New contract with America - 11 things to do to save America
Rush Limbaugh was right in his Wall Street Journal Opinion article, "We
believe in individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the rule
of law, faith, a color-blind society and national security. We support
school choice, enterprise zones, tax cuts, welfare reform, faith-based
initiatives, political speech, homeowner rights and the war on
terrorism. And at our core we embrace and celebrate the most
magnificent governing document ever ratified by any nation--the U.S.
Constitution. Along with the Declaration of Independence, which
recognizes our God-given natural right to be free, it is the foundation
on which our government is built and has enabled us to flourish as a
people. "
I think he should add we are strong environmentalist.
As conservatives we must have candidates to run on these issues
and here are answers to how and why they should be accomplished.
1. Aggressively pursue the war on terrorism.
The agenda for such a movement should include the following activities and efforts.
- investigate radical mosques
- support anti-Islamofascist freedom fighters
- thwart attempts to impose Sharia law
- form an anti-Islamofascist publishing network
- create an anti-Islamofascist portal on the Internet
- establish an anti-Islamofascist speakers bureau
- wage an ideological assault on Islamofascism
- support efforts to evangelize Muslims in Europe and the Middle East
- create a global anti-Islamofascist coalition
- reframe the illegal immigration issue as one of national security
- end dependence on foreign oil that's funding the Islamofascists.
- We need a serious dialogue -- not knee-jerk hysteria -- about the
1st Amendment, what it protects and what it should not protect. Here
are a few
baseline principles to consider:
We should be allowed to close down websites that recruit
suicide bombers and provide instructions to indiscriminately kill
civilians by
suicide or other means, or advocate killing people from the West or the
destruction of Western civilization;
- We should propose a Geneva-like convention for fighting
terrorism that makes very clear that those who would fight outside the
rules of law,
those who would use weapons of mass destruction and those who would
target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of
rules that
allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains
so much strength that it is truly horrendous. A subset of this
convention
should define the international rules of engagement on what activities
will not be protected by free speech claims; and
- We need an expeditious review of current domestic law to see
what changes can be made within the protections of the 1st Amendment to
ensure
that free speech protection claims are not used to protect the advocacy
of terrorism, violent conduct or the killing of innocents.The
most effective form of counterterrorism fights not the terrorists but
the ideas that motivate them.
- This strategy involves two main steps.
First, defeat the Islamist movement just as the fascist and communist
movements were defeated - on every level and in every way, making use
of every institution, public and private. This task falls mainly on
non-Muslims, Muslim communities being generally incapable or unwilling
to purge their own.
In contrast, only Muslims can undertake the
second step, the formulation and spread of an Islam that is modern,
moderate, democratic, liberal, good-neighborly, humane, and respectful
of women. Here, non-Muslims can help by distancing themselves from
Islamists and supporting moderate Muslims.
2. Nominate and confirm judges that will follow the constitution.
The Supreme Court is one of the most important issues of our day. The courts
over the last 60 years have been participating in Judaical activism,
making law not found in the Constitution. The most recent example is
the takings law, eating away at the fifth amendment.
Most of all of the great culture war issues of our day can be
directly traced to bad decisions by the United States Supreme Court.
Consider this: duly elected legislative branches of government are not
ultimately responsible for abortion on demand, legalizing same sex
marriage, protecting pornography as free speech, removing faith symbols
from the public square, and undermining private property rights.
Instead, these moral and social ills are the responsibility of
unelected, unaccountable members of the federal judiciary who refuse to
recognize their limited and restrained role as jurists and insist upon
acting as social change agents.
3. Close the borders and enforce the immigration laws.
The lack of assimilation by immigrants
to the United States - both legal and illegal - is culminating in an
American identity crisis and poses a serious problem for the future of
our country.
This movement toward anti-assimilation stands in
stark contrast to the very concept of our nation. E pluribus unum, "out
of many, one," is the motto of the United States. This motto, this
dedication, was originally selected by the Great Seal Committee in
1776. It acknowledged that the thirteen separately governed British
Colonies had banded together to form one inclusive nation, a country
that stood independent from the British Crown, the United States.
