Tuesday, October 07, 2008

To The Next President and The People of The USA

Change is the most important thing that I can think of that our country needs. We need to change so many things, in so many areas, that it is almost hard to know where to start. I do not want to change things just to change them. I really believe we need to change somethings that are fundamentally wrong in our government.

Where do I begin? I guess the most important change we need is to get rid of professional politicians. Why you ask? Well, when our government officials changed over from being citizens who wanted to contribute to ones who wanted to make a living being a government employee, we all lost out.

Professional politicians have but one agenda, to be reelected, everything after that is just gravy.
unfortunately they are not making enough gravy for the rest of us anymore, and are hogging all the good stuff for themselves.

We have to get back to our leaders being statesmen again. If they can't be reelected to that office, then maybe they will be able to focus on something that needs to be done about our problems.

Statesmen in my opinion, act for the national good, rather than only on what will get them reelected to their office again. Statesmen act for the greater good of our country. They do the right thing for the right reason. Being a statesmen means making hard decisions which are for not necessarily popular back home with the voters but that are the right thing to do any way. If you can not be reelected then that removes the incentives to please everyone and allows you to do the next right thing. One of the guiding principles is that they should represent thier constituence, by being one of them. No special perks, if the folks back home don't have it, they don't either.

So how do we find citizen who will serve rather than be served by their position?

I am not complete sure of how to go about that, perhaps if we settled the campain finacing problem we could find better people to run. So first of all we have to make all campains finaced by government funds. Perhaps we could allow some contributions but we must limit them to say $50.00 and only from private citizens. No corporate donatations, no PACS, and only from constituents of that area. We can not allow outside contibutions so that the statesman are only beholden to thier constituents and no one else. We have to get rid of professonal lobbists also.

Then anyone who can get enough signatures on a petition could run for office. Perhaps there could be some kind of draft or jury duty selection system to help pick everyday people. There would need to be a minium number of people on the ballet, if there were more than 3 then a runoff election could be held, to pick the final two contestents.

I recognize that to leave your job and go serve for a term of a office, that would put a strain on a person so there could be a law, like for national guard duty, such that when you term is over your previous employer has to offer your job back or one similar to the one you had.

Compensation should be approprate for the service done but not skyhigh, the purpose is to support that person and thier family while they serve in the term of office, but not make them millionaires just because the held office. Income would/should be limited, to thier official salary. While they serve they should pay into social security and pay taxes just like anyone else. They should have the same health plan every other government employee has while they serve.

We need to change our attitudes and actions to reflect a more realistic view of what is important in the world. I have nothing against sports or entertainment, but making them heros, and overpaying them makes the real important jobs being done by everyday joes unimportant and unattractive. Solders, Firemen, Police Officers, School Teachers, Scientists, Construction Workers should be our heros. They are the ones making america what is is,

I would like to apologize to you all. I was trying to find out which of you were already members by comparing bebo with my address book, and bebo spammed you all. I did not intend you ask everyone in my address book to join bebo.