With all of the hubbub over the 8 fired U.S. Attorneys now going into its third week (or more, I lose track) I am struck by the Republicans that now partake in party cannibalism in order to be noticed. With that Nebraska punk Representative that has added his name to the list of Republican "heroes" to the drive-by media, now numbering 5, that have demanded Alberto Gonzalez resign from his post as Attorney General.  I had to ask myself, "Self, why should Gonzalez resign when the only thing he did wrong was to properly explain the need for the firings to Chucky Schumer?"  The only answer I can think of is that it is now a part of the liberal playbook to criminalize the execution of Constitutional authority in Republican administrations.  I harken back to the days of Janet "the torch" Reno and how she was able to stay at her post despite many politically motivated acts and questionable ethics that went on while she sat as Attorney General under Clinton. The hypocrisy of the liberals in Congress is stark and very striking.  Let us now compare and contrast the reigns of Reno vis a vie that of Gonzalez.

                                                 Janet Reno

Background:  US attorney general (1993–2001), born in Miami, Florida, USA, the first woman to become US attorney general and the longest serving occupant of that cabinet post. She studied at Harvard Law School, and became the county prosecutor in Dade County, FL (1978–93). President Clinton named her attorney general in 1993 after two women who had been selected withdrew their candidacies.

Events of note: 

- Approved of the tactics used by ATF agents at Ruby Ridge, where an innocent mother and child were shot and killed by Federal agents

- Approved the tactics used by Federal agents against the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, which led to 80 people, 20 of which were children, to be incinerated to death.  Reno said she tried to resign but Clinton won't let her.

- Found "no controlling legal authority" and therefore did not appoint an independent prosecutor in the campaign finance scandals in the 1996 presidential election where Al Gore solicited campaign contributions from Buddhist monks, the Clinton campaign accepted campaign contributions from Chinese agents of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese red Army.

- Deported Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba.  He was seized in America after her heavily armed Federal agents raided the home of members of Gonzalez's family living in Miami, Florida in the dead of night.

- Wasted billions of taxpayer dollars going after Microsoft on a trumped up "anti-trust" charge.  The end result was a few million in fines.  Microsoft was not required to break up. 

- Even though her Department of Justice did prosecute the blind sheik and did prosecute Ramsi Yousef, she failed to capture the financiers or the true masterminds of the 1993 World Trade Center, which turned out to be Khalid Sheik Mohammed.  Turns out that KSM planned and executed the 2001 World Trade Center bombing, commonly referred to as 9/11.  Her deputy, Jaime Gorelick, implemented the policy where any grand jury testimony could not be turned over to intelligence and law enforcement official,  the infamous "Wall".  She failed to capture the perpetrators of the 1998 African Embassy bombings and didn't even lift a finger to try to get the USS Cole bombers. 

- Here is the piece de resistance: Fired ALL 93 U.S. Attorneys in March of 1993 for no other reason than they were appointed by George Herbert Walker Bush, which was fully in President Clinton's Constitutionally specified authority to do.  Many of these attorneys were working on criminal cases involving many Democrats to include Dan Rostenkowski and President Bill Clinton's dealings with Whitewater, a scam to steal money from retirees using burdensome real estate language.


                                                    Alberto Gonzalez

Background:  Gonzales was born in San Antonio, Texas, and raised in Humble, near Houston. He was the second of eight children born to Pablos and Maria Gonzales. His father, who died in 1982, was a construction worker. Both his parents were children of immigrants from Mexico with less than a high-school education themselves; in the midst of a national debate in the US about immigration from Mexico, Gonzales told Wolf Blitzer on CNN that no immigration documentation exists for three of his grandparents and they may have entered and resided in the United States illegally.

An honors student at MacArthur High School in Houston, Gonzales enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1973, for a four year term of enlistment, serving for two years at Fort Yukon, Alaska before being accepted to the United States Air Force Academy in 1975. In 1977, he transferred to Rice University (Houston, Texas), where he was a member of Lovett College and earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1979; he never completed the remaining two years of his USAF obligation; he then earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1982. He was the only one of his siblings to finish college. He has been married twice: he and his first wife, Diane Clemens, divorced in 1985; he and his second wife, Rebecca Turner Gonzales, have three sons.  He is the first Hispanic American to hold the position of Attorney General.

Events of note: 

- Criticized, by Democrats, for the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program.

- Criticized, mostly by Democrats, for his part in drafting the Detainee Treatment memorandum which allegedly condoned torture of detainees.

- Criticized, mostly by Democrats with some cannibalistic Republicans on board, for the firings of 8 U.S. Attorneys believed by Gonzalez and President Bush to not be executing their responsibilities of their office in a manner consistent with the policy agenda of the Bush Administration.  Six of the eight are Republicans appointed by Bush.

