The WHAT WOULD YOU DO? thread

I think one of the first things I would do is institute a 'loser pays' system in the courts. If you sue somebody and lose, you pay their expenses to defend themselves.

Impose term limits--2 terms--

Send Congressmen and Senators back home, where their offices are open to their constituents. Of course, since they don't need two homes, and all that travel--cut their pay almost in half. Buy a huge apartment complex for them, when they have to come to town for votes and such. You know, like one many of us have lived in--

Lower my salary by half.

Delete Congress' special healthcare provisions. They get healthcare just like everyone else--which may change their views on the VA and private healthcare--and subsequent votes.

Push hard for alternative fuel--

Begin phasing in earth friendly standards for industry.

Drop pretenses with Saudi Arabia and China--Speak honestly, and not intentionally confrontationally--but stop looking the other way. Address Human Rights issues, and SA's behavior on a frequent basis in speeches at the UN. Change MFN status, but in a manner hopeful of them joining Human Rights standards, at which time, it may be reinstated.

Make tax rates across the board. 5 or 7% of all income for individuals making more than 60,000 (for a family of four). Some tax cuts for industry/ business, based on how much they spend on earth-friendly standards, and innovations in healthcare coverage or retirement plans for their employees.

Strengthen OSHA and DOL to care for workers, and negate the need for Unions, in an effort to make the US more competitive.

Establish a fair working wage, with a DOL subdepartment, constantly doing field work to see how families manage, and meeting needs, following trends, and staying current.

Fight ridiculous, inflated CEO salaries to bring about a choice of industry to lower these salaries. Maybe add a tax incentive to bring about this choice.

Stop pro forma Humanitarian Aid--and give on an as needed basis.

Put the world on notice that we are backing away from the Global Cop role. Inform the UN that we believe that is their role, make sure our UN dues reflect our fair share, and keep them current.

Develop cordial working relationships with other world leaders, let them know we are assimilating into the global structure, but are paring back our dominant role.

(This was fun.)

I would outlaw PACs and lobbyists.

You made me think of something Sofia. I propose that states have the authority to set the salary, benefits, and term limits for the congressmen and senators representing their particular state. No more automatic cushy lifetime pension if you manage to make it to Washington.

One thing I would do IMMEDIALTY is cut space exploration benefits and spending allowances by 70%. That would give me a starting amount of about 70 million + a year.

With that money I would lower the teacher : student ratio allowances. Produce more publicly funded teacher assistant programs and create a new popultion to school ratio that was almost twice as high as the one we have now.

Being a nurse , the other things that are close to my heart are issues of healthcare. Honestly... I would reverse the pay scale for nurses , lower it for doctors and supplement the differences with savings and investment bonuses. Nurses would NOT start out in the lower percentile of pay rates. Doctors would not start out in the higher. N urses do much more d*mn work on thier feet in one year then 60% of doctors do in a lifetime.
Emergency room staff would have exceptions to this rule.
I would also create more publicly funded nursing continuing education courses and government funded investment possibilities for those who took them.

I am with sofia when it comes to regulating taxes. That is a thing I would tackle in the first week in office too. With THAT money I would specifically put it to public funded projects like it SHOULD be going now. Streets , libraries , policing , sidewalks, public transportation , landscaping , tree conservation etc... everything we THINK our tax dollars are going to now. And nothing else. That would apply in the upwards of 20 million MORE a year. Taking our tax dollars out of political advertisements , personal investments by the government employees etc... would make the things we rely on on a daily basis actually RELIABLE.

And... sorry folks... I would regulate the speed ALL street legal vehicles could go. DAMNIT... this just seems so simple to me. To save lives on the road ways. stop speeding. You cant make people stop speeding so stop PROVIDING them with ways to speed. If the legal , across the board speedlimit is 75...why can I buy a car that can top out at 280 ??????!!!!!!!
Why do we have to spend so much money into trying to create the perfect high impact safe vehicle if we can only go 75? F*NG Duh.... All cars would top out at 80. Period. End of story. Caught driving one that goes higher on public roads? Big azz ticket..that goes right into public safety budgets. After we removed all that extra spending from the automotive companies ( wich comes from tax dollars as well ) I would place it in more public programs. ( wich ones... not too sure) But there would be more since people wouldnt be dying at such high rates...

> steps off soapbox<
That is my outline for the first week in office. I think after that i would make a bullett proof bubble for me to live in. Hehehe... I wouldnt be too popular.

