If You Were In Charge
 

Here's my disingenuous way of trying to draw attention from the ad hominem attacks in the other threads (as much as I enjoy them, some people's feelings are probably hurt).

If you were president, what would you do about:

1. Terrorism?

2. Unemployment?

3. Creative accounting & other funny business among corporate heads?

4. Congressional stalemates?

5. Hate crimes (assuming you consider the category a separate, valid one)?

6. Crime & punishment in general?

7. War & the military?

8. Education (or, more accurately, public schooling)?

9. The rivenness of American social life (in other words, the deep splits between ideologies that affect all aspects of experience)?

Above all, you're the president . . . so have fun! :cool:

Hmm... I think I'm going to need you to step that up to "Supreme Ruler Of One And All" before I'm capable of answering how I'd change things if I were in charge. ;) :laugh:

Seriously though, great topic... I'll have to give my answers some thought. I don't want to flip-flop on anything! :shocked: :laugh:

Ya left off....
 

the number 1 scurge of the planet:

Downloading music & movies from the internet...Which makes the rest of those problems look somewhat not as important if ya ask some of those 'tards in Washington DC...I'm sure they tell ya some "blonde bimbo flavor of the weak" missing that $0.02 profit from an album being downloaded online is WAY more important that world peace :rolleyes:

We have to take a good long look at who and what's involved in that. No comprehensive investigation into 9/11 was ever really conducted. The 9/11 commission was a whitewash. Since I'm not privy to all the information, that would be a first step-one that as a president would probably get me assasinated. My personal opinion is that our government was far more complicit in 9/11 than most Americans are capable of believing.
After the first world trade center bombing, there were many preventitive measures that should/could have been taken and were not.
I doubt any of them would have made the towers such that they could have withstood the impact of airplanes.
We certainly should implement some sort of system to check cargo that's coming into the United States. Power plants and water supplies need to be more secure. Our borders, especially to the north, have very little security. It sure would create a lot of jobs. :) Of course, we'd have to raise taxes. But don't you think Americans would be willing to pay for their safety? The Department Of Homeland Security has been shown to be a largely pork barrel project anyway. Those dollars could be diverted into other programs.
We might want to consider what it's like to be diplomatic to other countries again. We could be facing blowback from the situation in Iraq for god knows how long.
It would help if we developed methods of alternative fuel to lessen our dependence on foreign oil so that a lot of the evil people who have been our bedfellows and then enemies wouldn't have us by the balls.
NAFTA. Just get rid of that damn thing.
Implement taxes on corporations that do business in this country and ship the majority of their jobs overseas.
Our economy needs to be made strong again in order to spur job creation. The first step toward a more stable economy is to start ridding ourselves of the ridiculous deficit that we have now.
It's already illegal. If the Department Of Justice and the SEC don't investigate these people, then who the hell is going to?
I'll have to think on that one. The system of checks and balances is so out of whack right now... With the gerrymandering of congressional districts and other things that have gone on, it's hard for me to believe that the people are being fairly represented. We need to figure out a way to hold our reprsentatives more accountable. Term limits, maybe?
Specifically?

It's okay, Johnny. Thinking, progressive people change their mind. Sometimes, they're even wrong.

Even though I have used "flip-flopping" as a punchline on this and other occasions, I actually admire people who are able to remain open to other possibilities, and are willing to admit that they were wrong, or hadn't considered a possibility.

Sticking to your guns is an admirable thing, but a willingness to admit you don't know everything is even more admirable, IMO. :)

I'm in a quandry about NAFTA. Not a quandry where i question that it is bad, but a quandry where....how can we hope to make businesses stay in our country when most of the rest of the world isn't up to our living standards? how can it be done? I can imagine some serious forces working against taxing businesses who ship their business overseas... :distress:
But how can we convince Capitalist america to do these things? business owners are in business for money. It's cheaper to pay workers overseas. How can we stop it? I'm pretty damn sure business owners won't wake up and see the light of how they're detrimental to our society. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
It just seems impossible to make a business owner here pay our wages, and our health benefits, etc, when someone else will do it for $3 a day. And i'm not saying that is right, I'm just saying that business owners will never do it, and that the standard of living in many of these other countries is to different from ours to ever...awww....I just haven't found the solution, except by law, to require them to hold business here. Judging from the vice grip corporations have always had on politics and law, it's hard to see the right ever happening. :distress:
GDW?

1. Terrorism?

2. Unemployment?

3. Creative accounting & other funny business among corporate heads?

Prosecute these guys, especially that Enron Guy. Frankly I don't know how these guys cook the books like they do. Don't they have to be audited by an outside source?