This problem is best illustrated by two examples;
the aggressive Reconquista movement in the Southwestern US and the
developing and sometimes violent row with the growing Islamic community
in the United States.
The militant Reconquista movement embraces
the divisiveness of multiculturalism more fervently than Dr. Leo
Buscaglia used to embrace his patients. Their motto, "Por La Raza todo,
Fuera de La Raza nada" - which translated means "For the Race,
everything, for those outside the Race, nothing" - encapsulates the
dangers multiculturalism poses to a nation's identity.
Violence on the U.S.-Mexico border has risen dramatically
over the past three years in what U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) has called "an unprecedented surge." ICE has
established intelligence and investigative operations along the border
to combat the increased brutality.
In a recent report, ICE said the border gangs, which collect
hundreds of millions of dollars annually in illicit profits, are
becoming increasingly ruthless -- against their victims, rivals and
federal, state and local police.
Much of that violence has targeted U.S. Border Patrol agents,
who have seen a spike in incidents as the agency continues its efforts
to bring larger areas of the border under operational control. Violence
directed at agents has included physical and vehicle assaults, and
shooting incidents.
Gunfire has become commonplace along the border, authorities
said, particularly in the alien- and drug-smuggling corridors of
southern Arizona. They said about 90 percent of the migrants headed
north out of Mexico have hired a coyote to guide them into the United
States. State and local law-enforcement officials on the border have said they
are outgunned and outmanned by drug- and alien-smugglers armed with
automatic weapons, grenade launchers,
bazookas, improvised explosive devices, and state-of-the-art
communications and tracking systems.
The rising border violence also has been attributed by
authorities to efforts by the street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13,
to win control of drug- and alien-smuggling routes into the United
States. The Border Patrol's field-intelligence center said MS-13 has
aligned with drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia, and seeks unfettered
access to smuggling corridors.
The intelligence center said the MS-13 presence has increased
competition between rival gangs that must vie for areas where they can
ply their trade. The result, it said, has been an increase in violence
as rival gangs struggle for domination.
MS-13 members also reportedly have accepted contracts to
assassinate Border Patrol agents to intimidate and frighten agents away
from the border.
4. Repeal Article XVI of the Constitution and implement the Fair Tax.
The FairTax proposal is a comprehensive plan to replace federal income
and payroll taxes, including personal, gift, estate, capital gains,
alternative minimum, Social Security/Medicare, self-employment,
and corporate taxes.
The FairTax proposal integrates such features
as a progressive national retail sales tax, dollar-for-dollar revenue
replacement, and a rebate to ensure that no American pays such
federal taxes up to the poverty level.
Included in the FairTax plan
is the repeal of the 16th
Amendment to the Constitution. The FairTax
allows Americans to keep 100 percent of their paychecks (minus any
state income taxes), ends corporate taxes and compliance costs
hidden in the retail cost of goods and services, and
fully funds the
federal government while fulfilling the promise of Social Security
and Medicare.
An integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales
tax, a rebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes up to the
poverty level, dollar-for-dollar revenue neutrality, and the repeal of
the 16th Amendment.
The FairTax taxes us only on what we choose to spend, not on what
we earn. It does not raise any more or less revenue; it is designed to
be revenue neutral. So it is also
cost neutral – the final cost for goods and services changes little
under the FairTax.
The FairTax is a fair, efficient, transparent,
and intelligent solution to the frustration and inequity of our
current tax system.
The FairTax eliminates the intrusive, inefficient IRS; The FairTax abolishes individual income-tax forms; The FairTax imposes no tax on small businesses or farms,The FairTax untaxes education; The FairTax replaces all federal income and payroll taxes with a revenue neutral, 23% national sales tax.
5. The FairTax is fair because it:
a. Has No exceptions, No exclusions = No loopholes
b. Enables workers and retirees to keep 100% of their paychecks
c. Encourages greater savings, investment, job creation, productivity, and economic growth
d. Increases taxpayer compliance while reducing compliance costs
The FairTax removes the cost of corporate taxes and compliance costs from the cost
of U.S. exports, putting U.S. exports on a level playing field with
foreign competitors. Lower prices sharply increase demand for
U.S. exports, thereby increasing job creation in U.S. manufacturing
sectors.