- Is prosecuting the mastermind of the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center bombings, Khalid Sheik Mohammed.  Is prosecuting the mastermind of the 1998 African embassy bombings.  Is prosecuting the bombers of the USS Cole.  Is prosecuting the murderer of Daniel Pearle.  All of whom are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It will be a tragedy the likes only seen in Shakespear's "King Lear" or "Hamlet" if Gonzalez is fired or he resigns when he, and his staff, have broken no laws, have done nothing unethical, and have only been trying to do their job. The day is coming when only fools or idiots are willing to work in Republican presidential administrations given the climate of legal terror that the competent ones will see hanging over every department in the administrations.

So, if Reno didn't resign for all she did or didn't do, why should Gonzalez?

 
Thought for the day:

"Compromise done unilaterally is nothing more than capitulation."

To all Democrats in Congress: 

Greetings! I mean that sincerely.  Welcome to the last day of your ability for anyone to take you seriously about either national security or supporting the troops.  You, the Democratic Party, are now and forever the party of anti-America lunatics,Bush haters, terrorists, appeasers, and anti-war cowards.  This is not a charge I make lightly.  The Democratic Party of Truman, FDR and JFK is dead.  The Democratic Party of today is one of special interest pandering.  Your Democratic Party is a soulless, godless party that will prostitute itself out to whatever and whomever will keep you in power.  You believe in nothing except your own power as welded through your every expansive governmental regulation and control.  The Democratic Party of today looks eeriely similar to the party of Stalin, of Lenin, and of Marx.  We know that your party died as of the 26th of March, 2007, but where did it die? Your party died in the deserts of Iraq.

Let's back up to when your Democratic Party was first diagnosis with terminal cancer and dementia at the same time: the 2000 election and the subsequent recount.  When George W. Bush sued to stop the illegal recounts in three Florida counties and the Supreme Court of the United States upheld that the recounts were illegal, the schism between the Left and the Right was cast in iron.  The Left on the day that Gore conceded the election had a collective nervous breakdown.  You also became afflicted with a cancerous tumor called "We Hate George W. Bush".  The venomous hatred for George W. Bush poisoned the soul of your Democratic Party and all that ardently supported it.  Hating Bush first started out as a sport to make yourselves feel better about losing. You first ridiculed his speaking and mannerisms, then you ridiculed his daughters.  You Democrats in Congress felt that Bush was something that could be waited out and endured like the Common Cold until 2004.  But then September 11, 2001 happened.  Bush was strong and unifying as he stood at Ground Zero and pledged to get the bastards responsible.  Bush rallied the nation in his speech before Congress and you Democrats callously lamented that Bill Clinton would be remembered for Lewinski-gate while this boob, Bush, will be remembered for the Global War on Terrorism.  The dementia that began subtly in 2000 resumed with wild alligation of unfounded and unsupportable conspiracy theories that the moron Bush was somehow able to pull of the most diabolically cleaver plot against America ever.  When Bush announced the invasion of Afghanistan, you were despondent at his approval numbers.  Sure the Democrats would try to rally and take back the Congress in 2002, however, Bush was too popular and 9-11 was still so fresh in everyone's mind that the Republicans held the House and won the Senate. 

When your cancer metastasized was when Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. Your dementia also then became a full blown insanity.  The Iraq War has become this "perfect storm" of converging anti-Americanism, pacifism and Bush hatred.  How does this manifest itself? First is in the mantras of the Left.  "Bush lied and people died" was heard the second our troops crossed the Iraqi frontier.  But was the intelligence that Bush used to support the need to oust Hussein that much different than the intelligence that William Cohen and Madeleine Albright used 1998 on Meet the Press to charge that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons? No, of course not.  The only real difference between Bush and Clinton is that Bush had the courage to go into Iraq with the military and confirm or deny it as opposed to Clinton, who knew the same intelligence but was content to consider Saddam contained. 

The Bush hating insanity has led your Democratic Party to accuse all in the military of being war criminals for Abu Ghraib even though a handful of poorly led miscreants were all that were responsible for the abuses that went on there. It has led your Democratic Party to side with anyone who is against Bush, to include the very terrorists that want to kill each and every American, you Democrats included.  You Democrats in Congress demand that terrorists at G'itmo have every right that the victims of 9/11 had taken away from them as they accuse every prison guard there of abusing the "rights" of the terrorists.  Your Democratic Party are advocates for terrorism worldwide.  And while the Bush Administration conducts the safest war for the military in the history of America, you want to accuse Bush of "murdering" the 3,400+ soldiers that volunteered for service in our armed forces.