4. Congressional stalemates?

5. Hate crimes (assuming you consider the category a separate, valid one)?

6. Crime & punishment in general?

7. War & the military?

8. Education (or, more accurately, public schooling)?

Get rid os SOL's in Virginia...the idea of holding people to standards isn't a bad one butyou have to watch teaching to the tests and not teaching anything else...

9. The rivenness of American social life (in other words, the deep splits between ideologies that affect all aspects of experience)? People have to be taught to respect all beliefs..

I have a question: What would you do if you were president about the great economic splits in the country? The inequality here I think breeds some of the other stuff-like hate crimes...I also find it ridiculous that a nation as rich as this one is (not the gov't-I mean ordinary citizens) should have homeless people in the streets..

this is a great thread-i need to thin k some more about it..

Above all, you're the president . . . so have fun!
__________________
Pas de lieu Rhône que nous.

Ken Lay will never be prosecuted more than a dog and pony show trial. he's been a Bush family friend for many, many years and was one of his biggest campaign contributors in '00 and the gubernatorial race. :(

The sad thing is that this type of fraud was very widespread. I personally know of a company that knowingly lied to Wall Street but they never got in trouble. They just fired the CEO, who I am not even sure was fully to blame, but he probably deserved to be fired. Of course, he had the "golden parachute" of millions in severance. :rolleyes:

The reason why Enron's corruption was so vast and so unnoticed was because they had the auditors in their pockets. Wasn't it Andersen? I think that their reputation was ruined after this.

My ideas...
 

Tee hee!!!!

:lol:

To get anything done, you would have to be Dictator. The congress and Senate would need their pork barrell additions and amendments ...in other words no President can really do much.

It was Arthur Anderson. :nod:

For anyone interested, here is some info. on the Bush - Lay - Enron connection

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushlay1.html

Here are some on Lay and Enron's donations:

http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/alertv6_31.asp

http://www.cato.org/dailys/02-01-02.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...ers/power.html

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5395458/
___________________________________________________________

That no one of any substance, much less Ken Lay, from Enron has not been tried and convicted speaks for itself. I mean who here sitting on a jury would not convict them on the facts we know :shrug: Thus, this is politics - pure and simple :nod:

As to David's point, I would:

Take marriage out of the govt.'s hands. If you want to get married - find some Church to marry you and I do not care who or how many you marry. no tax or other Federal or state benefits will be deemed given just because you are married. Thus, everyone would bo on equal footing in all areas. If this is so easily obtainable as the far religious right says it is in reference to gay marriage, then I really do not see the problem. If fact, the Churches can provide the documents since they apparently are so interested in this.

Change affirmative action to poverty based as opposed to race. I have long said the reasoning that minorities (not just blacks) were oppressed therefore they deserve special treatment is over and done with as far as I am concerned. I say that the son of a wealthy African American family should not be given any preference over a poor white kid from the projects. That is assinine to me.

I would semi-socialize medicine in that doctors would have to donate something like 20% of their time to treating the indigent. Another thought is doctors and hospitals would have to take 20% indigent patients and the govt. would pay them a nominal fee - like $20. That people in America die from a lack of health care is horrible. Plus, many doctors and hospitals are already doing this.

I would, even though I do not smoke it, legalize pot - I mean come on - alcohol is worse for you and think of the tax dollars flowing in from that cash cow.

Those are a few - there are many more though :laugh:

I agree about pot legalization. Though it didn't do that much for me, as you say, alcohol is legal. Pot users don't belong in jail. They're overcrowded as it is.

I would also abolish the death penalty.

I would overhaul the higher education system - entirely open admissions, but tougher standards to graduate. Universities are paper mills, and then employers b!tch about incompetent workers. And, this would never fly in our society, but I think grades are negative. People are more worried about passing/making staight A's/just getting by or whatever their mantra than actually learning. College would also be free or extremely low cost.

I would end legalized discrimination in all forms.

:thumbsup:

College educations have become jokes. The teachers just go through the motions, assigning book work and reading assignments, etc. There is an utter lack of hands on involvement. It's become so easy to pass college classes that I fail to see the point to them. Now they have distance learning classes, which are essentially courses that can be taken over the internet. Who really does the assigned work, man? All you have to do is sit there with your textbook while taking a quiz or test. Who is learning anything?