- Abolishes the IRS
- Closes all loopholes and brings fairness to taxation
- Ensures Social Security and Medicare funding
- Brings transparency and accountability to tax policy
- Allows American products to compete fairly
- Reimburses the tax on purchases of basic necessities
- Enables retirees to keep their entire pension
- Enables workers to keep their entire paycheck
The FairTax plan is a
comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll
based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive
national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal
taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar
federal revenue replacement, and, through companion legislation, the
repeal of the 16th Amendment. This nonpartisan legislation (HR 25/S
1025) abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift,
estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare,
and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible,
federal retail sales tax -- administered primarily by existing state
sales tax authorities. The IRS is disbanded and defunded. The FairTax
taxes us only on what we choose to spend on new goods or services, not
on what we earn. The FairTax is a fair, efficient, transparent, and
intelligent solution to the frustration and inequity of our current tax
system.
No tax on used goods. The amount you pay to fund the government is totally visible.
With
the FairTax you are only taxed once on any good or service. If you
choose to buy used goods − used car, used home, used appliances − you
do not pay the FairTax. If, as a business owner or farmer, you buy
something for strictly business purposes (not for personal
consumption), you pay no consumption tax. The FairTax is charged just
as state sales taxes are today. When you decide what to buy and how
much to spend, you see exactly how much you are contributing to the
government with each purchase.
Retail prices no longer hide corporate taxes or their
compliance costs, which drive up costs for those who can least afford
to pay.
Did you know that income taxes and the cost of
complying with them currently make up 20 percent or more of all retail
prices? It’s true. According to Dr. Dale Jorgenson of Harvard
University, hidden income taxes are passed on to the consumer in the
form of higher prices for everything you buy. If competition does not
allow prices to rise, corporations lower labor costs, again hurting
those who can least afford to lose their jobs. Finally, if prices are
as high as competition allows and labor costs are as low as practical,
profits/dividends to shareholders are driven down, thereby hurting
retirement savings for moms-and-pops and pension funds invested in
Corporate America. With the FairTax, the sham of corporate taxation
ends, competition drives prices down, more people in America have jobs,
and retirement/pension funds see improved performance.
The income tax exports our jobs, rather than our products. The FairTax brings jobs home.
Most
importantly, the FairTax does not burden U.S. exports the way the
current income tax system does. The FairTax removes the cost of
corporate taxes and compliance costs from the cost of U.S. exports,
putting U.S. exports on a level playing field with foreign
competitors. Lower prices sharply increase demand for U.S. exports,
thereby increasing job creation in U.S. manufacturing sectors. At
home, imports are subject to the same FairTax rate as domestically
produced goods. Not only does the FairTax put U.S. products sold here
on the same tax footing as foreign imports, but the dramatic lowering
of compliance costs in comparison to other countries’ value-added taxes
also gives U.S. products a definitive pricing advantage which foreign
tax systems cannot match.
5. Vote for real cuts in spending, eliminate corporate welfare, be fiscally conservative.
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- 6. Reform Social Security.
Reforming the present Social Security system to create
fully funded independently held personal accounts for every American,
-
The president’s fiscal year 2008 budget envisions providing resources for voluntary
accounts funded by a portion of a worker’s Social Security payroll
taxes. Starting in 2012, participants could contribute up to 4 percent
of their Social Security-taxable earnings to an individually owned
account. In exchange for the opportunity to invest their own money,
participants would likely receive less in guaranteed benefits.
Personal
retirement accounts are seen by many as a way to secure the financial
futures of millions of Americans without requiring higher taxes or huge
benefit cuts.
Personal Social Security Savings Accounts.
