Lets try a little fixing of the problems, at least ideas

I have been here for a while, seems to be a lot of folks leaning way one way or the other. I fully believe that there can be a negotiated fix, would you folks be willing to try. With everyones input, I would like to be able to offer a complete platform to any candidate willing to accept it.

I think the first resolution should be: The current political environment in the United States is absolutely out of control.

No one wants to reply? You have no fixes in mind? You would rather just complain? Whats up folks, give us some ideas.

Second Resolution: Any and All lobbying by corporate entities be banned.

I cannot believe there is no one that has any ideas on how to fix things, I guess like typical Americans, you would rather promise revolution, than try to fix what we have had for 200+ years, so much for the Constitution.

reply to post by BubbaJoe


I do not necesarily disagree with you here. I will admit that even I am guilty of having a handful of complaints and nary a solution at the ready. Perhaps it would be a little easier to narrow down the focus though. Think of it as asking people what solutions they have to prevent death. That is a pretty broad category. Are there any specific problems that you are seeing people complain about with no solutions that come to mind? Maybe just mentioning them will ring a bell, get some attention, or further prove you right. Who knows.

Most everything in this country needs to be changed, except for our founding documents and their amendments. I have reforms in mind for welfare, education, health care, etc etc. The problem I see with this site, is that no one offers options, it is either agree with me or revolution.

Resolution Number 3 - Severe term limits, no more than two for senators, and no more than 6 for reps.

Lets talk welfare reform, how do we fix it, without people starving in the streets. I have my ideas, lets here some of yours, what I am looking for here folks is discussion.

Guess I need to learn to write Doom and Gloom headlines, other than that no one wants to reply, amazing lets call for a revolution without trying to fix the problems.

I'm with you Bubba.

Let's make it against the law to quit school before graduating.
Parents no longer enforce reasonable guidelines on their children. Just give them a cell phone and a computer and they will stay busy and out of parents way.

Then the parents are free to drink alcohol, smoke crack and get in their neighbors bedrooms.

While we are working on our education bill lets make all colleges free to all.

And making parenting classes a law or keep the child until the parents complete the course. Again, classes will be free.

Maybe I'm becoming a tyrant but we do need drastic changes.

introduce 2 term limits no career corrupt politicians at the end of your second term you step down

The problem is that Americans don't want to negotiate or compromise. They either want it one way or the other way (usually along party line) and are afraid to give an inch.

Until we learn to compromise, we can continue to expect more of the same.

reply to post by BubbaJoe


Hey There, I found your thread. Well as you can see everything needs to
be repaired. The problem is though, that everything is "Fixed" by the
Special Interest Money Supply. Those folks don't care about you or even
The People of The United States of America for that matter. All they care about
is getting MORE of what they already have too much of. But they can't see that.
They are trapped by the the Descent in to the Maelstrom, and they are captured by their own reflections every morning.

I guess too much is not enough.

BubbaJoe
I have been here for a while, seems to be a lot of folks leaning way one way or the other. I fully believe that there can be a negotiated fix, would you folks be willing to try. With everyones input, I would like to be able to offer a complete platform to any candidate willing to accept it.

I think the first resolution should be: The current political environment in the United States is absolutely out of control.

The following tentative solution is going to sound
a little squirrely and it's so far out of the park that it
is over the fence, through the parking lot, and across
the street. But due to the nature of information as it is
compared to knowledge and how the latter is derived from
the former, this is the kind of idea that I could get behind now.
********************************************
All labels may be challenged on their length by comparing them
to "The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America..."

upload.wikimedia.org...

********************************************
So lets take a few examples. The one word labels are easiest so lets sweep those out
of the way first. Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive, Democrat, Republican,
etcetera, are all equal to just the first word of The Unanimous Declaration, and that is
the word "The." So our stance is that somatically all of the above labels tell us no
more than the word "The." Well that's neither an argument, and answer, nor is
it testimony. So lets go more specific, I'll pull a random case from the con-
servative label, namely Rush Limbaugh. Conservative Pundit = "The Un-
animous," Conservative Pundit Rush = "The Unanimous Declaration"
but that's all. I mean, without any more information it could be a de-
claration of anything, maybe even something ghastly, we require
more information. A direct quote from him will do nicely, and
in that case we will be able to contrast it to more of The un-
animous Declaration this will force the political voice to
say things longer than a sound bite, but not too long.
Have you ever noticed that it's either thirty seconds
or an hour long speech. Are their no simple ten
minute statements. I mean The Unanimous
Declaration is 1337 words long, perfect.


