Special Topic - Politics

With the elections just 8 days away, I thought I would share my brief summary of politics - what I think, why I care, and how I keep from going crazy. Regardless of your political party affiliations or religious background, I hope that you can appreciate my point of view and allow me to explain my background on the issues. I've spent my fair share of time around the world and it has opened my eyes to issues we have here in America and all of the possible solutions to them that we are too close minded and "bipartisan"to ever fix. Americans are burned out on politics and half of running for office has turned into dragging people to their precious liberty of actually casting a ballot. Damn are we ungrateful and lazy.

I should warn you that if Ron Paul was running in this election, I would vote for him. For those of you who left my blog because of that sentence, good riddance. It's your subjective type that keeps us in the fatal loop. It is frustrating to me that in today's America, to vote for any candidate except for one of the two who has a lot of campaign money, is to "waste your vote" as so many of my friends have told me. Instead, I prefer to look at which candidate best matches my views on the issues and vote for them. Thankfully, to make this easier my wife has dug up "isidewith.com". This website queries you on your views and then reports back your most aligned candidate. Mine was Gary Johnson. Who? Yeah, exactly. Unfortunately for the guy, his Libertarian party is not currently giving away signs for free so I won't be displaying one in the front yard, but he does have our votes.

So what causes all this political burnout? For me, it's the phone calls. Our house rings every night with misinformed Democratic telemarketers trying to force to see who we're voting for in Florida. Too bad we don't live there. And it's not just one party... the only reason the Republicans don't call me any more is because I told the last lady (3 weeks ago) that if they ever called me again I wouldn't vote for them. Coming from a registered Republican, that's saying a lot. And it's not just the phone calls. Negative TV and radio ads barrage my ears day and night. I fall asleep to it. I sit in traffic jams with it. I watch comedy shows which won't even leave politics alone. Trust me, there's not enough comedy in the world to glaze over a 75% negative presidential campaign ad season. This is ridiculous. Why can't we go back to the old days where people debated on the issues and voters used their brains to pick a candidate. Both parties and all their PAC cronies use so much propaganda you would think we were the Slavs during the Cold War.

To avoid the political burnout, I decided to try something new this year. I signed my wife and I up for a bus tour with the only political candidate that we like: Pat Tiberi. Pat is one of the true representatives out there. Like the good old days, he truly believes in representing his district in DC. He testifies on our behalf and uses personal from his constituents in every issue he discusses. He takes the time to connect with the people in his district and learn what is really important to them. This is why his re-election is really not in doubt, and also why I volunteered my wife and I to go out this past weekend and walk around on his behalf. I just wish that more politicians would take more time to know and represent their people rather than their sponsors. It's because of this that I often debate running for office. I have a respect for those true servants of the people, the ones who give up their livelihoods to represent the unrepresented in our capitals and legislative bodies. I'm not sure I could ever give up that much time myself. But on the flipside, I am so sick of being forgotten and ignored, while fought over and patronized. I just want a break from all of this and I'm not sure how we'll ever get one unless someone like me stands up and takes the initiative.

So here's what I would do if I could be the one in charge...

First off, we need to make better use of our prisoners. I'm morally against the death penalty (it's also a cheap way out), but life in prison is way too good to people. We need to threaten them with real work for the rest of their lives. There are plenty of jobs out there that we can put people to that they would be able to perform without danger to the community while at least paying for their room and board with the government. Along these same lines, I believe that if we're going to hand out welfare checks anyhow, we might as well pay people to perform a job for the government and increase government or civil service contributions with the money that we're giving away. And IDs should be issued for food handouts. People should be more restricted on what they can get with taxpayer money. If I'm paying for someone else's dinner, I at least want to know that they are getting appropriate nutrition with it so that I also won't have to be paying for their healthcare.

Second, with foreign policy, we can stay the course. Foreign occupation is unnecessary and a long-term problem for us. Instead, we should be tactical with handling of those who are wrongdoers while limiting our time spent in foreign countries. I wouldn't want police patroling outside my house every night just because there's one bad guy who likes to speed past there once a week. I think it's the same with military occupation of other countries. We can deal with dangers to our country while not forcing ourselves upon the people. It's no wonder that they're tired of having us there. If we moved faster and stronger we wouldn't be taken for granted by our allies and we wouldn't be taken as pricks by civilians in aggressor countries.

Third is taxes. I'm so sick of hearing about taxing them or taxing me. Everyone should pay taxes. Self-employment opportunities don't pay taxes well. To fix this, let's try random audits of self-employment filings. If everyone pays the same percentage of taxes, I'm fine with that. This is the land of opportunity, not the land of get whatever you want until you make $100,000. And since I'm headed that way, what about education? I don't think we have a problem with enough people going to college. No, I think we have a problem with enough quality people going to college. Trust me, I've seen them in the classes I TA. What we need to do is invest our loan support money into grade schools instead. If we can build up education at this level, we can increase intellectual growth in our students through highschool. If they learn in highschool what people used to learn in highschool, the diploma would again have the value that we have inflated to a community college degree now. Rather than inflate education, I would prefer to decrease our educational statistics and instead increase the quality of education provided to kids.

People tell me that things are just not that simple. Well, I have trouble believing that. We've made things far too difficult for ourselves and if we don't snap out of it, America will be outsourcing our Obamacare medicine to China and then paying interest on it via imaginary monopoly cash from a couch at a European McDonald's where we reside on disability. People need to stop complaining about how hard everything is and get back to work on making things better. Who cares if it doesn't go perfectly as planned? If we don't try to fix things we know what the end result will look like.