Workers should be allowed the freedom to choose to shift some of the
taxes they already pay into their own personal savings and investment
accounts that over time would take over responsibility for paying some
of their future Social Security benefits. This reform would produce an
historic breakthrough in the personal prosperity of working people. An
average income family where the husband and wife both work and earn
just average incomes would accumulate over their entire careers close
to a million dollars in real terms after inflation. Even lower income
families would accumulate several hundred thousand dollars by
retirement. These funds would be personally and directly owned by each
family, and can be left to the family at death, greatly strengthening
the family structure. Families would continue to be backed up by a
Federal guarantee that all workers with personal accounts would receive
at least the benefits promised under the current Social Security
system. Because market investment returns are so much higher than what
Social Security promises let alone what it can pay, workers with
personal accounts would actually receive far higher benefits. As the
accounts take over responsibility for paying future promised benefits,
all long term Social Security deficits under the current framework
would be eliminated, and Social Security will achieve permanent, full
solvency. We should also eliminate the taxation of Social Security
benefits, which is an unnecessary, counterproductive burden on our
nation’s senior citizens.
Reforming the present Social Security system to create
fully funded independently held personal accounts for every American,
A business that isn't ready to adopt a
401(k) or other retirement plan would simply offer its employees the
chance to contribute to an IRA every payday by direct deposit, in much
the same way millions of us have our paychecks deposited directly into
our bank accounts. It's easier to save small amounts on a regular
basis. And once payroll deposits begin, they continue automatically and
accumulate tax-free,
The first is that the plan would result in little or no cost to
employers who would be exempt from costly rules and regulations that
govern 401(k)s and other retirement plans. Businesses would be offered
a tax credit in the first two years to encourage them to offer such
plans and help them adjust to any administrative costs.
The second is that it would principally benefit moderate- to
lower-income workers -- the 58 percent of the workforce that does not
participate in any retirement plan, people who tend to have less
education, do not save on a regular basis and usually work for small
businesses.
7. Reform Medicare and Medicaid.
First let's acknowledge that the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures
from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax
manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference.
Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third
parties, which means that most consumers exercise no
cost-consciousness. As Milton Friedman always pointed out, no one
spends other people's money as carefully as he spends his own.
The U.S. ranking is
influenced heavily by the number of people -- 45 million -- without
medical insurance. As I reported in previous columns, our government
aggravates that problem by making insurance artificially expensive
with, for example, mandates for coverage that many people would not
choose and forbidding us to buy policies from companies in another
state.
Even with these interventions, the 45 million figure is
misleading. Thirty-seven percent of that group live in households
making more than $50,000 a year, says the U.S. Census Bureau. Nineteen
percent are in households making more than $75,000 a year; 20 percent
are not citizens, and 33 percent are eligible for existing government
programs but are not enrolled.
Move to an electronic health record
for every person. That health record will start with prenatal care
and end with analytics after you pass away.
The National Institutes of Health ought to create
an institute of epidemiology based on the kind of electronic health
records that exist for over 30 million people who have electronic
health records already.
[Electronic health records offer] a
major goldmine of information on how to treat people – what works best,
what doesn’t work quite as well, what medicine you should use and what
protocols really have the right outcome.
It could be organized
into a totally HIPAA-compliant, anonymous database that gives us the
chance to have an epidemiology kind of study. So it’d be breathtaking
[and] ongoing.
The
Institute of Medicine reports that it currently takes up to 17 years
for a best practice to reach the average doctor. What you want to have
in the future is an online 24/7, full-forward, on-demand, continuous
medical learning system available to the doctor, the patient and their
family.
So that when you have a problem that’s particularly
difficult, you’re getting this week’s breakthrough and you’re keeping
the pace of intelligence up to the highest possible level.
So,
think of intelligence as moving knowledge from the laboratory to taking
care of you in the shortest time as possible and think of intelligence
in the sense that we efficiently and accurately track, for your entire
lifetime, your health status so that you have the optimum ability to
have the right prevention, the right testing and the right
self-management.
This means you have a real-line payment system. But [this idea is
similar to] the Georgia project with diabetes where we’re now prepaying
doctors for every diabetic in order to get them educated well enough
that we don’t pay for the emergency room.
We really have to [begin viewing] every hospital as a component of a health system.
Because
if hospitals move from acute care to early detection and early
prevention and continue the care of chronic illnesses – and if we
gradually continue to defeat cancer and cancer becomes a chronic
illness rather than a terminal event – you’re going to have the entire
process of managing chronic behaviors.
And you want [this
process as] deinstitutionalized as possible. The more you can do that
on an ambulatory basis, [by] training the patients to take care of
themselves, the less you have to do.
