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Hi y'all, I've been doing some political soul searching, and just plain old soul searching for that matter, but anyway I'm curious to see what the federal government would do and look like if you as a conservative were able to have complete control of reshaping the federal government?
Much ,much ,Smaller, more efficient, streamlined and effective.
Why do we need a federal Dept of Education? Why do we need the bloated bureaucracies of the EPA, FCC, Interior?
Why do we need a $750 Billion Defense budget?
I agree with you on most.
The Education department should be privatized. Only people with money can send their kids to school. Or let kids work their way thru school by working in factories.
Unions should be abolished and their leaders arrested.
All restrictions on business should be lifted. No laws about the environment should hinder profits.
But I disagree on defense. The Defense budget should be quadrupled. We have to fight those nasty muslims, or face the fact that they will rule over us, just like in Europe.
Everytime GAO issued a report where something wasn't being done/wasn't working effectively/efficiently, that agency would lose funding in the next appropriations bill. If it happened a second time, that is a second audit showed the problem wasn't fixed, the department budget would be cut by 20 percent.
Headquarters operations for all agencies would be cut by 25 percent. The span of control for executives and especially 1st line managers, in DC headquarters offices, would seriously increase. There's no good reason why the highest graded employees need more first line supervision than the lower graded employees in field offices.
The size of the government would decrease by attrition. A hiring freeze for 5 years. Retirees and quitters not replaced. Exception: military.
Every agency's travel budget would be cut in half.
No earmarks in any bill. There would be a single annual "earmark" bill with everyone's pet projects in one place. The politician who requested the individual item would have their name appear next to it. The annual earmark bill would be ordered/alphabetized by the state of the person who added the item, so for example, all of California's politicians' earmarks would be together. The bill would be made public for two weeks at which time, citizens could contact their reps and their senators before it was voted on. At the end of that period, items could be deleted or edited but no items could be added before the "earmark" bill was voted on. I think they wouldn't be called "earmarks" anymore but that's trivial.
No combo bills. Example: No attaching the national healthcare database creation to the stimulus bill. No attaching the Dream Act to a Defense Spending bill.
The federal government would no longer fund research EXCEPT if that research was going to be USED by the federal government for decision making/allocating funds/etc.. Examples: (I'm just making this up) Research to see why it takes so long for people to get their first social security checks, research to determine the weight a soldier can carry in 100+ degree temperatures, reseach to see why those oil drilling permits take so long to be processed, research to determine how the government can better track visa overstays effectively, research to determine which 2 army bases should be consolidated, research to determine the best of two fuels for the next space flight, research to determine the most effective techniques for questioning terrorists, research to determine the selection criteria for audits, all okay for federal government funded research.
Research money to see why kids don't build female "snowmen" or why people who sit on the couch all day are fatter than people who exercise or why people put on more clothes when it's cold, or federally funded research in bars in Buenos Aires to determine why gay men participate in risky sexual behavior when they're drunk ----> GONE.
And this may not be what you are looking for in this particular thread but I want to see some kind of primary states rotation so that the same states aren't always going in the beginning of the voting in presidential election years.
Only people with money can send their kids to school.
Or let kids work their way thru school by working in factories.
Unions should be abolished and their leaders arrested.
All restrictions on business should be lifted.
No laws about the environment should hinder profits.
1. Merely transformed into a national credentials bank. Students can learn from any source. Credentials can be acquired by examination.
2. American schooling has little to do with education. It is for bestowing credentials. That's why a "C" GPA from Harvard trumps an "A" GPA from Podunk Community College.
3. Apprenticeship is far cheaper than expending huge resources to buy credentials. No school loans, grants nor debt burdens to repay.
4. Collective bargaining is not the problem. Collective extortion is the problem.
5. Merely eliminate limited liability. Any enterprise that does deliberate injury is criminally liable, from president to stock holder.
6. All "laws" regulating pollution merely create legal limits for poisoning. It would be far simpler to make all outlets upstream of inlets, and requiring the management to imbibe the output on a weekly basis (random sampling, of course). Any toxic behavior will result in "new management" who will rectify the problem ASAP.
I would just get rid of the internet, television and cellular communications. There's your austerity right there. Those 3 things might be a bigger joke on the general population than alcohol and tobacco. Well, maybe not that big.
Better yet, 95% cut back.
That will be very helpful.
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