Now, the Democratic Party is dead.  Dead from a vote to tell Bush and the terrorists when Bush can expect defeat in Iraq and for the terrorists to win.  A "date certain" for when the killing fields of Iraq will replace the killing fields of Cambodia in terms of numbers of murdered innocents and unrelenting bloodshed.  The Democratic Party, your Democratic Party, while dying as a political party with American interests at heart, decided to cash in on the need for money to fight the Iraq War by loading the war spending bill with the very same pork the you hypocritically charged the Republicans of ladling in every bill.  I'm sure your thought process was, "while we are busy tying Bush's hands and hamstringing the military commanders, why don't we throw some coin to our pet projects.  That way, if Bush is stupid enough to sign the bill, our contributors get paid, but if he vetoes it, we can claim he is against the troops.  It's a win-win!"

There have only been one instance in my life when I voted for a Democrat and that was for Dan Glickman, an honorable man, in 1992.  Now I swear before all-mighty God that I will never, EVER again vote for any member of a political party, the Democratic Party, that would actively and consciously maneuver to support the enemies of this nation in order to score a cheap, short sighted and short term political point against one man, George Bush; the soldiers in the field be damned.  The Democratic Party has completely turned its back on our military, refuses to support our country in a time of war and is totally beholden to the most radical and insane members of our society and is now beneath contempt.

Sincerely,

Rich from Paso

Okay, I'm sold.  Al Gore has convinced me of the urgency we need to take to fix this global warming problem.  Well, actually, he convinced me via osmosis after he droned me to sleep and his words just kind of seeped in.  At any rate, I have come up with a way to make as many Americans carbon neutral as I can while making a ton of cash, just like Al Gore.  Here's how:

We all know that the carbon offset concept, whereby you figure up what your carbon footprint is (i.e. how much CO2 you theoretically put into the atmosphere).  You then send a company (probably ran by Al Gore) a check for x number of hundreds or thousands of dollars and they will plant enough trees to offset your carbon production.  These trees make you carbon neutral while enabling you to not change your lifestyle while being able to claim that you are carbon neutral.  We all know (or at least we should) that these newly planted trees take 50 years or so to grow up big enough to suck up any carbon dioxide.  I have a plan to shorten that time to nothing. 

My plan is to offer up my services to help you claim trees that already exist.  See, there are millions of trees around the country on Federal land that are not claimed by anyone.  These are our trees and they should be pegged to an individual America so we can see who really needs to be paying to plant trees.  My plan is that for $500 per tree you need to make yourself carbon neutral, I will put your name on a tree on Federal land.  For no extra money, I will give you a set of 10 digit GPS grid coordinates to where your trees are located so you can go see how your trees are doing sucking up your CO2.  You can even fly your G5 private jet there because those trees will be taking care of your CO2.  Once all of the trees in America have been claimed, I will shut my doors and you will be forced to buy your trees from the carbon offset folks, so hurry because the supply of trees in America is finite and supplies will go fast. 

     The deafening silence coming from the Conservative wing of the Republican Party over Alberto Gonzalez and Scooter Libby bodes ill for whichever one of the Republican candidate that might win on '08.  We know Chuck Hagel wants the Republicans defeated over Iraq.  We know that Arlen Specter wants the Republicans defeated over abortion. Voinovich in Ohio cost the President John Bolton as Ambassador to the U.N. Now you have guys like John Ensign of Nevada bad mouthing the Administration.  You have guys like the Senator from Oregon that wants us to retreat in defeat from Iraq.  These guys are cannibalizing the Republican Party while the Conservative wing of the Republican Party is rolling over and showing the Democrats their soft underbelly, especially with regard to AG Gonzalez and Scooter Libby.  It is as mind-boggling as it is unconscionable.  Let's review recent history and you will see what I mean.

  Scooter Libby was convicted of not lying to anyone about the identity of Valerie Plame.  He was convicted of not remembering who it was he told that truth to and when in front of a Grand Jury.  Fitzgerald knew that Richard Armitage was the first person to talk about the wife of Joe Wilson in any substantive way mere moments after the investigation started.  The kangaroo courtroom's jury, chocked full of MoveOn.org and Bush hating types, were prevented from hearing the name of Richard Armitage, denied testimony from Joe and Valerie Wilson as to who it was that sent Joe over to Niger, denied the findings of the Senate Subcommittee that determined that Joe Wilson was a habitual liar and were denied know the truth that Valerie Plame was no more a covert agent than my mother.  Who were the star witnesses against Scooter?  Tim Russert, Judith Miller and Michael What's-his-face from the Washington Post. As if those three have any reason to slit their own throats by corroborating Scooter Libby's story. The Drive-by media had a field day mischaracterising the trial as the Bush Administration on trial over the road that led the nation to war in Iraq, which it never was.  Someone once said, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Let me say it again:  Scooter Libby told the truth to everyone but forgot who he told that truth to when he was in front of a grand jury... three times for eight hours at a whack.   