And again, we [came to this
conclusion by studying] diabetes, because it is technically impossible
for nurses and doctors to manage diabetics.
The most they can
do is monitor them and educate them, reward them and encourage them.
But it is impossible for a doctor to say, “I will take care of your
diabetes.” In the end, you’re going to have to learn how to take care
of yourself to be well.
You can apply that also to a whole range
of things. You can apply it to asthma. People who are trained well [to
manage their asthma] almost never go to emergency rooms, and people who
are not trained well go to emergency rooms a lot.
You can apply
it to rheumatoid arthritis: where people with the right training and
the right medication lead full lives and are very active; and people
without the right training and the right medication could end up in the
wheelchair within three to five years.
But the real winners would be the uninsured and those who
choose insurance policies with lower premiums but higher deductibles.
The uninsured would now be able to use the money they would have paid
Uncle Sam to put toward purchasing health insurance. For someone in the
30 percent tax bracket, that would be $4,500 they could use to pay for
health premiums. The working poor, who pay little or no income tax,
would still receive a break on their payroll taxes, though not enough
to pay for most current insurance policies.
Potentially, even those who have employer-provided policies
might have an incentive to push for lower-cost plans, since they will
be taxed on the value of the premiums. If they're relatively healthy,
they might prefer higher deductibles for routine care, or they might
want only catastrophic insurance to pay for some unexpected illness,
injury or hospital stay.
We need to put the consumer at the center of the
health-care system, just as we do in every other market. And the surest
way to do this is by creating a national market to purchase health
insurance.
Current state and federal laws permit consumers to
buy only those health-insurance plans that have been approved in their
own state, meaning it is illegal for a citizen of one state to buy
insurance in another. These government barriers to free trade stifle
competition, producing disastrous results: The absence of robust
competition artificially inflates the cost of insurance, preventing
millions of citizens from purchasing affordable coverage, and thus
shifting the burden of care to those who do pay for insurance and into
government programs.
To reverse this, government must allow
competition to flourish. More competition among insurers in a national
market will encourage more creative products, better services and lower
prices — just as it always does wherever competition thrives — and
every American will be able to find affordable coverage. The Health
Choice Act, which was introduced by Representative John Shadegg of
Arizona, will go a long way toward creating a rational, working market
in health care.
A vital part of this rational market is the
availability of information. Information on performance, cost, and
quality allows consumers to make informed decisions, but health care is
perhaps the only market in which consumers have virtually no access to
this information.
Americans have a right to know this information, and the
data that can best inform us is Medicare-claims history. Medicare has
detailed information on nearly every doctor and hospital in the
country, which can be analyzed to identify the most efficient
hospitals, best doctors and most effective treatments. The federal
government also has information on disciplinary action and lawsuits
filed against doctors, collected for the National Practitioner Data
Bank. Inexplicably and inexcusably, the federal government will not
release this data, despite growing demand from many health plans,
employers, consumers, and researchers. This information will save lives
and save money now. Americans have a right to know this information,
and taxpayers must continue to demand its release.
Romney’s plan harnessed free-market principles to create an “insurance
exchange” that provided citizens with a one stop-shop to purchase
health insurance. According to Heritage’s Ed Haislmaier, one of the
architects of the plan, the exchange works like a “stock or commodity
exchange” and serves as a “clearinghouse” (but never a “product
regulator”) from which individuals can choose affordable healthcare
plans.When Governor Romney decided to tackle the double-digit annual
increases in health insurance costs, the average uninsured resident in
Massachusetts had to pay $335 a month for private health insurance,
which did not include coverage for prescription drugs and featured a
$5,000 deductible. Moreover, the state was spending over $1.3 billion a
year on "free care" for the uninsured.
Governor Romney actually got the Democrat-controlled
legislature to enact a plan that addressed these problems. He took the
time to understand what makes private health insurance markets work and
transformed the market in his state from one that was
government-controlled to one that allows competition to flourish.
Governor Romney's health care plan featured a number of
reforms. First, his plan deregulated the overburdened Massachusetts
insurance market to reduce the cost of private insurance, while giving
consumers more choice from a broader range of plans. Second, the plan
addressed the problems caused by the fact that many people could not
get healthcare through their employers and could not afford it on the
individual market. Third, he redirected the millions of dollars that
were being spent on free emergency room care and used it instead to
help those who truly were not able to afford private health insurance.