David Grouchy

Mod Note: Removed excessive characters that were stretching the screen.

[edit on 8/5/2010 by defcon5]

While it may seem like a mountain of a task the first step the United States of America should do is repeal the 17th Amendment, specifically the portion that stripped the responsibility of State Senates being the elective body for the U.S. Senate.

The original idea of the lower house or more commonly known as the House of Representatives was to be just as it says, representative of the People. Whereas the upper house or Senate was to be representative of the States.

With the introduction of the 17th Amendment and the elective body shifting from the States to a popular vote for Senators, power was consolidated towards the central government.

Again, I know it sounds like a gigantic task, but bringing the balance back between the People, the State and the Federal Government is the only way even small problems will be fixed at the Federal level.

As for my ideas, the following would have to be imperative in order to solve even the most mundane problems.

The electorate is highly ignorant, disengaged and overall uneducated to be able to contribute in a Representative Republic such as the United States of America.

- Throwing more money at education has not and will never fix the anemic state of education.
- While I firmly believe that having a solid education is paramount, having it centralized at the Federal level is counter-intuitive and destructive.
- Abolish the Department of Education and relinquish control to the States on what standards they wish to pursue in regards to education for their citizenry.

The idea of term limits is a somewhat popular one, but we already have term limits in a way: We go to the polls every two years. This goes hand-in-hand with the above in regards to education and understanding self-governance.

A parenting class? Really? So now the Government is going to determine if I am worthy of a child? Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of idiotic persons that bear children and do them no justice, but to allow the Government to dictate and hold a child until a person has satisfied some government mandated class is crazy.

A social safety net is okay, if done correctly. Prior to the massive welfare programs that were created under Roosevelt, social safety nets were in place: They were called communities, friends, family, churches, and charities.

- Granted back then there were a lot of stigmas in society such as being a single parent, having a child out of wedlock, etc. Most of those have been washed away.

- Allow the people to give freely and on their own free will. Charitable giving in this country is astounding even in the face of massive laws, regulations and potential tax breaks and/or tax consequences.

- Its a general axiom that a body of people that produce wealth, generally are very giving and not as snobby and filthy as the wealth envy crowd wishes us to believe. Bill Gates comes to mind, among countless others.

Overall the foundation of the nation is solid when we apply the Constitution as it was meant to be. As the Constitution is the framework for government and the limiting document to ensure that the People are power of the Government, not the politicians. For too long, with sidesteps by nearly every president and congress for the past 100 years, the People have allowed the Federal Government reign in control, centralize and consolidate power.

There is no need for some bloody revolution as the pen is mightier than the sword. More persons actively participating within the system will break the control and bring back a more natural balance between liberty and limited government.

Eh...kind of rambled and will better focus on later posts.

I like most of Ownbestenemy's points but I would like to add a few more to the list above. Some things that I believe would, in the long run, would help us improve our nation.

1. Decriminalize drug use. Yes, this one is very controversial but give me a moment to explain how this could work. I'm not saying that we make drugs legal, just make being addicted to a drug not a crime. We still go after the drug dealers and suppliers but we encourage those who are addicted to seek treatment. Believe it or not, this approach has worked pretty well for our neighbors to the north. Yes, they still have a drug problem but it's much less severe than what we have here in the US. This would also allow drug enforcement to focus on the dealers and smugglers which would decrease the drug supply in our country.

2. Return all non-essential military personnel to US soil. I'm not saying that we bring every soldier home to the US. Some bases around the globe are needed for our national security. There are those bases, however, that serve not real security purpose. They are hold overs from old wars or established for economic purposes. Many bases in the EU are no longer needed as there is not "cold war" to fight there anymore. The EU is also capable of defending itself at least as well as we are so having our bases there serve no real strategic purpose. the same goes for US bases in southeast asia, etc. If we have allies in that region, then we should be able to work together as allies to defend the world. It's time that we stop footing the bill for every security issue that our allies get themselves into. They should start taking a more active roll in their own defense as well as assisting us in dealing with hot-spots across the globe.

