Like most people, I often sit at home reading the news or watching political commentary and start gritting my teeth at the sometimes incompetent people involved in government. And I am not talking about Obama. I am a fan of his mostly (although his policies toward the war in the Middle East and his position on whistleblowers needs work in my opinion). No I am talking about the many members of Congress and the Senate and all of the talking head bureaucrats that fill up our legislative branch, sucking money and resources out of the country for doing nothing. In the last 8 years most of them have done nothing but halt social progress at every turn all while taking a big fat paycheck (not to mention kickbacks) and leave a once thriving Middle Class in the dust. Also like most people, I sometimes get angry at the lack of common sense solutions these people seem to have. A true armchair political analyst, I often form plans or actions in my head that I would like to see America put forth but that I know will never happen, for many reasons. And yet, most of the things on my list would probably seem like pretty rational solutions to some. But never look for rationality in government. So here is my bullet point list, just for fun, of 15 things that I believe would make our country a better place. This will all be in layman's terms. I have the same amount of political/governmental knowledge as the average human. Maybe less. This list will also be skewed to my beliefs, obviously. I am a Liberal Progressive, so someone in the deep South will probably hate this list. But these are just some thoughts.
1) Legalize all drugs - Seriously, it is 2016. Why, at least, isn't pot legal? Nobody who's high on pot goes on a killing rampage with a machete in a shopping mall. The dude probably couldn't even make it off the couch or hold a weapon with all of the Doritos dust on his fingers. Pot makes me happy, as it does almost everyone I know who has taken it. Colorado made pot legal, and saw an influx of millions of dollars in revenue. Imagine that on a country-wide scale with all drugs. America, as of 2016, has spent upwards of 1 trillion dollars in the War on Drugs. 1 trillion dollars that could have been spent on food or rehabilitation programs for the homeless, infrastructure repairs, or any other number of things. And in all that time and all that money spent, have our laws against drugs made them any less appealing for people who might want to use them or any less easy to get or curbed ANY drug taking activity? The answer is a resounding NO by anyone's standards. The government should subsidize drugs. Start making its own product, start taxing the shit out of people who want to use them, and put all of the money we were wasting on the war against it into rehabilitation services when people do want to quit.
2) Legalize prostitution - Here's another "crime" that shouldn't really be a crime. Most of my belief's come down to personal choice. And what bigger personal choice could you make about your own body than to make money off of it? Why is it okay for Jennifer Lopez to insure her ass for millions of dollars which ostensibly places a dollar value on her physical sexuality, and not okay for a 35 year old woman in Minnesota to place a dollar value on her vagina? It's just a moral judgement we make. I am very non-judgmental when it comes to sex, so as long as the two people engaging in prostitution are both willing adults, why should we even care? If you legalized and levied a tax against prostitution alone you could probably end hunger in America.
3) Impose strict term limits and job requirements on members of Congress and the Senate - This should be common sense. No more career politicians who get paid 100k a year and do absolutely nothing. Four years of service is all you get, and only then you get it on the proviso that you produce at least 5 bills of importance a year and work at least 40 hours a week with four weeks of vacation like the fucking rest of us. No more government shutdowns. You refuse to do your job, we'll have somebody waiting to get right in. Essentially these jobs should be considered a public works program, not something that only rich people are able to campaign for.
4) Take money out of politics - No corporate support for politicians. No kickbacks. No promises to vote against renewable energy in return for a private jet and five weeks of vacation at a beach resort owned by Exxon. This is all bullshit that we allow to continue simply because "It's the way it's always been done." If you accept a gift from a corporate sponsor, you go to jail. Period. It should be considered treason. People in a position of legislative power need to vote and act based on their conscience and in the best interests of the country, not based on an under the table discount on stock in Bank of America.
5) Give every American full and equal rights - This should also be a no brainer, but here it is 2016 and Conservative Republicans are STILL spending countless man hours and millions of dollars fighting against equal marriage which was made legal by federal mandate over a year ago. Not to mention that in a huge number of states LGBTQ people can still be fired from their job or evicted from their home simply for being queer. Enough is enough. We should drag these hateful religious conservative assholes into the new millennium by their fucking collars and if they're not willing to obey the law and follow the path of progress like the rest of us, someone else will be more than happy to fill their vacated legislative job. We'll have plenty of jobs open repairing bridges and roads with all of this new money we'll have coming in from taxing drugs and prostitution so they can pick up a shovel and get right to work on that. My sympathy level, as you can tell, is exactly nil for these people. Their free ride is over.