Finally, Governor Romney recognized that competition is the
key to the success of any market – so doing what no one had ever done
before, he created a new market where consumers can go to pick the
health care plan that suits them best. Called the "Connector," this
marketplace is not a new regulatory agency or insurance purchasing
pool. It is a place that gives people access to more choices, better
information, and lower costs in selecting a private health insurance
plan. The Connector also provides a way for individuals to purchase
insurance with the same pre-tax advantage given to those buying
insurance through their employers. Even better, the Connector gives
people the chance to buy private insurance independent of their jobs,
so that they don't have to worry about losing their coverage when they
change employers.
But Governor Romney's reforms did not stop at reducing the
cost of insurance today. He also tackled a number of reforms that will
help reduce the rise in health care costs over the long-term. His plan
included medical transparency provisions that allow consumers to
compare the quality of hospitals and providers, while tracking and
recording the costs associated with the care they provide. The reforms
also instituted measures to encourage the use of electronic health
records, which will reduce medical errors and lower costs.
What's been the result of all these reforms? Although the
reforms were signed into law just over a year ago, the changes are
dramatic. The same uninsured individual whose choice was formerly
limited to a policy with a $335 a month insurance premium with no drug
benefits and a $5,000 deductible now can purchase quality private
insurance, which includes coverage for prescription drugs, office and
emergency room visits, and a $2,000 deductible, for $175 per month.
Between July 1, 2006 and May 1, 2007, nearly 125,000 previously
uninsured residents of Massachusetts got health insurance coverage.
Taxpayer-funded "free care" is falling at double-digit rates,
because the Romney reforms no longer allow people to let others pay for
their health care if they can afford their own health insurance. Those
who previously couldn't afford health insurance now have the help they
need to get access to affordable, quality, portable private coverage.
And, as he promised, Governor Romney did all this without raising taxes
and without a government take-over of health care.
The plan requires all Massachusetts citizens to purchase health
insurance from this marketplace of private insurers or from another
source. Employers must provide employees with the option to purchase
healthcare plans with pre-tax dollars. Those who can afford to but
elect not to purchase health insurance face wage withholdings and the
loss of tax exemptions. Those unable to afford insurance premiums
receive government assistance to purchase insurance; the assistance is
made possible thanks to Romney’s plan to redirect funds earmarked for
hospitals to cover uninsured patients to help individuals purchase
their own insurance.
Universal deductibility of health insurance premiums by
employers, employees, the unemployed, individuals and business owners
would connect the consumer to health care costs. When people spend
their own money, they spend it more wisely. Most people will purchase
health plans they can afford, instead of expecting more benefits from
their employer or the government.
Laws should be changed to allow health
insurance entrepreneurs greater freedom to experiment more with the
types of coverage they offer, such as offering coverages like bare
bones, full, or any combination in between. Changing the tax treatment
of individually purchased insurance policies could help limit the
problem of the temporarily uninsured. For the few who still couldn’t
afford insurance, medical charities should be encouraged to step in and
help.
The American health care industry suffers from
government regulations that limit entry through occupational licensure,
and interferes with drug adoption and many other aspects of health care
in addition to the health insurance market. Increasing reliance on
markets in insurance will help to bring health care costs under control.
8. Reform the education system with vouchers.
Take
a look at our public-education system. Nearly a quarter-century ago,
the Reagan administration warned America that our failure in education
was becoming a major threat to our national security. The report A Nation at Risk
noted that “[o]ur once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry,
science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors
throughout the world.” It went on to soberly conclude that “what was
unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur — others are matching
and surpassing our educational attainments.” Unfortunately, since that
report was issued in 1983, public education has continued to
deteriorate.
School administrators, government officials, and
teachers’ unions profess to want real change. Their calls ring hollow,
considering that student performance has not improved in a generation.
After all, public education is a monopoly run by city, county, and
state governments, with a growing federal role in oversight.
Bureaucratic intransigence and vested union interests consistently
block transformational solutions that will bring about real change.