    Now we have the U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, being excoriated over the firings of 8 U.S. Attorneys. These attorneys work at the pleasure of the President, regardless of administration.  Bill Clinton fired all 93 of them and no one really said all that much and it sure as hell wasn't greeted as a scandal in the eyes of the media.  Sure, there was some finger wagging over the firing of all 93 to get at the 3 that were really bugging the Clintons, but since the U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, there was not a whole lot that could be said about it. But even still, the Democrats, the Drive-by media and even some Republicans are speculating how much longer Gonzalez will stay on as AG.  Tony Snow said he hopes he stays as if this was a choice that Gonzalez could make on his own and the President was just sitting around waiting to see what he was going to do.
    
    So back to my opening charge. The Congressional Republicans are rolling over and playing dead in the face of this new set of attacks.  Look, folks, the Democrats are creatures of habit.  They have a playbook that they go to without fail.  That playbook has the race card in it. It has the directions on how to properly demagogue someone.  It tells them how to dodge softball questions thrown at them and still sound like they said something when they didn't.  Their playbook tells them how to miscast any Republican initiative as a payback to the "Rich" in America and how to stoke the fires of class warfare.  The Democrats only do what they know works on the uninformed rubes in America. The Republicans right now are split with half running for the tall grass for fear of getting tied to President Bush and the other half can't seem to wait ten seconds before campaigning against the President.  You have to keep in mind that when something new is shown to be working, the Democrats waste no time adding it to their playbook.  With every attack that goes without a response or an attack in kind,  with every successful prosecution of Republicans for being just being Republican, like Tom DeLay, Scooter Libby and (hopefully not) Alberto Gonzalez, the Democrats just update their playbook with the tactics they see as working and trot them out again when the need arises.  Without response, every future Republican administration will be investigated, smeared, lied about, and finally, prosecuted for no more offenses than exercising their Constitutionally granted powers.  How do we fight this?  We need to find a new Representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA).

    Newt Gingrich brought down Speaker of the House Jim Wright with special orders speech after special order speech on the corruption going on in the House, with particular interest in the Speaker.  Representative Newt Gingrich mobilized a movement of Republicans and won back the House for the first time in 40 years in 1992.  That movement snowballed and the also gave the Republicans control of the Senate.  What Newt did was fight the Democrats.  He stood up to them and exposed them for the intellectual and moral frauds that they are.  He was not afraid to get he hands dirty while slinging the truth laden mud that stuck so easily to the Democrats of that time.  It is because of his eagerness to take the fight to the Democrats that Newt probably is unelectable as President, even though he possesses a vision to where this country needs to go that is lacking in the rest of the field of presidential contenders. 

    What the Republican Party needs right now is another Representative Newt that is 1) clean of any personal baggage that would be used against him (or her), and 2) willing to go on every Sunday talking head show, deliver special order speeches in the wee hours of the night, and 3) intelligent and articulate enough to think on their feet and slam these pompous windbag Democrats when they try to pin their yarns on the issues of the day.  Newt was all of those guys.  We need a Republican to take one for the team and be the target as they go out their and, once again, expose the Democrats lies and deceits for exactly what they are.  I don't know if such a person even exists in the Republican Party right now.  Maybe Duncan Hunter or Tom Tancredo or someone else might be interested.  But this passive, wussy, "scared of what they might think about me" attitude that the Republicans in Congress are showing right now is emboldening the Democrats and ensuring that the best Republican candidates will not run for President for fear that the Republican Party won't support them against the relentless attack machine of the Democrats and that they will be convicted of the crime of being Republican in a court of law and their lives will be destroyed because of it.  The fear the Republicans are showing the Democrats right now is the surest path to destruction for the party, and the Democrats are all too happy to oblige them.

In the rush to politicize as early and as often as they can, the Democrats have struck again. In a selectively presented exposes, the Drive-by media has created another tempest in a teapot. The DBM chose to present as the norm the conditions of 22 rooms in a 371 room building of a 5,500 room hospital complex. You read right: 22 rooms of 5,500. But were these rooms the science projects of mold and mildew or the run down dilapidated rooms that the DBM has presented? Well, there was some peeling wallpaper in a few rooms and a little bit of mildew in others still, but only one soldier complained. The other tens of thousands that have passed through Walter Reed Medical Center and their families had nothing but glowing reviews to the care and concern shown to the wounded of the Iraq War.

