What's your platform?

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Someone in another LJ community suggested that I run for President and asked me what my platform would be.  I offer my answer below -- and invite others to do the same.

1.  Revamp the military to reduce the defense budget.
2.  Means-testing for Social Security and raise the age at which you start withdrawing.
3.  Drive structural costs out of healthcare.
4.  Substantial investment in urban renewal
5.  National energy policy within the first year
6.  Same-sex marriage as a civil right
7.  License and tax recreational drugs
8.  Federal mandates re consumer waste
9.  Tax breaks for corporations directly tied to domestic job creation

I would also like to put a damn stake through the heart of several prevailing ideas:

1.  That we are somehow competing against other countries for a piece of a zero-sum global economic pie
2.  That everyone has the aptitude or the need to go to college to be a fulfilled, contributing member of society
3.  That optimum outcomes are normatively achieved through intensely competitive self-interest
4.  That the metrics for individual quality-of-life and/or the functional success of society are exclusively economic

Also, I get to say "Jesus" and "Yahweh" whenever the hell I want to.  My running mate will be my Mom.

 

Comments

[mijan.livejournal.com]

I'd vote for that platform, as long as I can say "Artemis, Zeus, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster" instead of Jesus. As long as that stands, then you've got my vote.

Hi mom.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

You can say what you like. But I'm the one who gets to pre-empt Trump to announce another successful hit.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I haven't put together a platform, but it has been uppermost in my political passion for years to put an end to Daylight Saving Time, never to be heard from again.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

LOL ;) I like that idea!

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

I vote for the stake.

[mijan.livejournal.com]

I'd vote for a steak. Rare.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

I'd rather be a dictator than President. And my platform would be everyone needs to shut the fuck up and do what I say. Plus I'd have a kick-ass all woman bodyguard team like Gaddafi.

Also, I can't be President because I'm from Canada and wouldn't be able to produce my long-form birth certificate. :(

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

You could become dictator of Canada. Then I can order an invasion to make you the 51st state like you oughta be liberate you.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

3. That optimum outcomes are normatively achieved through intensely competitive self-interest

When you're finished, I would like to find this idea's burial site and take a dump on it.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

i'll help. We shall work together to create a synergy crap!

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I agree with a lot of your platform. I'd add to that tax reform and simplification, and maybe a few other fringe elements - for instance, I'd love to axe cotton subsidies, kill the ethanol subsidy for corn, and remove tariffs on sugar cane. I've got a few ideas for the judiciary, as well, namely reforming the constitutional elements of standing, and imposing caps on judges to keep them from serving until they're 90 and senile.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

I sense a groundswell. But are you as broke as the rest of me supporters?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I would have run a campaign that would promise the American people that if they vote for me, I'd do exactly what I promise. My promises would be deceptively simple: reasonable foreign policy for the 21st Century and balancing the budget. If elected I would start withdrawing US troops where they are not needed (i.e. Germany, Japan, countries like that where our presence is atavistic and irrelevant to modern concerns), amplifying US presence where it really would be needed (i.e. South Korea in order to prevent a restarting of the Korean War, enforcing immigration policies on the northern and southern border), changing US foreign policy would mean also amplifying relationships with the democratic movements in the Arab world, aware that Israel's military power will let it fend for itself, while changing US political power to reflect soft (i.e. the lovely and insidious financial empire relative to Bush-style clumsy military imperialism) power as opposed to atavistic Cold War mindsets.

I'd also dramatically amplify playing up the various factions opposed to McWorld against each other, as if divide et impera was good enough for Julius Caesar it's good enough for me. I'd do this behind the scenes as opposed to overtly, with plausible deniability to favor my proxies at the expense of the other guys' proxies. As well I'd seek to limit the other Great Powers by the more subtle means of financial strangling and slip-nets placed so one wrong move and they're in US clutches, financially as opposed to militarily.

I'd also draw down the number of nukes while streamlining the nuclear ballistic missile arsenal, introducing flexibility as to the most likely targets for quality as opposed to quantity (because destroying the human species only 2 times over is preferable to 8 times).

