Read a great article by Peggy Noonan on creating a new third political party.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I’ve decided to run for President of the USA as a write-in candidate, as a member of the I’ve Had Enough Party. I have a platform all ready and everything.
- Federal lobbying by special interest groups will become illegal, while federal lobbyists and any government member meeting with them will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, fines will be huge, and imprisonment will be mandatory
- The income tax will be repealed, and federal and local governments can derive their income from sales and luxury taxes, and spend less money when they have less money, just like the rest of us. (Maybe they can go out and hold bake sales if they want to spend more)
- No Congress member can pass a tax law without immediately paying ten thousand dollars of his personal funds into that tax. Laws that include multiple taxes will require a ten-thousand-dollar fee per instance. Congressmen will immediately be required to pay retroactively for every tax law they have passed while in office, plus 23% interest compounded annually (to keep up with the usurious credit card rates now permitted because of Congressional relaxation of laws on their money buddies)
- The laws that permit corporations to be treated as individuals for the purposes of privilege and profit but as businesses without individual responsibility with regards to any infringement on the rights or wellbeing of others will be revoked, and any and all corporate officers will bear immediate and full responsibility, mutually and individually, for any act of criminal malfeasance their corporation commits
- Personal-matters issues (abortion, gay marriage, legalization of marijuana, etc.) will be decided by a popular vote at the state level, state by state, and the Federal government will remove its nose from the decisions of those states
- Federal funding of public schools, from pre-K through college, will cease, as will Federal directorates on curriculum. Communities will resume both funding of schools and the curriculums therein. So long as education is federally required, however, schools will be made legally responsible for the results they obtain in teaching their students in reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and history. Tenure for teachers in all schools funded by public money will be eliminated, and those teachers who fail to teach their students will be required to be fired.
- All laws that prohibit the expression of religion in public places will be immediately revoked as being unconstitutional. For the purposes of this law, atheism will be classed as a religion so atheists will also retain their freedom of public expression
- US Representatives and Senators will be required to spend one month of their summer recess doing public service on a road crew while wearing a bright-orange vest. They will be required to spend their second month of recess working in a minimum-wage job, or in a job in the meat-packing industry. They will be required to spend the third month of their recess teaching underprivileged kids or illiterate adults to read.
- Term limits in both the House and the Senate will be set, House to three terms, Senate to two. All Senators and Representatives over their term limits will be booted out on the day the law takes effect. This will be a temporary measure, and Congress will recess briefly while states bring in the folks they voted on before the law took effect. Following this general ouster of the old guard, a state by state vote will be taken on what the population in general wants term limits to be.
- Laws passed in Congress that permit Congressmen to create laws that do not apply to them will be revoked. All remaining Congressmen will immediately undergo investigation by the FBI and the CIA to make sure that they are acting legally in all matters, and are not given any special privileges
- No former president will be permitted to occupy the White House after two terms in any capacity. Spouses of former presidents who wish to become president may do so only if the presidential spouse has been divorced and has been extradited to Mexico. [The No Dynasties Rule]
- No kid who has ever lived in the White House as the son or daughter of a president may occupy it as a president or spouse of a president. [The No Dynasties Rule]
- Health insurance and automobile insurance will be recognized as the criminal scams that they are and will be made illegal.
- Corporate ownership of hospitals will be made illegal, and hospitals will be returned to the communities that used to own and run them. Community hospitals will once again be required to treat all patients without regard for their ability to pay.
My platform will certainly include other critical issues, but those are my starters.
Well, see, in fact I’m not serious about running for the Presidency, as a write-in candidate or otherwise.
The majority of my platform would only be workable if, as President, I immediately found a way to make myself dictator, too, because the majority of the corrections I’d like to make in government could only be accomplished by a dictator. Not good. But it’s a starting point for dialogue, anyway.
Our problem, in essence, is that we’ve been running Darryl and Darryl as candidates for a hell of a long time now, and nobody seems to have noticed, or cared.
We keep running Darryls: vaguely-different shadow images of each other. The last election was the worst, with two creepy Yalie Skull-and-Bones intellectual losers paired off against each other, and everyone pretending that one of them would be fantastic while the other would be the end of the free world. In fact, both of them were big on corporate power, men who had never been poor or known hardship. Just about everyone acted as if, upon reaching office, the winner was going to suddenly turn into this great guy who would make everything right.
Instead, we got what we would have gotten either way: more government, more taxes, less freedom. With one, we’re prosecuting a war that needs to be fought (my opinion, you’re welcome to your own); with the other we would have cut and run with our tails between our legs, strengthing the hold of Islamic terrorism in the world. Nothing else would have changed.
What we need to do is cut the Darryls from the loop and nominate and elect great guys. But to do that, we’re going to have to bypass both the Democrats and the Republicans. And probably the Libertarians, too–sadly, because I kind of like them. But all they’ve proven in lo these many years is that they can lose elections and stay completely off the radar. And we’re going to have to go out and find good leaders and drag them kicking and screaming into the job, because the people who want the job and actively pursue it should never be let anywhere near it.
That’s one weird manifesto all right. Some how I don’t think you’ll win but sounds like it’ll fun pulling the other guys tails while you try. I don’t ‘get’ most of it, being English and not required to even care about the difference between the senate and the congress, but I’d be worried about letting individual states define their own educational syllabus especially if you leave it up to them to work out their own definition of science. No creationism please, those people are simply nuts!
You’ve got my vote.
Only one major quibble. I’ve been absorbing Pournelle on Separation of Powers and the fact that the legislature, not the executive, is supposed to be the most powerful branch. So any law pertaining to separation of powers which exists in the Constitution (as opposed to special powers laws which are not part of the Constitution) should be permitted.
I particularly like the “No Dynasties” law with the proviso that special clauses about siblings be added (although the case I’m thinking of is of course ..er, godfathered).
I would also take away the power of the Executive branch to pass regulations which “interpret” law. Have you ever examined the “Code of Federal Regulations?” I was astonished the first time I saw it in ’96 (color me naive). This law of the land, none of it voted by Congress, encompassed at that time about 18 shelf-feet of tightly packed, paper bound (because it changes annually) terse language on everything from environmental regulation to education. Check it out on-line sometime; at a minimum, I would specify the requirement that it must be trimmed 10% per annum for five years, and 5% per annum thereafter.
Arrvee – that’s an excellent point. Rider bills should be killed dead, and the sooner it happens, the better.
I think these are all excellent planks. Count on my vote.
I would add 2 more, though:
1. Congresional salaries will be limited to no more than the current minimum wage.
2. No amendments of any kind will be permitted to bills in either the House or the Senate.
Most US citizens would not believe the stuff that gets passed through amendments to bills. Everybody should visit Thomas (http://thomas.loc.gov/) periodically and read the idiocy that’s being made law in this country.
You what’s amazing? I’m a conservative Christian, yet I agree with 98% of what you said. And what I didn’t agree with is not what you’d expect!
You’ve got my vote Holly!
I’m a liberal and you’d have my vote. Power to the People!
An odd mix of the “Right on!” and the irritatingly naive; but still, a fun read.
I’m a moderate libertarian, so with but one exception, I agree strongly with all of these. I LOL’d, and you’d have my vote in a heartbeat.
I’d vote for you!