A high ranking administration official that spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed to me the number of rooms in question and told me that they had been in those rooms and did not feel that they represented a danger to the health of the soldiers that might have stayed in those rooms. Furthermore, the families of the soldiers that they spoke to at the hospital had nothing but praise for the hospital and stated that the staff and doctors of Walter Reed would be the reason why their soldier would be able to have as normal life after their injuries healed. Finally, as with most of the Democrat’s cause d’jour, no one can show any harm from the perceived neglect at the hospital.

Here’s the deal: In the few days before a man was convicted of telling the truth about a known liar but forgetting who he told the truth to, two other men were fired over 22 rooms of a 5,500 room hospital being substandard. Last week, the hospital’s commander, Major General Weightman was fired by Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey and then two days later, Secretary Harvey was fired by Defense Secretary Gates. Lost in this bloodletting and blame storming is the fact that the Army lost arguable it’s best Secretary in the last quarter century. The word from the field was that no one has been a better advocate for the soldiers than Secretary Harvey. The broader issue is that the Democrat Party and their accomplices in the drive-by media will politicize any issue and destroy anyone in their fanatical zeal to destroy President Bush, his administration. Also, the Democrats and the DBM will stop at nothing to fulfill their wish for the Iraq War to be seen as needless and unwinnable. Democrats will use wounded soldiers convalescing and recovering at Walter Reed to further their goal of America retreating in defeat from Iraq. I can only wonder if there are any issue the Democrats won’t politicize or any depths they won’t sink to demonize the Iraq War. I fear that we will see Nancy Pelosi or Jack Murtha emerge from the ground in China ready to sow more seeds of defeat for our country. These are sad times indeed.

 I have been listening with passing interest in the global warming debate.  On one hand, you have "95%" of the world's scientists and Liberal activists saying that Global Climate Change is proven science and a fact.  then you have 95% of the talk show hosts and Conservatives saying that all of the GCC is junk science and bunk.  What is lacking on both sides is context and perspective when they present their facts.  Here are some facts about our Earth's atmosphere:

- The entire volume of the Earth's atmosphere is 5,000 trillion metric tons (that's 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons)

- Carbon Dioxide represents 0.04% of the total composition of the atmosphere, or 200 trillion metric tons.  (That is  200,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons)  The rest is oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor and trace elements .

- Last year, 25 billion tons of Carbon Dioxide was released into the atmosphere through the use of fossil fuels, the "man-made" component of Greenhouse Gas emissions.  That quantity of emission represents 0.0000005% of the total atmosphere and 0.0000125% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere.

- At this rate, it will take 8 million years at present rates of burning fossil fuels to double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.  That is, to go from 0.04% of the atmosphere to .08% of the atmosphere.

These look like really small numbers to me.  I know the GCC acolytes out there will say, "But Rich, what about that "hockey stick" graph that shows the CO2 levels skyrocketing starting in 1945?   I use the analogy of a swimming pool.  If I were to try and fill the pool a pitcher at a time, it would barely register on a graph.  If I then use a garden hose, the amount of water will shoot up real quick.  The graph would look just like the "hockey stick" graph.  What I haven't told you is the size of the pool.  If it was a backyard pool, the pool would fill quickly.  If it was a pool the size of the Mediterranean Sea, however, then I would be at it forever.  To me, the CO2 issue looks like trying to fill the Med with a garden hose. 

The other question is just how delicate is our atmosphere to where we can bring about the global calamity that Al Gore and his disciples talk about.  Keep in mind that a meteor the size of Rhode Island struck the earth near the Yucatan Peninsula and destroyed all of the dinosaurs.  Life on earth survived and we exist today because of that calamity.  I happen to think that the earth is more resilient than the Global Warming fearmongers want us to believe.

Of course, when I bring up these points, I always seem to get "But Rich, what about our children?  Sure, it may not be a problem now, but in forty or fifty years, our children and our children's children will have to deal with our neglect." I just love the fallacious "Appeal to Emotion" tactic that people who can't win on the facts use to try to win an argument.  I have heard the "What about our children?" argument on every Democrat issue.  Universal healthcare, nuclear war, the national debt, poverty, the Iraq War, on and on and on.  I take great pleasure in slamming anyone with the guts to use that tactic and I tell them that they don't have anything to support their agenda other than it might cause problems for our children or grandchildren, so we need to act now.

Look,  I'll be the first to say that I don't know if these are good or bad facts, but these numbers look really, really small to me.   The question I want answered: Is our ecosystem so fragile that these really small numbers can actually change our climate enough to melt the ice caps and whatnot?   I honestly don't know, but to me, these numbers look almost insignificant.  Maybe that's why the mainstream media does not tell the public just how big and massive our atmosphere is in order for their anti-American economy agenda not to become just a whisper in the wind. 

