@spendius,
spendius wrote:
What are your top five acheivable sane policies?
A great question, and one that I take as a great opportunity to provide the best answers I can come up with. I am glad for the question also because I have not yet taken the time to personally pick 5 primary politicies out of what could be a pretty long list. Here is my list after some thought. The list is not necessarily in order of absolute priority, but perhaps approximate priority. And I have added a 6th point, which should actually apply to all of the other points as well as the entire government.
1. Fiscally responsible federal government - actually this policy has several aspects to it, which can be assisted by some of the other 5 primary policies that I list here, but ultimately the bottom line must be a balanced federal budget, federal expenditures must not exceed federal tax revenues. To achieve that goal, cutting spending should be the highest priority.
2. Smaller federal government and a re-affirmation of our belief in people and the state and local governments to take care of most of our needs. One example would be education, wherein we could eliminate the federal department of education and entrust the education of our children to the people, either through locally run government schools and their school boards as we already have, or through private schools funded by some kind of voucher system.
3. Re-affirm our belief in capitalism and free market solutions to most of our needs, rather than government solutions. A large component of this policy would be the reduction of the adversarial relationship between government and business. Tax policies and other regulatory policies should be reformed to make it more attractive to operate in the U.S. instead of going offshore. I do not give it much chance, but one huge reform could be getting rid of the income tax system and replace it with the "Fair Tax," or retail sales tax, which I think would stimulate one of the largest economic booms ever witnessed in America.
4. Fix our broken immigration policy. A nation that cannot secure its borders will not survive as a nation. I think a key component of being able to fix this problem is not to hire more border patrol agents, but to provide a good way for employers to check citizenship, and then very severely fine any employer or person that hires any illegal alien. When the jobs dry up, the illegals will quit streaming across the border and they will go home. Also, make it highly illegal for any state or local authority or entity to provide any service or refuge for illegal aliens, and provide the appropriate punishment for those entitites under the law. Another part of my immigration policy is that if we find that we seriously need more immigrants to provide the needed labor in some industries or regions, then up the numbers, but screen out the criminals, drug dealers, and gangsters, the people must meet the a decent criteria for citizenship in this country.
5. Clarify and better define our national defense, foreign policy, and terrorist policies, and stay committed to those policies. Do not allow political correctness and other nonsensical policies hinder our ability to detect, arrest, and prosecute people that are bent upon doing our country and our people harm.
6. An extra point, one that should just be understood to be there throughout all of the policies and bueaucracies. We must have a moral foundation throughout our culture and society, as individuals, which will translate into our collective moral foundation. A part of this is to root out all corruption in government, as honesty should remain supreme. As part of some unfinished business along this line, I think entitities like Fannie and Freddie should be answering some very serious questions and the guilty should be prosecuted. Also voter fraud should not be tolerated, and organizations like ACORN should be called to account. Another example, foreign campaign contributions to Obama need to be properly investigated and prosecuted.