The
status quo is failing our students, and to truly see real change, we
need to enact real change. The simplest and surest way to transform
education is to give students and parents the freedom to choose where
they will go to school. This means eliminating restrictive zoning laws
that force kids into schools simply because they live nearby. This
means introducing free-market forces into education, encouraging
schools to compete for students, much like businesses compete for
customers. This means that schools that do not perform will either
improve or close their doors — which is as it should be. There is no
middle ground.
Vouchers, which will bring choice and competition to
education, so that the dollars can follow the kids. That way parents
can send their kids to the school of their choice public or private.
Studies show that charter schools routinely out perform traditional
public schools. Charters are providing a fast growing option to under
privileged children. This irks teachers unions, school boards and
administrators with a vested interest in a public school monopoly that
is failing to educate millions of kids.
When you take a look at the battle that ensues when a failing public
school is analyzed and a proposal to close that school is made, you get
a sense of how the bureaucracy circles the wagons and defense its
vested interest. One of the virtues of charter schools is that some of
them are allowed to fail. They fail when their customers, the parents,
don't think they are doing a good job. Charter schools are suppose to
improve or fail. The continued failure of so many government schools,
in perpetuity, in spite of the fact that they are failing - because
they have a captive audience -because the parent and the kids aren't
free to go to a different school, is the best argument I can think of
for the virtue of choice and competition funded by vouchers.
The success of school choice, when properly
administered, is indisputable — proven by hoards of academic studies
and thousands of personal experiences. School choice attracts better
teachers, encourages creative curriculum, and improves student
achievement. By applying market principles to
education, you empower students and parents at the expense of
bureaucratic government control. This combination, of limited
government and a vibrant market, never fails to deliver better outcomes
— even in public education.
Parents were heavily levied with property taxes, the
vast portion of which was then given to the local school system to pay
teachers and administrators salaries, along with all the other costs of
operation.
The
Department of Education says on its website the TIF "supports efforts
to develop and implement performance-based teacher and principal
compensation systems in high-need schools" through student academic
achievement and regular in-class evaluations of the teachers.
Early
in his first term, President Bush embraced the “No Child Left Behind”
legislation that has since been found wanting for its one-size-fits-all
approach to education, its over-emphasis on testing, and its punishment
of “under-performing” schools. The result has been to expose most
schools as inadequate and to encourage every form of administrative
cheating necessary for a school to meet the standards set by the law.
The
idea was to force some improvement on a system everyone already knew
was failing students. Laws, however, do not educate students. Teachers
are expected to do that and it is no surprise that the National
Education Association—a union—hated the idea of improvement. Indeed,
from the 1960s to the present day, the NEA has done its best to
undermine, if not destroy, a system of education that served previous
generations of Americans quite well.
Competition and incentives for the better schools would
raise the standards for all schools.Audit your teacher’s classrooms for activity, progress, and
efficiency…more can be learned if the teachers simply focused on
getting the material across.
Hire leaders as principles, not school administrators…you can
have as many curriculum advisors as you want, but districts rarely make
good leadership decisions…you don’t need a link here, wait a day, an
example will show up in the paper.
Hire business managers as Superintendents
Focus on the education of children…the problems within your districts will then become self-evident.
The crux of the problem of education in America. The
teachers. Thanks to the unions, it is virtually impossible to fire an
incompetent teacher. Merit has nothing to do with teaching. Longevity
is the name of the game. And the multitudinous layers of
"administrators", the top among whom receive salaries that rival and
surpass those employed in private industry, are part of problem too.
America needs
another Revolution, an Education Revolution. Parents must rally, school
by school, to wrest back control over their local schools from the
teacher’s unions. They must find a way to hire people who are actually
competent in their subject areas. States must demand real standards for
graduation from their colleges of education.
9. Continue to reform the welfare system to really help.
You move away from rewarding single parent families. Males have to take responsibility for the kids they have.
10. Reform the drug laws. By legalizing, taxing and regulating we will take revenue out of the hands of terrorist.
The syndicates that control narcotics production and distribution reap
the profits from an annual turnover of $400 billion to $500 billion.
And terrorist organizations such as the Taliban are using this money to
expand their operations and buy ever more sophisticated weapons,
threatening Western security.
