earns $500 million a year and pays as much as $125 million in federal taxes. Under the national sales tax plan that's proposed as a replacement for income tax, he would pay $23 million in federal taxes and your taxes would go up. If you think that's a Fair Tax, you're wrong." Repealing the 16th Amendment goes here also because you can't institute the Fair Tax as it is written without eliminating the income tax, and to do so the 16th Amendment wouldn't HAVE to be repealed--it ALLOWS Congress to levy income tax but does not REQUIRE it--but they want the amendment gone anyway. Uhh...you guys know amendments of repeal can themselves be repealed, right?
No Unrelated Amendments: This SOUNDS good but it would bring Washington to a standstill, which I think is the point. I can see it for major initiatives--repeal of Glass-Steagall, which was tacked onto another bill, comes to mind--but if you're writing a defense bill that puts $150 million into bringing troops to Fort Bragg, throwing in another $2 million to upgrade the Fayetteville water plant isn't an unreasonable use of the appropriations process.
Congressional Term Limits: This would do one major thing: turn Congress into a body of people who could afford to buy their own seats. It's very expensive to run for Congress the first time, especially in a primaried election. The people who own their own congressmen don't want to buy new ones over and over. Besides...this is an effort to change Congress into a body of "citizen legislators." Fuck that. I don't want a citizen doctor. I don't want a citizen electrician. I want people who know how to take my appendix out, wire my outlets, change my clutch and get the viruses off my computer doing those things, as do you. Politics is the same way. You need very specific skills--negotiation and leadership--to get me the kind of legislation I deserve. I want PROFESSIONAL politicians doing my politicking for me, and the people who really know how to be politicians are rare individuals indeed.
It would do one minor thing: concentrate control of America into the hands of a few big-state congressmen. Anyone who's got the chops to be a good politician also has the chops to be a good corporate executive, which explains the revolving door between Congress and the corporate world. Let's consider Idaho. It hosts the headquarters of two major corporations: Micron Technology, a semiconductor company; and JR Simplot, an agricultural concern. There are quite a few small and medium companies there, but the kinds of outfits that attract the people you want to be senators just don't exist there. The same is true with places like Montana and North Dakota. Back to Idaho: They need to pull two Senators and two Representatives on a fairly regular basis to send to DC, and the people who would be good at this don't WANT to do it. I mean, you could probably go to St. Maries and drag Jack Buell (he owns one of the biggest truck lines in Idaho and he's County Commissioner for Life in Benewah County) kicking and screaming to DC, but for what? That guy is happy where he is. If you sent him to DC it would probably kill him.
Fuck term limits.
Abolish the Department of Education: You're going to have to show me a reason to do this besides "they won't let them teach the Bible!" The problem isn't that these people want THEIR children to be taught the Bible in public schools but that they want YOUR children taught it, and in the way they want it taught. There's a place in town where you can take your children to be taught the Bible. It's called a church. Take them there.
Medical Malpractice Tort Reform: I really don't think people are suing doctors because they served vanilla custard instead of chocolate at dinner. Yeah, the abusive cases are fun to talk about, but the press's insistence on running those stories camouflages the real problem--not all doctors need to be practicing. Anyone got any stories of people on dialysis because they went in to get their left kidney removed and the doctor took out the right one instead? (Which really means both came out since the left one didn't stop needing to be removed.)
No lifetime salary or benefits for Congress: Congressmen are on the Federal Employees Retirement System, and they pay into Social Security like any other federal employee--which, of course, they are. Snopes is your friend.
Congress shall not exempt itself: Well...on the laws that apply to Congress this would be fine. However! Most of the laws Congress passes can NOT apply to Congress. Imagine telling the Congress they had to obey the hours of service rules for airline pilots. Certainly all the airline pilots in Congress must follow that law...but how many airline pilots are in Congress? I would imagine the number is low-it's hard to campaign for Congress while you're flying an airplane eight hours a day.
An official language of the United States: Żeby zapewniać sprawiedliwość, oficjalny język Stanów Zjednoczonych miał być Język polski.
Drill Here, Drill Now: I'm certain the thirty drilling companies in Fort Worth would be overjoyed to know they drill neither here nor now. Why the morans who wrote the latest contract on America can't just come right out and say they want to turn the surface of ANWR into a pegboard is beyond me.
Interstate Health Insurance Competition and Free Market: Another two-fer, and easy to kill. Most people have credit cards, and most people are paying rates of interest on those cards FAR in excess of their state's usury laws. As an example, Idaho has a state usury law of 12 percent, but if an Idahoan applies for a Home Depot consumer credit card, she will probably receive a card with an interest rate of 25.99 percent or more. This is because credit card banks are allowed to charge interest according to the laws of the state they're chartered in--which naturally means all credit card banks are chartered in the most expensive states in America. The same thing will happen with health insurance--the health insurance companies will simply find the most expensive state in the nation to issue health insurance from, and relocate to it. This'll be a hell of a boon to West Virginia (the highest-rate state because coal miners are expensive to insure, and WV has a lot of them) but not so hot if you live in Hawaii (the lowest-rate state because living in paradise is good for you).
Enumerated Powers Act: if you thought America employed too many lawyers on Congressional staffs now, wait until they have to Constitutionally justify regulating things that weren't even invented when the Founding Fathers were alive. I really don't think Benjamin Franklin anticipated needing Part 101 of the Federal Aviation Regulations (it covers kites) and Jefferson never would have dreamed of writing a law covering "fuel venting and exhaust emission requirements for turbine engine powered airplanes" (part 34 of the FARs).
Birth-right Citizenship: Obama slam. They're also trying to outlaw "anchor babies."
Defund Activist Groups (ACORN): They want to remove from the Federal budget all funding for "groups and organizations." You know, until the 2008 election season none of these people ever heard of ACORN, who'd been in business for thirty years. Now they're evil incarnate? If we wrote a similar one, "Defund Faith Based Organizations" they would scream bloody murder.
Nuclear energy: There are three problems with nuclear energy that make this a nonstarter: no one wants a nuclear plant in his hometown, no one wants a nuclear waste storage site in his hometown, and no one wants them to take the waste from the plant they didn't want to the waste dump they didn't want through their hometown either. And unfortunately, EVERYWHERE is someone's hometown.
Enforce Existing Immigration Law: They don't do this now? I'm not paying out of MY hard-earned tax dollars for a Border Patrol and an Immigration Service?
Balanced Budget Amendment: We can balance the budget without an amendment. All we need to do is remove anything Republicans like from it. States can balance their budgets because the federal government subsidizes some of their needs. The Chinese subsidize the federal government's needs--at 4.5 percent yield.
Vote no on Cap and Trade: I like Cap and Trade. So does big business. The advantage of cap and trade is it gives polluters an in$entive to get their shit together.
Repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913: Yesterday we went into some detail about Jonathan Krohn's vanity-press book. In it he says only conservatives are cognizant of history, which explains why they want to repeal the Federal Reserve Act. It was enacted in the wake of numerous financial panics, including the Panic of 1907 in which J.P. Morgan propped up the American banking system with his own money. J.P. Morgan is in a hole in the ground, and no one has come forth to take his place.
I can't think of anything on this list that should come to fruition.
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