Third Party - Part 1

I keep hearing from people that I am not a True Conservative like them, and I think they are right.  Of course, I am not a True Liberal either.  So I guess I am not a part of either collective, and that is fine with me.

I have had it with people who are philosophically inconsistent, and that includes those on both the left and the right.

Yesterday I caught Al Sharpton interviewing John Lewis at the Essence Festival.  Let’s be clear; both men would like for people to take skin color into account when judging others.  I have taken Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee to task for the same thing, as she seems to be very proud of her skin pigmentation also.  Congressman Lewis and Reverend Sharpton both agreed there was still a long way to go for “their people”, and that the struggle was not finished.

The recent back and forth about Paula Deen and the N-word, and the racism surrounding the George Zimmerman trial, has made me a little sick to my stomach.  It is clear that people are on both sides here, those sides being black and white.

I am not a true conservative or liberal because I do not care in any way about skin pigmentation, and I want my government to also be completely colorblind.  I want individuals to still be free to think whatever they want, to enjoy their ignorant racist thoughts, but I insist that my government not recognize color of skin.  To that end we need to eliminate affirmative action and everything that goes with it.  We need to stop taking data on race on federal forms.  We need for the EEOC to stop prosecuting Dollar General for doing background checks.  And we need to eliminate the designation of hate crimes.  A crime is just a crime.

Principle Number One:  It does not matter what color your skin is.

I was listening to an internet call-in type show that featured primarily conservatives last Monday night.  They talked about a wide range of subjects.  I loved the conversation because it was slightly irreverent and open, and some if not most of the guests had been drinking just a little.  The last topic they covered was, “should marijuana be legalized”?  The discussion centered around whether or not marijuana was harmful, and personal stories about folks who had messed up their lives with drugs.  They talked about some research, and whether pot led to psychoses later in life.  Most ended up answering “NO”, that it should not be legalized.

The True Conservatives are always going off on Mayer Bloomberg for outlawing cola drinks over 22 ounces.  They are upset that there are more and more restrictions on smoking.  They complain that government is telling them how to live their lives.  They sit around and enjoy a cocktail and talk about how pot should not be legal, that it is contributing to the moral decline in this country.  I will not bother going over the health effects of smoking and alcohol.

I am not a true conservative or liberal because I choose to be on the side of personal freedom across the board.  With two caveats; that children cannot decide for themselves and so must be protected, and that you cannot take away my rights or directly endanger my safety, I do not support restrictions on personal liberties.  If you want to eat tree bark go ahead and do so.  It is probably not good for you and seems stupid to me but I do not want to see a flurry of tree bark laws if that suddenly becomes a fad.

Principle Number Two:  I support the personal liberty of adults to do as they please so long as they do not infringe my rights or safety.

There is a debate going on in this country about abortion.  Texas is in the middle of a big debate on a bill that would restrict abortions after 20 weeks.  Both sides are pretty heated.  Liberals have decided that until the baby is born and comes down the birth canal it is part of a woman’s body and she can do with it as she pleases.  The conservatives feel that it is not a fetus but a child and that the liberals are treating abortion as merely another form of birth control.

It was particularly interesting this week to see the pro-life crowd singing Amazing Grace and the pro-choice crowd countering with chants of “Hail Satan”.  Make no mistake, there is a heavy religious overtone on the issue with pro-lifers quoting scripture and pro-choice folks not wanting someone else’s morality and religion shoved down their throat.

I watched my children come into the world.  Based not on religion but on being in the delivery room, I can say with complete confidence that human life begins sometime before a full term trip down the birth canal.  They were just as human 10 minutes before they were born as they were 10 minutes after.

I am not a true conservative or liberal because my anti-abortion stance is based on protecting the rights of what I see as a human life, not a fetus.  And so when every law continues to make exceptions for rape and incest, I scratch my head.  Since this is a human life it has rights, whether it is the result of rape or incest or whatever.  It seems to me reasonable that a baby that would be viable if delivered should not be aborted.

Those on the true conservative side also are fighting against the emergency contraception pill, which would not abort a child but prevent a life if taken the day after.  Those on the liberal side are ignoring the fact that before the late term abortion a woman has plenty of “choice”.  She can choose not to have sex, to use contraception, to use the morning after pill, or to have an abortion much earlier than 20 weeks.  Lots of choices.

Also, I am pro-life in the sense that I do not believe in the death penalty.  I am not a true conservative because I am against the death penalty and not a true liberal because I do not support abortion rights.

Principle Number Three:  Human life is sacred and as a society we should not take human life unless necessary to protect other human life.