In the past two years, the drug war has become the Taliban's most
effective recruiter in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's Muslim extremists
have reinvigorated themselves by supporting and taxing the countless
peasants who are dependent one way or another on the opium trade, their
only reliable source of income. The Taliban is becoming richer and
stronger by the day, especially in the east and south of the country.
The "War on Drugs" is defeating the "war on terror.". . .
The war on drugs is the underlying cause of the misery. Everywhere,
that is, except Washington, where a powerful bipartisan consensus has
turned the issue into a political third rail.
The problem starts
with prohibition, the basis of the war on drugs. The theory is that if
you hurt the producers and consumers of drugs badly enough, they'll
stop doing what they're doing. But instead, the trade goes underground,
which means that the state's only contact with it is through law
enforcement, i.e. busting those involved, whether producers,
distributors or users. But so vast is the demand for drugs in the
United States, the European Union and the Far East that nobody has
anything approaching the ability to police the trade.
Prohibition
gives narcotics huge added value as a commodity. Once traffickers get
around the business risks -- getting busted or being shot by
competitors -- they stand to make vast profits.
In Washington, the war on drugs has been a third-rail issue since its
inauguration. It's obvious why -- telling people that their kids can do
drugs is the kiss of death at the ballot box. But that was before 9/11.
Now the drug war is undermining Western security throughout the world.
While the United States constitutes 5% of the world's population, this “land of the free” holds 25% of the world's prisoners – a third to a half are there for drug offenses . The drug war produces the largest industry in this country the penal system.
Plant some poppy, in Afganistan, the pods are ready
in six months. It's their living. The War on Drugs is, I think, the single
most insane policy that the United States has ever pursued--
we burn
the only crop these people have, and tell them we're trying to win their
hearts and minds. We should instead be paying them to grow it, as we do pay
the Turks now to grow this stuff. Painkillers have to come from opiate.
Opiate has to be produced. If you legalize it, refine it, purify it, tax it,
then the revenue does not go to narco-crime families, it goes to the coffers
of those who grow it and those who consume it.
the War on Drugs. What a waste of
resources and of people.
Federal prison
sentences for possessing or selling crack have far exceeded those for
powder cocaine for two decades. House crime subcommittee Chairman
Robert Scott, D-Va., a longtime critic of such sentencing policies,
plans to hold hearings on crack sentences this year. In the Senate,
Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama is drawing bipartisan support for
his proposal to ease crack sentences.
"I believe that as a matter
of law enforcement and good public policy that crack cocaine sentences
are too heavy and can't be justified," Sessions says. "People don't
want us to be soft on crime, but I think we ought to make the law more
rational."
The mandatory federal sentencing guidelines passed by
Congress in 1986 require a judge to impose the same sentence for
possession of 5 grams of crack as for 500 grams of powder cocaine: five
years in prison.
De-criminalize drug use. There's no any
advantage in keeping drugs illegal. That only serves to make them seem
romantic and dangerous to young people and other dunderheads. It also
keeps them far more expensive than they would otherwise be. I mean, why
should I care if someone uses cocaine or heroin? So long as the junk is
cheap enough so that users don't have to resort to criminal activity to
finance their habit, how is it my business if other people choose to
mess up their brains?
How is it my business what people smoke, snort or inject into
themselves? However, if they cause mischief while stoned out of their
skulls, I'd treat them as criminals, not victims.
11. Eliminate earmarks. These
appropriations are a version of what used to be known as "pork" and a
way for a House Member to "bring home the bacon" to his or her
constituents. Now days these programs are called "earmarks." They are
discretionary appropriations directed at a specific program or a
specific group of people.
Earmarks can be found almost
everywhere in the federal budget and for almost any project that
someone or some interest group wants the Federal Government to pay for.
Earmark appropriations may range from several thousand to more than a
billion dollars per item. On Sept. 20 2005 there was a vote in the Senate to take money out of the
transportation bill, earmarked to Alaska, to help with the Katrina
Hurricane and it was voted down 82 to 15.
If
you want to witness the most blatantly un-Constitutional and
un-American laws at work than just take a walk through your local
schools. They are currently under the control of the federal
government. 
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