 

The current tax policy is inefficient and counter-productive. It has created an entitlement mentality for those who don't pay taxes or who buy things solely because of the "tax breaks" they receive. Those who are part of the top 5% that pay half of all taxes feel they are entitled to influence our elections in their favor. And why not? When you foot the bill don't you want a say on where things are going? Plus the corporate tax code is foolish in it's complexity and inefficiency.

Here's how I say we fix the tax code.

1) Repeal the entire tax code and end all taxes on the individual. That includes the capital gains tax (where stiffles capital flow), cigarette and alcohol tax (which taxes the poor more than anyone), the inheitence tax (a bone thrown to the investment planning lobby) , the gasoline tax (another added cost paid twice by consumers), and all others.

2) Replace the current tax code with a 10% flat tax on all income after the first $5,000 and a 10% national sales tax on all purchases except food with no deductions. This taxation method will take away the psychological restrictions on people moving their money.

3) Replace the corporate tax code with a 20% flat tax on revenues above $250,000.

4) Allow corporations to deduct 50% of their tax bill in the following five areas (10% in each area):
a) Education programs, student scholarships and school sponsorships
b) Enviromental stewardship programs
c) Medical benefits programs for employees
d) Capital improvements
e) Research and development in these areas: national bullet rail system, alternative fuels or cures for cancer, alzheimer's, AIDS or whatever. This list is subject to change as priorities change.

 

1) Freeze the Federal budget to $1.8 trillion dollars for two years. Isn't $1.8 trillion enough money to run this place? I think it is.

2) Pass the Line-Item Veto - Every line item that the president vetoes woud be sent back to the Congress to pass with a super majority vote. The congressional leadership would decide how the vetoed items came up for a vote, either as a group of line items or individually.

3) End the Earmark process by budgeting into the annual Federal budget a set amount for each Congressman or Senator to take home in monetary value. The elected official would then have to justify to their constituents why they spent their budgeted amount in that way.

 Term limits
Senator - 3 terms (18 years)

Representatives - 9 terms (18 years)

Once you have been elected to both houses for a total of 36 years, that's it. You cannot be a member of Congress. Give someone else a shot.

Federal Elections

All elections to Congress and the presidency should be totally Federally funded. Furthermore, individual, corporate and special interest donations to campaigns should be banned, to include the personal assets of the candidates themselves. This, more than anything else, will take the money out of politics and totally remove the power and influence of the two major parties.

The candidates will be budgeted as follows:
House candidates - $300,000 for primary run; $1.2 million for general election
Senate candidates - $500,000 for primary run; $1.5 million for general election
Presidency - $10 million for primary run; $10 million dollars for general election

The "Third-party" Rule - Any third-party candidate that gets 25% of the vote in a House or Senate race, or is on the ballot in 40 states for a presidential run, will receive the same funding as the Republican or Democrat candidates.

Incumbent President rule - The sitting president and vice-president have to claim the use of Air Force One and Air Force Two against their budget if the airplanes are used to go to campaign stops when the planes are gone from Andrews AFB.

The result of this will enable anyone, regardless of upbringing, social status, education or net worth to run for public office.

 

I want to have a national lottery that only American citizens above the age of 18 can win whereby for every $1 given to register for the lottery, your Social Security number is submitted to the drawing. You would be able to register for the lottery at any post office location. Every month, there would be a lottery drawing. 50 Social Security numbers would be drawn at random. The people tied to those Social Security numbers would win $1 million tax free. Once you win, you can never win again. If you are using a fraudulent SSN, not only does the real owner of the SSN win the million dollars, but you go to jail for 10 years. The proceeds from this lottery would first go to retiring our Treasury bonds (the US national debt) down to a fixed in law $2 trillion ( the bond market needs bonds to have a bond market) and then to fund a $500 billion "contingency fund" that could only be accessed during a national crisis, like a major war or a Hurricane Katrina like disaster. Of course, most of these provisions would require a constitutional amendment, but what else is new?

 

Here is my plan on border security which I call 360 degree border security.

1. First, we need a Constitutional Amendment defining what it means to be a citizen of the United States. What does it mean right now to be a citizen if I can walk across the border and receive every public assistance program benefits, send my kids to school and attend college as an in-state resident? We need an Amendment defining what it means to be a citizen, that English is the national language, and that the National Anthem must be sung in English.

2. We need to have a complete fence along the southern border. Additional sensors or cameras are fine after the fence is complete.

3. I strongly believe that the term 'Border Patrol' needs to end. It should be renamed the "U.S. Border Security Force". The Border Security Force would have up-armored HMMWVs, mounted with .50 cal machine guns and armed with M-16s. No one respects a 'patrol', but Coyotes, drug smugglers and the Mexican Army would respect a force armed with machine guns. The fact is that every day the Mexican Army, Federalis, or drug smugglers posing as the Army cross our border with impunity and it has to stop.