As far as domestic policy is concerned, I'd adopt a UHC system on the French model, while streamlining the budget to lop out a lot of the incompetence and political musical chairs that keeps the Defense Budget artificially inflated. I'd retool Social Security and Medicare for the 21st Century state that recognizes (in theory) rights that the 1930s one did not, with longer lifespans than the 1930s one was used to. I would update labor laws in favor of labor, recognizing that capital can fend for itself where labor is more numerous and a much better political base. I would also expand financing for the arts, while dramatically clamping down on any and all pork barrel projects to districts which cannot pay their own way (read: no pork for Republican districts, they can pay their own damn bills).

I would also finance an energy policy directed not in favor of more, more and still more oil-drilling, but in favor of an efficient and limited type of oil drilling for sectors of the economy where it is truly needed until a viable substitute is developed/found (which would also receive consistent investment and financing) while expanding local alternative energies suited to regions, as opposed to the entire country as a whole. I would dramatically expand as well protection of wildlife and forests in the United States, while allowing states latitude WRT 10th Amendment rights on legalized marijuana, stricter EPA emissions than the national standard, and other such things that benefit people, clamping down on harsh coercive measures.

I would also begin strict crackdowns on selectively enforced laws and attempts to eliminate civil rights wholesale, and would remember Little Rock and the Civil Rights Act of 1871 as precedents if that were to meet a backlash. Also I would emphasize repeatedly that the USA is a *secular* country where individuals are free to worship as they please, to proseyltize as they please if the religion considers that just, but are not free to try to use the state to compel conversion for them. I would also do this aware I would be vanishingly unlikely to be re-elected. And not caring overmuch on that.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

You really think the Kim regime would restart the Korean War? They've been threatening for fifty years, but it always seems to be a bargaining chip. I wonder if they have the balls nowadays, when they'd likely lack Chinese support for an offensive, to actually open fire. And if they do, then more US troops are unlikely to dissuade them.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Good idea for a post.


My platform planks would be

1) Begin a global drawdown of US military forces such that 10 years from the start of the process the only places in the world outside of the the US that have US troops stationed on them are Guantanamo, Guam, and Deigo Garcia.

2) Push for a Constitutional amendment that limits defense spending to 1% of the prior years GDP except during a declared war.

3) Eliminate the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, Education, Commerce, and Energy reorganizing the handful of remaining essential functions into other departments.

4) Eliminating all government subsidies for corporations and imposing criminal sanctions against the senior officers and Board of Directors of any company which recieves a government bailout. The company might be too big to fail but there has to be penalties for those who are responsible for it.

5) Replace Medicare and Medicaid with universal government funded Health Savings Accounts that provide funds into the account on a sliding scale based on age, income, and number of dependent children. The maximum government contribution would be $16,000 per year, the minimum would be $1000 per year. Retain a Medicaid lite option whose sole eligibility requirement is that your HSA is exhausted and you have medical expenses which have exceeded $16,000 per year for 5 consecutive or 7 out of 10 years.

6) Increase the retirement age to 72, index it to the average life expectancy.

7) Replace all income taxes with a consumption tax that gives a prebate on the taxes paid up to the poverty level.

8) Index student aid dollars to the major being studied and the projected need for that skillset upon graduation.

9) Immigration reform such that pretty much anyone who wants to can come here provided they are not carrying a communicable disease or wanted for serious violent crimes in their home state and they can show that they either have a job or a sponsor willing to provide for them in the event that they cannot provide for themselves. Concurrently rework all federal assistance programs such that no one is eligible to receive aid of any sort until after they have been in the country for more than 2 years. Finally set up a program for anyone present in the country illegally where they can file for papers on the grounds that they plead guilty to a misdemeanor that puts them on probation for 5 years and pay a token fine.

10)Tort reforms that contain some mechanism for a defendant to recoup expenses from defending against a frivolous suit and provides some form of sanction against lawyers who defraud their clients by allowing them to continue in such suits.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Oho, I want a platform, too!

1. Implementation of a nationwide, mandatory, single-payer healthcare system.

2. Retooling of patent, trademark, and copyright law; repeal of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

3. Scrapping the current income tax and social welfare systems in favor of a unified progressive negative income tax system with attendant nasty penalties for anyone abusing it (i.e. you'd better work if you're able, or you'll face fines and loss of benefits). Since corporations are now persons (thanks, Citizens United!) they'll get to pay the same rate of income tax, and only use the same deductions, as individuals within the same income bracket.

4. Repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and passage of federal laws equating discrimination on the basis of religion, gender, or sexual orientation to that based on race (i.e. strict scrutiny).

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

It makes me sad that you don't already have #1 and #4. Come to Canada. I'll be making it a dictatorship but I'll keep all our social programs in place. And I'll even let you be in charge of supervising my all-girl bodyguard team.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

My plan would consist of raising taxes by 100% for two years to pay for a massive relocation campaign. I would give Texas to the right wingers and pay for people to move out if they wanted to.

[blue-mangos.livejournal.com]

I support this platform. Mainly because Texas is far away from Canada.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

Expand the death penalty to include those who get passed while driving in the left lane, and those weird fuckers who sit within 3 seats of you in a nearly empty movie theater.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

I think it might be more politically expedient for us to bypass the legislature and just handle this via clandestine ops.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

1, 2, 6, and 7 I'm with you.

3 and 4 are relatively meaningless without saying how you plan to do it. Depending on the how I might or might not agree with you.

5, 8, and 9 I would oppose.


As far as your ideas to kill, I agree with 1 and 2, 3 contains the fallacy that "optimal" even has a meaning in this context but I'm almost certain to disagree with what you are going for with it, and 4 is just a misunderstanding of the meaning of economics which do account for non financial goods and not just financial ones.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

My platform...

-Metric system only!
-All new buildings (especially residential) to have sprinkler systems
-Incentives to have fire protection sprinklers in all dwellings
-Government to fully subsidize birth control
-Ant-abortion bullies have mandatory community service in orphanages
-Allow motorcycles to lane split
-Ban flat head screwdrivers, the awful nuisance
-Mandatory merging test for all Drivers license renewals
-Ban corporate political donations to stop buying bills/laws that benefit them
-Initiate election spending caps, we should be electing people, not ads
-Encourage savings by taxing spending rather then income

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Metric is overrated. Cubits and thimbles all the way!
Wait... for a moment I thought you had said sphincter systems...

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

1. Revamp the military to reduce the defense budget.

What kind of revamping did you have in mind?

3. Drive structural costs out of healthcare.

Any detail on what this means?

7. License and tax recreational drugs

This one I'm vaguely surprised at.

8. Federal mandates re consumer waste

Do you mean trash or do you mean overconsumption?

I love hypotheticals, they let non-Americans get in on the fun

[tridus.livejournal.com]

1. Massive reform of the patent system. Business process patents are banned. Software patents are banned. Any patent that takes an existing idea and adds 'Internet' to it is banned. Getting onto a standards body and then using it to get your patented tech into a standard without bothering to mention the patent is also banned and immediately nullifies the patent.

Patent cases will be handled by a panel of federally appointed experts rather then by juries in East Texas who have no idea what they're talking about.

2. All corporate subsidies eliminated. Anybody who claims this will hurt the environment by damaging the ethanol industry will be shot out of a catapult.

3. Net-neutrality made law. That's the version that says carriers can't discriminate against competitors traffic in favor of their own (because competition is good). Carriers ARE allowed to impose transfer limits, and I really hate how some people try to lump that in with net-neutrality.

4. Reduce the millitary budget by 2.5% a year every year for the next 10 years. Would love to get more, but a bureaucracy that large doesn't change direction quickly. Change focus to a smaller, more defense oriented military and not a global police force.

5. Reform the tax system so that a mortal can understand it (sorry Intuit). Eliminate the boutique tax credits, subsidies, grants, and convoluted weirdness that makes the thing so damn complicated. I'll keep progressive income tax, but with five brackets.

This could go on a while and I want to get dinner, so I'll stop there.

Re: I love hypotheticals, they let non-Americans get in on the fun

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

"1. Massive reform of the patent system. Business process patents are banned. Software patents are banned. Any patent that takes an existing idea and adds 'Internet' to it is banned. Getting onto a standards body and then using it to get your patented tech into a standard without bothering to mention the patent is also banned and immediately nullifies the patent."

