MY PLATFORM (or what I would change if I were king for a day)
Election reform
of president:
- should be by direct election, with a runoff between the 2 leading candidates if no one has a majority. (Election by plurality should be eliminated for all elections)
- term limits should be eliminated, which would have allowed Bill Clinton to run again, which would have avoided the current debacle with Bush.
- there should be a minimum IQ requirement for presidents. They should prove that they can test at least at an IQ of 120, namely superior. We should not be subjected to presidents who are too stupid to understand the implications of what they are doing. This is analogous to the age requirement that currently exists.
In general
o there should be a voter-generated paper ballot for every voter who is not too handicapped to do so. Other methods should only be used for people who are unable to generate a paper ballot
the post office
- bulk mail:
o there should be no bulk discount for unsolicited bulk mail. Only solicited bulk mail, such as subscriptions (whether paid or not) and bills, should get a bulk rate. Unsolicited bulk mail should be charged a premium.
o Unsolicited bulk mail should be delivered separately from regular mail and should only be delivered once a week, in a single bundled package
- Sending mail from the same zip code to a central sorting center does not increase security. It increases the chance that local mail will encounter contaminants such as anthrax. Mail within the same zip code should be sorted and distributed by the post office for that zip code.
The New York Metro area
-
this area should be carved
into a single 51st state including parts of
-
there should be a train that
goes around the metro area in a ring, crossing
- There should be gantry-based automatic toll collection facilities at each major municipal boundary on every road in the New York Metro area. These toll collection facilities should charge penalty tolls for driving during rush hour. These penalty tolls should go to aid improvement of public transportation.
- Public transportation should be computerized and use small vans, rather than busses, so that an itinerary can be programmed in advance and approximate door-to-door service can be effected.
Education:
-
a spelling reform should be
adopted, such as was instituted in
- “inclusion” or “least restrictive environment” is a failed policy. It is being used to deny services to students needing them. Parents and school districts should not be penalized for lack of political correctness for not wanting these policies applied to their children.
- Any student who cannot read by age 10 should be regarded as having a learning disability and should be entitled to special education services. Discrepancy between achievement or IQ scores should not be necessary to establishment of a learning disability.
- The no child left behind act needs to be eliminated. Expecting school districts to deal with a 700 page statute and 2 feet of regulations is overly burdensome.
- IDEA should not be weakened
o Parents who win appeals should get attorney’s fees;
o CSE hearings should be held regularly, at least every year to review children‘s programs
- All high school students should be required to take at least one year long course with the following topics:
o Personal & business ethics;
o Developmental psychology, so we know how to raise our children without abusing them and so we learn to recognize learning issues such as Asperger's Syndrome, dyslexia, ADD, mood disorders and the like and know how to address them proactively from the start;
o Relationship and negotiating skills, so we know how to deal with spouses, other family members, co-workers (including supervisors, colleagues, and subordinates), competitors, neighbors, and friends;
o Time & money management;
o Career planning;
o What to expect physically and psychologically as you age;
o Basic first aid and recognizing dangerous health symptoms;
o Dealing with personal crises: family and personal illness, loss of job, loss of family members; and
o Personal physical fitness and nutrition programs, for lifelong health in an aging body.
Drugs:
· marijuana should be legal if the THC content is less than 4%
· medical marijuana should be legal at any strength.
· people addicted to drugs should be given their drugs in a supervised institutional setting. They don’t need to be put in prison. Their addiction will imprison them. This type of institution would be cheaper than a prison & eliminate all the violence and organized crime surrounding drug trafficking.
healthcare
· medical malpractice should be handled like workman’s compensation;
· primary health care — including routine procedures such as childbirth, appendectomies, and treating broken bones — should be available to everyone at subsidized clinics, where most care is administered by nurse practitioners. Fees at these clinics should be based on ability to pay. This is different from universal insurance, because more elaborate procedures like brain surgery, oncology, & organ transplants might not be covered. This might mean that the poor don’t get as good of treatment as the rich, but at least they would get basic treatment.
Taxes:
- issues regarding the marriage penalty should not be considered together with other tax increase or decrease issues. The marriage penalty is simply wrong. We need to encourage marriage, not discourage it. Married people should have the option of filing as singles if that would be advantageous to them.
- decreasing estate taxes for the wealthy should be restricted to cases where there is a small, family business to be preserved, such as a family farm. There is no need to reduce estate taxes for the wealthy where only shares in publicly held corporations or luxury residences are in question.
Free trade
- I support NAFTA, because we cannot have an impoverished neighbor immediately to our south. That is too destabilizing.
- This does not mean we need to grant free trade status to all the countries of the world, especially small Asian countries.
Extraditing terrorists
- We should not be demanding that other countries extradite terrorists to our country. It increases the security of our prisons if these people are imprisoned abroad. Instead, we should be willing to ship witnesses abroad to appear at foreign trials of terrorists.
International relations with countries where women lack rights
-
we need to make our foreign
policy reflect what is going on in countries.
Countries like
- We need to construct energy policies that minimize the number of US dollars that go to such countries.
Antibiotics
· drug resistant bacteria are on the rise and endanger all of our lives. Probably the most important source of these bacteria are farms where animals are indiscriminately fed antibiotics to make them fatter. No one should be allowed to give antibiotics to animals without a prescription from a veterinarian. Antibiotics should only be prescribed to animals if an infection is found. Antibiotics should not be routinely fed to animals just to make them gain weight.
Teenage pregnancy
· a girl who is below the age of consent should not be allowed to gain parental rights
· a man who commits statutory rape should not be allowed to acquire the right to prevent the mother from giving the child thus conceived up for adoption.
The environment
o While the environment should be vigorously protected, it is wrong to expect our corporations to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up messes that were legal and not known to be harmful when they were made. The government needs to foot the bill for cleanup of superfund sites.
o Federally funded highway projects should include pedestrian and bicycle pathways. Major bridge and tunnel projects especially should include provisions for pedestrians and bicyclists.
o There should be more support of wind-based power generation and other alternative power; and of research about such power. This would also help us wean ourselves from dependency on countries that enslave women.
o Policies should be put in place to discourage use of private automobiles and encourage public transportation. This would both protect the environment and reduce the number of people injured and/or killed in auto accidents.
Divorce
o
We need to help those states which try to make
it harder to get divorced. It should not
be possible for a one person to abandon a spouse and go to another state to get
a divorce, where laws are more favorable.
Divorce should occur in the state where the couple last resided together,
unless both spouses consent to a different jurisdiction. The federal government should use its power
under the commerce clause to enable states, like
Public restrooms
1. It is hard to find a restroom when you are away from home. This is especially difficult for those of use who have weak bladders, a seldom-discussed handicap. Merchants who are open to the public should be required to provide restrooms to all comers. They should, however, be allowed to charge a fee for those restrooms, so long as they don’t charge more for women than for men.
Identity theft
2. In order to prevent identity theft, credit card companies should be required to obtain notarized signatures from applicants for credit.