4. Once the fence is completed and the USBSF has sealed the border as certified by each of the four state governors, the federal government should give all illegal aliens residing in the U.S. 1 year to declare themselves as illegal. While this may be seen as "amnesty", it is necessary to give an incentive for illegals that wish to remain in the country a reason to turn themselves in. If an illegal can show that they have been working a real job and have no criminal record, they will be allowed to stay. In return, the illegal alien agrees to plead "no contest" to the charge of entering the country illegally. The will pay a $5,000 fine and receive 3 years of probation. No matter what anyone says to the contrary, when you cross the border without proper legal documentation, you are a criminal. This new law does not make them criminals, their choice to enter the country illegally does.

5. After the plea agreement has been signed, the new resident will receive a new Social Security number and card. The Social Security card that would be given to the illegals will be the only means of verifying their status and enables the immigrant to work. After the year, ALL American citizens will have to get their own Social Security Card. These cards will have the biometric data, a picture, and their signature. These cards will be laminated and watermarked to prevent duplications. With the background checks and the Social Security number being the only means of gaining employment, illegals with warrants for their arrest or won't pass the background check, will leave on their because they won't be able to get a job.

6. After the one year grace period, it is a zero defect policy. Anyone who fails to turn themselves in or is arrested for being an illegal will be immediately deported. Employers caught employing illegal alien labor will be subject to a $25,000 fine per worker caught in their employ.  Employers that are in egregious violation of the law (employing 50 or more illegal aliens at a time) could be subject to imprisionment.

7. Employers would be required to ensure that every employer was a legal resident or a U.S. citizen. Through a national database managed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, employers would be able to check on the status of potential employees.

8. Employers would have to pay all legal migrant labor minimum wage. Here is the method that the compensation would be structured: Employers would be able to pay $2/hour less than the national minimum wage out in cash, but the $2/hour difference would be paid into a health care fund to offset the burden migrant workers put on local medical infrastructure. Therefore, all migrant workers would earn a migrant wage plus medical insurance coverage and employers would be able to hold costs down but would still provide a livable wage and health care. In some ways, it is a better deal than some American citizens receive.

9. There should be an ICE agent located at the admissions office of every university in the United States. The ICE agent would track every alien in the country with a student visa at their university or univeristies. The agent would be required to put eyes on every alien student every term and would be the check to make sure that every alien is enrolled, attending classes and are making legitimate progress towards a degree. Once the alien graduates, there would be a national database of qualified, legitimate workers that could be rolled over into a clearing house for employers to recruit the new alien labor pool providing a seamless transfer from student to worker.

10. Citizenship should be automatically conferred on aliens that have given 10 or more years of honorable service in the United States Armed Forces in addition to those who die in the service of the United States.

11. Every port would need to be fenced off to create a quarantine area. Every shipping container would have to have its origins and ownership verified and the contents x-rayed before that container could leave the quarantine area. Furthermore, there needs to be a radiological monitor or monitors installed in every port in America. Furthermore, every port for civilian boats and watercraft should have some sort of 24 hour security to prevent infiltration.

12. Airports are better than other means of travel when it comes to security. Bomb sniffing working dogs should be used throughout our major air hubs. Bomb material detection devices are another means of providing added security.

13. I think it may be time to discuss the de-centralization of our Federal offices away from Washington D.C. We need to seriously discuss moving the different Federal departments, other than Defense and State who's infrastructure are tied directly into the northern Virginia area, to other cities across America. For instance, move the Treasury Department to Denver, Dept of Commerce to Chicago, Agriculture to Kansas City, Energy to Dallas, Transportation to Atlanta or Memphis, HHS to Raleigh, NC, Labor to Los Angeles, Homeland Security to Boston, Veterans Affairs to Seattle, HUD to New York. These are not necessarily where they should go, but provide a starting point for discussion. By decentralizing the Federal government agencies and departments, we lessen Washington D.C. as a nation-crippling high payoff target to terrorists and ensure that our government would continue to function if a WMD was used on D.C.

 With all of the troubles the United States has faced in Iraq from a persistent insurgency to the self-inflicted wounds of an incompetent Coalition Provisional Authority, there needs to be a new paradigm for how the United States should rebuild nations.