Much has been made recently about the supposed trade-off between security and liberty.  The recent revelations about the NSA and PRISM programs and government secrecy have made for some very strange bedfellows.  Those who have called Edward Snowden the worst kind of traitor have squared off against those who see him as a hero.  He is probably both. 

I am not a true conservative because I do not support the government’s need to have secret programs to keep us safe that involve government spying on us.  I distrust my government, as did the founders, and although they do have a responsibility to try and keep us safe, it is secondary to protecting our liberties.  Liberals, to my shock, have also embraced the need for these secret programs, ie, Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi agree oddly enough with Dick Cheney and Lindsey Graham and Barak Obama that we need these secret government data collection programs to keep us safe and that Edward Snowden has done a terrible thing.

Principle Number Four:  Government itself is the biggest threat to our liberties, and we need a transparent open government.  Liberty trumps security and Tyranny is our biggest threat.

Finally, I am not a true conservative or a true liberal because I believe in a much smaller, much more limited federal government.  I also cannot be a true conservative or liberal because I think we need to do whatever it takes to reduce our deficit and repay our national debt.

Liberals are in love with big government and are fine with expanding it for Obamacare and entitlement programs, and they do not ever talk about our debt problem.  Nancy Pelosi is famously quoted as saying we do not have a spending problem.  I am not a liberal because I know we have a massive spending problem.

Conservatives think we need to protect the military from job cuts.  They think lowering taxes is the solution to the federal debt problem.  Wall Street is in love with Ben Bernanke and his printing press solution to our economy.  George Bush and Hank Paulson convinced us we needed to do whatever it took to bail out the financial sector and the largest companies on the planet because they were “Too Big to Fail”.  They were wrong.  Failure is how we learn.  Failure is what keeps us honest.  Failure allows smaller companies to rise up and replace bigger ones.

I am not a true conservative, I am a capitalist.  I believe in the free market.  I do not support cronyism.  Conservatives would tell me I just don’t understand.  Liberals will tell me I have no compassion.

Principle Number Four:  Government cannot control the economy, or protect everyone financially.  Government needs to balance it’s budget, pay it’s debt, and get out of the way and let free market capitalism work.

I am sick of people protecting their own self interest, their own views, their own side, and ending up horribly inconsistent and then using convoluted reasoning to defend their views.  The words conservative and liberal no longer have any consistent meaning, except that they both represent hypocrisy.

There is talk of a third party, of the need for another option.  We do not need a moderate party, lukewarm and straddling the fence.  We need a party that outlines principles and sticks to them, through thick and thin, whether comfortable or not.  I say leave the Republican party for the TRUE CONSERVATIVES, the Democrat party for the TRUE LIBERALS, and we all leave their parties for something with a consistent set of principles.

Comprehensive Government Reform

A lot has been said about reform lately in the United States.  We are debating comprehensive immigration reform.  We have passed comprehensive health care reform, or Obamacare.  There is talk of the need for tax reform and social security reform and fiscal reform and entitlement reform.

I am a fan of reform, but I think we need to start with the idea of truly comprehensive reform, namely reforming the entire way we do government.  We need comprehensive reform of the entire US Government.

There is a lot of agreement that things are broken, lots of things across the board.  The first paragraph above provides only a partial list.  I am sad to see us attacking each of these problems separately, without really applying a coherent overall policy to what we are doing and why.  One big reason for this is politics.  Change in government comes from politicians, who often do what is good for them politically, and then compromise down to what they can get away with.  What we end up with is a huge amount of federal structure and legislation that makes no sense.

I have intended to write about what to do about the health care mess on many occasions, and whenever I do I am acutely aware that everything we do is so intertwined with everything else that changing the problems in one area also requires changing another area, and so on with domino-like effect.

Make no mistake; one thing I do not think needs changing is our Constitution.  I just think we need to get back to it.  I will attempt to lay out what path I think we could take to get back to where we should be, but the subject is larger than I can tackle in any one sitting.  And so let me start with a few core principles as step one in beginning this discussion.

Less Federal, More State.  Power, that is.  We need to take a whole host of issues and give them back to the states to decide.  Mainly this means social issues.  Those need to be decided at the state level, and the federal government needs to back away from telling states and local governments what they can and cannot do.  People can have an effect on what goes on in their state a lot easier than they can at a national level.  We need an amendment that tells the Supreme Court it is the will of the people that the Interstate Commerce Clause is only for commerce that crosses state lines.