Divert CEO salaries towards labor, knock them down a notch, teach them that a happy workforce equals more production, thus keeping the bottom line, without the need for layoffs. How many cars does one CEO need? If I had god powers, I would just snap my fingers and make everyone in the world see sense.

I'd create a law that would make it illegal for ANY corporate CEO to earn more than a certain multiplication of the lowest paid workers wage.

Off the top of my head, I'd say no CEO could earn more than 15-20 times what the lowest paid worker gets (I'm just guessing here...I'm sure there's a better number out there).

Sterilization procedures would be made available free of cost to anyone who wants them (we have enough unwanted kids), but it would never be made mandatory for anyone, ever.

Death penalty only for those guilty of the worst, most violent crimes (first degree premeditated murder), and even then, complete, total, indesputible, proof must demonstrate guilt. Otherwise its life in prison w/no parole.

I think my next dictatorial bull will be that slander and libel laws will apply in politics as well as in private life. No politician or supporter of a politician may make a public statement or air or publish any advertisement that is in any way misleading or untrue regarding his/her accomplishments and/or about his/her opponent.

Anyone caught doing so will be required to withdraw from the election process.

And as for the message boards, anyone posting an erroneous negative comment about anyone else will be required to write a retraction and the correct fact twenty five times for the first offense.

Since I live in Germany, the country that invented bureaucracy, I'd send all civil servants to work a year in the free economy. Just so they'll see how hard their tax-payers's money are being earnt, before they're burnt...

Re: The WHAT WOULD YOU DO? thread


Not having read any of the posts here yet, I can only think of two reasonable answers:

1. Nothing. I would do nothing with this "unbridled power". Better a year of no government, whatsoever, than a year of me (or anyone) opening the Pandora's Box of unbridled power. Some boxes are better left closed.

2. (variation). I would use my unbridled power to order new elections, open to everyone except the politicians who had decided to hand over that power to me in the first place. And then I would hand back that power to the newly elected bodies and the courts, under the exact same rules as existed before my "coup". Under the one condition: that they vote in a constitutional law that no person and no entity will ever be allowed to hand over or accept unbridled power over the country ever again.

All Senators limited to 2 terms, US Reps to 4 terms.
Make violating the Constitution a capital crime, punishable by public crucifixion.
Cut gov't spending by at least 85%.
Bring the troops home.
Stop putting people in jail for using drugs.
Round up all politicians in Kalifornia & shoot them (OK, just kidding).
Tort reform--loser pays, filing a lawsuit found to be baseless is grounds for disbarrment & criminal charges (against lawyer AND plaintiff).
Make child abuse a capital crime.
Pass some car emission laws that actually make sense.

Oh, one more: stop the illegal aliens flooding in from Mexico, by any means necessary.

1) Raise taxes while reducing employment taxes.

2) Suspend foreign aid to Israel and Palestinians with the notice that they can't get none till they acheive territorial resolution.

3) Put Israel and Palestinians on notice that we will impose a peace if needed, even if it means going to war with either side.

4) Impose my mid east peace plan (has been outlined before).

5) Eliminate the electoral college.

6) Increase military spending on humans and drastically reduce military spending on technology (I'd cut the military budget by half and it would not mean less security, just less rich contractors who trade in technological pipe dreams at inefficient costs).

7) Eliminate capital punishment.

8) Make free speech divested from profit. E.g. laws could deny profit from certain speech but not the dissemination of it. This way people are free to say what they want but they can be divested of monetary incentive to do so. This can reduce some market-driven vulgarity while allowing vulgarity for vulgarities sake to exist.

Hard to explain, basically I wanna rewrite it so that if you wanna say the speech you can but that doesn't mean you can sell it.

Wicked controversial in America but I'm dictator dammit.

9) Eliminate funding for any school that has a prom and a homecoming king and queen.

10) Reduce average school size to about 25%.

11) Get behind the ICC.

12) Insitute UN reform and make it a more important institution (hopefully conflating it with the WTC).

13) Create free-travel blocks. Like free trade but the difference is no immigration/travel restrictions between teh countries. A move to lessen the lines in the sand without being the country that gets screwed trying to achieve it. We get to negotiate blocs and phase it in.

14) Ima goan need more than a year. I will give myself more (this is how benevolent dictatorship goes awry).

15) I shall have a harem of Biblical proportions... Damn, I'[m letting the benevolence slid again.

16) I will change the government to proportional representation. Americans will bitch because they think we have a perfect political system when in reality it's a piece of junk that happens to ride on the greatest economy.

When they do, I will remind them that I am dictator and that their daughters would make lovely additions to my harem.