Clearly, neither the State Department not the Defense Department can single-handedly manage the reconstruction efforts of Iraq. With this in mind , here is the what right looks like for nation-building:

Any future rebuilding efforts should be lead by the Vice-President as chair of a committee representing the different facets of society. This committee would be composed of the Undersecretaries of State, Defense, Energy, Commerce, Health and Human Services, and the Vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This committee would formulate a unified strategy to synchronize the efforts of those rebuilding a nation. No one person would have veto authority. The Vice-President, as the second most powerful person in the United States, has to be Chairman of the Committee for Reconstruction to bring the onus for success back to the White House. The Vice-chairman of the JCS brings the soldiers' perspective to the table. Involved in the implementation of the policy would be the Inspector General's office to ensure compliance with United States laws and to prevent price gouging and profiteering. With this committee formulating and implementing a unified strategy, we can avoid the pitfalls that have beset our efforts in Iraq since the beginning.

 We all saw the images of Hurricane Katrina and were appalled. Everyone involved in the disaster shares the blame for how poorly this country, at all levels of government, reacted. While this post may stir those memories to the surface again, let's all remain focused on the future and how we can prevent them from happening again. Allow me to start:

1. End FEMA

Let's face it: FEMA serves no real purpose. The job of FEMA is to roll up on a site and give away money, period. As Katrina showed, no one at FEMA knows how to really manage emergencies. Also, anyone can pass out cash.

2. Give the Emergency Management Job to the Military

Not because I'm a military "homer", but because the military is the only institution that can effectively manage the personnel and logistics needed to respond correctly and then get those personnel and logistics to the emergency site in the most timely manner possible. But more specifically, the National Guard Bureau should be in charge of domestic emergencies. The cash disbursement job can be handled by anyone in the Department of the Interior, which is where domestic disaster management should reside on the civilian side.

3. Restructure the National Guard to Handle Domestic Emergencies

How do we do this? First, all the National Guard units should fall under a four-star general that would head "2nd Army" (First Army already exists and would manage the Army Reserves under this plan). This new army would manage the deployments of units, the readiness and personnel moves of the National Guard as well as have an equal say at the Department of the Army. Under the 2nd Army would be four regionally based corps. Each corps, commanded by an active duty three-star general, would have the mission of managing personnel, readiness and training needs and requirements within their corps. More importantly, these corps would plan for every domestic contingency facing their corps area of responsibility (AOR). Every possible eventuality from a terrorist attack, wildfires, hurricane response, earthquake, WMD attack, mass casualty event, mass rioting, whatever, would be planned for. If another Hurricane Katrina-like event happened, the responsible corps commander would appoint a division commander in the AOR to head the effort, the operations plan would be brought out and implemented. The corps staff would have instant access to units in the area, their readiness strengths and equipment availability and could have soldiers mobilized and on the road in hours. In order for this plan to work, the governors in all 50 states would have to sign a compact that would allow the National Guard from theirs and others states to be mobilized from the national headquarters after the President declares a State of Emergency for that area. I think the deployments would be for a maximum of two weeks and could be extended at the governors request.

4. Rename the DHS to the Department of Homeland Defense

Why? I think "Homeland Security" does sound a little Gestapo-esqe and "common defense" is expressly stated in the preamble of the Constitution, not "common security". In other words, it just sounds better.

5. Give the Bureau of Land Management Oversight Responsibility of the Army Corps of Engineer Projects

The ACE levees in the New Orleans area were under a state of disrepair for not just years but decades. Who is watching the watchers of these things? Apparently no one. The BLM inspectors would report their findings to the Secretary of the Interior and provide a recommendation for repairs and other actions. The Secretary of the Interior should be mandated to set a corrective plan of action within a set period of time and present it to the appropriate Congressional committee for action.

 

In trying to have a wide spectrum of ideas and solutions to problems, this one goes back to my high school days. Under the category of "environmental stewardship", I propose that the federal government provide grants to the 50 states to build plasma arc incinerators in their largest municipalities to process contaminates and render them back to their constituent elements.

Plasma incineration is a relatively new field of waste processing that uses temperature as high as 7,000 degrees F to break down everything from illicit drugs to toxic waste contaminated soil to simple trash down to its constituent elements. The residual elemental components can be filtered off, reprocessed and reintroduced to the environment with almost no residual impact. More information can be found at these websites:

http://www.usplasma.com/Engineering/Overview/overview.html

http://www.epa.gov/ord/scienceforum/2005/pdfs/oeiposter/Bodurow_OEI30.pdf#search=

How should government policy change once these facilities are up and running? First, all municipalities larger than 250,000 should be forbidden from opening any new landfills. This will necessitate the need to use the plasma facilities. Second, the federal government should mandate a 20 year cleanup window to have all existing landfills closed and cleaned up. This again will necessitate the use of the facilities and increase the demand for more plasma incineration facilities. Third, fines for illegal dumping should increase by a factor of 100.

The net result is that in 20 years all landfills would be closed, all waste would be reprocessed through plasma incineration facilities and illegal dumping would become a thing of the past. And the best part of it all? It would all be tax-deductible under my tax plan.