Man I should have included this in mine. Personally I'd rather abolish ALL IP laws and protections but I recognize that is probably going too far in the short term but your suggestions are a good place to start and I'll throw in No patent or copyright can last for more than 10 years or 5 years past the death of it's author/creator.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

1. Demolish all ungodly post-thingies that stick out of the ground.
2. Tear down the mountain altars.
3. No more business on Saturday.

Oh wait, I'm in the 21st century aren't I... wait a minute... umm...

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

1. Exile worshippers of Asherah
2. Claim land from The Nile to The Euphrates
3. Spread knowledge of The Holy Book
4. Fake moon landing

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

You didn't say a word about weed, man. Me disappointed.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

#7?

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Your platform isn't too shabby, pastorlenny. Here's my own:

1. Eisenhower-era progressive tax rates
2. Medicare for everyone (and aggressively pursue structural solutions to increasing medical expenses through stuff like drug pricing reform, training more doctors, et cetera)
3. Reduce the size of the US military by 80% over the next ten years—starting with an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
4. Government employment for anyone willing and able to work, focusing on useful major projects:
   • Infrastructure supporting a shift from suburban to urban development, like public transit
   • Other infrastructure
   • A Marshall Corps fighting world poverty—project #1 can be fresh water supplies
   • ... but anything will do (http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/422902.html) so long as it keeps people employed
5. Carbon Zero by 2030, including investments in both existing technologies and research, and steadily increasing carbon taxes over time.
6. End the War on Terror, notably including ending torture and indefinite detention; address terrorism through law enforcement methods
7. Vigorously protect civil liberties (yes, that includes same-sex marriage)
8. End the War on Drugs; include drug addiction treatment in the expanded Medicare program; release nonviolent drug offenders from prison
9. Commit the US to the International Criminal Court
10. Change agricultural policy to make nourishing food cheap and junk food expensive, rather than the other way around.
11. Net neutrality
12. Reform intellectual property law so that IP holders receive fair compensation for their work but cannot block its use
13. Federally fund primary and secondary education
14. Abolish the penny, daylight savings time, and useless security theater in airports.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

This is great. Can't find a thing to disagree with. Can I add stuff?

I would add what Portugal is doing to #8. "At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail."

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

Anything on corporate welfare?

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Oh man, come and be president of the independent city-state of London. (When we finally get around to seceding from the rest of the UK: Scotland first, Wales and Cornwall next....then it's our turn.)

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

London isn't part of the "Real" England anyway. Just look at those football teams, how many English play in Chelsea, Arsenal and the rest?

You make a good politician

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

My critique of your proposed platform:

1. "Revamp" is a nonesuch word. It is much like "reform"; it sounds good but it essentially can mean anything, or nothing.


2. These are already coming and will almost certainly be tried before the Social Security scheme collapses. It will of course, violate the implied contract under which Social Security was sold to the voters as an annuity, not government welfare, but hey, who expects politicians to keep their word? The Supreme Court has already made precident dispelling that popular delusion previously though. Your scheme will work if you can actually get a good balance of the "have-nots" on your side to balance the political power of the "haves" from whom you intend to rob.


3. Central economic planning does not and cannot work. What you are proposing is yet one more analogous friction-reducing scheme to make the great perpetual motion socialism machine finally work. You cannot legislate away the Economic Calculation Problem, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem) any more than you can order the tide not to come in.


4. See the economic calculation problem again. Politician-run "urban renewal" does NOT work, unless you think its previous incarnation, often referred to as "the projects" were a magnificent success. Of course, had they been, more "urban renewal" would not have been necessary in the first place because the cities would be utopian socialist paradises.


5. Economic calculation problem again. Disbelief in gravity does not confer the ability to fly by flapping your arms. Without free energy markets, no bureaucrat, no matter how well intentioned, no matter how "incentivized" by threats and rewards can make prosperity out of fiat whims. They simply lack the information necessary to set rational, market-clearing prices. Nixon, Ford, and Carter tried the same tricks back in the seventies.


6. It would be interesting to see the fallout from that attempt.


7. That would be a step in the right direction, and it might confer plenty of real socio-economic benefits. Good luck not being assassinated by the scoundrels, on both sides of the law, who are growing fat and prosperous, thanks to the never-ending drug war.