Damn, power is so corrupting.

17) I will make gay marriage legal in every sense of the word (the word legal).

18) I would decriminalize certain drugs.

19) I would lower the drinking age to 18.

20) I would raise the driving age to 18.

21) I would lower the age of sexual consent to 16 (with certain clauses, exceptions etc).

It's already 16 and lower in many places but I like standards.

22) I would subsidize all birth control including abortion. Every form of birth control will be free.

23) I would actually recommend birth control. Screw mere choice it will also be a feeekin' suggestion.

24) I would institute welfare reform and make it more like the new deal. We'd create work just for the sake of it and the flip side is that a lot of people who get benefits would have to work for them.

Beautification would be a major part of the artificially generated work.

25) I'd work drastically toward public transportation. The US is gonna get caught with its pants down on this one.

26) I just realized I'm not too fond of political enemies, and I plan to make a lot of them.

I will reinstitute the death penalty and stary killing them.

27) I just noticed that J-Lo has a fantastic ass. I shall make it property of the government and seize upon it most vigorously.

28) I kinda like a lot of other businesses out there. I shall nationalize them.

29) Look, for me to really make a difference I need to have more time. Let's make this a lifetime gig ok?

30) I am wicked pissed that the New York Times criticizes me. I shall call down thunder and lightning upon them.

31) I will institute a program to research the possibility of the supreme leader invoking lightning so as to avoid unecessary embarassment when it fails.

32) Come to think of it, I think we need more such weapons. I will dramatically increase spending on technological weaponry. I'm so gonna be bad ass. I'll have all the bets toys!

33) Look, the ICC, UN, WTC and all are impediments to my unbridled progress. Such alphabetic soup shall be hitherto relegated to an inconsequential debate club.

See, when you have the power everything is inconsequential. Disagree? Your wife now belongs to my harem.

34) Screw fixing the mid east, let them kill each other. We'll just align ourselves with whomever best suits our needs. Yo Israel, wanna be friends?

35) I will destroy Israel for not wanting to be friendly because I'd cut off their aid.

36) I will tell the people how we must now sacrifice and fight for our freedoms. Israel is so gonna learn themselves a thing or two.

37) I'm getting sick of these deviant immigrants now. I want my lines in the sand back.

38) I never did like Israelis, I think I'll kill them all.....

You know, Hitler was a wuss, his problem was that he was stupid. With this here power I could sooo outdo him. I'm gonna make people ingest their eggs from the other end...

And so goes the benevolent dictatorship down the path of totalitarianism's repeated chapters.

Edit: I am kidding above. I don't really want J-Lo.

I'm with shewolfnm on space exploration.
CUT!

And, yeh, I think I like her idea. More BETTER teachers at high salaries, and lower student/ teacher ratio. Teachers producing "improved" students, or maintaining high student success rates receive yearly bonuses (high!) based on yearly success.

Good one, shewolf!

I don't know. I was watching when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and felt enormous pride and wonder in an amazing national accomplishment. And when GWB announced his hopes of a manned expedition to Mars (which has since been dropped from the radar screen) my heart took a little skip and I thought how wonderful that would be. I was disappointed when it got shelved.

I think as dictator I will funnel more funding into space exploration as well as other scientific exploration that is not profitable in the private sector.

I'm also pondering Craven's list and gulping a bit.

Craven, are you PWI?

What a bunch of Socialists!

Not one capitalist venture in the group of you!

I will have a list tomorrow. But, as a primer:

I want the best qualified politicians to be politicians. If that means high salary, cushy benefits, whatever, they shall have it!

Professional atheletes, entertainers, and the like will come back to earth. NO actor or athelete is worth more than the president. They shall receive NO more than the President under ANY circumstances. If they don't like it, they can go get real jobs. The money saved on professional atheletics and acting will go back into the economy where people can make as much money as other people will pay them.

BUT: If your company is not-for-profit, then you better damn well be sure ain't no one in that company making 6 figures...

A flat tax will be imposed for the needs of the Federal government. States can do what they want for tax money. I will consult with the people that know the most about this to reach a decision on what an appropriate level is.

Healthcare: Get insurance.

Insurance companies: Not-for-profit (see above)

Lawsuits: Nope. If you get hurt by spilling coffee on your crotch, deal with it. You're a moron and you do not deserve any money. If a doctor f's up, you can sue him and he will be relieved of his medical license. No money unless you have insurance.

More tomorow...

Call China, and tell them they aren't really Communists anymore.