I admit that when I was in college, I did everything in my power to circumvent doing any actual work when it came to math courses and biology courses. But I was lucky in that my major required total hands-on involvement in order to graduate. Projects, models, research, blue prints, you name it. Now there are kids out there who get psychology degrees without even knowing Piaget's theory of cognitive development. I've met them firsthand. :laugh:

:nod: :nod: I would be SO screwed if I hadn't gotten my first public radio job in college - I learned more from that part-time job about my field than I did from any courses...

a lot of coursed offered nowadays are total jokes....just see the Lil' Kim course in Syracuse...horrible...

They offer courses on Lil' Kim? :shocked:

I wonder if they ever dress up like her in order to "get inside her head." The professor could role play as Diana Ross. :D

Yes - the title of the class is - The Life and Times of Lil' Kim I believe...I posted about it once before...I'll see if I can dig it up...

I think you could get inside her head by just looking at her. The way a person dresses (or does not :laugh: ) tells a lot. :wavey:

Life and Times? The chick isn't even 30 years of age!

http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showthread.php?t=16734

There ya go...

Hehehe. I wonder if they'll have a class on Blondie, seeing as how they essentially created the hip hop movement in America. :laugh:

Sign me up for that one! I betcha I'd ace it ;) :wavey: Then again... I WOULD kill all hip hop vibes as soon as I walk in the room :laugh:

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Did you see the hip hop awards on VH1 a couple months ago? I couldn't stop laughing. It's hilarious to see her treated as hip hop royalty, a white woman from Jersey. :laugh:

I boycotted that one :wavey: :laugh: :laugh:

:laugh: It was rather unwatchable, to be honest. Though I did think the week-long documentary on the evolution of hip hop was rather fascinating. And it had a good twenty minute portion regarding Rapture and Blondie.

Did you download that concert I posted about? It's fabulous, I'm telling ya. :wavey:

Hey, why pick on the psych kids!?! I went to Bridgewater State and I got a great education I thought. Ivy league shmivy league. Not that I don't have any respect for those colleges, it's just that colleges like mine don't get it when it really was a good school with quality teachers and curriculum, IMO. Also, sometimes the more prestigious schools will give a "gentleman's B" because no one can fail on paper and make the school/themselves look bad.

Coming soon...
 

from the College of Ass-tards, The course y'all demanded:

Stevie Nicks-My Life and Times in a SINGLE BLACK DRESS!!!

Watch in awe as Ms.Nicks explains over-and-over how black is slimming, Why she isnt a witch, Blahblahblahyaddayaddayadda!!!

Head? Honey, don't you mean pants? Or lack thereof.

In a recent interview...
 

Jesus H. Christ (Occupation: Messiah, Carpenter, Tree-hugging liberal) was asked the above questions and how he would solve these problems for American citizens if he was elected President:

"Are ya kidding me...Trying to solve those questions is one miracle that even I could not attempt...Man, Y'all need to get outside more often cause I think the lack of sun in the winter affected yer pea-sized brains.

As for me, I'm off to meet the fellows (aka The Disciples) at the local Hooters then it's off to the local nudie bar...Gonna be a long night of "Breasts & Thighs" if ya know what I mean (Jesus winks & gives the thumbs up-Just imagine the Buddy Christ pose from the movie "Dogma")".

Absolutely - ITA

I would also have a flat tax of 15% (if that high) for the Fed. Gov. and a 5% cap (if that high) for the states. If they cannot do it on that - SCREW THEM!!!! :laugh: Thus would end all pork barrel crap that we see everyday on both sides :mad:

You mean income tax? Stupid pork barrel crap.

I mean a 15% tax PERIOD - no excise tax - no estate tax - no telephone line tax (have you taken a look at your bill lately and seen the pork barrel given to the phone companies to bring lines into rural areas :eek: ) - or any other individual tax. 15% PERIOD :mad:

:laugh: :laugh:

Sweet, strand for pres! Lol. Oh man, yes I've seen that crap on my phone bill. Ugh.

AND - Bellsouth has the NERVE to say "We do not get that money" - I also have to tell them that it is a FEDERAL SUBSIDY - which means they get the MF'ING money they lobbied for - JACKA$$E$ :mad:

AND ANOTHER THING - $1.50 for 911 emergency services - PUUHHHLLLEEEZZZZEEEEE If there are 10 million phones in Georgia (which I submit is grossly underestimating it) that is 15 million a month to 911. That is $180 million a year EVERY YEAR. I cannot believe it costs $180 million a year to maintain and run 911 - JACKA$$E$

Can ya tell I hate the Fed. and State tax cooruption :laugh: :laugh:

I hate it too. They have to pay for $100 bottles of champaign somehow.