8. ...And back to the flat earth where the Economic Calculation Problem does not exist. What you're calling "waste" is the product of economic trade-offs that occur in the market place. "Waste" is subjective. The best that government can do is not subsidize or forbid free economic transactions between economic actors. Government should also not protect those who impose externalities on third-parties. Anything more than that will end up producing more of the same Gordian Knot bureacracy and market distortions that exist now.


9. You mean, tax breaks for companies that I and my political supporters like, at minimum, and a tipping of the economic playing field in favor of already established firms at the expense of new ideas. This represents a change, how?

As for you list of prevaling ideas that you want to kill:

1. AGREED!


2. True. A more pernicious idea though, is the idea that, outside of the talented and lucky, most people cannot easily produce far more values than they consume. The exact opposite case is true, provdide people are allowed the liberty to participate in the market without coercion.


3. "Optimum outcomes" are themselves a collectivist fantasy world hobgoblin. You cannot even get two people who agree on the real-world existence of this concept to agree on what it looks like.


4. Each individual is unique, as is his subjective scale of values. As such, there is no such thing as a universal or objective measure of "quality-of-life."

Re: You make a good politician

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

London Docklands and Evansville seem to have worked out fairly well.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

1. Make everything better

2. Make people happier.

I can't lose.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I will create a Commission for the Propagation of All Things Good and Nice.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Why Katy Perry?

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

My platform

1. Mandatory two year government corps service, military or other. Is not eligible to vote or receive certain government benefits (unemployment, attend university with any public funding, get business, drivers or professional licenses) until service is complete.

2. Expand the disability insurance portion of social security.

3. Single payer medical system.

4. Mass executions of those with Celiac's Disease in order to protect the sanctity of pizza dough.

5. Legalize recreational drug and pharmaceutical drug use, leave remedies to adversarial tort system.

6. Prosecute owners of businesses that commit crimes. Stockholders held individually responsible for crimes committed by businesses, like other RICO organizations.

7. Tax oil at $120 a barrel, then let market find alternative energy sources.

8. Index criminal fines to income.

9. Eliminate old age portion of social security insurance.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I gotta say... #1 to me sounds a helluva lot like forced labor.

My platform

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

1. Encourage better sex education programs (that include lessons on birth control and abstinence) in order to reduce the abortion rate without abolishing abortion.
2. Stop collecting Social Security to be used as a government slush fund and encourage people to save for retirement on their own. Continue to pay those who've already paid into the system.
3. Revamp the education system to include more science, technology, language, and arts programs. Emphasize physical education but stop these massive varsity sports programs.
4. Encourage energy independence by extending research into algae-based fuels, solar and wind energy, and coal.
5. Consolidate government agencies so there's no overlap.
6. Institute a cap on medical malpractice awards, as well as allow health insurance purchases across state lines.
7. End the current tax system and instead institute a federal tax of 10-15% based on income. For corporations, institue a 20-25% tax based on profit ONLY.
8. Legalize same-sex marriage.
9. End hate crimes legislation (may be controversial but let's face it - EVERY crime boils down to hate)
10. Legalize and tax marijuana and encourage use of hemp in industrial/commercial markets.

I would LOVE to kill-off the ideal that just because someone is rich, they made their money through nefarious deeds.

Re: My platform

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

2. Stop collecting Social Security to be used as a government slush fund and encourage people to save for retirement on their own. Continue to pay those who've already paid into the system.

I think you actually need to force people to do it, if you just "encourage" you're going to end up with a lot of old, angry, retired people who vote in numbers disproportionate to their demographic representation and are hence able to hold a disproportionate amount of power over government. I think if you just "encouraged" people to do it that voting block would end up resulting in some horrible policies later. With the Australian system your employer pays 9% (raising to 12, should be 15) of your income into a superannuation fund (15% from 30-65 should give you enough to retire at 75% of your average income for the rest of your life without touching your capital). You can have total control over that, right down to 100% self managed (most people outsource it), but there are really specific rules about getting it out before retirement (demonstrated financial hardship). It's also taxed at under half the rate that income is and you can contribute extra at this lower tax rate. One result of this has been to vastly increase the capital pool available for investment which has helped strengthen the economy. This system has only been around for about 25 years but most people retiring today are comfortable in their retirement.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

I'd rather vote for that than the Demopublicans or the Republicrats.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Republic of cats? =)