6) Ban all guns except those needed for hunting (ie handguns, rifles, shotguns) and require extremely strict licensing for those - I'm sick of this debate. The NRA wields entirely too much political power in our country. I actually fall in line with the left side of the debate who want to do away with guns completely like they did in Australia. If it's a choice between doing nothing or banning everything I would always choose the latter. I'm sick of hearing about dead schoolchildren and cops and innocent black people mowed down on the news. We're like a diabetic who's foot has gone gangrenous telling his family he's fine and he's not giving up his ways as he chomps down another Milky Way bar and they prepare to amputate his foot. Why are some people so willing to give up their civil liberties if it means fighting terrorism (as we do when we go through the average body cavity search at any airport before we board a plane) but not if it means possibly saving children from death as sensible gun control might have at Sandy Hook? And I hear all of the cons coming at me from the Right. Like, we might need those guns in case our country becomes a dictatorship and we need to fight the government. Are they for real with this one? Have they not heard about a little thing called nuclear weapons? Or drones? If all that stands between you and subjugation is an assault rifle, you've already lost the battle my friend. You're not John Wick. Or the old comeback; you can kill people without guns so why bother? And true, as in France recently, we saw that a man driving a massive truck can do as much or even more damage than one with an assault weapon. But that's also like saying "Well I have cancer and that stuff is pretty aggressive so why even bother fighting it?" Yes, that IS an option, but it only leads to death. Or their other favorite: If everybody had guns, we'd all be a lot safer. Oh yea, this is exactly what I want, the average bigoted homophobe who shops at WalMart and ran over the curb parking his car firing a handgun in my general direction when he thinks my friend Achmed with the turban is a terrorist. This entire issue should be common sense. Yet we fight against it at every turn, no matter how many men, women, or children die. And as I said, although I would probably fall more into the Left side of the debate on this, I will admit I love guns. I love movies with guns. I've fired guns and it was fun. But if me giving up firing an assault rifle whenever I want means that thousands of people's lives will be saved in the long run, I gladly give up that right.
7) Disband the IRS and the FCC and give all of their money and power to the EPA - The IRS and the FCC waste billions of dollars fighting average Americans and telling us what we can and can't watch or hear, respectively. Meanwhile, the EPA currently is like little Davey fighting the Goliath that is the fossil fuel industry only their happy ending does not seem like it's coming anytime soon. They impose fines that essentially the big corporations snicker at as their flaming undersea oil well ravages miles and miles of ocean irreparably. They need more power and funding. Income tax will be paid at the time you receive your check. That pesky other income tax payment once a year is bullshit. Unless they owe you money.
8) Tax churches - I'm tired of hearing about religious dogma as if it is our moral responsibility. If churches and their members want to be so active in the world like the rest of us, they need to start paying the entrance fee.
9) Remove God from our money, our pledge of allegiance, and everywhere else he has been erroneously placed - Self explanatory. We are supposed to have a firm separation of Church and State. God's reign is over.
10) Start a Government Jobs program (similar to FDR's New Deal) - There are plenty of things that need to be done in our country, either now or in this future I have constructed. Perhaps we can rehabilitate the homeless by giving them some of these jobs. Or slash through unemployment by putting many of the people on it to work at these jobs.
11) Break up the banks - Too big to fail my fucking ass! We should jail all those assholes who bet America's livelihood on highly risky ventures and bust up these massive monopolies the banks have created. And if they refuse we levy a fine that actually hurts against them instead of something that they pulled out of their suit pocket along with a handful of lint.
12) Impose federally mandated prices on drug companies - No one on Earth can defend to me with hope of changing my opinion the fact that you can buy the same drug in Mexico for $5 that you pay $300 for here in America. It's bullshit. And if the drug companies refuse, America will start making and selling its own pharmaceuticals directly to pharmacies. End of debate. And also the end of a corporate stooge at Johnson and Johnson making 53 million a year for doing nothing but setting a decimal point a few places to the right.
13) Free college tuition - Everybody who wants an education will get one, with an option to pay back the money for those who can afford it or do a year of federal service if they cannot. No more late fees or interest.
14) Federally subsidized healthcare for all - No more dying broke and penniless because your medical bills going through chemo came to 5 million dollars and you died anyway. No more charging people $500 for an aspirin. We need real affordable healthcare for all. Obamacare is a start, but we're not regulating doctor's fees or drug companies or corporate machinations so people who work 40 hours a week are still getting shitty healthcare and going broke paying for it. Trust me, I'm one of them
15) Raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage - I've heard all the arguments. You shouldn't get paid $15 to flip some french fries. If you pay an adult that much to be a cashier how will teenagers get any work experience? All bullshit. The Middle Class in America has eroded in the last three decades. My standard of living, instead of going up since the time of my mother and father, has gone down incredibly low. We really no longer have a Middle Class anymore. It's the 99%, and the 1%. That may seem like an oversimplification, but I firmly believe it. Simply put, NOBODY who works hard 40 hours a week should have to live in poverty and seek welfare.
I could have kept going, but this is just a starter pack. These are things I would like to see us work toward. A lot of them fall into the dreaded "socialist" ideology of Bernie Sanders which a lot of people in America are emphatically against. But overall, I think they'd do nothing less than help us become the leader of nations that we always intended ourselves to be. And yes, a lot of this list is naive. I'd rather be naive than complacent.
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