Balance The Budget.  The federal government needs to stop living beyond their means.  As soon as our debt is paid off and we have extra cash or gold lying around then we can talk about what to do with it.  Otherwise we need an austerity program.  We are $17 trillion dollars in debt, the Social Security trust fund is empty, and we are leaving a horrible mess for our children and grandchildren.  This is irresponsible and cannot continue.  Part of this reform includes not allowing a Federal Reserve to create $85 billion in new dollars every month to prop things up.  Another part of this reform involves eliminating automatic spending increases.

Reform Entitlements.  Our entitlement programs are all built on a house of cards.  We have promised a massive amount of money to people, and we are currently virtually hand to mouth.  George Bush tried to reform Social Security and he got blasted for it but he was right, the program is not sustainable.  I have in mind one new massive federal program - Social Welfare that would eliminate all other federal programs that send checks to individuals.  Yes, that would include Social Security, Welfare, AFDC, Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and on and on.  All of those programs would be gone and would be replaced by the new Social Welfare program.  This program would send checks from government to those in need.  Note that if you are not in need you would not get a check.  Taxes would be taken from these checks, and you would have to prove need.  Yes, means testing.  Some agency similar to the current IRS (I will get to them in a moment) would look at your application for aid, look at your assets and determine whether you are needy enough to be sent a government check. 

We are and always will be a compassionate people and there is no scenario in our future where we will turn a sick child away from getting medical care, or allow old people to starve or freeze to death.  So for all of your criticisms of what I am suggesting that are based on lack of compassion, I will direct you to the Social Welfare program, which will alone deal with these issues.  All other relevant programs will cease to exist.

Federal Tax Reform.  If ever anything needed change, it is our federal tax code.  First, let me deal with how to fund the Social Welfare program noted above.  This program would be funded by a sales tax on all Americans.  There would be no prebate, as suggested by the current Fair Tax proposal.  There would be no personal exemptions, no exceptions for anything including food and medicine.  Every American would pay the same percentage on everything they buy, period.  If someone is buying and someone is selling then there would be a tax to pay, period.  Americans could then, either directly or through their elected representatives, decide how large this tax would be, how much they were willing to pay for social welfare.  Everyone would have skin in the game, as it were, and so there would be pain for everyone if the tax went up.  Once collected, that would be the total amount available to be handed out by the Social Welfare program, and of course there would be much debate about who was most deserving.  There should be much debate about that. 

The rest of the government could either be funded through a Flat Tax, or additional Sales Tax, or Flat corporate taxes, or a 9-9-9 plan.  In any event, there would be no exemptions or exclusions or deductions for anything, period.  No real tax code, just a percentage.  Whatever great thing we were trying to do with tax codes to promote this or that could either be done at the state level or we could send checks to individuals, but we do not need to social engineer through the tax code.

As for the IRS, it needs to be eliminated but something similar will be needed for means-testing those who want government aid.  If you don’t want a government check, there should be nobody looking at your financial affairs.  If you want money and need it, someone will have to check out your claim that you don’t have anything of value.

Health Care Reform.  Repeal Obamacare.  Eliminate subsidies to employers to provide health care and people will buy it on the open market.  Allow companies to operate across state lines.  Watch free market capitalism drive down prices in the health insurance industry.  Provide help to the needy through the Social Welfare program. 

Immigration and Borders.  The federal government should secure our borders, to control immigration and to provide security.  Fix the current legal immigration system and monitor those who come here on visas.  Find a way to provide appropriate punishment to those living here who broke our laws and then allow them to go to the back of the citizenship line.

Gay Marriage, Marijuana, Abortion.  These are issues to be decided by the states.  Refer back to the first point.  Vigorous debate and discussion will occur in the states and over time the states themselves will likely reach consensus; or not.  Move to another state if you are unhappy.

Retirement.  Because some of you may have noticed that I eliminated Social Security, and with it all of the money that you paid in, I hear you screaming “that’s my money!”  It would be, if there was any money.  As I noted, not only do we not have any of the money that anyone paid in, we also are $17 trillion in debt.  The money we all paid in is gone and not coming back.

And so Individual Retirement Accounts are in order.  Americans need to regularly save for retirement and that money needs to belong to each of us individually rather than all of us collectively.  Back to George Bush and his ideas on reform of Social Security.

Clearly this is not a complete plan but just the beginning of a plan, the start of a discussion.  There is much to criticize here, and I hope you will do so.  We need to start this debate and get a plan together before our institutions start collapsing on their own.  Most people do not wish to think about any of these things.  And that is the problem.  They expect politicians to figure things out and just give them what they want.  They don’t care how and that is why we are in this mess.

I realize I sound like some sort of radical doomsday guy, but some of these facts are inescapable.  And the current piecemeal approach is getting us nowhere.  We need comprehensive government reform.

I look forward to flushing out some of these ideas with more specificity and welcome your thoughts.