THE TEA PARTY

5/15/10

I think it’s time to have a discussion with the Tea Party. To be sure, there are legions of rightfully angry people amongst its ranks. They are fed up with the way our country is being run. The anger is good because with enough of us, unified for change, a much-needed change may very well happen.

Repeated choruses of “too large government” and “we don’t need government in our personal lives” have become the mantra of the day.

OK. Fine. But, are we really ready to govern ourselves?

“Huh?”

Well, somebody has to govern. Without governance, there’s anarchy. Are we prepared to run everything?

“What?”

Well, if you want smaller government, then we have to pick up the slack, because, certainly, things don’t govern themselves. We have almost 310 million people in this country. That’s a lot of governance. And, if we don’t want to do it and we decide to appoint someone to do it for us, are we willing to at least be a watchdog over those we elect to represent us?

“I don’t have time to do that. I have enough trouble trying to make ends meet.”

But you said you didn’t want big government, and you didn’t like the way the present government is taking care of business.

“Yeah. We don’t like the way we’re being taxed.”

Who’s going to pay for the programs you want?

It’s not like I don’t agree with you. The list of governmental abuse of power and waste is endless. But my concern, no matter how justified our anger is, I have not yet heard anything of any substantial content to replace the present status quo. Allow me to make some suggestions.

1) Take all money out of politics. Period! No political advertising of any kind. If someone wants to run for Congress, then he/she has to gather 100,000 signatures in petition, for Senate, 1,000,000 signatures, President, 10,000,000.

The government issues FCC licenses to allow various entities to broadcast. As such, during every election primary year, they must afford free airtime to those candidates who had gathered enough petition signatures to challenge the standing elected official for re-election. The field will be open to all who pass the signature amount requirement. On air “Town Halls” will broadcast every three weeks during the primary season. The only thing that may have to change is there may be the necessity to have more than one primary election, depending on how many candidates present their respective credentials.

2) Revoke the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The infrastructure of the banking

System is fine. The problem is the Central Bank is not a bank of the nation,

as its title misleads. It is a private bank with a monopoly to print money. All interest on the money it loans is unnecessary debt, a drain on our financial wellbeing. If the Central Bank were to become our own sovereign bank, lending money would become interest profitable for our Nation. It is quite conceivable that many of the present taxation needs would be supplemented by the interest profits generated by a nationally owned Central Bank. Currency flow is essential for a society to grow. The interest profits generated would simultaneously allow a quicker pay down of the outstanding pre-existing debt, which if not immediately addressed, will inevitably destroy our nation.

3) The practice of Fractional Reserve Banking, has to not only be curtailed to a smaller multiple, but a regulatory body must be put in place to guarantee there will no more abuse of this practice. Like interest rates, this body will determine what would be healthy and sustainable multiples. Banks, up to our present financial disaster, were allowed to perversely max out the dollar value forty times, as well as not having the needed funds to back up such loans. This was done to solely maximize interest profits in lending. The practice so grossly inflated the value of everything that was viewed as a commodity until the bubble burst virtually destroying the entire world’s economy.

4) To truly fix the health care system, several things must be put into place. The immediate burden of a growing population is putting unsustainable stress on our hospitals. The most effective way to eradicate this is to put board certified general practitioners within a designated numerical demographic to look after us. Like the general practitioner who made house calls, and was considered a most welcomed extended family member, he/she examined us when we had colds, flues, mended our broken limbs and referred us to specialists when that kind of intervention was required. We went to him/her for our routine check-ups and used his/her knowledge as preventive medicine.

If we were to employ such an application, where we would give blood two to four times a year, and urine twelve times a year for monitoring and testing, we would be governed by a preventive medicine watch dog, who could then advise us to get specific help in the very early stages of detection, as opposed to catastrophic reaction when it made already be too late. The former allows for higher success rates of recovery and as well as proving much more cost effective than the later which may prove too late for the patient and exorbitant financially.