3. Nationalize the Federal Reserve. I think it is high time that the government takes back the responsibility of printing money. The Federal Reserve may have served a purpose at one time but it's high time that the American people take back the power that has been invested in a small group of private businessmen who may or may not have the nation's best interest at heart.

Originally posted by ownbestenemy


- Throwing more money at education has not and will never fix the anemic state of education.
- While I firmly believe that having a solid education is paramount, having it centralized at the Federal level is counter-intuitive and destructive.
- Abolish the Department of Education and relinquish control to the States on what standards they wish to pursue in regards to education for their citizenry.

Education is one of my pet peeves, it needs to be totally revamped. However, I am going to disagree with your method of doing it.

- We need to establish standards based education, as opposed to the grade system, a child does not automatically move from 1st to 2nd, it is basically a self paced environment, and when they can meet the standards they go forward. These standards must be measurable, for example, "Student must complete 100 single digit addition problems in 10 minutes, with an 80% accuracy"

- Children need to learn 3 things in order to function in life, Reading, Writing, and Math. National standards need to be set for these three things. We live in a very mobile society, every student needs to have an equal education in the basics.

- While I agree with smaller government, I think the Federal Department of Education is important. We see under the current system that some states value education and some do not, however with the current state of our society a student from Alabama or Mississippi needs to be able to compete at the same level of a student from California or New York. So maybe it is the state Dept of Ed we need to eliminate, and level the field nation wide.

I am not an educator, not am I educated, these are just some things that seem to me to be based on common sense. The somewhat self paced environment will allow those with the ability to rise more quickly and not be held back by the teacher attempting to teach to the lowest common denominator.

reply to post by jam321



This is exactly the point I was attempting to make, to try and get some ideas on the table so that they can be discussed. When you remove the 15 - 20% fringe both right and left, it leave 60 - 70% of us in the middle, where we ought to be able to reach some compromises. It is time for the people to take the USA back from the hands of special interest.

reply to post by soontide


Agree on all three points.

In a past thread I proposed that we draw down our overseas bases to 3 geographically strategic bases: Japan, Germany and Diego Garcia. Our military as is has a 24-hour capability to put a complete army on the ground and we can suppress enemies with superior air power until the boots hit the ground that it seems pointless for the massive amounts of bases worldwide. That is an amazing feat and the hundred of bases around the world are no longer needed.

We are not meant to be an empire yet I do understand that we need to have a geopolitical presence in certain spheres of the world. Finding that balance would allow many soldiers to make their way home.

The War on Drugs is probably one of the most ridiculous endeavors that a Government has ever undertaken...well...almost that is. I personally believe that we should decriminalize marijuana. The product is either on par with or below in terms of dangerousness as buying a bottle of Jack Daniels or a pack of smokes.

I love hearing the argument that if it were legal, people would be high all the time at work. This is the most asinine argument. Do we see people drunk at work all the time? Sure there are a few morons, but most private companies and even public jobs all have workplace rules that discourage and outright make it a violation of your employment contract to be drunk at work. The same would apply to drugs.

As for other drugs, I am not too positive about making legal, but the Federal government needs to but out. Allow States to make the laws regarding drug use.

-----------

Bubba:

Most of what you are proposing was actually in place not too long ago. Maybe not in written policy, but was definitely practiced. Children were not given a go ahead no matter if they failed to meet a basic standard for a certain age group.

There was a time were teachers had the muster to stand up to parents and say that the child is not ready to move on and would be better served to stay back another year. They were not afraid of the child's psyche and/or feelings being hurt because they had the foresight to understand that holding them back at the lower levels may help ensure a stronger finish in the end.

I should have explained my point of view better. My beef so to speak in regards to a centralized education system ran by bureaucrats would not be wholly solved with the abolishment of the DOE because there are still State level departments that would again muddle politics with education.

What I cannot understand is that Americans allow a central agency dictate what children should learn. Do you really think its in the best interest of the Department of Education or even the Federal Government to have highly educated individuals that could function in society? To have free will, critically thinking skills and the ability to call BS when they see it? I know it sounds a bit conspiratorial, but I don't think so. I believe they want the masses to be as dumbed down as possible to ensure their survival as the ruling class of America. IT IS THE ONLY WAY. Producing 'government drones' is the current job of the DOE.

Disclaimer: I use Mississippi as an example, not a fact
I believe that a free-market principle would prevail in terms of the different standards that different states may hold in terms of education. Parents want their children to be better than and more successful at life than they are . If a parent lives in Mississippi and sees the education system as lacking, they will seek out the state that is pushing for higher standards to draw more people into the states. It is a win-win situation. At some point, Mississippi would get the hint that having low standards is causing people to leave the state.

As it stands now we have a central system that thinks it can dictate what is best for 300 million people and their kids rather than 300 million people deciding what is best for their kids in terms of education.

Social engineering needs to go away. It never works, causes pain and suffering where ever it is attempted and will always somehow favor one class or group of citizens over another. That is not what this country stands for nor was it ever to stand for such.

Edited for spelling and grammar

[edit on 5-8-2010 by ownbestenemy]

reply to post by jam321


Understandable point of view but I think it is controlled by what we see in the media, mainstream or not.

Usually a minority in a situation is the one that screams the loudest. Most American's wish to see a 'center; slightly-right' government. Not crazy Right-wing nor loony Left-wing.

The slight-right of center shows that American's for the most part are human. Change is not something people enjoy. Drastic changes without a catalyst of major proportions are generally rejected or fought tooth and nail. Hence the fight on Health Care issues. Most Americans maybe grumbled about the small stuff that has been included over the many years, but once the Federal Government decided to just go for chutzpah, well....you get the idea.

What is truthful about your statement is that it is indicative of the state that most American's find themselves in. They all of a sudden decided to look up and are realizing that the America they grew up in is being drastically changed. Then, rather than bunkering down, rolling up the sleeves and putting a bit of that good ole' American elbow grease on to solve the problems, they regress and complain and continue on with their lives.

The spirit of freedom and liberty has slipped away from many; security and comfort now rule the day.

reply to post by ownbestenemy


"What I cannot understand is that Americans allow a central agency dictate what children should learn. Do you really think its in the best interest of the Department of Education or even the Federal Government to have highly educated individuals that could function in society? To have free will, critically thinking skills and the ability to call BS when they see it? I know it sounds a bit conspiratorial, but I don't think so. I believe they want the masses to be as dumbed down as possible to ensure their survival as the ruling class of America. IT IS THE ONLY WAY. Producing 'government drones' is the current job of the DOE."

I do understand where you are coming from, however I do not feel that "MEASURABLE" national standards in the basic subjects would undermine the learning process. I believe all politics should be removed from the schools, whether it be right, left, up or down. The somewhat self paced situation would remove some of the ability for the instructors to sway kids.

As an adult I have learned that much of what I was taught in school was biased one way or the other, and some of it was nothing but untruths. My fear is that if it is left to local control, this will continue with the fringes ending up being the decision makers in what is taught. Much like the Texas standards folks wanting to remove any mention of slavery in the History text books.

reply to post by BubbaJoe


This sir/ma'am I agree upon. The political pandering of our school systems and children is a world-wide joke in my eyes. Politicians would rather fight to have their names placed on a local school rather than fix the problem.

Sad thing is, there is but probably a handful of our representatives that actually engage in this type of discussion and debate. Hashing out ideas from all sides is what leads to a better solution. While you and I may not see eye to eye in terms of how to get there, we do seem to have the end goal as the same. The betterment of our school systems.

So easy steps to achieve that goal is what we should focus on and not the bickering that we may engage in.

-- Teacher's Unions I believe are too powerful in the fact that it is nearly impossible to fire a teacher. There are cases in California of teachers on what amounts to permanent administrative leave because they have neglected or abused their position as a person of trust. But because of the unions, they cannot be fired. This needs to change.

-- That said, there are countless people out there with the heart of a teacher that is willing to impart upon the youth their knowledge. Those teachers need to be recognized. I mean take a look at who society holds to a pedestal: A football player that yes, has amazing talent and should be rewarded for it, but the teacher performs their function without such.

-- Take out all the sensitivity crapola that we see in lesson plans and leave that aspects to the parents. A child should go to school and learn as you have stated: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Bring back grammar lessons.