Also, it’s time to examine the food industry under a microscope. It is this industry that has managed to have laws put into place, which prevent us from examining it. At the present time, sixty percent of our processed food is a variation of corn. So egregious is this abuse of food processing, that we now have in the juvenile population, obesity on an epidemic level. and one in three with the onset of type 2 diabetes, and within minorities, one in two.

5) Presently, our public school system does not work. There are far too many questionable schools, too many dropouts and a comparative reality of illiteracy for those who do graduate, as compared to the rest of the world. We are ranked twenty-fifth in math and twenty-first in science; certainly not the stuff for a nation that prides itself as a world leader, let alone be able to continue to function.

Within the private school sector, depending on the families income, financial aid can be as high as fifty percent. When one considers how much money from taxes is supposedly allocated to each child within the public sector, one quickly realizes it would not only be cheaper, but more effective to send each child to private school.

If the government were to guarantee, say, a $10,000.00 voucher for each student, not the household, but the institution the child will be going to, then the household would be responsible for the balance up to half tuition. Most private schools full tuition would be around $25,000.00 per year, which means approximately $13,000.00. The household must come up with the $3,000.00 balance, approximately ten dollars per day for the year. Households that can well afford the full amount of tuition would pay in full, but get a full tax credit.

We should take a page out of the European playbook when it comes to education. If a child ultimately proves, by continued scholastic evidence, not to be academic, but trade worthy, then those schools that will better equip the individual as a functional worker should be made available. That said, those students through the years who have repeatedly proven academic worthiness, should be afforded the luxury of higher education by grants and scholarship, as opposed to student loans and incredible debt by the time they receive their respective degrees.

Be perfectly clear. A more educated functional work force generates more income which then circulates in higher volume as consumer money. It also means more taxable income, which means less per individual taxation because of the higher national gross.

6) Immigration has to be dealt with. Period. There is such abuse of our present state because of illegal persons who have multiple identities and no insurance.

It’s really very simple. If you make every non citizen have to become a citizen, and thus register, and most importantly, then show their identity card as a part of every day life, we will finally be able to tax these people who are presently burdening our system without contributing to it. If we are concerned about entry into our country, then numerical quotas and waiting lists will have to be put into place.

Our country was founded by immigrants. We cannot afford to become xenophobic. That said, however, there are only so many resources any area has to support any given population, which brings us to the next most important point.

7) With all the concerns we hear in our daily conversations, not once have I heard any mention the elephant in the room, and I don’t mean Republican. I’m talking about population and the necessity of the world to invoke mandatory zero, if not negative population growth. The world simply cannot handle such numbers of people and maintain quality life. We now have 6.8 billion people on this planet, which is already overheating from green house gases.

How will we enforce such a needed thing to do? If we are successful in

sustaining one person/one child, then after a few generations, the global

population will decrease allowing less stress on the world’s eco systems as a

whole.

The Chinese, with 1.2 billion people had to mandate negative population

growth; two parents/one child. India, since its independence in 1947, has

doubled its population to one billion.

8) Legalize drugs. All related crime will end. The exorbitant costs for prisons

will end. All that saved money could be applied to education of all our children. The only thing that then must be applied is drug testing for public workers to guarantee the safety of the work force. The violence in Mexico, as well as all other countries involved in illegal drug trafficking, would completely disappear.

9) I don’t like war and have, unfortunately, been witness to it my entire life. Since we are hell bent determined to constantly be at war, then there have to be rules of responsibility to go with the creation of war. If war is determined necessary, then, everyone must participate. Everyone. Men and women. Taxes must be raised to support it. Such a reality at time of war, would completely change our hubris to start war in the first place. Short of being attacked and having to defend ourselves, most wars are about corporations making profits.

These are only a few suggestions towards the much needed change that has to be implemented, otherwise we are doomed. The anger we all feel is right and good. We are united within this passion. However, without content, there can never be change. It would be a hollow rebellion. We have enough history to learn from, as did our Founding Fathers. Let us draw from this wealth of this information and set our course for an all inclusive synergistic future.